Mark 14:17-26; Family Dinner

Sermon in a sentence: The Lord’s Supper is a family meal.

Family Members

The invisible Church is made of regenerate believers. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

The visible Church is a made of a mixed company. (Matthew 13:24-30)

Even though Judas predetermined to betray Jesus, he was still at the table.

First, this shows God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. (Acts 2:23)

Acts 2:23 “23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

Second, this shows man’s sinful nature and ability to infiltrate the church.

Jude 4 “4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

2 Peter 2:21 “21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”

Family Relationships

Fundamentally, the church is the new family of God bought by the blood of Christ.

This new family should strive for holiness.

David Garland

Mark Contemporary Significance

Mark does not present the Last Supper as a sacrament that brings blessing and assurance. The scene, filled with high tension, sweaty palms, lumps in throats, and nervous anxiety, serves as a warning to readers. They are to examine themselves in precisely the same way as these first disciples did. One of them would betray Jesus. The gathered disciples did not immediately single out Judas as the guilty party. They looked to themselves. Today, each must ask himself or herself, as these disciples did, “Surely not I?”

When the Lord’s Supper is served at the end of a worship service, people may examine their watches more than their hearts and may be worried more about dinner than how they have betrayed Jesus in the previous week or how they might betray him in the next. Mark’s account of the Last Supper should jolt us awake. Each should contemplate his or her own life and confess all the ways, big and small, that he or she has betrayed the Lord and acknowledge such weaknesses. We should all be humbly aware that if one of the Twelve could betray Jesus, every Christian has that potential. This idea of self-examination, as opposed to cross-examination, is preserved in Paul’s comments on the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:27–29), along with the idea of eating worthily. We are worthy of the Lord’s Supper when we recognize how unworthy we are. We feel its power when we also recognize that Jesus died for us and accepts us in spite of our unworthiness.

This new family should look forward for the coming kingdom of God.