Mark 14:12-26

12 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrifice the Passover lamb, His disciples asked Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare the Passover so You may eat it?”

13 So He sent two of His disciples and told them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a water jug will meet you. Follow him. 14 Wherever he enters, tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room for Me to eat the Passover with My disciples?”’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.” 16 So the disciples went out, entered the city, and found it just as He had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

Betrayal at the Passover

17 When evening came, He arrived with the Twelve. 18 While they were reclining and eating, Jesus said, “I assure you: One of you will betray Me—one who is eating with Me!”

19 They began to be distressed and to say to Him one by one, “Surely not I?”

20 He said to them, “It is one of the Twelve—the one who is dipping bread with Me in the bowl. 21 For the Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”

The First Lord’s Supper

22 As they were eating, He took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it;[b] this is My body.”

23 Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them, and so they all drank from it. 24 He said to them, “This is My blood that establishes the covenant;[c] it is shed for many. 25 I assure you: I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in a new way[d] in the kingdom of God.” 26 After singing psalms,[e] they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Reintroducing the story

Enter the mind of the disciples

Aspects of the Passover meal

It would need to take place in the city.

The disciples sought to make preparations but God already had.

The shock of Jesus’ statement while they eat. “One of you will betray me”

Heart rate goes up, both in wondering who it is, and in that deepest, darkest corner of your soul, living in distress that it might be you.

And it might be you. Something that we will examine is the parallel between Peter and Judas.

All of a sudden Jesus is breaking from the script.

He’s doing a new thing…

This is my body??

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood?”

Blood that establishes the covenant?

What covenant? (a question they would spend the rest of their lives answering.

Covenant Pattern

1 Chronicles 16:15 LEB

15 Remember his covenant forever, the word he commanded for a thousand generations,

Psalm 103:15–18 HCSB

15 As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; 16 when the wind passes over it, it vanishes, and its place is no longer known. 17 But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear Him, and His righteousness toward the grandchildren 18 of those who keep His covenant, who remember to observe His precepts.

Hosea 6:6–7 LEB

6 Because I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 7 But like Adam, they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.

“Exodus 24 begins with a call to worship as the Lord summons Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel to draw near. Moses then includes the people in what can be described as a service of worship–a ceremony of covenant confirmation (and later renewal) focusing on three elements.” -Clearly Reformed

Covenant Meal Pattern

5 C’s all present?

Call to Worship

Confession of sin

Consecration, which includes Bible readings and the sermon

Communion, or Lord's Supper

Commissioning, or Benediction

(blessed by eating the meal? Or later as in John 20:22?)

God is the one who establishes a covenant, not us.

This is really important because our promises are like mist.

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:14-15

This is made evident by God’s preparation of the meal,

Jesus’ highlighting of the fact that even the betrayal plays into God’s cosmic plan,

Jesus is the one who serves the meal.

Covenant Renewal Today

“The historic liturgy of the Christian church did not originate in evangelicalism, or in the Reformation, or in Europe. It grew out of Old Testament (and then New Testament) assumptions about what it meant for God’s people to gather and renew the covenant. The corporate gathering of God’s people is not mainly for community or for fellowship or for moral instruction, though all of these are present. “We gather each Lord’s Day,” Mike Horton reminds us, “not merely out of habit, social custom, or felt needs but because God has chosen this weekly festival as a foretaste of the everlasting Sabbath day that will be enjoyed fully at the marriage supper of the Lamb.” - Clearly Reformed

What are some things

5 reasons we worship the way we do:

An attentiveness to the word of God

A desire for peaceful and orderly simplicity

Ultimately this is simply

A commitment to evangelism

A clear vision of the future

“I assure you: I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in a new way in the kingdom of God.”

Jesus gives of himself every Lord’s day as we drink from the cup of blessing, which is both a look forward into the future, but also a legitimate present day reality of the kingdom of God NOW.