Mark 14:12-25
Notes
Transcript
Verses 12-16
Verses 12-16
Exodus 12 gives the instructions for Passover and the feast of unleavened bread -
14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.
15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
16 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you.
17 And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever.
18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.
19 For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land.
20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb.
22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
Passover was a celebration of God delivering His people out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt and follows with God bringing His people into a covenant with Him on Mount Sinai accompanied with the Old Covenant Law, while Communion is a remembrance of Jesus Christ delivering us from the bondage of our sin and follows with the coming of the Holy Spirit to write the law of God upon our hearts, and that law being the law of love, Love God above all else with all we have and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
A man carrying a jar of water -
This would be an odd thing for them to see considering carrying water in a jar or pitcher was a task that women did in those days and not men. Men carried liquids in animal skins but not jars or pitchers as the women did.
Notice how Jesus makes sure not to tell the disciples where they will celebrate Passover ahead of time? That might be to prevent Judas from knowing so that he could not betray Jesus until after supper.
Jesus was giving Judas Iscariot one last opportunity to repent and be saved, as well as protecting the other 11 from being trapped in the guest room where they would eat the Passover meal together.
On top of all of that Jesus knew what He was about to do after eating the Passover meal.
Jesus was going to institute a new covenant, and that was not to be interrupted by His betrayal.
Verses 17-21
Verses 17-21
as they were reclining at table and eating - In the instructions from Exodus the Jews were told to eat standing up, but from the time they entered the promise land they began to eat sitting or reclining.
One of you will betray me - Can you imagine what a shock this must have been for them to hear? They didn’t know that Judas Iscariot was the one that Jesus was speaking about. Each of them had left everything behind to follow Jesus and had stuck with Him even when everyone else had gone away and gone back to their homes. The idea that one of them would betray Jesus was no doubt incredibly shocking to hear.
one who is eating with me…
9 Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
12 For it is not an enemy who taunts me— then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me— then I could hide from him.
13 But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.
14 We used to take sweet counsel together; within God’s house we walked in the throng.
In John’s account of this night we read…
18 I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’
19 I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he.
They began to be sorrowful - Don’t you love that the 11 at least were honest and recognized that they had the capacity within themselves to be a betrayer of Jesus?
Obviously Judas was only playing the part as a hypocrite in this moment...
The heart of the 11 remind me of the words we sing in the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" written all the way back in 1757…
"O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above"
Son of man goes as it has been written - Beginning next week we will see the words of Isaiah and David the Psalmist take place.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Woe to that man - The son of destruction
12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Verses 22-25
Verses 22-25
"He took bread, and after blessing it broke it: When the bread was lifted up at Passover, the head of the meal said: “This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let everyone who hungers come and eat; let everyone who is needy come and eat the Passover meal.”
Everything eaten at the Passover meal had symbolic meaning. The bitter herbs recalled the bitterness of slavery; the salt water remembered the tears shed under Egypt’s oppression. The main course of the meal—a lamb freshly sacrificed for that particular household—did not symbolize anything connected to the agonies of Egypt. It was the sin—bearing sacrifice that allowed the judgment of God to pass over the household that believed. (David Guzik)
Also, notice that unlike what the Jews typically say about each item on the table during the Passover Seder about Israel’s oppression by the Egyptians and God’s deliverance out of the land of Egypt, Jesus is explaining how all of this points to Him as the Savior of the world.
I found a helpful and concise note...
“This is My body: Christians have debated for centuries about the true nature of the bread and the cup at this supper.
i. The Roman Catholic Church holds the idea of transubstantiation, which teaches that the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.
ii. Martin Luther held the idea of consubstantiation, which teaches the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine, but by faith they are the same as Jesus’ actual body. Luther did not believe in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but he did not go far from it.
iii. John Calvin taught that Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine was real, but only spiritual, not physical. Zwingli taught that the bread and wine are symbols that represent the body and blood of Jesus.
iv. According to Scripture, we can understand that the bread and the cup are not mere symbols, but they are powerful pictures to partake of—to enter into—as we see the Lord’s Table as the new Passover.” (Guzik)
Take eat - Take it as a gift and a command, but take it freely. Eat it as something that is as vital to your spiritual life as food is to your physical life. Take all of Christ into all of you. Leave no place within you that Jesus does not enter in and take control of your life.
New covenant - Only God can establish a covenant with humanity for the remission/forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternity, and that is precisely what Jesus did here as He made a new covenant in His own blood and not the blood of animals.
6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
9 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. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Covenants are always made with blood in the Bible. In fact the first covenant that God made with the nation Israel along with the giving of the law was made with blood in Exodus 24…
1 Then he said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.
2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”
3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”
4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.
5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.
6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.
7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
8 And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
This new covenant wasn’t made from far away on a mountain top, but instead in a close and intimate setting with God in the flesh in an upper room.
Now this new covenant was all foretold before, one place in scripture that really sticks out is Jeremiah 31…
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.”
Drink it new - New - That which is new and distinctive in comparison with other things. That which is new in nature, different from the usual, impressive, better than the old, superior in value.
Communion
As we now take communion together I’d like to point out one other thing that is astounding to me. Jesus gave thanks as He did this. Knowing all that was coming His way, He gave thanks! The word in the ancient Greek for gave thanks is eucharist.
Verse 26
Verse 26
They would have sung one of the songs of accent that is found in Psalms 116-118 that were always sung after partaking of the Passover meal.