Gooding, David: Celebrating the Original Lord's Supper

And now, for these few brief moments, shall we read two passages from the gospel by Luke, the first of them to be found in chapter nineteen verse twenty nine: And it came to pass, when he drew nigh unto Bethge and Bethany, at the mount that is called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go your way into the village over against you, in the which as you enter, you shall find a coat tied, whereon no man ever yet sat. Loose him and bring him. And if anyone ask you, why do you loose him, thus shall you say, the Lord has need of him. They that were sent went away and found even as he said unto them. And as they were loosing the coat, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose you the coat? And they said, The Lord has need of him. And they brought him to Jesus, and they threw their garments upon the coat and set Jesus thereon. And as he went, they spread their garments in the way. And as he was now drawing near, even at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they had seen, saying, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And another passage, if you will, please, from chapter uh twenty two of this same gospel. And verse seven. And the day of unleavened bread came, on which the Passover must be sacrificed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, go and make ready for us the Passover that we may eat. And they said unto him, where wilt thou that we make ready? And he said unto them, behold, when you are entered into the city, there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house whereinto he goes. And you shall say unto the goodman of the house, The master saith unto thee, Where is the guest chamber where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished, there make ready. And they went and found as he said unto them, and they made ready the Passover. When the hour was come, he sat down with the apostles, and he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he received a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I say unto you, I will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you. But behold, the hand of him that betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man indeed goeth as it has been determined, but woe unto that man through whom he is betrayed. And they began to question among themselves which of them it was that should do this thing. And so, since this morning, we have once more celebrated the Supper of the Lord. I thought it might not be inappropriate if we cast our minds back into history to the first occasion on which the Lord's Supper was celebrated, so that we might refresh our minds as to what it was then, at that time, all about, and what it is still about in our modern world. Now, to put it in our context, perhaps we should notice that Luke tells us that in the last week in which our Lord was on earth before he suffered at Calvary, he made two very carefully prepared entries into the city of Jerusalem. And we have read of those two occasions just now. On the first occasion, he sent two of his disciples into a nearby village that there he might borrow and use a colt. And Luke tells us that the disciples went, and they found exactly as he had told them, and they loosed the colt. And when the owners of the colt objected, they reported to them just what the Lord Jesus had said. On the second occasion, he sent other two disciples into Jerusalem city, telling them to watch for a man whom they should see carrying a pitcher of water. They to were to follow him at some distance, mark the house in which he entered, and then they were to go and seek out the owner of that house and ask him where the room was, where they could make ready for our Lord Jesus to celebrate the Passover. Two very carefully prepared entries into Jerusalem City. Of course, in the course of that week, we are subsequently told that at night time our Lord had to go out to the darkness of the Mount of Olives to escape arrest, and would come again into the temple when it was daylight, and the presence of the crowds thronging the temple would provide our Lord for the moment with security against arrest. But here were two very different entries, not coming in informally or quietly, but two carefully prepared entries into Jerusalem City. Let us ponder their significance. The first of them was very dramatically prepared. Our Lord had been to Jerusalem on a number of earlier occasions, but on this final occasion, this was to be his formal, public, and official coming to Jerusalem. He had come, of course, into our world before, and Bethlehem, as he was born in the manger, was, you may say, the first coming of the Lord Jesus. His coming into our world, his coming into our humanity. His baptism by John had been a coming, for now he was officially introduced to the nation as God's servant come to be the Lamb of God. But on this final visit to Jerusalem, this was the spectacular and official coming, not of a babe to Bethlehem, but as Israel's king coming in all his glory publicly to be heralded by the crowd as blessed is the king of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord. And so that Israel might not be in any doubt as to the significance of his coming, our blessed Lord arranged to borrow an ass that he might come to Jerusalem city, riding upon the colt of an ass, celebrated by all and sundry as the king that comes in the name of the Lord, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah chapter nine and verse nine that said, behold, Zion, daughter of Zion, thy king comes lowly and sitting upon an ass, the whole of an ass. So had Zechariah promised and prophesied centuries before, and Israel had waited all down the tedious centuries, wondering whether it would be fulfilled and whether it would be fulfilled literally. It must have been an ear tingling, a hard, stimulating experience, when after the long silence of the centuries, one day Israel, standing in the temple courts and looking out over the com- the Mount of Olives opposite, saw that magnificent spectacle. These thousands upon thousands upon thousands of the disciples that had collected around the Lord Jesus as he had come from the north of country to the south, now coming over the brow of Mount Olivet, and they saw him coming. And the rumor went round, the king is coming, the king is coming. Zachariah's prophecy is being fulfilled in front of our very eyes. Behold, your king comes lowly and sitting upon an ass and the pole of the ass, and they watched the great procession as slowly and in dignified triumphal passage it came down the Mount of Olives and through the Kidron Valley and up the other side and entered the portals of the ancient city of Jerusalem. It was the public coming of the king. But you know the story that followed, and I have no need to retell its details. When the king came officially to Israel, the officials of Israel, the leaders of the nation, the high priests, alas, eventually joined by the Pharisees and the common people, determined to reject their king. They said, this is the heir, come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And eventually they took him, led him outside of Jerusalem City, and nailed him to a cross. He knew, of course, exactly what was going to happen. He told them a parable that indicated he knew that they would crucify him. And when at last he left the temple, he sketched in what the future would hold. Because Israel had rejected their Messiah, then presently God would allow the nations to come, and in particular the Romans, and they would destroy the city, and they would destroy the temple, and Jerusalem should be downtrodden of the Gentiles until the fullness, the times of the Gentiles were come in. He said, you'll not see me again, Israel, until you say, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. The official coming of the king, followed by his rejection, his abandonment of Jerusalem city and temple, and the destruction of that temple, and all the long, dreary centuries of Israel's oppression, until once again he would come. Then shall you see the sign of the Son of Man coming in the heavens with power and great glory. And as we think about it this morning, our hearts leap within us, don't they? Oh, we're going to see it. Just as one day they saw him come down the Mount of Olives, riding on a donkey, so one day we shall see him. Oh, I shall see him, not now coming on a donkey. Now we shall see him coming in the clouds of heaven with all the attendant angelic throng and the myriads and millions of God's people. Oh, I shall see him descend from the sky, coming for me, for me. Thus did our Lord promise the rejected king will come again. And with that, he went out of the city to the shadow of the Mount of Olives. All during that week, as I say, in the daytime he taught in the temple, but at night he went out to the Mount of Olives because, so long as the crowd were with him, the priests couldn't arrest him. When the crowd went home in the evening, then it became dangerous. And for safety's sake, our Lord had gone out to the darkness of the Mount of Olives. And this time he went again, but this time with a difference. For now, he made another entry, equally carefully prepared as the first entry had been. On the first occasion, he sent two disciples to fetch an ass that he might ride on it to fulfill Zechariah's prophecy. Now he sent two disciples once more, but this time quietly, like secret agents, going not openly, but waiting for a sign that they should see in the city. A man bearing a pitcher of water. We're not told who the man was. We're not told his name. We're not even told that the disciples would have known the man's name had they, uh, seen him. When they saw him, they were to follow, presumably at a distance, mark the house where he entered, enter after him and ask for the owner of the house, which presumably wasn't the same man. And they were to say, where is the guest room where the Lord may celebrate the Passover with his disciples? It was very carefully prepared and secretly prepared, as indeed it had to be secret. For this time, this night, Jerusalem itself was seething in the darkness with plans to take and arrest our blessed Lord Jesus. Why, the very high priests were already in collusion with Judas, and Judas in collusion with Satan. This was to be denied. When the very powers of darkness would take over the hearts of the leaders of Israel, and they would come with their staves and with their troops to arrest the Lord Jesus in the garden, the apparent triumph of the powers of darkness. And what would our Lord do? Run for his life? No, indeed not. Though the nation had rejected him from their city, he was determined that before he left, he should set up his kingdom in the very heart of his capital city. In spite of the powers of darkness, in collusion with the high priests and the general public. I repeat, he was determined to come, and in his own capital city, he would set up his kingdom, all hell notwithstanding, he would set it up. And so he made arrangements to borrow a room in the very heart of the city, not in some distant little village, not under the cover of darkness of the Mount of Olives, but there in the city. For it was his own capital city, wasn't it? Wasn't he the Messiah? And he wasn't going to have men and women just swing him out of his city and say, oh, well, now I'm defeated, I- I better get going, I suppose. No, indeed not. He was going to set up his kingdom. That he had come to do. But he was a brave man, don't you think? That nameless man, who on that very dangerous night, and perhaps at the risk of his own very life, decided to open the very best room in his house for the king to come. And there to set up his kingdom. Why, if we'd have been there, we'd have been given our homes, wouldn't we? Wouldn't you, my dear sister, have taken courage in both hands? And said, Lord, whoever else rejects you, if I've got a room in Jerusalem city, you will have my room, at least in this little room. You will reign as king. This morning we've done it, my brothers, my sisters. This is the significance of this feast. Until the Lord comes. In a world that seeth with human and demonic hostility against the king, in a world that is still marked by the fact that the king has been crucified and slung out. We have met and given him once more the opportunity to remind us of the establishment of his kingdom. If you came to the city of Chester in England, a very old and ancient city, the guides will take you around the walls of that city, for it still has walls around it, and they will take you to a guard room, a little room built out from the wall on the top of the wall, where at a certain period the guards of the city had a special custom. The king whom they favored was in exile, and a different king was now on the throne. But the guards were loyal to their ancient king, over the water as he was on the continent. And from time to time, they would meet in their guard room to drink the king's health, and they had a tankard, and they would get the tankard and put it up on a board. As they lifted it to drink the king's health, they would drink the king's health of the king that's over the water and put the tankard down on the board. If you had looked at the board, you would see it a mass of confusing colors that didn't seem to be anything in particular. But if you put the tankard right down in the middle and then got back and looked at the reflection of the colors in the side of the tankard, you would have seen it made the King's face. There was no doubt as to which king, uh, they were loyal, to whose health it was they drank. They drank to the health of the king, and his face was reflected in the tankard. We've done it this morning, haven't we? Our blessed Lord absent, cast out from our world, but here at this little bit of us, we say no to Satan and all his hosts, and we say yes to Christ, and we bid him come and establish his throne here on this spot on earth and in our hearts, isn't it so? That's what we do. Briefly, allow me to remind you of the things that our Lord did on that occasion and of the significance of what happened. The meeting that night in the upper room was the fulfillment, the celebration of the fulfillment of the Passover, said the Lord Jesus. And then it was the establishment of the new covenant. And thirdly, it set the pattern of service in the new kingdom. And fourthly, it had announced the second coming and the rewards that the king will give to those that have faithfully followed him. And until he came, it announced the provision that the Lord would make for the maintenance of his people's faith. And finally, it set down the conditions for the battle in which we must all engage. And briefly, I comment on them. The fulfillment of the Passover, that was the first thing. For the Passover in Israel was, after all, but a prototype, wasn't it? A thought model by which we may analyze the significance of our Lord's death. Israel had been in bondage to the Prince of Egypt, and Passover was the celebration how God had delivered his people from the bondage to that evil tyrant and set them free. It was the memorial of a greater deliverance. Israel, like the Egyptians, stood under the wrath of God. Had there been no lamb, Israel's firstborn must have died just like the Egyptians' firstborn died. And Passover was a celebration, how Israel had been delivered from the, the wrath of God through the slaying of the Passover lamb. And when the Lord met his people that night, he said, now this is going to be the fulfillment of Passover. What Passover prefigured now is going to come to pass in reality. We couldn't be in his kingdom at all, but for both things, could we? For us, the coming of the king would have meant judgment, apart from this, that his death has delivered us from the wrath of God. His death has broken the tyranny of Satan and set us free. And we have given thanks to the Father this morning, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption, the very forgiveness of our sins. Thus we have remembered this morning. But then our Lord, as he took the cup, said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. What was done that day was a celebration of the establishment of the new covenant. And I've no need to tell you, my brethren and sisters, have I? For you have taken the cup into your hand this morning, the cup of the covenant. And you have remembered the terms of the covenant? And of course, you could recite them by memory, couldn't you? I'm nearly tempted to ask you to do it. You could, couldn't you? You, sir, get up. You, sir, over there, you get up. Tell us what the terms of the covenant are. You've taken the cup into your hand. It can't be you took it without remembering what the terms of the covenant are, surely. Else that would be an emptiness, wouldn't it? We've come here this morning to celebrate the establishment of the new covenant, and here come its terms. I will write my laws on their hearts, and on their minds will I inscribe them. They shall not need to teach one another, saying, know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. And we often quote the last bit, don't we? In my little experience, we don't so often quote the first bit. But the first bit is very important, isn't it? Here we have met the Lord Jesus and taken the cup of the New Covenant to be reminded of his sovereign kingly purpose to write his laws in our hearts and on our minds. He began to do it at our conversion, didn't he? As Paul puts it in two Corinthians chapter three, commenting what happened at Corinth when he came to Corinth there to preach. He says, you know, Christ, the great penman, took hold of me and made me his pen, and the ink in the pen was nothing other than the Holy Spirit, and Christ taking hold of me wrote by the power of the Holy Spirit his laws on your Corinthian hearts, that he did. Marvelous. See, Moses' laws were written on stone, and that's comparatively easy if you have a bit of an elbow, you know, and some muscle in the old arm and a chisel that's, uh, sharp and a hammer that's heavy enough, and you've got the skill, you can easily write laws on bits of stone. Of course you can, and once you've written them, they stay put. You try writing laws on people's hearts and see how you get on. That's a time you'd wish they were granite, wouldn't you? You think you've written it today, and tomorrow it's come, and it's all dissolved and gone who knows where. How fluid and unstable our hearts are, aren't they, what? And the marvel of the miracle of the gospel is this, that when we are born again, we not only receive new life, but the blessed Lord begins to write by the power of his Holy Spirit the laws of the very divine nature on our hearts. We receive a new life and with it a new nature, and the beginnings of a desire to do the will of God. The importance of the supper is this, that we come each week, the writing of those laws be deepened. That's why it's a very serious thing to come to the Lord's Supper, isn't it? On the first occasion, Luke tells us that even in those sorry mo- sor- sorrowful moments, there was a traitor present. And Paul reminds his fellow believers at Corinth it was on the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, that he took the cup and said, this is the cup of my covenant. Be careful how you eat and drink, says Paul, because if we come carelessly, not thinking what we do, then the Lord is covenant bound to deal with us. You see, the promise he has made to us again this morning as we took the cup is he's going to write his laws on my heart and your heart. And he gives me the option. I can say, yes, Lord, and I'm with you in this. As much as I've done in the days before, Lord, it's wrong, forgive me. There must be about me, Lord, many wrong attitudes that I don't see, perhaps my friends see them. I haven't yet seen them. Lord, help me to discern those wrong attitudes. Thank you for dying for me so that I can be forgiven and come and enjoy your presence. But Lord, do carry on writing your laws in my heart. Please, Lord, do it. But to come here and take the cup and not even know the terms of the covenant, that wouldn't be a sign of being serious, would it? And if we come without seriousness and we take the cup, we are not engaged daily with the Lord in seeking for his laws to be written ever more deeply, then the Lord is going to fulfill his promise. He will write the laws. Only this time it could be pain. If he has to write them without our cooperation. He might have to discipline us, he says, until we are brought to a proper sense of values. The faithful king has undertaken by his own life's blood and promised it. He will write his laws on our hearts. And then he set his disciples the pattern of service in the kingdom. What will it be like to be under this king and to have to work for him? Is he a rigorous tyrant, always binding burdens on our backs? Burdens that are irksome. Burdens that we could rightly resent, complaining that he's always seeking us to do something for nothing. No, indeed not. For when there were rose a dispute among the disciples who should be the greater, the Lord rebuked them. He said, gentlemen, you know, that's how the Gentiles think. The man who gets to the top of the civil servant signs his letter, your obedient servant, uh, but at the top of the civil service, he tells you not what to do, not you, him. That's how the Gentiles think. It won't be like that among you. Whoever will be first shall be the servant of all. After all, he said, if you go to a dinner party, now, now, who's the more important? The person that sits on the seat and is served, or the person that does the serving? You say the more important one is the one that sits on the seat. Yes, that's true. And I am among you as the one that sits on the seat? No, said our Lord, I'm among you as the one that kneels before you and serve you. Or if you could go home this lunchtime, madam, and sit down in your lovely armchair there and push a button, and in presently came a, a, a, a, a tailor, a waiter in all his tails and tops and everything else and said, madam, did you ring? What can I do for you, madam? What would madam like for lunch? Of course, that would be good, wouldn't it? And if you could go home and ring a bell, and when the waiter came in, it turned out to be the Lord Jesus. What would you do? That would be embarrassing, wouldn't it? Would fall off the seat, wouldn't you, and say, no, no, no, Lord, Lord, Lord, you're not going to serve me. You, you sit there and let me serve you, wouldn't you? Yes, you're going to have a difficult time up in heaven, you know. The Lord will forever be serving you. And if by that time there had remained in our hearts any sort of self-centeredness, we should be ashamed out of our very lives, shouldn't we? How can you sit on a seat and just sit there and let the Lord serve you. Glory of life in his kingdom is now and will be later. The very joys of heaven are the way the people behave. There's not a trace of selfishness left from the Lord downwards. The bigger the people are, the more they serve. After all, which is really, in a good truth, more important, the pigs who are yelling their head off to get their morning feed, or the farmer who comes and serves it? You say, really, it's the farmer that's more important. Good. Try not to be a pig, won't you? And then, of course, uh, there is the announcement of the rewards. You are they that have continued with me in my temptation, said the Lord Jesus, and I appoint unto you twelve thrones, that you shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel at the time of the coming again. The glory of the coming and the high rewards that are there held out to reign with Christ, to be given authority and administration. But my dear brethren, you see the connection, don't you? If ever we're going to get the reward of reigning, we've got to learn the principles of serving now. The announcement of the coming rewards. For the eternal glories gleam afar to nerve my faint. So now to work, to wait, to war, and then to rest forever. And what in the meantime, until he come? Provision to maintain our faith. Said he to Peter, Satan has desired to have all twelve of you to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith fail not. And when you are converted, when you are restored, strengthen your brethren. And so it turned out. In the assault that then came upon Peter, his godliness failed, his courage failed, his truthfulness failed. His testimony was blown to smithereens. One thing didn't fail, and that was his faith, you know. In spite of his denial, when he denied the Lord, he was telling a lie, and Peter remained a believer and came through and was restored to the glory of Christ and the strengthening of his brethren. We too have a great high priest. As we think about the purpose of this supper, the celebration of our deliverance from Satan and from the wrath of God, the establishment of the laws of the king in our heart, the call to serve him after his model, the hope of reward to come, and we say to ourselves, but Lord, I've got to leave this sacred spot now and go out into this rough world. How timid my faith, how faltering my courage. Oh Lord, what should I do? Yes, what should we do? Had we not a great high priest who ever lives, and because he ever lives, is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, because he ever lives to make intercession for them. And finally, orders of de- the orders of the of battle. What are the orders of battle? Kindly and faithfully, our Lord warned them that from now on they would have to fight. Hitherto he had come as Messiah and had the right to commandeer Israel's property. So when he wanted an ass, he just took it. And if the owner said, what are you doing? They were to reply, the Lord. It's the same word in Greek. The owner has need of it. As Messiah, he had a right to commandeer anything in the land. When the apostles went out on their missions, they were to expect the people to entertain them and pay their food expenses and anything else. Of course they were, for Jesus was the Messiah, but it's going to be different now, says Christ. You won't be able to expect the nation to support you now. Why not? Well, because that which is written is going to be fulfilled in me. I am numbered with the outlaws. And because I'm a rejected king, you can't expect the world to support me or you either. You'll have to fight for yourself, gentlemen. Take a sword, and if you haven't got one, sell your very shirt and get a sword, for it's a sword you'll need. If you can't afford both a shirt and a sword, well, get a sword then. Because the terms of life following a rejected king are a battle from day one until the Lord comes again in glory. The Lord bless his word, grant that because of it our celebration of his supper today shall have grown even deeper and more meaningful than before.