What sort of love of this?
q I want you to imagine, for the moment, something extraordinary.
I want you to imagine that you are a woman
I’m sure that’s hard for the men here
And that you are married to a perfect man
I’m sure that’s hard for the women here
This man
Loves you very much
Cares for your needs
Always leaves the toilet seat down
Buys you flowers at least once a week
(I know, it’s pretty much impossible, but bear with me)
One day, something very strange and tragic happens
You and your perfect husband are strolling down the footpath
After a beautiful romantic meal
Arm in arm
The sun is shining, the birds are singing
Suddenly, your perfect husband jumps in the air
Pulls his arm away from yours
Shouts, ‘I love you!’
Jumps into the street, straight into the path of an oncoming motorcycle
Gets run over an dies
q When you have recovered from the shock and trauma, you have some pretty essential questions to ask
Why on earth did my perfect husband have to do something so terrible?
Before he died, he said, ‘I love you!’
But how can that be true?
If you love somebody, you don’t go and die on them!
Jumping deliberately to your death isn’t normally an act of love, is it?
It’s an act of stupidity
Or madness
Or utter selfishness
But how can death be loving?
q This is the question that we’re faced with as we look at Jesus’ death.
Jesus is God’s perfectly good and loving king
The Lord and master of the universe, who demands our trust and obedience.
And yet, Jesus was a king on a suicide mission
Marching up to Jerusalem to die
q Why did King Jesus die?
You might say that he died out of love
Or maybe as an example of love, to inspire us to love others
But how on earth can somebody’s death be an example of love?
What sort of bizarre love proves itself by dying?
And if so, how is it an example to me?
The final meal
Well, fortunately Jesus’ didn’t just go and die without an explanation.
If he did,
We’d have to call him a suicidal lunatic, wouldn’t we
Instead, Jesus went to great lengths to explain exactly why he died
Because the night before his death, he had a meal with his close friends
And at that meal,
he told them why he, the king
had to die.
q Elaborate preparations 8-13
You can see the elaborate preparations that Jesus went to for this meal
We read in verses 8-13, he
Sent two of his disciples ahead of him
He gave them detailed instructions about the place where the meal was going to be held
And even before the disciples found the place, Jesus had been at work,
- Making contacts in the hospitality industry
- To get it all set up
So they found it exactly as he had told them.
Jesus obviously cared about this last meal
And that’s what people do when they have something important to announce or to celebrate
They make elaborate preparations, don’t they?
A casual dinner with friends might take a couple of hours to organize
A 21st birthday might take months
A wedding can take even longer
Jesus obviously had something very important to say at this meal
Because he took extra good care to get it ready.
q Intimate explanation 14
When you think about it, having a meal is a very intimate thing do to with somebody
Very personal and close and warm
I love the beautiful smile on my little daughter’s face when we sit down to have dinner together
- She loves it
- Adelaide and Mummy and Daddy are all sitting together
- At the same level (she’s got a booster seat)
Talking and eating, up close and personal
You can see that same warmth in verse 14,
Jesus leans back to talk to his apostles
In fact, Jesus often used meals to show his friendship and warmth for people
Throughout Luke’s account you can read of Jesus having meals
- With notorious people, crooks, sinners, even prostitutes
To prove how dear they were to him
But this last meal, with his disciples, is extra special and close.
q The passover – 7
This isn’t just any meal, either
This is a particular feast, called the Passover (that word ‘Passover’ is mentioned four times in verses 7-13).
The Passover was a bit like Christmas for the Jewish people
A time of special celebration
Where everybody came together
But the Passover was a time when the Israelite people remembered God’s great rescue of them from Egypt
Do you know the story.
God’s people were slaves in Egypt
God promised he was going to punish the Egyptians and bring his people out of there
So one night, God sent a angel of death to kill the firstborn of every house in Egypt.
But God didn’t want his own people to die,
- So he gave them something very important to do
- At sunset, all the Israelites had to kill a lamb, an animal
- Not just for food,
- They had to take the blood of the lamb they’d just killed
- And paint the blood on their doorposts
Sounds a bit gruesome, doesn’t it?
- But they had to do it.
- Because when the angel of death came to their door later that night
- He’d see the blood painted on the doorpost
- And he’d know that a death had already happened in that house
- And he’d pass over the house and leave them alive
And so God punished the Egyptians but rescued his people
This meal that Jesus prepared so thoroughly was actually a Passover meal
The meal that remembered back to the time
- when God’s anger was turned away
- by the death of an animal.
So already, at this meal,
Both death and joy are hanging in the air.
q So Jesus uses the meal to explain his own death
He tells them why the king had to die.
One important thing Jesus says is,
The king’s death was utterly evil
There are evil, cruel things going on at this meal
I’ll show you what they are
q Deep personal betrayal (21)
There is personal evil
Just look down at verse 21 with me, will you?
Jesus says in verse 21,
‘the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table.’
If you’d the beginning of this chapter, you’d know all about Judas
Judas was an apostle, an insider who knew all about how Jesus operated
And Judas traded his inside info for money
He told the men how to arrest Jesus
And in verse 21
Jesus says, I am sharing my table, my food, my love, my warmth, my friendship, my mateship with you, Judas
- But you’re going to betray me
Betrayal: it’s one of the most evil and painful things in this life isn’t?
If you get hurt by an enemy, you expect it.
If you get hurt by a stranger, you get over it.
What if you get hurt hurt by a close friend?
- Or A father? A mother?
- A husband? A wife?
- Do you ever get over it? I don’t think so.
Jesus knows all about betrayal
- A man he had shared his whole life with for years.
- Handed him over to death.
The king’s death was utterly evil
And not just on a personal level
q War and cosmic turmoil (36)
In verse 36 Jesus talks about evil on a grand scale:
War and battle, swords and fighting
War is terrible, even if it’s sometimes necessary
Jesus is saying that his death is as evil as the horrors of warfare
q And not just war, but spiritual war. Satan was right there behind Jesus’ death.
In verse 3, Satan entered into Judas
In verses 31-34, Satan is right there,
Waiting to break the disciples, Peter especially
Satan asked Jesus, ‘I’ve got Judas, I want Peter too’
Satan wants to annihilate the kingdom that Jesus was building for himself
To destroy their souls by killing their king
q Betrayal, war, Satan!
The king’s death was utterly evil
And yet, that is not all that Jesus has to say.
Despite the horror and the deep misery of Jesus’ death
The king’s death was at the centre of God’s plan
The king’s death was at the centre of God’s plan
q The servant, delivered to death (22, 37).
Please read verse 22 with me, will you?
‘The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.’
Oh yes, Judas delivered King Jesus over to death
And Judas is entirely responsible for that evil act
But look at the start of the verse
The Son of Man (that means Jesus)
Will go as it has been decreed
Who decreed it? What does that mean?
Well Jesus’ words here point us back to a particular passage in the Old Testament,
If you can, please turn with me to Isaiah 53:4
This is a prophecy, hundreds of years before Jesus
It is predicting that a man will come
And this man will would be a sacrifice, just like the passover lamb.
I want you to read with me,
And as you’re reading, ask, who is responsible for the death of this man?
- 4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
- 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
- he was crushed for our iniquities;
- the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
- and by his wounds we are healed.
- 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;
- and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- Skip down to verse 10…
- 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
Jesus is this man
And God planned his death
The king’s death was at the centre of God’s plan
q Jesus was our Passover sacrifice!
Read verse 15
‘I eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before my suffering’
And then, what did he do with the Passover, the remembrance meal?
Verses 19-20
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Jesus says, the Passover is all about me
They were used to eating in remembrance of the Passover lamb, killed to turn away God’s judgment.
Now Jesus says, ‘eat in remembrance of me’.
God has given me to you as a Passover lamb
King Jesus is the sacrifice that turns away God’s anger
God is angry with us
We deserve to die
Why should the angel of death spare us?
We’ve treated God with contempt,
- we’ve lived lives of betrayal against God
- Sometimes blatantly
- Sometimes just living without reference to God
We’ve got it coming.
Well,
Imagine you have a perfect husband
- Who obviously loves you very much
- Cares for your needs
- Goes to extraordinary lengths to love you
- Shares his most intimate meals with you
One day, something very strange and tragic happens
- You and your perfect husband are strolling down the footpath
- After a beautiful romantic meal
- Arm in arm
Suddenly, your perfect husband jumps in the air
- He tells you, urgently, ‘there’s a motorbike coming for you!’
- ‘It’s going to hit you if I don’t stop it!’
- ‘I love you!’
- Jumps into the street, straight into the path of the oncoming motorcycle
- Gets run over an dies
That’s love
That’s why the king died
To take away the everlasting death
- that was coming to us as surely as a speeding motorbike
Because we’d rejected God
q Jesus’ death wasn’t
An accident of history
As if Jesus was a moral teacher who stood on too many political toes
Got caught up in the politics
Jesus’ death wasn’t an unfortunate plan ‘B’ for God
It’s not as if Judas made his decision to hand Jesus over to death entirely off his own bat
- And then God said to himself,
- ‘Oh dear.
- How naughty of Judas.
- But I respect his free decision.
- I’d better make the best out of this situation and turn it into a Passover sacrifice.’
Not at all!
Oh, Judas is responsible for what he did
- The King’s death was utterly evil
- But the king’s death was at the centre of God’s plan
Oh, I pray that you understand this.
If you know nothing else, know this
That Jesus’ death was to pay the penalty that you deserve for rejecting God
So you can have total forgiveness.
And know that your forgiveness is not some afterthought of God
Something on the edge of God’s mind
that he made up as he went along
Your forgiveness was planned by God
Jesus planned it as he made the preparations for his final meal
Jesus planned it his whole life as he lived heading for his death
Even thousands of years before Jesus came, God was planning his death
- He gave them the Passover
- He spoke through Isaiah about the coming man
In fact, from all eternity
- Your forgiveness was right at the core of God’s heart.
Isn’t that mindblowing?
The king’s death creates God’s kingdom
And it doesn’t end there,
Not by a long shot
What if your perfect husband, just before he jumps in front of that motorcycle, also tells you something else?
He says, ‘I love you, and I’ll come back and be with you’
q The new kingdom (16, 18, 28-30)
Evil didn’t have the last word over Jesus
Throughout his last meal, Jesus kept on talking about his new kingdom
Verse 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."
Verses 28-30 You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Jesus knows that his death will bring about his new kingdom
Satan didn’t have the last word.
Jesus kept Peter safe, even through the dark and evil moments of the passion.
Jesus rose again, as the king of this kingdom
q In verse 20 it’s called a new covenant
A new relationship with God
A relationship of love and everlasting security in the forgiveness that came through Jesus’ death
q Following the servant king (24-27)
So what is it like to be in this king’s kingdom?
Well, it means to trust the king for forgiveness
And it means to live like the king
Sacrificially
As loving servants of one another
- That’s what verses 24-27 say.
I think it’s quite sad that often Christians read this passage and all they’re interested in is finding out about the Lord’s Supper
You know, the communion
- the thing we do with the bread and the wine at church as a reenactment of the last supper
But Jesus spends very little time here establishing a new meal
What Jesus is interested in here is establishing a loving, serving, sharing group of people in his kingdom
Jesus wants kingdom people who are so moved by Jesus’ loving death.
- That they leave behind the petty politics of the world
- And just get on with living as friends and servants in the kingdom
And that’s really what the Lord’s Supper is about anyway, isn’t it?
- That’s what 1 Corinthians chapter 11 says.
Let’s come back to Jesus’ death, though.
Because that’s what Jesus wants us to understand.
q How do you feel when you think about Jesus’ death?
Horror?
Revulsion?
Mild interest?
Guilt?
Nothing?
I’ll let you into a secret
You don’t know God
- until you can think about Jesus’ death, and feel peace and joy
Not superficial bubbly peace and joy, that’s not what I mean
I mean that deep joy, that peace
- The joy and peace you can have even when you hurt badly
- The joy and peace that knows that Jesus’ death was at the centre of God’s plan
- That God planned the evil of Jesus’ death to create his kingdom
- His free
- Everlasting
- Secure kingdom
- Full of rich, deep joyful relationship
- And that you’re in it
- Because he’s your king.
- So is Jesus your king?