Holy Week Special Service

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- In For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway wrote that

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today is only one day

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in all the other days that it will ever be.

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But what happens in all the other days

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can depend on what you do today.

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Now, most days barely register.

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They barely leave a mark, but some days change everything.

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This was one of those days.

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Jesus was at a table with His friends sharing a meal,

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but the clock was ticking.

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Because before the sun would rise,

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He would be betrayed, He would be abandoned,

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He would be arrested,

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and He would be beaten and led to a cross.

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24 hours can change a life,

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but as we're about to see, 24 hours can change the world.

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- Lord, would You be with us tonight,

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would you just fill every space where Your people are gathered,

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and will You help us to receive what You so graciously gave.

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It's in Your Name, Jesus, that I ask You

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to be here with us tonight. Amen.

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Well, welcome to Holy Week, everyone.

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My name is Alli Patterson.

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If you're joining us as a guest

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or you're gathered with us online,

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I just want to say welcome to Holy Week at Crossroads.

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I'm one of the teaching pastors here.

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And last weekend we began Holy Week

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by talking about Palm Sunday.

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And tonight we're going to continue

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Jesus's steps to the Cross

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by going into the final meal

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that He shared with his disciples

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on the last night of His freedom.

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We call this night the Last Supper.

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But we've been retracing these steps because

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we're here to remember.

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We're here to remember exactly what He went through

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on the way to the Cross.

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And now we understand as we look back

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and we sit in this tension here tonight,

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it's not unlike the tension that His disciples

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would have been in on that Last Supper night with Him.

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Because everything about this night said

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that God was about to do something,

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that the time had come for something.

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And we now know that God was about to reveal

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a massive part of His story,

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and that Jesus that night knew He was going to live

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the final hours and the final minutes

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to complete the mission that God actually sent Him to complete.

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And that's what we're here tonight to remember.

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And I'm going to tell you the story of this meal,

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because I want to walk you back into the meal

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because there wasn't just one story taking place through it,

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there was actually two.

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There were two stories taking place that night

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and I want to go through the meal that they had together,

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because I want you to see the stories

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that were both unfolding through this meal.

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And we're going to do that together.

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We're going to worship through the elements

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of that meal together, and we're also going to remember

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whatever it is that you came here to remember.

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I believe that as we're gathered as a community,

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that there's something God brought you here

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to be reminded of that's going to take place

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in and through this meal.

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As the week started in Jerusalem,

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Jesus carried through several days

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where He was living in the city.

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He had traveled there with some of His disciples

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and no doubt some of His community

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and family was there as well.

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This was an annual pilgrimage

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to one of the Jewish festivals, one of the feasts

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that they would do every year.

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And a few days into that week,

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Jesus gave His disciples some instructions.

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He told them to prepare for the Passover.

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He said make preparations so that

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we can eat the Passover together.

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And let me just tell you what the Passover was.

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That's the meal that loosely is prepared here on this table.

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So His disciples would have gone and made preparations,

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because some very specific elements were part of that meal.

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And the Passover was an old story.

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This is the story that they retold through the meal.

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And if you've seen the movie Prince of Egypt,

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then you know this story.

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The movie Prince of Egypt is based on the story of Moses.

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When God sends Moses into Egypt,

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where His people had become enslaved

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and they were living oppressed under a pharaoh

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in Egypt who would not release them.

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And so God chooses a leader named Moses,

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and He sends them, He sends Moses in to challenge Pharaoh.

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And Pharaoh will not let God's people go.

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And so He brings plague after plague after plague

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against the land of Egypt.

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And this meal is based on the final plague.

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It's called the Passover because the final plague

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was actually a judgment of death that God brought

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against the entire nation of Egypt.

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He said, I'll tell you what, I want my people to go.

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And the final thing that I'm going to do

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is send a judgment across the land.

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And every firstborn, every firstborn human,

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every firstborn of all the herds

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that they would have in the fields,

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every firstborn under the nation of Egypt

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was under God's judgment, a sentence of death.

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But God provided His people a way out.

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He said if you will kill a lamb,

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and you will smear the blood of that lamb

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over your doorpost, when I send my destroying angel

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across the nation of Egypt, you will be spared.

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He provided a substitution, a sacrifice, if you will,

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that was going to take the place of the death

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that he had proclaimed over the land.

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And so, the nation of Israel does that.

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They kill these lambs

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and they smear the blood over the doorway,

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and God sends this judgment across Egypt,

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and the angel passes over the houses

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with the blood of the lamb on the doorway.

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That's where we get the name of the meal

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that they were celebrating that night.

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It was called Passover because it was

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a celebration of their freedom from slavery.

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That was the final plague.

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Pharaoh finally says, fine, go,

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and they're freed from slavery in Egypt.

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And as they eat this meal called the Passover,

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they actually retell the story of the meal.

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Now, the Passover was not just a good moment in the history.

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You know, you have those high days, the low days.

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This was not just a good day.

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This was the day.

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This is what the entire New Testament circles around.

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This is what the nation of Israel was centered on.

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The Passover was the defining moment

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in the nation of Israel.

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It defined their relationship with God,

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their identity as a nation, their future.

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It defined absolutely everything about them as a people.

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And so every single year they would get together

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and they would retell this story.

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You know, when you live through some events and you know

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that there's actually something bigger taking place,

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something deeper going on, but you can't --

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You don't quite have the words for it.

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You just understand something else is happening here.

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The Bible has a word for that. It's called kairos.

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It's a word for time.

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It's a different kind of time.

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It stands in contrast to chronos time,

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which is clock time,

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the ticking away of hours and minutes.

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But kairos time is an appointed time of God

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where God breaks in and He advances His story.

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That's what the Passover was.

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The Passover was a kairos time,

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a time where God had fixed and appointed

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a trajectory shift for His plans, His kingdom, His story.

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And this Passover meal that we're looking at up here,

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it retold it through elements,

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through bread, through herbs, through wine,

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through a lamb, through all kinds of things.

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And they would walk back through the story,

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but Jesus was going to grab the elements

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on the table tonight,

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and He was going to tell a second story.

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They were going to retell the story of the Passover,

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and He was going to flip the script

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into a brand new story, The Last Supper as we know it.

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It's actually a hinge in the story of God.

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It stands right between two appointed times of God:

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the Passover in the ancient history of Israel

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and the coming Cross.

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Jesus knew the Cross was coming,

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and He began to reveal the story

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that was going to take place on the Cross

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through this old story.

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And He began to explain it actually through

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the elements of the meal on that table.

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God had once saved, He had once rescued,

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He had once defended His people,

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and He was about to save and rescue and defend

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His people in a new way with a new kairos,

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a new appointed moment where the Kingdom of God

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was going to break into the world.

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Let's go into the Upper Room

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where this meal actually took place.

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And it begins very simply. Luke 22:14 says this:

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And when the hour came, He reclined at table,

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and the apostles with Him.

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Now that word hour, it's actually a chronos word.

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This meal began the ticking clock toward the Cross.

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Jesus knew when He steps into this meal

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and He begins to tell the old story,

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with the new story wrapped around it,

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that the clock was ticking.

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He was moving toward the new in-breaking

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of the Kingdom of God, the time had come for the Cross.

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And He signaled this new story with a really strange move.

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He got down on the floor

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and He took a water basin that was meant for servants

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and He took off his cloak

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and He wrapped the towel around His waist

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and He began to wash their feet.

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And right here is where the new story began.

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The new story begins with Jesus saying,

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"It's time to receive from Me.

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You can actually receive from Me."

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Now, this was a shocking move because

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in the ancient Jewish culture, authority figures,

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the greatest in the room, in the land, in the nation,

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which Jesus certainly would have been in that space,

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they didn't serve; they were served.

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And so Jesus began this new story in a really curious way

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when he takes off His robe

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and He does the work of the servant,

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and He tells them, "You can receive from Me,

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not Me from you; you from Me."

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Some of us are here tonight

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and that is what God brought you here to remember.

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He brought you here to tell you

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I have something for you.

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You're here to receive something.

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A lot of us, that makes us really uncomfortable

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because we respect, you know, we respect God.

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We want to please Him. We want to --

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We want to work hard to be decent.

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You know, we're trying to be good people here.

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And Jesus brought you here to hear the words

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"receive from Me" tonight.

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That's how this new story actually began.

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See the first kairos,

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it was just a demonstration of raw power.

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When the Passover happened,

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that was God being capital G-O-D God.

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He was like, I'm the guy. I'm the one.

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I have all power, over even life and death.

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It was a demonstration of raw power.

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But the new story was that power going low to serve.

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And Jesus began to tell that story

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with this strange move of washing their feet.

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And it made a few of them really uncomfortable.

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Peter, he speaks up right away.

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He tries to reject it.

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He's like, no, no, no, no, no.

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And he tells Him no.

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He tells Jesus, "You're not going to wash my feet,"

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because he understands Jesus is messing with

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their concept of what power does and how love happens

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and what respect means.

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He's messing with all of these deep concepts in their culture.

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And Peter tries to reject it.

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And Jesus says to Peter what He says

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to you and I here tonight. He says:

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If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.

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You can have no power from Me.

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You can't receive from Me,

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unless you will let Me serve you.

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And that's such a script flip for some of us,

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even sitting right here today

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because we've grown up in traditions

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or with a mindset that it's our job to serve God.

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And Jesus says, wait a second.

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It's first My job to serve you.

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And the only way that we can receive is

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if we will get down low with Him where He can wash us,

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heal us, care for us, love us, forgive us.

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All we have to do is come down low enough

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to recognize our need.

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That's what the new story demanded.

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That's where the new story began.

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And Peter was really uncomfortable,

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just like some of us are, with that idea

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that Jesus might actually have something for us.

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But that's where the new story starts.

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And as the meal began, they went on

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to one of the traditional elements, which was bread.

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Now it wasn't like sourdough.

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It was more like this.

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It was flatbread, it was unleavened bread

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is what they called it, and it was unleavened bread

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for a very specific reason.

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This unleavened bread was two different reminders

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in the story as they were retelling it.

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It was one a reminder of their suffering

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in Egypt as slaves.

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It was also a reminder of the night that they were set free.

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Because the night that they were set free in the Passover,

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which is why they ate the bread like this,

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they left so quickly.

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God descended so quickly and delivered them

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that the bread didn't have time to rise.

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There was no yeast in it, so they ate unleavened bread

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on the night of the Passover.

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So to remember God's deliverance,

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His sudden, miraculous, final deliverance,

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they remembered that story with unleavened bread.

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When the bread was eaten, here's what happened,

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Luke 22, it says:

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And He took the bread, and when He had given thanks,

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He broke it, and He gave it to them, saying,

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"This is My body, which is given for you.

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Do this in remembrance of Me."

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Do you hear the second story?

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He's adding on. He's flipping the script.

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He's changing the old story into a new story.

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And He's saying, the bread,

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the bread that celebrates your sudden deliverance,

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the bread that represents the suffering

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that you went through, this bread is My body.

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Jesus was telling them, "I'm taking on your suffering.

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The suffering of My people is what My body

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is here to take on."

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The new story inside the old story.

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It points back to their sudden escape

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and it points forward to the Cross, which would be

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just as miraculous and just as sudden,

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a deliverance from all of their sin and oppression.

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Jesus was telling them through the bread that night,

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"I will pay the price, not you.

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You don't have to pay the price."

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And so I believe that some of us

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have walked in the door here tonight,

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and we're going to receive bread in a little while.

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And that the thing that God wants you to take in tonight

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is to stop paying the price.

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A lot of us pay the price for far, far too long.

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And Jesus wants you to drop that tonight.

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He brought you here to be reminded that

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this bread means you don't have to pay the price;

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He did that for you.

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In that moment, He set you free from the price of your sin,

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from the suffering of your sin.

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Remember tonight that His body was given so that

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that could happen for you.

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During the meal, the disciples

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would have wondered at what wasn't there.

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I have an empty platter in the middle of the table.

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More likely, there wasn't one.

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More likely it was just absent.

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But the central element to the Passover meal

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was, of course, lamb, and it wasn't mentioned.

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If you read the accounts of the Last Supper,

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in none of the Gospels that recount this moment

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is Lamb ever mentioned as part of the meal.

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It was very likely not even in the room,

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not dealt with at all.

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And the absence would have been really curious.

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It would have been memorable, this omission.

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It might have even been like something

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they would have whispered about at the table.

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"Where is this? Why isn't this here?"

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And in the absence of the lamb,

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Jesus was leaving space for what I think

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He brought some of us here to hear tonight.

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He was going to reveal His message to the disciples,

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which is: I am the one that saves you.

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It's Me who saves.

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If you remember, in the story of the Passover,

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it's the lamb that has the power to save, right?

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This is what God instructed.

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He said: kill a lamb, smear the blood,

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and you will not suffer the destruction that

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I'm going to bring in death over the land of Egypt.

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And that's what they did.

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It was the Lamb with the power to save.

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And when Jesus didn't make mention of it,

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didn't include it, doesn't say a word about it,

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He was leaving space for this message to be revealed

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as the second story unfolds

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that Jesus is the Lamb who will save.

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John the Baptist actually calls Jesus a particular name

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when he announces His public ministry.

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This would have been about three years before this.

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God sends His cousin, a guy named John the Baptist,

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to sort of announce Him, before He comes, you know,

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into the public ministry that He's going to do

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among all the people.

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And John the Baptist says this, John 1:29:

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Behold, the Lamb of God,

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who takes away the sins of the world.

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Behold, the Lamb of God.

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And this night, this odd story that He's sort of retelling

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has a missing element of a lamb.

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Very, very curious.

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The second story was soon going to be understood

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because at the Cross, Jesus, the firstborn

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and the Lamb of God would be slaughtered.

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And this time it would be His blood with the power to save,

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His blood with the power to protect,

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His blood that would give an escape from the judgment of God.

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He was putting Himself in the place

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of the missing element of the meal,

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and also established Himself as the foundation

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of the new kind of, I'll call it, an agreement with God.

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He calls it a covenant.

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And the old agreement was based on the temple system

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and the sacrificial system.

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And the people would come over and over

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and they would slaughter animals,

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and they would seek forgiveness,

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and they would get right with God

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through a system of sacrifice.

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And Jesus becomes the one to finish all sacrifices

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and establishes Himself as the Lamb of God,

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the final, all sufficient sacrifice.

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No more lambs needed.

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I think there are those who have gathered with us tonight

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who need to accept the sacrifice of the Lamb

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for the very first time.

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We don't really like the word saved.

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It conjures up people yelling at us on street corners.

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It's unpleasant.

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But we need saved.

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We're under the judgment of God,

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in the same way that the Passover

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saved Israel from the judgment.

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Let me just tell you, when the judgment of God

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comes against all people, the nice ones do not get saved.

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The ones with the blood of the Lamb on them get saved.

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[applause] That's who gets saved.

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And so if you haven't received that,

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if you haven't received that sacrifice

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and you don't consider yourself under the blood of the Lamb,

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there's no time like the present, my friend.

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Maybe that's what God has brought you here tonight

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to remember and receive.

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And some of us, some of us actually do believe

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we actually are saved, if you will.

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But we never experienced the blood of the Lamb,

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the power that is in that blood.

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We never experienced the salvation power

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that really is ours to have in our life.

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And it's because we forget that

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when the Savior came and saved, He also became the King.

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The night that the Passover happened,

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the night that the Passover happened

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He not only saved his people,

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He beat Pharaoh once and for all.

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He proved Himself the King over all kings,

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the most powerful God of all

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that claimed any kind of divinity,

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which Pharaoh certainly would have.

00:29:15

And some of us don't experience

00:29:17

the powerful life of our salvation

00:29:20

because we haven't really made Him the King.

00:29:24

And these two things, they travel together.

00:29:26

If He is powerful enough to save you,

00:29:29

then He is worthy enough to be your King.

00:29:33

And so some of us tonight have come here

00:29:35

because we need reminded that He's the King.

00:29:40

And there's a part of our life

00:29:41

that we're not allowing His Kingship within.

00:29:46

So maybe that's you, and as you take in

00:29:49

His sacrifice for you in a little while,

00:29:51

maybe you receive His Kingship in a brand new way.

00:30:01

On the table, the last element that we're going

00:30:05

to talk about tonight would have been the wine.

00:30:09

Now, over here, I've got four cups.

00:30:13

And these cups are really interesting because

00:30:16

there are exactly four cups of wine in a Passover meal.

00:30:20

And they actually link to four promises

00:30:23

that God fulfilled when He,

00:30:26

in the original story of the Passover.

00:30:29

The four cups kind of paste the meal, if you will.

00:30:33

They went from the very beginning to the very end,

00:30:35

and they were timed through the meal to happen

00:30:39

at very specific points as the story was retold.

00:30:43

And they were linked to promises of God from Exodus 6.

00:30:47

I'm going to read these to you and let's count these promises.

00:30:49

Here's what the Lord did in the original story,

00:30:52

in the Passover story, He says:

00:30:53

I am the Lord your God, and I will bring you

00:30:57

out from under the burdens of the Egyptian. Number one.

00:31:00

I will deliver you from slavery to them.

00:31:05

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm

00:31:08

and great acts of judgment.

00:31:10

I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God,

00:31:15

and you shall know that I am the Lord your God,

00:31:17

who has brought you out

00:31:19

from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

00:31:21

That's what these cups represent through the Passover meal.

00:31:26

I will bring you out. That's cup number one.

00:31:28

Cup number one is the cup of sanctification.

00:31:33

It marks out the meal as holy,

00:31:35

exactly like God pulled His people out of Egypt

00:31:38

and marked them as His own.

00:31:40

This is the cup of sanctification.

00:31:42

It begins the meal.

00:31:44

The second cup.

00:31:46

The second cup is told at

00:31:48

the very specific point of the rescue,

00:31:50

when they're talking about the actual rescue of God,

00:31:53

this is the cup of deliverance.

00:31:56

And it is consumed in the Passover meal

00:31:59

at the point where the deliverance story is recounted.

00:32:05

And then the third cup.

00:32:08

This one is for right after the meal.

00:32:10

And the promise of this cup is: I will redeem you.

00:32:14

He says, "I will redeem you with an outstretched arm

00:32:16

and mighty acts of judgment."

00:32:18

This is the third cup and this is the one

00:32:20

where Jesus pauses. How do we know?

00:32:24

Well, Luke tells us.

00:32:26

Luke records this third cup in Luke 22:20. He says:

00:32:29

And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying,

00:32:34

"This cup that is poured out for you

00:32:37

is the new covenant of My blood."

00:32:41

This cup. Which cup? This one. The cup of redemption.

00:32:49

The old story is that God redeemed

00:32:52

with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

00:32:55

And the new story is that redemption

00:32:57

is going to happen a different way.

00:32:58

What does He say?

00:32:59

This is the new covenant in My blood.

00:33:05

The way to redemption, He's flipping the script.

00:33:10

It's His own blood, which is what we remember

00:33:13

as we drink the wine from that cup, the third cup.

00:33:20

Jesus's blood is the way to be redeemed.

00:33:22

What does it mean to be redeemed?

00:33:24

When we're redeemed, we are actually bought back.

00:33:29

To be redeemed means to buy something back,

00:33:32

to return to original owner sort of idea,

00:33:36

to be brought back home again,

00:33:39

to be put back where you belong.

00:33:41

Do you know that there's a price on your head?

00:33:45

There is a ransom that was due for your life,

00:33:49

and that's what it was.

00:33:51

And in the cup of redemption, the new covenant

00:33:54

of Jesus's blood paid the price to bring you home again.

00:33:59

And some of us walked in the door here tonight

00:34:03

and we've been running.

00:34:05

We're running off.

00:34:07

Sin has pushed us away.

00:34:08

Shame is keeping us from coming back again,

00:34:11

or we just wandered off out of laziness

00:34:14

or apathy or boredom or whatever, and we are gone.

00:34:22

And you are here to remember that

00:34:25

the price was paid to bring you home again.

00:34:28

You can come home again.

00:34:30

Jesus actually says this earlier in the evening.

00:34:33

He actually says that this is what He came to do.

00:34:36

Earlier that night when He was talking to His disciples,

00:34:39

he says exactly this:

00:34:40

If I go, I will prepare a place for you,

00:34:44

and I will come again, and I will take you to Myself,

00:34:47

that where I am, you may be also.

00:34:49

He says in another place, that His Father's house

00:34:52

has plenty of rooms,

00:34:54

that you are welcome to come home again.

00:34:57

And that is the mission that He was on

00:34:59

with the covenant of His blood, the third cup

00:35:02

where He paid the price for you to come home again.

00:35:12

We're going to receive communion together.

00:35:15

And this act we have come to be almost too familiar with.

00:35:20

If you've attended any church for any length of time,

00:35:24

we just think about the Cross, right?

00:35:27

We think body of Christ broken for me,

00:35:30

blood of Christ shed for me.

00:35:32

That's true, and there's an entire story of God

00:35:38

that's taking place here.

00:35:40

From the very beginning God was going to break in again

00:35:48

to help us escape judgment, to save us,

00:35:51

to bring us home again, to be our King,

00:35:55

to provide a life and a future,

00:35:57

and to fulfill the promises that He fulfilled

00:36:01

in the Exodus, once, long ago for us.

00:36:06

So just like that night, we're going to

00:36:07

remember this time through a meal,

00:36:11

and we call this meal communion.

00:36:12

And we only use two elements of this Passover meal:

00:36:16

the bread and the wine,

00:36:17

because they tell the second story,

00:36:20

the one that we are invited into.

00:36:22

I'm going to read you the entire thing

00:36:24

together from Luke 22. It says:

00:36:26

And He took bread, and when He had given thanks,

00:36:28

He broke it, gave it to them, saying,

00:36:31

"This is My body, that was given for you.

00:36:37

Do this in remembrance of Me."

00:36:38

And likewise the cup after they had eaten,

00:36:43

saying, "This cup that is poured out for you

00:36:49

is the new covenant in My blood."

00:36:53

Jesus wanted them to remember His life and death

00:36:57

through a meal, which is something you have to receive.,

00:37:04

which is where the second story began.

00:37:06

He left us a story, that in order to consume this meal,

00:37:10

we have to actually receive it.

00:37:13

Because a beautifully prepared meal,

00:37:16

set on a beautifully set table,

00:37:18

means nothing unless we actually receive it.

00:37:24

That's the story of the Cross;

00:37:26

it's there for you to actually receive.

00:37:29

And it is actually for those of us who have received Jesus.

00:37:34

That's who consumes the body and the blood.

00:37:36

We remember Him tonight through the body and the blood

00:37:40

that were broken and shed for us.

00:37:42

This is for those of us who have actually received Him.

00:37:48

And as you receive Him, I want you to choose a promise.

00:37:51

There's a few promises on the wall behind me.

00:37:54

And they're, I believe, what God has brought you here

00:38:00

to remember tonight.

00:38:01

He has something for you.

00:38:03

He wants to bring you home again.

00:38:05

He wants to save you.

00:38:06

He wants be your King.

00:38:08

I don't know what He'll put in your mind,

00:38:10

but what I do know is as you take in

00:38:14

the body and the blood of Christ,

00:38:16

He brought you here to remember that this meal

00:38:19

was for you from the very, very beginning.

00:38:23

And as a way for you to not just take that in tonight,

00:38:26

but take it home with you,

00:38:28

when you leave the room at the end of the night,

00:38:30

you're going to find a poster

00:38:32

with one of these promises on it.

00:38:34

And you can receive that

00:38:36

so that you can take that promise with you and remember.

00:38:45

As we receive communion, I want you

00:38:47

to make your way back to your seats after we do that,

00:38:50

because we are going to finish this meal

00:38:53

in the same way that Jesus

00:38:55

and His disciples finished this meal.

00:38:58

And now in all of our spaces,

00:39:00

wherever you are gathered with us at Crossroads tonight,

00:39:03

your community pastors are going to come up

00:39:05

because there is communion in all of our rooms

00:39:08

for you to come receive and remember.

00:39:15

- As Alli said, this is a gift.

00:39:18

This is meant to be a meal and a gift that you receive,

00:39:20

not something that you passively observe,

00:39:22

not just something that you watch,

00:39:24

not even just something that you reflect on.

00:39:26

But instead, this is meant to be a moment

00:39:29

between you and Jesus where you receive the gift of His life,

00:39:35

we receive the gift of His blood,

00:39:38

where you receive the gift of His perfection

00:39:41

to make up for the ways that you and I are not perfect.

00:39:45

And so if you've heard the saying

00:39:47

the medium is the message, man,

00:39:48

there's something beautiful in that for us

00:39:50

that we are given a gift.

00:39:52

We're given something that we receive

00:39:54

and take into our bodies as a way to remember

00:39:57

and to lean in and experience the depth and the beauty

00:40:00

and the promises of this story

00:40:02

and of what Jesus did for us.

00:40:04

So this isn't just a story for Jews

00:40:07

living in Israel thousands of years ago.

00:40:10

This isn't just a story for people in church buildings.

00:40:13

This isn't just a story for somebody else, somewhere else.

00:40:16

This is a moment for you.

00:40:19

This is a story for you.

00:40:22

And so wherever you are, I'd love it

00:40:24

if you'd grab water or juice, wine, whatever it is,

00:40:28

and something to eat as well.

00:40:30

And as you do that, I want to walk you through this.

00:40:33

You don't have to do it just in time with me.

00:40:34

But I want you to take whatever it is

00:40:36

that you have to eat, as Jesus took bread, said,

00:40:39

"This is My body broken for you. Take and eat."

00:40:47

And then He held up a glass of wine.

00:40:50

He said, "This is My blood shed for you. Take and drink."

00:40:57

And whenever you're ready, I want you to do those two things.

00:41:01

Not as a tradition, not as a ritual,

00:41:04

not even as a reminder, but as a way

00:41:06

to receive the love and the sacrifice of Jesus.

00:41:11

And I'll remind you, we're not done yet.

00:41:13

We're not done with this story,

00:41:14

and we're not done with our experience

00:41:17

and the reminder that we have of it.

00:41:20

So here we go, as you take communion

00:41:21

and are reminded of the gift of Jesus' blood

00:41:24

as we continue to take communion and worship right now.

00:46:04

- The disciples should have finished the meal

00:46:06

that night singing praises.

00:46:09

They should have finished it singing classic praises

00:46:12

from some of the Psalms to celebrate

00:46:14

the finish of the Passover meal

00:46:17

with the fourth cup of wine.

00:46:19

That's what happened with the fourth cup,

00:46:21

but as far as we know, the fourth cup on the table

00:46:25

that night was never even touched.

00:46:28

This is the fourth cup.

00:46:29

It's called the cup of consummation.

00:46:32

The cup of consummation is when they celebrated,

00:46:35

when the Passover was complete,

00:46:36

when the rescue was finished,

00:46:38

when the people of Israel had been saved.

00:46:40

And now we sing in celebration, the cup of consummation

00:46:45

and they drink the final cup of wine.

00:46:46

But that night no fourth cup was touched.

00:46:50

As a matter of fact, we learn from the scriptures

00:46:52

that after the third cup, Jesus actually seems to say

00:46:56

He's not going to drink it.

00:46:57

He says, "I won't drink of the fruit of the vine again

00:47:01

until My Father's Kingdom."

00:47:04

And then they get up from the Upper Room

00:47:07

and they go out into the night,

00:47:09

and the fourth cup is still sitting on the table.

00:47:15

And the story continues.

00:47:17

One of His disciples had betrayed Him.

00:47:19

And Jesus went out into the night with all of them.

00:47:22

And He knows that the clock is ticking

00:47:25

and He's moving toward the Cross.

00:47:28

And shortly after this, He's arrested.

00:47:33

The next day he goes through a sham of a trial.

00:47:38

He's falsely accused.

00:47:39

He's unjustly condemned.

00:47:45

And then Roman soldiers take turns beating His body

00:47:50

black and blue, so much that they break the skin

00:47:55

and the Lamb of God begins to bleed.

00:48:05

The Last Supper wasn't finished in the Upper Room.

00:48:13

The Last Supper wouldn't be finished

00:48:15

until the Lamb of God made it all the way to the Cross.

00:48:21

And they took a crown of thorns

00:48:23

and they shoved it on the head of the King of kings,

00:48:28

the most powerful King over all the other kings.

00:48:32

And they mocked Him.

00:48:35

And they beat Him.

00:48:37

And they made Him drag His post, His Cross

00:48:41

up the hill to Calvary.

00:48:43

And when they got there, they threw Him down on it,

00:48:48

and they nailed Him to it through His hands and His feet.

00:48:52

And the Lamb of God began to bleed on another post,

00:48:58

a different kind of post.

00:48:59

The blood was running down as they stood Him up,

00:49:03

completely crucified, struggling to breathe.

00:49:08

And it was only then that He drank the fourth cup.

00:49:15

John 19 says: After this, Jesus,

00:49:20

knowing that all was now finished,

00:49:24

said to fulfill the scripture, "I thirst."

00:49:28

A jar full of sour wine stood there,

00:49:31

so they put a sponge full of the sour wine

00:49:34

on a hyssop branch and they held it up to His mouth.

00:49:39

And when Jesus received the sour wine,

00:49:42

he said, "It is finished," and He bowed His head

00:49:52

and He gave up His Spirit.

00:49:56

That is the moment that the Last Supper was done.

00:50:00

That was the fourth cup.

00:50:02

That was the moment that God fulfilled His promise

00:50:06

where He would be with His people

00:50:08

and they would be with Him.

00:50:10

Now we can sing praises to God,

00:50:14

because the Lamb of God was slain on the Cross,

00:50:18

His blood dripping and the consummation of it was complete.

00:50:24

The new kairos of the Kingdom of God

00:50:27

had broken into the world through the Cross.

00:50:31

The time had come, and not just the kairos time,

00:50:33

not just the time that God appointed.

00:50:35

You all, even the clock time was pointing at this.

00:50:39

The chronos time that had been ticking and ticking

00:50:43

and ticking as all of these events were taking place.

00:50:47

If you read back through the scriptures,

00:50:49

what you're going to see is that Jesus was crucified

00:50:52

on the third hour of the day

00:50:55

and hung on the Cross until the sixth hour,

00:50:57

when there was darkness that fell over the land

00:51:01

for three hours.

00:51:03

And it was at the ninth hour that

00:51:08

He breathed His last breath and said, "It is finished."

00:51:11

Do you know what else happens at the ninth hour?

00:51:15

At exactly the ninth hour, the Passover lambs

00:51:19

are sacrificed for the temple.

00:51:24

The Passover lambs are slain,

00:51:26

and their blood is shed to remember the original escape,

00:51:30

the original salvation,

00:51:32

the original kairos of the Kingdom.

00:51:36

And the same thing happened at the same moment in time,

00:51:40

and even the clocks pointed to it.

00:51:47

The new exodus, the new kairos, the new escape

00:51:52

was done on the Cross.

00:51:58

But don't imagine for a moment that

00:52:00

the disciples actually knew what was happening.

00:52:02

They had no idea.

00:52:03

Most of them had run away in fear at this point.

00:52:06

A few of them were cowering in the shadows,

00:52:08

watching what was going on.

00:52:11

The world as they knew it was confusing and dark.

00:52:14

This odd meal, this terrible trial

00:52:18

and the crucifixion of their leader.

00:52:20

They had no idea what to make of any of it.

00:52:23

The world as they knew it was finished

00:52:26

and everything went dark when Jesus breathed His last.

00:52:29

And eventually they took his body off of the Cross

00:52:34

and they laid it in a tomb.

00:52:39

And that tomb was sealed.

00:52:44

And chronos time was still ticking away.

00:52:55

[clock ticking]

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