OPEN: There is a part of a basketball game that no spectator gets to see.
No matter how important the ticket holder may be.
No matter how much he’s paid for his seat.
There is one event he will NOT be INVITED to observe.
And yet this one event can change the entire course of a game. I’ve read of games that I’d have considered lost – games when teams were down as much as 20 points or more - that literally turned around when this part of the basketball game took place.
Does anybody know what I’m talking about?
That’s right - It’s called the half-time talk.
It’s considered to be so crucial to the tempo of a game that nearly every team has one.
I did an internet search looking for examples of these talks, but all I could find were colorful phrases to describe them. Phrases like:
Spirited
Energized
Stern
Intense
Angry
A tongue-lashing
(and my personal favorite) Paint peeling
Coach Jerry Wainwright DePaul Blue Demons once said that during such a talk: "I wasn’t real kind. Usually, I yell to our players. This time I yelled at them."
The objective a half-time talk is to tell the team what they may not want to hear - but things they really DO need to hear in order to succeed in the 2nd half.
APPLY: In this passage from the Gospel of Mark, we find Jesus telling his disciples some things they don’t want to hear. Just for the sake of my illustration, I want you to think about the disciples as being a team and Jesus is their coach.
Over the past couple of days, they’ve been on a roll. Jesus has come off a successful road trip
o where He’s performed numerous miracles
o healed hundreds of people
o And raised Lazarus from the dead.
And then they entered into Jerusalem where the crowd goes wild. The people cut down branches from nearby palm trees and lay them along the road and they shout out “hosanna, blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” Everybody is expecting that Jesus will soon proclaim Himself to be the King
Then Jesus goes into the Temple and displays His power and majesty when He clears out the money-changers that everybody knew were crooked businessmen and should have been dealt with years ago.
Yes sir, if you were to compare this to a basketball game, “Team Jesus” has gone into the locker room with a 20 point lead… and victory is assured.
But Jesus knows that’s not how this game is going to be played out.
Jesus knows this illusion of success will soon disappear… and so will His team.
And He knows He needs to tell His team things they don’t want to hear… but the things He needs to tell them - they need to hear if they’re ever going to overcome the tragedy and despair of the next few days.
And so Jesus is brutally honest with His disciples. He tells them:
“…One of you will betray me— one who is eating with me.” Mark 14:18
"You will all fall away" Mark 14:27
And then He shared the prophecy about Himself from Zechariah 13:7 where God declared:
”I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”
This is unbelievable.
The disciples can’t even begin to grasp what’s happened.
Except for Judas, the rest of the team has been loyal.
They’ve played their hearts out.
And yet Jesus tells ALL of them that they will fail
He tells ALL of them that they will leave Him
And worst of all, He tells them that He will die
The prophecy from Zechariah declared that the shepherd would be “Struck”… which literally means he would be “slain” or “killed”
They couldn’t understand. How could Jesus say these things?
What had they done to deserve this?
ILLUS: Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever been slapped down by something that came completely from left field and left you wondering: Why did God allow this to happen to me? What did I do to deserve this in my life?
And you begin to search for something that you need to repent of because you just know that God must be punishing you for something.
(pause…)
That’s how the disciples feel. What had they done to deserve this?
Well, they hadn’t DONE anything wrong. This wasn’t about them. This was about a game plan that had been devised 1000s of years before they had been born.
The book of Isaiah had declared that this Messiah would be
“…led like a lamb to the slaughter” Isaiah 53:7
“…cut off from the land of the living….” Isaiah 53:8
“…assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death…” Isaiah 53:9
“…pierced for our transgressions…”
“…crushed for our iniquities…”
“…the punishment that (would bring) us peace was upon him
“… and (it would be) by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
Isaiah described the coming Messiah as being a sacrifice for our sins… kind of like the Passover Lamb had always been for the Jewish people.
Back in the days when the people of Israel were slave in Egypt, the Bible tells us that God bro’t them out of the land of their captivity with a mighty hand. God brought 10 plagues upon the Egyptian people – to convince the Pharaoh to let His people go. And the last of those plagues was the death of the 1st born male of every family in Egypt… those who didn’t have the blood of a lamb painted on the doorposts and lentils of their homes.
It was in preparation for this last and most terrible of plagues that God instructed the Israelites on how to conduct their Passover feast and of the importance of placing the blood of this innocent lamb on their homes.
God told them: “…the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will PASS OVER you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” Exodus 12:13
The blood of an innocent lamb needed to be shed to save them from death.
So now, Jesus is with His disciples in an upper room and they’re taking part in a Passover meal together. And Jesus is talking about the Passover feast as if it’s all about Him.
Look With Me To Mark 14:22-24
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body.’
Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it.
‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,’ he said to them.”
He is telling His disciples that the items they’d always eaten and the items that always drank as part of the Passover feast - the unleavened bread and the cup of juice - it was His body… His blood. It was His body that had to be broken to save men from death, and His blood that had to be shed to save mankind from the curse of death. He was the Passover lamb.
He was the Passover sacrifice. (pause…)
But there is a catch. In order for the blood of the sacrifice to be offered… what had to happen to the sacrifice? Well, it had to die.
For about a year now, Jesus has been telling His disciples this was going to happen. Right after Peter told Jesus “Thou art the Christ the Son of the Living God” Matthew 16:21 tells us:
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
Matthew tells us of at least 3 separate occasions Jesus specifically told the disciples this. But the disciples were never quite willing to accept this idea… because – to them – this wasn’t how the game was supposed to be played.
So now, here they are at half-time.
They’re about to face the hardest challenge they’ll ever encounter.
They’re about to see their Master arrested, beaten, condemned… and crucified.
And ultimately, they are all going to fail Him. Not just Judas - but every single disciple is going to run away and hide. They’re going to be afraid that the same forces that will arrest and crucify Jesus will come for them.
It’s half time, and they’re about to go into a part of the game they’re not prepared to handle.
It’s half time, and they’re about to face forces of darkness that’ll overwhelm and fill them with despair.
It’s half time, and it’s at this point in His ministry that Jesus sees the need to give them “the talk”
Now as I was studying this passage for the sermon this morning, something occurred to me. Jesus and His disciples have spent at least two other Passover meals with Jesus before this one. But it is only now… as they are about to face the greatest challenge of their lives… a challenge that they will ultimately fail… It’s only now that Jesus sees fit to speak to them of bread being His body and the cup being His blood.
Why do it now?
Why hasn’t this been a repeated image at every single Passover they’ve celebrated together?
Well, because this Last Supper is all about Hope. It’s meant to place images in their minds to help them understand that the coming crisis will not be an accident.
In just a few hours they’re going to see Jesus arrested, beaten and crucified. And they’re going to be afraid. And they’re going run away. And they’re going to assume that they’ve lost the game.
Jesus gave this half-time talk because He wanted His disciples to understand: the crucifixion WAS the game. The Crucifixion was the entire reason they had come out onto the floor to begin with. If Jesus hadn’t gone to the cross for our sins… they would have lost. And we would have lost.
But we didn’t lose…
Jesus did go to the cross – He died – He was buried – and on the 3rd day He rose from the dead.
As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians “By this gospel you are saved…: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,… he was buried, (and) he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” 1 Corinthians 15:2-4
BECAUSE THAT IS TRUE… it helps us to understand that the purpose of Last Supper was to drive home to the disciples the fact that Jesus’ death was not in vain. His crucifixion was not an accident. Jesus didn’t get caught by surprise
It WAS the game plan.
Now… that brings us to the celebration of communion that we’re going to partake of this morning. The Lord’s supper is intended to have the same effect for us as it had for the disciples of Jesus’ day.
In I Corinthians 11 Paul writes: “… whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:26
Every time you partake of the cup and the loaf…
· you are declaring that you believe Jesus deliberately chose the cross for you.
· you are declaring you believe the blood of Jesus was shed to wash away your sins
o And that His blood will continue to wash away your sins
Why is that important?
Because every week we say thing we shouldn’t say, or think things we shouldn’t think, or do things we shouldn’t do.
Every week we fail.
Every week we fall short.
And when we gather at the communion table we are reminded on a weekly basis that the blood of Jesus was shed for us… because Jesus deliberately chose to go the cross for you and for me.
This was extremely important to the early church.
In Acts 20:7 Luke tells us that “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread…”
They gathered on the first day of the week to take communion.
Now it just so happened that Paul was available and he gave a sermon, but that wasn’t why they had gotten together. They weren’t there to hear a great evangelist – that was just jelly on the toast. The reason they came together on each Lord’s Day was to gather at the Lord’s Table.
And that continued to be the practice of the early church for several hundred years. Justin Martyr – one of the leaders in the early church around 150 A.D. wrote:
"On Sunday a meeting is held of all who live in the cities and villages, and a section is read from the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets, as long as time permits. When the reading is finished, the president, in a discourse, gives the admonition and exhortation to imitate these noble things. After this we all arise and offer a common prayer. At the close of the prayer, as we have before described, bread and wine and thanks for them according to his ability, and the congregation answers, "Amen." Then the consecrated elements are distributed to each one and partaken of, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the absent."
We take of communion every week because we need to.
We need to be reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus
We need to be reminded that it was a deliberate decision on His part
And we need to be reminded that it’s by His intentional choice to die on the cross that we can overcome and win in our lives.
CLOSE: John Stott The Cross of Christ
I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statute of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
But each time, after a while I have had to look away. And in imagination, I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross; nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness.
That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain.
He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.
