The Night the Lamb Sang
TCF Maundy Thursday Sermon
April 5, 2012
Matthew 26:26-30 (ESV) 26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” 30 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Properly so, we usually explore on this night the institution, the founding, of the Lord’s Supper, or we look closely at the words Jesus spoke that night in the Upper Room, or the events that took place that night.
This is a rich passage of scripture, deep with meaning, and an incredibly important time in the history of our salvation. This is the beginning of what’s arguably the most important 24 hours in the history of salvation.
There are so many directions we could go for our thoughts tonight, before we what Jesus asked us to do in remembrance of Him, when we take the bread and the cup ourselves, even as Jesus’ disciples did that very night.
We’ll do that shortly, but first, I want to highlight something that, at least for me, was an entirely new thought about this narrative. After leaving His disciples the instructions to remember His sacrifice by celebrating what we’ve come to call The Lord’s Supper, we see in verse 30 something that, at first glance, is easy to miss.
“And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.”
Now, with just a casual reading of this you might think that this is just Matthew, and also in Mark’s gospel, filling in some colorful detail of what took place. After all, he’s writing an eyewitness account of what took place. And this is inspired writing, so it might as well be thorough, and engaging.
But several weeks ago, I was reading a random article where the writer mentioned this verse almost in passing. I had never thought before about this being the only place in scripture where we see Jesus singing. The verse says “they sang a hymn.” Jesus was part of the group of men gathered that night, so He, was one of the they.
Now, I suppose it’s not surprising that Jesus would sing. Jesus was fully man at the same time He was fully God. Pretty much everybody sings sometimes, don’t they? Yet we see in scripture Jesus speaking, talking, eating, sleeping, walking, but here’s the only place it refers to Him singing, and here it refers to Him only indirectly, as one of the group. That raises a few interesting questions, doesn’t it?
First of all, how can you possibly be singing at a time like this? And secondly, what might Jesus and His disciples have sung that night?
So, to the first question - what a time to be singing! Think about it. Jesus had just discussed with His disciples the reality of the wine being poured into their cups, symbolizing the blood that He would soon pour out for their sins. Hardly party or celebration conversation.
He had just predicted His betrayal by Judas. He had just told His disciples that His time was at hand – the time of His death. We know from other gospel accounts of this night, that He had spoken of, and revealed to His disciples, the model of His servanthood, by washing His disciples feet.
In the gospel of John, we see much more of what Jesus spoke to His disciples on that night. For example, He told them:
John 15:18-20 (ESV) 18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
So, these are the things that happened, the things that were spoken that night. Hardly a party. Hardly a fun and exciting evening for the disciples. Pretty serious stuff. And that doesn’t even begin to look at what happened just a little later, in the Garden of Gethsamane, where Jesus actually sweated drops of blood. If they sang, we might be inclined to think, surely they must have sung a sober hymn, a quiet and contemplative song – the kind of songs we are singing tonight, right?
In a few minutes, we’re going to hear a very thoughtful, quiet, meditative song, reflecting on Jesus, who was the sacrifice Lamb, slain for our sins.
When you first encounter this idea of Jesus singing in this time and place, that’s the kind of song you might think Jesus sang that night with His disciples.
But on further reflection, we see that sober, reflective music isn’t always the norm when we suffer, or when suffering is imminent. We remember Paul and Silas singing when they were in prison after they had been beaten.
Acts 16:22-25 (ESV) 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. 23 And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. 24 Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. 25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,
Some versions of this verse say that they weren’t just singing hymns, they were singing hymns of praise. Now, maybe I have a wrong idea of what hymns or songs of praise are, but isn’t there usually some rejoicing involved in hymns of praise? A hymn of praise is celebrating God’s goodness, or His grace, or His mercy, isn’t it?
At least some of the same apostles understood this, especially after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and were given the opportunity to put this into practice themselves. After being flogged for the crime of preaching Jesus the Messiah, we read:
Acts 5:41 (ESV) 41 Then they (the apostles) left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
And lest we think that rejoicing, singing praises, in the midst of suffering is only for Jesus or the apostles, Paul writes to the Romans and to us in
Romans 5:3-5 (ESV) 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
And Peter writes to us:
1 Peter 4:12-13 (ESV) 12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
So, when we think about it, and consider the witness of Scripture, it’s not really all that odd to consider that Jesus sang, knowing fully the suffering, the torture, the horrible death on the cross that He was just hours from enduring for our sake.
Hebrews 12:2 (ESV) 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus had joy set before Him. He knew it. He was the sacrifice Lamb. It was His chosen destiny. The disciples really didn’t understand it all just yet as they sang that night. But Jesus knew there was joy set before Him, so He sang. He sang before He endured the cross. He didn’t sing because He was excited about the suffering. Jesus was not a sadist, looking forward with anticipation to torture.
Just a little bit later that night, Jesus asked God if it was possible to take this suffering from Him. But even in this asking, He bowed to the Father’s will. He chose to participate in God’s plan of redemption in the manner God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit planned before the foundation of the world.
Remember Jim Grinnell said that the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday was scripted? So was this night.
And that brings us to the second question. If we can wrap our minds around a man headed to torture and death in a few short hours choosing to sing, what could Jesus and the disciples possibly have sung that night?
All this particular passage tells us is that “they sang a hymn.” So surely, the best we can do is speculate. But much scholarly opinion says we not only do not have to speculate what they sang that night, but, surprisingly, we can know with a fair amount of certainty what they sang.
That’s because most of what the apostles did that night was all very familiar. Remember, this was the feast of the Passover. The Jews were remembering, and celebrating, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.
What did they sing that night? Scripture doesn’t tell us specifically, but we can make an assumption that’s more than pure speculation. Many believe we can know for certain what they sang, because they were doing what Jews always did on the Passover. The things they did together that night were all very familiar to the disciples. They’d done them before, every time they’d celebrate the Passover.
Yet, this night, Jesus gave the rituals and traditions special meaning, new meaning. He redefined them in a way that revealed their prophetic nature about his suffering and his death. He reinstituted them for us, to remember something different than they were remembering that night.
In one sense it was the same thing – they were being delivered, saved, rescued, in the Passover, and they were being delivered in the death of Jesus.
But in a larger sense, they were were being delivered from so much more, and this was the new meaning Jesus was infusing into the Passover meal in the upper room.
But that still doesn’t answer the question “what did they sing?” They most likely sang, throughout the course of the Passover meal celebration, from Psalms 113-118. One commentator writes:
The passover was observed by the Jews by singing, or chanting, the 113th, 114th, 115th, 116th, 117th, and 118th psalms. These they divided into two parts. The 118th and 114th psalms they sung during the observance of the passover, and the others at the close. There can be no doubt that our Saviour, and the apostles also, used the same psalms in their observance of the passover. Barnes Notes
Other commentators state it with a bit less certainty, yet consider it very likely that some or all of these psalms were sung during the Passover meal…and that this otherwise obscure verse which tells us they sang, at the end of the narration on the institution of the Lord’s supper, Matthew 26:30, included at least something from one of these Psalms.
When I learned this, I couldn’t help but wonder, considering how meticulously this had all been planned by God, what was the content of their lyrics the Night the Lamb Sang?
These six Psalms as a group are known as the Egyptian Hallel. That means that they were Psalms related to the exodus, the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.
That fact alone is significant, knowing that Jesus sang these words that night, before He willingly became the Sacrifice Lamb. On the first Passover, the Jews were delivered by the blood of sacrificial lambs, when the angel of death passed over those homes marked by the lambs’ blood. We, too, are delivered from sin through Jesus’ blood.
The deliverance from slavery in Egypt is what the people of Israel celebrated on Passover, and Jesus, again, was infusing new meaning into this history of Jewish redemption.
Just a sampling of these Psalms, too long to read and fully explore tonight, are especially meaningful when you consider that Jesus Himself sang these Psalms, hours before sacrificing Himself for our sins. I’d encourage you to read through these yourself.
Psalm 113, for example, is a short hymn of praise. It celebrates the way in which the great and majestic God, who rules over all, takes notice of the lowly. Verses 5-7 proclaim:
5 Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, 6 who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? 7 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, 8 to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.
Doesn’t that remind you of what Paul said of Jesus, which we looked at on a Sunday just before Christmas?:
Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV) 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross
Psalm 114 remembers specifically the deliverance from Egypt. But it goes beyond that. Here are just the first two verses:
Psalm 114:1-2 (ESV) 1 When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, 2 Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.
Think of how this relates to Christ: Israel was delivered from Egypt – Christ delivers us from sin and death. Judah became God’s sanctuary, the place He lived, the Psalm tells us, but Jesus lives in us – you and me! We are His tabernacle, we are His sanctuary. As Jim Garrett has reminded us from time to time, we don’t call this room we’re in a sanctuary – it’s just an auditorium - because for the believer in Christ, we are His residence, we are His sanctuary.
This, too, was a message likely sung by the Lamb, and invested with new meaning, that night when Jesus celebrated with His disciples the Passover, and gave so much of the celebration new and rich meaning.
We could go on to look at many verses and the themes of this section of Psalms. Psalm 116 is a personal song of thanksgiving for deliverance from imminent death. There’s no death more lasting than the death that Jesus delivered us from.
Psalm 117, the shortest chapter in scripture, recounts God’s unfailing love and His faithfulness. Was that ever demonstrated in any fuller or more meaningful way than in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross?
Psalm 118:24 (ESV) 24 This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Imagine for a moment your worst day ever. A day of suffering and pain and misery. None of us have ever had a day like Jesus did, which began the night before in the upper room and then Gethsemane. Only about 24 hours later, Jesus was dead and buried.
Yet, knowing that the events of that day were beginning to unfold, knowing that suffering and death was His chosen fate, the gentle, sacrificial lamb, Jesus the only Son of God, very likely sang that verse in Psalm 118.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
As we come to His table of grace tonight, as we remember, according to His instructions, what He accomplished for us by shedding His blood on the cross, let’s also remember that He did it for the joy set before Him. Let’s also remember that in the midst of this day of days, Jesus sang, He gave glory to His Father, and He rejoiced.
Sober reflection now is appropriate as we remember the awful price Jesus paid, but in the midst of that let’s always remember what Jesus remembered – sorrow may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning. For us, it’s a joy of gratitude, because we serve a loving, merciful, faithful God.
(Pray – also pray for the elements in advance of communion.)
