Take And Eat - Mark 14:22-26 Series

Mark 14:22 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." 23 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. 24 "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them. 25 "I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God." 26 When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Introduction

What’s the difference between your relationship with the guy taking your order at MacDonald’s and your relationship with a police officer? And how does that compare to your relationship with your next-door neighbor? We have a lot of different kinds of relationships, don’t we?

And each one is appropriate for its own context. Think of a business owner who has a “the cus-tomer is always right” business model. You come in as a customer, make your argument for why you should get your money back, he isn’t one bit convinced, but he smiles and says, “Yes sir. Would you like cash, or back on your card?” You have a customer-vendor kind of relationship with him, so you’re always right. If that business owner’s best friend came to him with that same argument you made, he would tell his friend, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” But with you, he smiles and agrees.

Which kind of relationship is better? He doesn’t capitulate to everything his best friend says like he does with you, but on the other hand, his best friend is welcome in his home—at his dinner table. As a customer, you’re never invited to his home.

And as I said, there are hundreds of different kinds of relationships. There’s the landlord-tenant relationship, a student-teacher relationship, a mother-daughter relationship, a voter-congressman rela-tionship—I could go on forever. Of all the different kinds of relationships, which is the best kind to have with God, and why?

The Bread

Mark 14:22 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."

Passover

The verse begins, “While they were eating.” Eating what? The Passover. Mark has made that very clear. So far in this chapter he has reminded us no less than 5 times. This was the Passover meal, Pass-over, Passover, Passover, Passover. Four of those were in the preceding paragraph. Mark doesn’t in-clude many details, so the fact that he reminds us 4 times in one paragraph that this was a Passover meal makes me think that’s important.

The Passover was the annual celebration of the greatest act of salvation God had ever done—the deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt into the promised land, which is the place of God’s presence and blessing. Every since mankind was banished from the Garden of Eden, one of the most prominent themes in the whole Bible is God bringing his people back from their remote, estranged condition back into the place of his presence and blessing. That’s why the Bible ends in the book of Revelation with God’s people back in paradise eating from the tree of life.

There are countless times God delivered his people, but none greater than the deliverance from Pharoah, and so God commanded his people to have a yearly feast as a remembrance, so they would never forget.

But it wasn’t just a remembrance. It also looked forward. The people knew that when a handful of Jews came back from the 70-year exile in Babylon, that wasn’t anywhere close to the glorious resto-ration the prophets had promised. They realized that even though they were back in the land, they hadn’t been restored. So they looked forward to the day of the ultimate exodus —the ultimate, final deliverance of God’s people when he would bring them back to the full-blown paradise of God and they would feast at the great messianic banquet forever.

And it’s at that yearly remembrance where we left off last time with Jesus and his disciples reclin-ing at the table enjoying that feast together.

This is My Body

Transforming the Passover

So while they were eating the Passover meal, Jesus took the bread and said, “This is …” Now, if Jesus had paused right then and the disciples had to finish his sentence, they would have said, “Oh, that’s easy.” When God gave instructions on how to celebrate the Passover in Deuteronomy 16, he said exactly what the bread means.

Deuteronomy 16:3 … eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction … so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt.