Exploring My Strange Bible - The Messianic Passover

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

The meaning and the symbolism of that final meal left a HUGE impression on the disciples that were there. So much so, that some sort of account has made it into every single one of the Gospels in the New Testament, and even made its way into one of the Apostle Paul’s letters. We did this teaching leading up to resurrection Sunday during holy week. During this episode, I reenact a short version of this Messianic Passover. You’ll hear how Jesus is intentionally explaining what is about to go down and the meaning of his death at the Passover meal. Listen in to hear more…

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right, well, in this episode, we are going to take some time to explore the meaning and significance of the Last Supper. Jesus' famous Last Supper with his disciples the night he was betrayed and arrested and led off on his trial to be crucified.

The meaning and the symbolism of that final meal that he had with the disciples, it left such an impression on the circle of his disciples that was there. Some kind of account of that meal has made its way into every single one of the Gospels in the New Testament, and also has made its way into one of Paul's letters, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. to one of Paul's letters, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. This was an immensely important moment in the story of what happened to Jesus and also how his followers found themselves called to participate and reenact and relive that meal on a weekly basis. And that's been happening in churches around the world ever since the Jesus movement's inception 2,000 years ago. The meal goes by various names in church traditions today,

whether it's communion, or the Lord's Supper, or the bread and the cup, or the Eucharist, or the Mass. But where did this come from? So what we're going to do, actually this was a teaching I gave. It was highly interactive. I did it right around a couple years ago, but before and leading up to Resurrection Sunday. So it coincided with Holy Week. And basically what I do is reenact a short version of a Messianic Passover. This meal was the ancient Jewish Passover meal that itself was celebrating and reenacting an ancient foundation story for the Israelites and their liberation from slavery in Egypt. And so Jesus is intentionally timing and calling upon all the symbolism of the Passover meal to explain what was about to go down in Jerusalem over the next few days and the meaning of his death. So just for reference, as you're listening to this, what I actually did was set up a little table in the front of the sanctuary at Door of Hope. I invite some volunteers up and we have

this kind of symbolic meal together. So it's kind of silly because, you know, it's fun to walk people through the Passover meal. If you really wanted to do the Passover meal right, it would take a couple hours, and there are really amazing versions of a Messianic or like a Christian Jewish Passover. You can Google them, find them online. But this is a condensed one that I used from the Gospel of Luke's account of the Last Supper. Okay, enough talking. We'll explore and learn together, but I hope it's as helpful for you as it was fun and helpful for me. I learned a ton in the process.

So there you go. Let's dive in together. So Palm Sunday, some of us may have grown up in and around church traditions or maybe knowing Christians or something who did a lot of things related to the church calendar. I'm imagining that a whole bunch of us, maybe even most of us, didn't grow up with any practices or regular traditions around the Christian calendar except for Christmas and Easter, right? And other than that, and mostly because those have become completely other versions of something in our culture, but there's all these other moments in the Christian year

of like Epiphany and Advent and Ash Wednesday and Lent and so on. And some of us may have grown up doing these things. I'm guessing most of us haven't. I sure didn't, right? And so I'm about, you know, as like homeless as they come in terms of the history of the Christian tradition, in terms of sacred time. And this is an anomaly in church history. Most Christians, through most of church history, have had their daily, weekly,

monthly lives woven into the calendar, the Christian calendar, which is essentially, it's a way of marking moments, certain moments and days as reminding you of the big story that we're in. American Protestant Christians, for the most part, we just, we're adrift when it comes to this. And I'm imagining that's how most of us feel. So, you know, you probably, my guess is that most of us probably know that Easter is next Sunday. My guess is that most of us were probably surprised that it's coming when we found out somewhere the last week or something like that. Are you guys with me? Right? It's, how many of you, this is totally Easter every year? You're like, oh, it's here? Holy cow, it's here. I had no idea, right? Before I was a

paid Christian, right? Like working at a church. I always forgot Easter, right? And I never remembered it until I had to because we began planning and thinking about Sundays and so on. So I never remembered. Easter was always like a surprise to me. That shows just how adrift we are, right? In our culture, in the practice, or lacking the practice of the Christian calendar. And I think it's to our detriment, really, I do, for a number of different reasons. So some of us are surprised, right, when I said, you know, Easter's coming, or maybe last week when we said it, and we're like, oh yeah, Easter. How many of you have had an experience like that, but has nothing to do with religious holidays? So today's March 24th,

for example. How many of you in the last week or two have had some sort of forehead-slapping moment or a conversation where you're like, holy cow, like it's March. It's March already. You know what I mean? Like, wasn't it just January 1st, New Year's? Like, it's already like a third, a quarter of the way into 2013. How is that happening? The last week was like a blur. Where did the last month go? You guys know what I'm talking about here. These are such strange realizations. It's like, where is the time going? And so what it shows is that our perception of our passage through time is chaotic and disordered. And the whole purpose of having some kind of rhythmic calendar, what the Christian calendar

has done, is to provide moments where you remember that this little story that I'm living out day to day, it fits into a bigger picture. And it's not just random chaotic noise. It actually, my little story has some sort of role in this big story that I'm reminding myself of. That's the Christian calendar. There's one culture that has a much older calendar than Christianity, and where people have been marking these moments of sacred time for like millennia now. This is a culture that grasps the significance of rhythms in our calendar. What culture am I talking about? There's a Jewish culture, right? And actually, the Christian calendar was born right out of the Jewish calendar. So, for example, in Jewish

culture, there are daily rhythms. morning prayers and scripture readings, morning, noon, evening, to remind you of who you are, of what this is all about, about the story that I'm in. There are weekly rhythms of Sabbath. There are the annual rhythms, the annual feasts and festivals. And so like in the fall, it's called the high holidays. And there's all of these awesome festivals. And all of them are meals or events that retell some foundation story in the scriptures about who we are as a Jewish people

and what we're all about. So you have the Feast of Tabernacles and you go camp out in your backyard with friends and family and remember the ancestors as they traveled in tents through the wilderness. We have the Day of Yom Kippur, the Day of atonement. You have Rosh Hashanah to remember the new year and the giving of the Torah. All these moments, but the pinnacle of the Jewish calendar is the festival that happens in the spring that coincides with Palm Sunday and Easter. And what festival is this?

It's Passover. It's Passover. It's the crown jewel of the Jewish feasts. Because Passover tells the foundation story of how Yahweh rescued Israel out of slavery in Egypt into the freedom of the promised land, protected them through the wilderness and into the promised land. And it's a week-long festival that culminates in the feast of Passover. Jesus grew up steeped in these sacred rhythms of time. It's this calendar that shaped his view of the world and who he was, and was a part of helping, obviously, gaining his sense of significance and identity in what he came to do. And Passover is, it's not coincidental

that Easter and Passover connect every year. It's because on Palm Sunday, Jesus intentionally chose the week leading up to Passover as his final week. He knew, he clearly knew it was coming. He was telling his followers, even though none of them could grasp, that he was going to Jerusalem to die. And he rode into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday was today, on a donkey, and he pulled the stunt in the temple, the whole thing, turning over the tables, and he made a lot of enemies that day. And that stunt earned a price on his head. Because in that act, he was asserting his authority over the temple,

and he was asserting that this place the temple. And he was asserting that this place is now corrupt and it no longer represents the God of Israel and what Yahweh, the God of Israel, intended it for. And so you read the stories after that. All four Gospels tell the story of Holy Week as a week of intensifying conflict with Jesus and the religious leaders and the Pharisees. And they essentially put in a motion to plot to kill him and put a price on his head. And it's Passover night where it all comes to a head. And so what we're going to do tonight is kind of retell the story of that last meal. Because what Jesus did, Jesus had a number of places where he talked about that he was going to

die. There's just a small handful of places where he talked about the meaning of his death. Jesus didn't say enough about the meaning of his death before the cross to even fill the whole page of a book, really. It was a handful of teachings. When he wanted to communicate the meaning of his death to his closest followers, he didn't write a book. He put on a meal. He put on a Passover meal. Because every part of this meal was a symbol telling that ancient story of redemption from slavery. And so what Jesus did on that final night is he transformed the meaning of this meal to take on a whole new significance around him and around what was to come. If we don't grasp Passover, we don't get Jesus, because he chose Passover as the meal

to explain what was about to happen on the cross and resurrection. So that's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do here tonight. You guys ready for action? So we're going to do kind of a, it takes about two hours to do, Passover Seder is what it's called. How many of you guys have been a part of Passover Seder before? Yes, a handful of you. Super fun.

It takes a whole evening. So we'll just do a super kind of truncated version. Actually, we're going to follow the version that is in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22. So, why don't you grab your Bibles with me and turn to Luke chapter 22. Luke 22, we're going to start in verse 7. And what we're going to trace at every step of the way again is how jesus took this i mean this this meal was already 1500 years old when jesus was around that's 3500 years old our time this is an ancient ancient sacred rhythm by jesus time and he's going to give it new meaning.

Luke chapter 22, verse 7. Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover had to be sacrificed. And so Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go make preparations for us to eat the Passover. So it's very clear. It's all four gospels. The last meal, the last supper it's called, was a Passover meal. Now I have to, there's a handful of you who might be aware of this. This is super interesting and there's absolutely no time to get into it. But if you compare all four of the gospels on the timing of this meal, you'll see

there's actually some tensions and some potential contradictions even between, was it Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that it was the Passover night when Jesus had the meal. John seems to indicate that it was the day before Passover. A lot of it has to do with the John and the other three Gospel writers are working with different kind of conceptions of the calendar. They're referring to the same night with different words. But here's what is interesting, and this is a view held by a majority of people who are way smarter than I am, is that Jesus almost certainly celebrated this meal about 12 to 24 hours before everyone else in Jerusalem was celebrating the meal. And that explains that

difference between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John's way of talking about it. And this is totally the way Jesus rolled. You know what I mean? He would take the way people normally thought about doing something, and he would just tweak it a little bit, always to help people understand something about himself. And so he doesn't actually have, in 24 hours, he's going to be hanging on a Roman executioner's rack, right? So he doesn't have 24 more hours. And so it's almost certain that it's in the wee hours of the morning, late at night, that he's having this meal just ahead on what would be Thursday night for us. It's Passover. Passover meal. Verse 9. Where do you want us to prepare for it, they asked. He replied, as you enter the city. What city is that? So it's Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was the center of, Passover was a

pilgrimage feast. In other words, Jews would come from all over the world and flock to the city. It's not a huge city geographically, and somewhere around 100,000 people, in addition, would flock to the city for, this was packed. The streets were full and full of music and singing and festivities and so on.

It's packed. So as you enter into the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters and then say to the owner of that house, the teacher asks, where is the guest room that I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he'll show you to a large room upstairs, all furnished, make preparations there. And so they left, and they found things just as Jesus had told them. And so they prepared the Passover. This is such a great, this is one of my favorite scenes in the Gospels. This is totally like a spy movie, you guys, right?

So think about it. This is Jesus last night. He's a wanted man. There's a price on his head to kill him. He's been the most controversial public figure in the city over the last seven days. He can't just go waltzing around, right? So he has to, Jesus has prearranged secretly everything with all of these anonymous people. You know, it's so wonderful. So he says, go into the city and meet the man carrying the water jar.

It's so awesome. And this guy would stick out too because as in this culture, a very traditional culture, like many other cultures, and it's super screwed up. Who does the heavy lifting in many traditional cultures?

Women. Typically women in their culture who would be carrying a jar of water. A guy carrying a jar of water, oh, that's our man. That's clearly our dude, because that's not normal. And so, and follow that guy down narrow streets in Jerusalem, little alleyways. Follow that guy down to the teacher of the house.

You can just see the guy with the water jar, he just keeps going. Oh, this must be the place. And then the guy opens the door, and it's like code words. The teacher asks, where is, oh, the teacher, you know and then you and they go and they walk upstairs and boom it's all like prepared and ready you know it's such a great such a great scene here so what's reflected here is that jesus he's brilliant and he knows he knows what's happening he sees the

writing on the wall he knows he has just hours left. And he wants, more than anything, to create this quiet moment where he can have these final hours with the disciples to explain the meaning of his death through the Passover meal. And so, you know, you get the image here, everything he's prearranged to be secret and have privacy and so on. And I don't know why, this might seem silly to you, but the image that comes to my mind is from right before the last battle in The Lord of the Rings. And Gandalf, you know, he's overlooking the fields of Pelennor, I think they are. And right before the battle, and it's that quiet night before the war. And he says of that night, he says it's like the last deep breath before the plunge. So that's the Passover. That's

this night right here, the last deep breath. Verse 14. When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles, they reclined at the table. Now, there's a very famous painting of this scene. You'll see it up here on the screen. It's a very famous painting called The Last Supper. Yes, there it is. And by whom? Who's it by? Yeah, da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci.

Now, it's a beautiful painting, all kinds of interesting things. And, you know, if you like good fiction, you know, read Dan Brown's book on it, and you'll see all kinds of interesting other layers of meaning in the picture. But the first thing that you need to do is get this picture totally out of your head, right? So it's a wonderful piece of the Western Christian tradition. It's completely historically inaccurate in terms of the depiction of the meal. So people didn't sit at tables like that. People didn't sit at tables, upright tables like that, right? 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. If they sat at tables at all, they would be low tables like this, and they weren't

long. They would be shaped in a circle or a semicircle or like a U-shape. And look at verse 14 right there. The apostles, what did they do at the table? They laid down to be at the table. So that's what we're going to do. So what I would like, this is a community fair. It's a family. Get all in the family. So what I'd like is a couple of volunteers, one guy, one, who's going to enjoy. Homeboy, you're really eager, okay? And one gal. Yes, here we go. I see that hand. There you go. Come on up. Yeah, yeah, come on up. Yeah, there you go. And there's some stairs right over here. Awesome. Hi, what's your name? My name is Thaddeus. Thaddeus? Yeah. That's really great. Feel free to have a seat here. And hi there. What's your name? Trisha. Trisha. Nice

to meet you. Welcome to my table. Can I call you Thad or Thadius? Whatever you want. All right. I'll call you Thad and Trisha. Awesome. All right. Welcome. Welcome to Tim's Passover meal. Great. So the Passover, this is one of the, again, one of the most ancient traditional religious meals in the history of the human race, in terms of people have been practicing this meal every single year longer than any other, like, religious meal in the history of mankind. You know what I'm saying? Like 3,500 years. So crazy. So this meal has attracted and grown in terms of the practices and the traditions. And so if you've been to a Passover Seder, that's going to have like way more elements than what we're going to do here. Almost certainly,

2,000 years ago, the version they practiced didn't have as many things as maybe what you had here today. So this is pretty stripped down. And we don't have two hours, and I don't want to keep you here, Thad, for two hours. So we're just going to do the version that we have here in Luke. The Passover meal is marked into four movements, marked by four cups of wine. How old are you, Thad? Really? 21. 21, that's great. Okay, I anticipated, just in case,

so I got sparkling Concord grape juice. But no, I mean, that's great. I'm happy for you that you're 21. But just in case, I just got grape juice. It's sparkling, too. I think it might be fizzy. I just got grape juice. So it's sparkling too.

I think it might be fizzy. So you're going to need to take a few swigs. So ration it out. Great. All right. So, man, you know what? I'm sorry. You know what happened to me?

I was, I got a sliver. Like 30 seconds before I came out here, I'm holding onto the railing, and it hurts so bad right now. Have you guys ever, it was like went straight in, one of those slivers. Anyway. It was real. They need to just like disinfect it. I know, yeah, right. Yeah, it's not real. Anyway, okay, all right. So anyway, I decided to share that, just get it out of my head

so I don't, won't distract me anymore. So this meal is broken into four different movements by four cups. And each cup over which you say a blessing, actually you don't bless the cup or the food. It's already blessed because it's a part of God's good world. The whole point of prayer in the Jewish tradition is blessing God. It's funny in the Christian church, we reverse that as if somehow the food needs to be blessed. Of course it doesn't. It's God who needs to be blessed because he provided the food. Anyway, so we say a blessing to God for the cup. I'm going to sing it in Hebrew, and then we'll all say it aloud together in English. You'll see it up here on the screen.

Baruch atah Adonai, lehenu melech haolam, haborei peri hakafin. All together? What? All together? Why? All together? Why is that funny? May you be blessed, O Lord our God, King of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. Tricia, Thad, bottoms up. It's good. It's good.

Okay. Look back down at your Bibles with me, and with that and Tricia, you guys get to listen. Okay. So look at verse 14. When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles, they reclined at the table, and he said to them, I've eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom And so after taking the cup, which we just did, he gave thanks just like we did, and said, Take this and divide it among you. And we drank it.

For I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. Now, this is the point at which the disciples would be very puzzled, right? Because this, like, you don't mess with the Passover. Like, it's already 1500 years old. You know what I mean? Like, you just do it. And so Jesus is, all of a sudden, he's taking the first cup and he's giving it new meaning. Right? Because the Passover meal is about what? Event. It's about the past.

Right? About this exodus of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. And Jesus is saying that now this meal isn't pointing backwards to the past anymore. It's pointing forwards. Right? Do you see this? It's pointing towards the future to something that's about to happen, and that something is his suffering, his death. And he says somehow the Passover, this meal is now pointing forward to his death, and it's about the fulfillment of the kingdom of God, or about the kingdom of God coming, he says. Now, this assumes

that you've been reading the whole gospel of Luke up to this point, and you know that the kingdom of God was Jesus' main message. If you heard him teaching on any given day, you'd hear him talking about the kingdom. And it was his shorthand way of summarizing the story of the Bible and saying that God's promises to rescue, to bless all nations, to forgive and to redeem his world, it's happening. It's reached the moment where those promises are coming true.

He said, it's happening in me. The kingdom of God is here in me, Jesus said. And so he says, this meal is now pointing forward to the climactic moment of the kingdom of God arriving in his death. And so, and we scratch our heads. What? No one's ever said anything like this before. This is very strange.

After drinking the first cup, we would have an appetizer, as it were, by dipping the karpas. Have you dipped your karpas before, Tricia? So why don't you take the smaller one of the two and maybe just kind of tear off a piece here. And you see in this white dish, what's going on there? Oh, got it. Was it your hair? What's going on there? I have a hair. Oh, got it.

Was it your hair? Uh. Oh, oh, it's horseradish string. Yeah, we'll get to that later. That's the bitter herb. Right now, focus on the white dish. One unpleasant thing at a time. Okay, so this white dish, it looks like water. It's actually really, really salty water.

Salt water. So stir it up, really salty water. Salt water. So stir it up, kind of agitate the salt, get it all over there. And we're going to dip the karpas and then, of course, put it in our mouths. Are you guys with me? Ready? Eat the karpas? Okay. yeah yeah i mean not the best taste in the world but i might have poured extra salt in that one it was before i knew that it was euthan so yeah okay so oh that's kind of hmm it's interesting appetizer uh if there's a kid at the table the kid kid might ask, like, oh, why do we have to dip the karpas? You know, what is that all about? So why do we dip the karpas?

There's many interpretations of the dipping of the karpas through the meal's history. The oldest one is that it's retelling the story of Joseph and his brothers. So you remember Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jacob has how many sons? Twelve sons. Isaac, Jacob. Jacob has how many sons? Twelve sons. The eleventh is this punk kid named Joseph who loves to, you know, rat out his brothers and so on. And so his dad, Jacob, loves Joseph more than all of the others. And so you remember he makes for Joseph the special coat, the Technicolor Dreamcoat, right? And the special coat that symbolizes how much more Jacob

loves him. And so his brothers are jealous. And so they plan to kill him, if you'll recall. And so, do you remember, they kidnap him and then they put him in a pit in the ground. And then they decide not to kill him. And they find a better alternative, which is to sell him into slavery, right? Somehow that's better, into Egypt. But you remember what they do? They need to trick Jacob, his father, into that Joseph has died. What do they do? They take off his coat, they kill a lamb, and then they dip the coat in the blood, and then they bring it to the father. A wild animal got him or something, you know, and that's their story. This is the story of how the family of Abraham ends up down in Egypt, right? It's the bitter, and what flavor

does blood have? It's very salty. It's very salty. This is the bitter story of how the Israelites end up down in Egypt. After the dipping of the karpas, we all are all of a sudden, especially the kids at the table, we're like, well, this is not quite a normal way that we have a meal. And lots of questions, lots of questions. And so typically at this point, the youngest person sitting at the table would begin to ask a whole bunch of questions about the meal. So since we're comfortable, I say we designate them to be the littlest kids, and you all are going to ask the questions. You guys with me? Okay, so you're going to see a whole bunch of questions appear here on the screen, and I want you all to read them aloud. Here's what I don't want you to do. Somehow in a large group, there's like this spell comes over

people when we all read something aloud, and we think, I'm going to read in my most boring, monotone voice. So don't do that. Stop that. So even though you haven't started yet, stop it. So you're a bunch of rambunctious, even obnoxious little kids. You're not going to read it all at the same time. You have your questions, and you need to ask them now. That's right? You guys with me? Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. Go for it. What was that? All right, that was epic. Did that happen? That probably has not happened in the history of Door of Hope up to this point.

I'm so glad you asked. What a wonderful question. Yeah. point. I'm so glad you asked. What a wonderful question. At this point, the head of the table would then retell the story of the Exodus. And normally it would mean a retelling of literally just rereading all these chapters of the book of Exodus. It could take up to 40, 45 minutes. So let's do a shortened version, shall we, to keep the meal going. According to Deuteronomy chapter 26, this was a version of something of what was said. Our ancestor was a wandering Aramean.

And God called him to the land of Canaan long ago, made promises to him that somehow through him and his family, blessing would find famine in the land of Canaan. And so Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, the 12 sons, the story that we just told here. But there was a great famine and so the whole family had to go down south to Egypt to find food. And in Egypt, our ancestors, they flourished, they multiplied, they were doing wonderfully there. But the king of Egypt, what's his name? Big bad Pharaoh? Yeah, Pharaoh and the Egyptians. This is a story that could be retold many times in human history. An immigrant population moves somewhere looking for food or work. They begin to thrive, to flourish, to multiply.

And then the indigenous people group gets threatened. They're scared. And so the Egyptians enact a series of measures to begin to enslave and deprive and kill off Israelites. The king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, he enacted a measure to kill all of the firstborn sons of Israel at the same time that he enslaved the rest of the population. He's trying to grind them into the ground through slave labor. And so our ancestors, they cried out to the God of Israel, to the God of Abraham, and God heard their cry. He remembered his promises to Abraham, and he raised up a deliverer. What's his name? It's Moses. It's Moses. And through Moses, Yahweh, our God, he brought great acts of justice against Egypt's oppression and injustice.

Ten great strikes against the king of Egypt and his people. And the last strike was the killing of the firstborn human and animals in Egypt. But Yahweh provided a means of escape, but that's going to come later in the meal. But it was through these great acts of mercy and justice that Yahweh rescued our ancestors out of slavery in Egypt. That's why we have this meal 1,500 years later here today. And so to commemorate the telling of the Exodus story, we would raise our second cup.

And we would actually sing a whole section of the book of Psalms called the Great Hallel. Psalms 113, Psalm 118. Your arm's going to get tired, Dad. But instead of singing it in Hebrew, let's just read Psalm 113 aloud together. And actually, we'll do it kind of responsibly. And as we do it, think about the significance that this psalm, this song would have

as we retell the story of the Exodus. Yeah? You guys with me? Praise Yahweh. From the place where the sun rises to the place where it goes down. For Yahweh is high above the nations. Who can be compared with Yahweh? Who is enthroned on high? All together. May you be blessed, O Lord our God,

King of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. Now, Rabbi Gamaliel, you guys heard of Rabbi Gamaliel? Actually, you may have. You may have. A whole bunch of you are like, no, of course I haven't heard of Rabbi Gamaliel? Actually, you may have. You may have. A whole bunch of you are like, no, of course I haven't heard of Rabbi Gamaliel. You for sure have heard and even read the writings of one of his students. He was a Pharisee named Saul, or you might know him as the Apostle Paul. His teacher, Rabbi Gamaliel, he used to say this. He was a very revered rabbi, and he said, you can celebrate the Passover a number of different ways, but any genuine Passover has to

have at least three elements. It has to have the unleavened bread. Shall we display our unleavened bread here? Unleavened bread. It has to have the bitter herb, which is in our clear dish that's coming. And it has to have the Passover lamb, which maybe perhaps we could show our lamb. Yeah. So I actually, I specifically thought of whoever would be here at the seven. I thought I could prepare a real lamb, but then it would be cold

and already picked over by this point. And that's gross. Silly lamb. That's, we're having silly lamb. Okay. So you need these three elements to tell, have a genuine Passover. need these three elements to have a genuine Passover. And these three elements Jesus takes up and he transforms.

So the unleavened bread. Why don't you guys pick that up again with me. So the unleavened bread is bread made without yeast. So yeast, you know, you make your dough. You put the yeast in and it may take hours or overnight or something for the bread to rise, and then you have a wonder loaf or something like that, whatever the risen loaf is, right? So unleavened bread, you can make much more quickly. You don't need to wait for the dough to rise at all, so you can just put it together, roll it out flat, and then bake it,

bake it on the spot very quickly. It doesn't have the best consistency or flavor. It's not the most interesting bread to eat. So, like, why would we have an annual meal where we eat the unleavened bread? Exodus chapter 12, verse 39 tells us why. With the dough that the Israelites had brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and didn't have time to prepare food for themselves. The Israelites needed to be ready to go any hour. They didn't have a whole night for the dough to rise. They needed to have food for the road as soon as they possibly could. Bags are packed. You

got your coat on. You sleep with your coat on that night, right? That's the idea. Haste, haste. So that's the meaning of the symbol. And 1,500 years, the bread has that meaning and that symbol. Look at what Jesus does at this moment in the meal. It's in verse 19. If you're looking down or you'll see it up here on the screens. Then he took the bread. And he gave thanks. May you be blessed, O Lord our God, King of the world, who brings forth bread from the earth. And then he broke it, gave it to his followers,

and he said to them, This is my body. It's given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And they would have eaten the bread together. Yep, there you go. Don't tune out. They were eating the bread together.

And it's dry. You might need a drink. That's flaky. And as they're eating, the disciples are totally puzzled. Like, what? No one's ever said anything like this before at a Passover.

I've been to. What do you mean? No, the bread symbolizes the haste and the hurry our ancestors were in. And Jesus takes this symbol from the past and all of a sudden he gives it new meaning pointing to the future, to his death. In just a few hours, 12 hours or so,

his body is going to be whipped and hung up on a Roman cross to suffocate and die. And somehow this bread symbolizes that act of his body being broken. And notice what he says, it's for you. It's for others. Somehow his suffering will bring life to others. Bread was the staple food of these people at that time that brought sustenance and life. And so Jesus puts this paradoxical symbol in front of them and says, this represents my body. I'm going to die and that will bring you life. It will sustain you.

No one's ever said anything like this before. no one's ever said anything like this before after the eating of the bread that can be dipped in the carpos water that's clever Tricia we are going to then eat of the bitter herb the maror why don't you grab your second piece of lettuce and maybe kind of make a little plate,

like tear it off so you have a little plate. And we're going to eat of the bitter herb here. Now, let's just be clear about this. The whole goal of this is to make you cry and to make your nose run. So you've said yes. You're already here. Yeah, all right.

So it's mashed and ground up horseradish root. And so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're going to need to drink afterwards, absolutely. So, you know, it's a beaver brand, extra hot. So whatever it's going to take, the goal is to cry. So yeah, you didn't sign a waiver, did you? I guess you can sue me. All right, you ready for action?

You guys with me? Eating the bitter herb? Okay, go. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. How you doing?

You doing all right? Okay, yeah, yeah. All right, there you go. Okay, so a quick story. The first Passover Seder I ever went to, I was dating Jessica, who would become my wife. And I wanted to,

this is such a stupid thing to do to impress the girl that you want to marry. But we were at the Seder and I was like, I'm just going to load, load up on the bitter herb. You know what I mean? Like just do it.

And it was, I don't even, like just knives, you know, going up your nose. And anyway. So even, like just knives, you know, going up your nose. And anyway, so yeah, totally. Yeah, I have a feeling you would do something like that too. Okay, why do we eat the maror?

Why do we eat the maror? Why do we do this? Why do we do this? Rabbi Gamaliel also used to say every generation of Israel should see themselves as the generation that came up out of Israel. We do this to not just remember but participate in the suffering of our ancestors.

Exodus chapter 1. So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves, appointing brutal slave drivers over them. The Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives marar. That's why we eat the maror. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix, mortar, and make bricks, and do all of the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands. We participate in the suffering of our ancestors by eating the bitter herb. After the bitter herb would come the eating of the lamb. Actually, this is kind of silly. This

is a serious moment, so I'll put the silly lamb away. We would have already picked out a lamb a week ago and had it around the house, whatever, given it a name, something. So it would be a year-old lamb without any spots or anything, blemishes. And on the day of Passover preparation for the feast, we would go to the temple in Jerusalem and we would have the lamb slaughtered there. And the priest, they were essentially butchers in the ancient world, and they would slit the lamb's throat and catch the blood that drained from its throat in a bowl. It's important for what's going to happen later. They'd then butcher the animal, and you take the meat and the blood home, back to where we're going to have the meal here. And the blood's very important to the telling of the story because you'll remember the tenth and final strike of Yahweh's justice against Egypt

was to do to Egypt precisely what they had done to Israel. That is to take the lives of their firstborn. But Yahweh provided a means of mercy and escape, right? And this is about the blood of the lamb. This is such an interesting symbol. And you'll see a picture here, this kind of traditional image. The head of the house was to take a bunch of hyssop, which is a certain kind of leafy bush, and make a bunch of it together, and then use it as a brush and then smear it on the doorposts of the house. And on the night of Passover, Yahweh sent a messenger of death. It's called a plague among Egypt. And anyone, Egyptian, Israelite, anybody who was in a house covered by the blood was spared.

Was spared from this strike of Yahweh's justice. And so throughout all generations as we retell the story and come to the Passover lamb, we remember the blood of the Passover lamb that covered us so that we could be spared from this strike of Yahweh's justice. Now here's what's interesting, is what Jesus says at just this moment after the eating of the lamb. If you look down at verse 20, or you'll see it up here on the screen. In the same way, after the supper, after eating the lamb, he took the cup. May you be blessed, O Lord our God, King of the world.

You create the fruit of the vine. Would you guys join me? In the same way after the supper, he took the cup, the third cup of the meal. This cup is connected to the blood of the lamb and he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. It's poured out for you. Do this to remember me.

No one had ever said anything like this before. The blood of the lamb is on your mind. Jesus is making this crazy talk. That somehow we need to have this meal that I thought was about the past, but now I'm actually ingesting and participating his body, and I'm ingesting and participating in these symbols of his blood. And it's no longer the blood of the lamb that's covering me. Somehow it's the blood of this man that's going to be the means by which I am spared or rescued or delivered. No one's ever said anything like this

before. And you can imagine the disciples just scratching their heads. This is how Jesus explained the meaning of his death to his followers. Thank you, guys. How are you guys doing? Have you recovered from the bitter herb? Yeah, me too. All right. Yeah, one more drink. Yeah, go right ahead. Let's give these guys a hand, and we'll let them go sit down. Thanks. Thanks. So notice the term that Jesus used right there as he talked about the cup. What did he say?

This cup is what? He said it's the new covenant in my blood. And so the covenant is a term drawn from the Hebrew scriptures that tells the story of Yahweh moving forward the kingdom of God or his mission to redeem and to save in moments by entering into these covenant relationships with his people. He was in a covenant with his people, Israel, that he redeemed out of slavery. But Jesus was looking to the Hebrew prophets who looked forward to a new relationship that God would enter into with his people. And that covenant would be somehow connected to the blood of a new lamb. All of this is swirling together and Jesus is making all of these ancient symbols have new meaning. He knew that in roughly 12 hours, he was about to die.

And he knew that he truly believed, and you can see it with what he says with these ancient symbols, that this night and what would follow in the next days was like the turning point. It was a new exodus that was about to take place. And he was the lamb. And this, you know, I hope this has been interesting and fun and kind

of cultural history lesson. And that's awesome. That's great. So it's good to learn things and to engage our minds. But if that's all that this is, then we completely missed the point. Because Jesus was convinced, dead convinced, pun intended, that what happened in that small room, that quiet night, that last meal, that that was an event of significance for all humanity, all places, all times. Something was about to happen that would mean an exodus, a freedom from slavery, not just for his tribe, Israelites, but for the whole world. So think about what Jesus is doing here. If we kind of float above the meaning of Passover and the story of the Exodus, it's a story that moves in three kind of moments or has three key components of the story. So think about

it this way, right? So you have the lamb. The lamb is the key. Can you see this up here? You'll see it up here on the screen. It'll kind of help make sense. So the lamb is the key part of the meal, right? Because it's through the lamb that we are covered. And then redemption comes after the blood of the lamb. It's through the lamb who gets rescued. Israelites, mostly, although anyone could come under the covering of the lamb. And then they are rescued from whom? It's a big bad king of Egypt, right? Pharaoh. It's Pharaoh. That's the story of Exodus. And what Jesus does brilliantly, he takes this ancient meal and he wraps it all around himself and what's about to happen. And he uses the same storyline, but he swaps out all the players to give it new meaning. So all of a sudden it's not through the lamb dying

and that they're eating that redemption is going to take place. It's actually through his death. He said his suffering and his death, his body broken, his blood poured out. Jesus saw himself as somehow dying in the place of others. And who would be rescued from Jesus' death? Who would be just Israelites? So now you read his teachings. He clearly had a vision that his death had meaning and significance for the whole world, for all of humanity. And so the story that Jesus is telling is that through him, the whole world was somehow

going to be rescued from slavery to what? To Caesar? Pontius Pilate? You know, to Rome or something? Just so clearly not. He had another enemy, right? Another Pharaoh in mind who was much more sinister, much more pervasive and universal in humanity. And so here's where this comes down to. Jesus, he's clearly brilliant and he's thought all this through. You read his teachings. When Jesus looked out at the world, he didn't see my tribe and your tribe, you know? He didn't see

the world in terms of Israelites versus the pagans, or the people whom God is for and the people whom God is against. He didn't see the world that way. And it was scandalous to many people around him, because he's constantly moved towards people who were considered outside of the boundary lines of what's okay for good religious observant Jews. And so he moved towards the tax collectors or the prostitutes or the lepers, and he was announcing to them that God's kingdom was available and open to them as well. He just saw people, just humans made in God's image. And if you read his teachings,

like you read the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus, he knew that the human heart is an extremely complex thing that is sometimes capable of bringing out great beauty and goodness, which should be celebrated, but he also knew that the human heart is enslaved, but he also knew that the human heart is enslaved, enslaved to dark powers and dark things inside of us, things that lead us towards slavery.

And so he had this one teaching where he said, it's not like somehow you're eating certain types of ritual foods that make you unclean. No, the uncleanness is rooted deep in the human heart. And it's shown by all of the behaviors that we manifest that show just how enslaved we are. Things like bitterness and anger, right? And unforgiveness and lust. These things that show there's something deeply wrong with me. And no one, you know, it's like my little two-year-old son right now. He's, I mean, I absolutely love him to death. Boy, he is selfish.

You know what I mean? And I sure didn't teach him that. You know what I mean? Like he's just, it's just coming out of him. There are so many wonderful, beautiful things coming out of him too. But dude, he is just, he is about himself a lot of the time. You know what I'm saying? And it's just like, no one has to teach us that.

It just comes out of us. If we're super honest with ourselves, we know there's something wrong with us. And that something wrong with us manifests itself, it manifests itself in broken relationships and broken families and marriages, which result in neighborhoods and cities and governments that look like ours. And the moment any one of us tries to like clean our hands from

it and say, I'm glad I'm not like those people, it just shows how incredibly naive we are about the darkness that's really inside of us, you know what I'm saying? And so when Jesus saw the world, he actually believed that Pharaoh is something that resides in every single one of us. We all have Pharaoh inside of us. And so what we really need to be rescued from is not the tyranny of Rome. What Jesus came to do was deal with the slavery of the human heart to these dark powers that have enslaved all of humanity. And so then what Jesus is doing with this meal is he's saying that somehow his life would now be a life lived on behalf of others. And his death would now be like a stand in, to stand in the place of others. He would die so that others

could live. He would become the whipped slave so that others could go free. And what we'll celebrate next Sunday is that he would be raised from the dead into new life so that he could give that resurrection life to all who would turn towards him in faith. The Passover meal tells the story of the gospel. It's the good news of Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us to free us. And this is the moment where this ancient meal stops being ancient history. It becomes a moment where Jesus confronts every single one of us

to own up to the darkness that enslaves us. And it forces a moment, a crisis, a decision of faith. Do you really believe that Jesus can free you from the junk that's inside of you, from the mess and the dark and the brokenness and the sin? It's precisely what he said he came to do. And so every time, there's four cups. Four cups in a Passover meal.

The fourth we're all going to take together in our time of worship here. And we do this every single week, but I trust that as we take the bread and the cup, tonight it has a new layer of significance and meaning because Jesus says when we take this meal together, we're reenacting the story that says he promises liberation and freedom for those who turn to him. Freedom from sin and from

death. And so there's, I know for a fact, there's some of us who are here tonight and like, you know, you didn't even, maybe you didn't want to come or something, and you've fallen again. You know you've given in again to the darkness inside of you. And it might actually make you feel like it should prevent you from taking the bread and the cup. And that's precisely the opposite of what Jesus wants. The whole point of taking the bread and the cup is that we're not worthy, and we don't deserve it.

But he's come to free us anyway. And so, man, don't miss out on this chance to take the bread and the cup as we go into Holy Week here together and march towards Resurrection Sunday. So I'm going to pray and we'll kind of transition here. But let's kind of just get our hearts into a mode of remembering.

All right, there it was, the Messianic Passover meal. I hope that you're never able to take the bread and the cup in quite the same way in your own community of worship. So thanks for listening, you guys, to Exploring My Strange Bible, and we'll have more episodes coming out. So see you next time.