Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Jesus's Death Gives Us Eternal Life | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 22.7-38

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Before Jesus died, he ate with his disciples and explained his death. It was no accident that the Lord's Supper was during Passover. Learn the significance of the Last Supper from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) as he reads through https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+22.7-38&version=NIV (Luke 22.7-38) to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/why-jesus-had-to-die-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-9/ (Why Jesus Had to Die). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. When Jesus wanted to give his first followers a better understanding of what his death meant, of what it accomplished, he did not give them a theory. He didn't give them a philosophical treatise. He didn't give them something complicated at all.

Instead, what he did is he gave them a story. I wish my seminary professors had taken the Jesus route because I remember learning all kinds of complicated theories about what Jesus' death accomplished. But Jesus, he gave his first followers a story, a story that explained their life, his death, and really the whole world. And it was a story rooted all the way back in the book of, Exodus. It was a story about the first Passover meal. It was a story about how God had delivered Israel

from slavery in Egypt. And the Lord gave the Israelites a meal to remember that, to remember how God had intervened, raised up a deliverer, brought them out of slavery and into the promised land. And specifically the Passover meal remembered how God had passed over their house and not taken the life of their firstborn son because they had taken the blood of the lamb and put it on their doorposts. Now the Lord's Supper or communion is the transformation of that Passover meal. Jesus isn't hiding the ball. It's pretty obvious. The Lord's Supper was celebrated at the time of the Passover. Instead of the blood of the lamb, delivering them from slavery in Egypt, and causing the angel of death to pass over their house, so the blood of Jesus delivers us from the slavery of sin. He died in our place.

Now, by the time of Jesus, the Passover meal had changed a little bit from Exodus 12. The people taking part in the meal, they all reclined because they were no longer slaves. was the host's duty to interpret each of the foods on the table as it helped explain their deliverance from Egypt. So the bitter herbs recalled their bitter slavery, and the fruit recalled how they were so miserable making bricks for Pharaoh, and the roasted lamb brought to their memory, the lamb's blood applied to the doorposts. Here's Jesus in Luke chapter 22. When the hour came Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table and he said to them, I have 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 of God. Jesus was looking to teach them truths from this meal. And one truth you wanted to teach them is that they would again share a meal together. It's the meal that's described in Revelation 19. the wedding supper of the lamb. And so whenever we take the Lord's supper, we have one eye kind of looking back toward the death of Christ, but we have another eye looking forward to the return of Christ when we will be with him and experience a fellowship meal with him. Here's the Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 11.

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. See, I'm trying to make a big deal out of this because I think we miss it. I think we only look backward to the death of Christ, which is incredibly important, but we should also be looking forward to the time that we will be with him. Jesus broke the bread and he said, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Now the bread they used in the Passover meal was unleavened bread

because that recalls the instructions they received all the way back in the first Exodus. Deuteronomy 16 reminds us that they were to use unleavened bread because they came out of Egypt in haste. They didn't have time for the bread to rise. But now this bread is given much more significance because Jesus says, this is my body. Over the centuries, there's been a lot of disagreement about what he meant by This is My Body. Did he mean that the bread was actually going to be turned into his body? Did he mean that it was a symbol? Well, I think, along with a lot of other much more intelligent people than me, that the bread is a spiritual representation of Christ.

that we don't consume Jesus physically as if we actually eat his body, but we do spiritually receive nutrition. We are spiritually fed by taking part of communion. So it's not the physical presence of Christ, but it is the spiritual presence of Christ in communion. In this passage, it's clear, in Luke 22, along with all the other gospel accounts, it's clear that Jesus is establishing his new covenant with his people. And the new covenant was superior to the old covenant. I just want to focus on one way

it was superior. And that is that the new covenant provided a new heart. The old covenant gave us instructions, but it didn't give us the power to obey those instructions. The new covenant it gives us that power in the form of a new heart, new desires, a new perspective. This is what is alluded to in Jeremiah 31, in Ezekiel 36. Human beings didn't just need more instruction told what to do, but we needed a new heart, a power to do it. Dr. Christian Bernard, a South African, is the first doctor to ever do a heart transplant. The first one was at the end of 1967.

His second patient was also a doctor, Dr. Philip Blayberg. And that heart transplant took place early in 1968. After Dr. Blabberg had recovered, he and Dr. Bernard, the surgeon, were talking about the surgery. And the patient, Dr. Blayberg, had lots of questions. Finally, after a while of asking all these technical questions, Dr. Bernard, the one who had performed the surgery, just looked at him and said, would you like to see your old heart? It was kind of a weird question, but he could do it. So he went over and got the jar that the heart was in and brought it over to Dr. Blabberg so that he could see it. And Dr. Blabberg looked at it and he said, so this is my own. old heart that caused me so much trouble. He handed it back to Dr. Bernard and turned away and left it forever.

That's a little picture of what God does for us. He gives us a new heart. When we give our allegiance to King Jesus, well, he restores us. He forgives us. And he gives us a new heart, a heart that wants to obey him, a heart that loves Jesus. That's what the core of the new covenant is about. God forgives us. He gives us a new heart. He calls us into a deeper relationship with him. I hope the more you know about communion, the more meaningful it will be.

God didn't give us a theory. He gave us a story, a story about how he has delivered us from slavery to sin and brought us into new life. Amen. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

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