What Happened on This Day in Easter Week - Thursday

[0:00] What happened on this day in Easter week? Thursday. Selected verses from Mark 14 starting from verse 12.

[0:14] On the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples asked him, Where do you want us to go and prepare the Passover so that you may eat it?

[0:26] When the disciples went out, they entered the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. When evening came, he arrived with the twelve.

[0:40] As they were eating, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, Take it, this is my body.

[0:51] Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them. And they all drank from it. He said to them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

[1:05] Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

[1:18] This is God's word. Jesus knows what's facing him tomorrow. And so he decides to do something very important to him. He arranges and hosts a special Passover meal with his disciples.

[1:33] Now the Passover is one of the most important holidays in the whole Jewish calendar, when they would remember God's miraculous rescue of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.

[1:47] And they would eat this special meal with special food to remind them specifically of this historical event. The host's main job at a Passover meal would be to explain to his family and guests what each of the foods symbolized.

[2:03] The unleavened bread to remind them of the haste with which they needed to leave Egypt. The bitter herbs to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. But this Passover meal, the night before Jesus dies, that Jesus hosts, is a different meal.

[2:22] Jesus doesn't follow the usual formula. Instead of explaining the old symbols, he explains new symbols for a new type of Passover he wants his disciples to eat from this night on.

[2:36] The bread that represents his body. And the wine that represents his blood. You see, he wants his disciples to realize what his death the next day will actually achieve for them.

[2:54] That just as God rescued old Israel from bitter slavery in Egypt on Good Friday, people are going to be rescued from the real slavery that we are all under by nature.

[3:07] When Jesus willingly gives himself as the ultimate Passover lamb to free his people from the power of sin. And just as Israelites in the past were called regularly to remember the bitterness of Egyptian slavery when they ate the Passover meal and those bitter herbs.

[3:27] So Christians today, as they partake in this new Passover, are to always remember the immense price that was paid to free them from slavery to sin.

[3:42] The blood and body of the Son of God. You see, because your sins and my sins require life in payment for them.

[3:52] They always have and they always will. But on Good Friday, the reason it's called Good is because on that day, a unique swap took place.

[4:05] A life was given. A death was suffered. But one that is not your life and not your death. But it nonetheless can pay for your sins against God.

[4:18] So that, as Jesus tells his friend Martha, The one who believes in me, even though they die, will live. And whoever lives and believes in me will not die forever.

[4:32] The death of Jesus that happened on Good Friday is the only death in all of history that is able to do this for other people.

[4:43] The question is, has it done it for you? Does Jesus' death count for you yet? Has it paid for your sins yet?

[4:54] Has it freed you from the hold that sin has over you? Well, it can. And you can know it has if you too partake in this new Passover meal and believe in what it represents.

[5:08] And so join us tomorrow on Good Friday as we celebrate the Lord's Supper and remember all these things. And perhaps invite someone else to join you, someone who's not yet believed this good news, so that they too can hear of the rescue from slavery and death that Jesus has made possible for us all.

[5:31] So cool. We'll be right back.

[5:41] Thank you.