Please turn with me tonight in the Gospel of Luke to chapter 21, begin our reading near the end of chapter 21 and read down through chapter 22, verse 23. Our service concludes with the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and tonight in the sermon we're considering Jesus' establishment of the Lord's Supper and its meaning for us. So we want to begin our reading in Luke's Gospel, chapter 21, at verse 37. Verse 37, let us listen carefully to God's own word. And every day Jesus was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet. And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him. Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people. Then Satan entered into Judas, called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. And they were glad and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the crowd. Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it. They said to him, Where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, and tell the master of the house, The teacher says to you, Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room, furnished, Prepare it there. And they went and found it just as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined at table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And then he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup, after they had eaten, saying, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed. And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who is going to do this. So far, the reading of God's Word. As Jesus tells us the story of the last supper he ate with his disciples, he rather intriguingly surrounds it with a discussion of betrayal. Did you notice that? He tells us about how the chief priests and the scribes Jesus wanted to find a way to destroy him, and how Judas, one of the twelve, came to them to betray him. And then at the end of this institution of Holy Communion, Jesus looks at the twelve around the table, and he says to them, one of you who sits here at this table with me will betray me. It's really a kind of sad context for the institution of this joyful provision of the Lord's Supper for us. But Jesus tells us that with a very clear purpose in mind. Luke tells the story in this way to contrast the betrayers with the faithful. He talks about the chief priests who would betray him. And what was the task of the chief priests? It was to preside over the temple and keep it holy, to provide over the Passover and keep it holy. They were supposed to be the protectors of true religion, not the opponents of God's Messiah. And then Luke talks about the scribes who are conspiring with the chief priests against him, the scribes who were supposed to be the students and protectors of God's law. But instead of understanding the law and promoting it, they are opposing him who came to fulfill the law. And then there's Judas, always perhaps the saddest figure, who had spent three years with Jesus, hearing his teaching, seeing his kindness, observing his miracles. and yet seems to prefer money to the Savior. And then behind it all is the great betrayer, the evil one, who comes into Judas' heart to plant these seeds of betrayal. He who has betrayed God from the beginning of creation. So here we have this scene of betrayal, and part of the reason I think Luke wants to underscore that reality is so that, by contrast, we can see the faithfulness of our Savior. Jesus is the one who never betrays, never abandons, never lets down his own. He remains always faithful, always reliable, always sure. There is no shadow of turning in him. And that's what Luke wants us to see so clearly at this crucial moment where Jesus is fulfilling the old covenant and instituting the new. And he wants, I think, to point out to us two ways in which we can see the faithfulness of Jesus. Yeah, just two ways. This is only a communion meditation. It's not a full sermon, you see. So you only get two points. Two ways in which we see the faithfulness of Jesus for his people. And the first way in which we see Jesus' great faithfulness is the way in which he prepares for his disciples' needs. Jesus is faithful in always anticipating and preparing for our needs. This struck me forcibly in studying this text because when you look at this text, there is something slightly strange here. I seem to be in the mood of finding strange things in texts. There's something slightly strange here. In Luke 22, the actual institution of the Lord's Supper takes up just two verses. Luke 22, 19 and 20. Very brief. Very simple. but Luke gives seven verses to finding the room in which they're going to eat the Passover. Isn't that, in a sense, kind of remarkable? Surely, finding the room is a rather incidental matter. But Luke highlights it, in a sense, to show us something very important about the faithfulness of Jesus. The Passover is approaching, And Jesus says to two of his disciples, go into the city and find a place where we can celebrate the Passover together. Well, did you think about what that requires? You know, it's not as if they had a social hall where they had coffee every Sunday and could just set up the Passover in the social hall. The disciples are going into Jerusalem that is mobbed with people who have come for the Passover. Thousands and thousands of people have come to Jerusalem for the Passover. It would be a little bit like going into the Super Bowl city the day before the Super Bowl and saying, find a nice hotel suite where we can meet. Now, I know none of you know what the Super Bowl is, but assure me it's a busy occasion in any city's life. And that's what it's like here. Just go into the city and find a room. Well, that's not so easy. The disciples' hearts must have sunk. Where at the last minute are we going to find a room? And Jesus says, well, just go into the city and you'll find a man carrying a jug of water. Just follow him and he'll lead you to a place and there'll be a large upper room, furnished, ready, when you get there. What do you think those disciples actually thought? If they're as cynical as some of them, they may have thought, yeah, right. Now, maybe they're sufficiently pious by this time that they didn't say, yeah, right. But there must have been a moment, a flicker in their minds. How is this going to work out? And yet, it works out. It happens just the way Jesus told them it would work out. And I think that's why Luke records this. I think this is why the disciples and Luke, who wasn't there but heard about it later, were so struck by this. And maybe they even connected it a little bit in their minds with Jesus' statement that he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. Finding the room for a Passover, in a sense, was a little thing. But Jesus was faithful in that. He was faithful in preparing the place his disciples needed to celebrate the Passover. And that's why Luke pauses, I think, after this is accomplished and comments, verse 13, and they went and found it just as he had told them. Just as he had told them. There's part of the theme that Luke is going to develop here. Everything in this Passover meal and in this institution of the Lord's Supper is just as Jesus told them. He was reliable in this little thing and he's reliable in everything he says because what he tells them will come true. He is faithful. He is not a one who promises to uphold the law and then doesn't do it. He is not one who promises to be a disciple and then turns away. Jesus is the one who stands by his word and always fulfills it and always accomplishes it. It's always just as he tells us. And so we see other ways in which he has prepared for his disciples. He's prepared the Passover itself. He's prepared it not just in terms of finding a room and having disciples find the food. He's prepared the Passover from its very institution. Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, has been involved in all the Old Covenant, In all the Old Covenant's institutions, in all the Old Covenant's provisions for the people. He has been preparing the Old Covenant itself for this moment of the fulfillment of the Old Covenant. And that's why he says so powerfully here, earnestly have I desired to eat this Passover with you. I've been looking forward to this day, not just to say goodbye in terms of our last meal together, that's part of it. Not just to keep the law which required him to observe the Passover, although that's part of it. But he's been earnestly, eagerly looking forward to this day, when all that the Passover pointed to would be fulfilled. What did the Passover point to? Well, it pointed to the way in which God had protected his people when he visited that final plague on Egypt. That plague in which the firstborn of the families of Egypt were struck down. But that plague was not to touch the families of Israel because God was providing a sacrifice to protect them. A lamb whose blood would be smeared on the doorpost so the angel of death would pass by. The blood would protect them. The life of the lamb given would save them. And they would be then not only protected, but they would be delivered from the land of bondage into the house of promise. Here's what God was doing for his people in establishing the Passover in the Old Covenant. But it was not an end in itself. It was always an institution that looked forward to a day in which the true Lamb would come. The Lamb pointed to would be manifested. It's interesting that a crucial part of the Passover meal was lamb. And one of the great events taking place in Jerusalem at this time is that the priests were slaughtering lambs for the Passover feast. Thousands and thousands of lambs being slaughtered. And apparently the disciples of Jesus had procured lamb and prepared it to eat at the meal. But you notice in all the gospel discussions of this meal, there's no reference to that lamb. That lamb was there, but it's no longer really important because the true lamb is there. The lamb that fulfilled all the promise. The lamb that fulfilled all the preparations of centuries of keeping the Passover meal was sitting there with his disciples. on his way to suffering so that his blood would be spilled out so that the true and final protection and deliverance of his people would take place. This is what's happening there at this meal, this remarkable moment where all of God's preparation is being fulfilled. You know, so much of what we know about Jesus, so much of the ways in which we speak about his saving work is really in Old Testament terms that we see now fulfilled in him. When John the Baptist cried out, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That only makes sense, doesn't it, against the background of what we've learned from the Old Testament. Or when we're told that Jesus is our great high priest. That only makes sense against the background of what was prepared for us by God in the Old Testament. But all that preparation is now coming to an end. It's being fulfilled in Jesus. And Jesus has prepared it all, just as he told us, just as he promised us. He's the faithful one, and he's prepared for us this supper now, which is his provision for us. That's our second point. He not only faithfully prepares what we need, but he faithfully provides for us in his new covenant. And what does he provide? Well, number one, he provides himself. He comes to us. He doesn't leave us alone. The Supper speaks of how He gives Himself for us. He gives Himself to us. He comes to meet with us. Now, He meets with us in other ways as well. He meets with us in the power of His Holy Spirit. He meets with us in the truth of His Word. But sometimes we can wonder, do we really have the Holy Spirit? Sometimes we can wonder, is the word enough? And so knowing our weakness and knowing our need, he provides another way in which he comes to us. And he says, I know your need to see and to touch, and so I give you the bread and the cup that you can see and you can touch, and you can hear my words. This is my body, which is for you. This is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you. I come. I'm with you. I bless you. Here I am. Let these signs be the sign of my presence with you and of my blessing upon you. And he says in this establishment of the meal, this is the cup of the new covenant. The old is passing away. He's not going to eat that meal anymore. He's establishing a new meal for us in the new covenant. In Hebrews 8, verse 13, we read, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. The first covenant wasn't bad, it was necessary, it was good, it was glorious, but it was temporary. And now it's fulfilled in this glorious New Covenant meal that Christ has established for us. And think of the simplicity of it. Not far from where Jesus and the disciples ate that Passover meal was the glorious temple with the priests in their glorious vestments, with that altar that was so impressive, where one by one the sheep were brought and slaughtered publicly, the blood poured out. It was a magnificent edifice. Faced with marble and gold. What a sight. How impressive. And by contrast, what a simple meal Jesus provides for us. We have it in silver trays. Semi-silver trays. But we don't even need it in that, do we? It's not the trays. It's not the containers that matter. It's the bread and the wine that matters. What could be simpler? And that was part of the essence of the new covenant. We don't need elaborate signs anymore. It's all fulfilled. Jesus has done his work and now he testifies to that in this simple meal of meeting and of renewal and of blessing upon his people. Some of you may know that I'm a church historian. And one of the great tragedies of church history is how much of the history of the church is devoted to trying to turn the church into a new temple. So that we don't feel like we've really connected with God unless we have a huge and glorious edifice and stained glass windows and clergy investments and all sorts of elaborate ritual. What we miss in that is that we're going backward, not forward. That we're recreating the symbols that have been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. And we're making the simple unnecessarily complicated. Jesus comes and in the simplest of ceremonies says to us, This bread and this cup of the new covenant are my body and blood given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. How simple. Jesus comes through the bread and the wine and the power of the Holy Spirit to be with us, to bless us, to renew us in the work that he did for us on the cross, It draws back to the very center of the gospel, which is that Jesus died, that we might be saved. And when he says, do this in remembrance of me, there is always a danger that we so focus on our obligation to remember that we forget what it is we're supposed to remember. And what we're supposed to remember is not us, but him. This is a meal that draws us to him. This is a meal that draws us to his work. This is a meal that draws us to confidence in him. Because every word that Jesus has spoken to us is a word that is true, that is faithful, that is reliable. It's just as he told us. The old covenant has been fulfilled. The new covenant has been established. Jesus has done it all for us on the cross, suffering once and for all upon the cross. And now he comes to us to encourage us, to remind us, to strengthen us, to draw us back to the heart and center of things. Where is your life, Jesus says? It's in me. Where is your hope? It's in my body and blood. Where is your forgiveness? It's in my work on the cross. God determined it so. Notice that little statement of Jesus in verse 22. God determined it so. So it had to be. That was what God had established. And so it's a table of meeting, a table of blessing, a table of participation, Paul tells us, in the body of Christ. And it's a table where Jesus is always faithful, And he calls us to come as those who are faith-filled, as those who trust him, who know that he will never betray us, but that we can have complete confidence in him. May God grant that all of us, as we come to the table, will have that confidence and be built up in that faith. As we approach the table, let's turn in our Forms and Prayers book to page 39. where we have a brief instruction in the meaning of the sacraments. Some people I know think these forms are a little long. They're very brief. They take only a couple of minutes to read. Don't grumble about that. It's good for you. When you can recite these forms to me, we won't read them anymore. Page 39, an instruction in the meaning of the Lord's Son. Let us consider the purpose for which our Lord has instituted his supper, that we should do this in remembrance of him. And this is how we are to remember him by it. First, let us be fully persuaded in our hearts that our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the promises made to our forefathers in the Old Testament, was sent by the Father into this world, that he assumed our flesh and blood, That he took upon himself for us the wrath of God under which we should have perished eternally. That from the beginning of his incarnation until the end of his life on earth, he fulfilled for us all obedience and righteousness of the divine law. This was especially evident when the weight of our sins and of the wrath of God caused him to sweat drops of blood in the garden. He was bound so that we might be loosed from our sins. And afterward, he suffered countless insults so that we might never be put to shame. Let us confidently believe that he was innocent, yet put to death that we might be acquitted on the day of judgment. That he even allowed his own blessed body to be nailed to the cross, so as to cancel out the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. In doing so, he took from us the curse and bore it himself so that he might fill us with his blessing. He humbled himself to the very deepest reproach and anguish of hell in body and soul on the cross when he cried out with a loud voice, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He did all of this so that we might be accepted by God, never to be rejected by him. Indeed, with his death and the shedding of his blood, he confirmed the new and eternal covenant, the covenant of grace and reconciliation, when he said, it is finished. In order that we might firmly believe that we belong to this covenant of grace, During the last supper, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. That is, as often as you eat of this bread and drink of this cup as a sure reminder and pledge, you shall be admonished and assured of my great love and faithfulness toward you. Because you otherwise would have suffered eternal death, I give my body and blood for you in my death on the cross. And as certainly as this bread is broken before you and this cup is given to you and with your mouth you eat and drink in remembrance of me, so surely do I nourish and refresh for everlasting life your hungry and thirsty souls with my crucified body and shed blood. From the institution of this Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, we see that he directs our faith to his perfect sacrifice, once offered on the cross, as the only foundation of our salvation. By this sacrifice, he has become to our hungry and thirsty souls the true food and drink of eternal life. For by his death, he has taken away the cause of our eternal death and misery, our sin. He has also obtained for us the life-giving Spirit who dwells in Christ our head and enables us, who are his members, to have communion with him and be made partakers of his riches, including eternal life, righteousness, and glory. Besides, by this same Spirit, we are also united as members of one body in true Christian love, as the Apostle Paul says, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. As many grains are ground to prepare one loaf of bread, and as many grapes are pressed together to produce wine, So we who by true faith are incorporated into Christ shall be one body through Christian love for the sake of our dear Savior, Jesus Christ. He loved us so greatly in order that we might show his love toward one another, not only in words, but also in deeds. May the almighty, merciful God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ help us in this through his Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you.