Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Establishing the Future Provision (Matt. 26:26-29)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/30/2024 11:08 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  “Establishing The Future Provision”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 26:26-29

 

            Message of the verses:  26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is My body." 27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. 29 "But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.’”

 

            What we will be looking at in this rather short SD is actually an introduction to these verses and what went on after Judas had left to do his awful deed of betrayal.  What Jesus is doing in these verses, and we will look at them in more detail in the coming days, is transforming the Passover of the Old Covenant into the Lord’s Supper of the New Covenant.

 

            The history of the children of Israel began when God called Abram in Genesis chapter twelve, and after a long period of time, through a miracle Sarah, Abraham’s wife had a son named Isaac.  Isaac was married to Rebecca who had twins, one would be a believer one would not.  Jacob the believer had twelve sons through four different women, and these became the twelve tribes of Israel.  They all ended up on Egypt and for the four hundred years that they were they God turned this family into a nation, but this nation of Israel were slaves for those four hundred years.  The Passover became the first and oldest festival for Israel as it celebrated God freeing Israel the nation of slaves from Egypt.  This festival was even older than the covenant with Moses at Sinai.  It was established before the priesthood, the Tabernacle, or the law.  It was ordained by God while Israel was still enslaved in Egypt, and it had been celebrated by His people  for some 1500 years.

 

            MacArthur writes:  “But the Passover Jesus was now concluding with the disciples was the last divinely sanctioned Passover ever to be observed.  Now Passover celebrated after that has been authorized or recognized by God.  Significant as it was under the Old Covenant, it became a remnant of a bygone economy, and extinct dispensation, an expired covenant.  Its observance since that time has been no more than a religious relic that serves no divinely acknowledged purpose and has no divinely blessed significance.  To celebrate the Passover is to celebrate the shadow, after the reality has already come.  Celebrating deliverance from Egypt is a weak substitute for celebrating deliverance from sin.

 

            “In fact, Christ ended the Passover and instituted a new memorial to Himself.  It would not look back to a lamb in Egypt as a symbol of God’s redeeming love and power, but to the very Lamb of God, who, by the sacrificial shedding of His own blood, took away the sins of the whole world.  In that one meal Jesus both terminated the old and inaugurated the new.

 

            “Jesus’ institution of the new memorial consisted of three primary elements: the directive (vv. 26a-27), the doctrine (vv. 26-28), and the duration (v. 29).”  This is the outline that we will be looking at beginning in tomorrow’s SD, Lord willing.

 

4/30/2024 11:32 AM

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