[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] Very good.
[00:00:13] Yeah, just a quick update from the gravesend side of things. You know about the harbour. Right. And we're going for a building, so there is a little update. Interested?
[00:00:24] Yeah. Good. So the update is that as a church, we're going forward as the preferred partner. What does that mean? It means there was another offer, but the council want to move forward with us into negotiation. So we find ourselves in negotiation now and what that means is we need to work out how much money is it going to cost for us to get in there and who's picking up the bill. Right. So that's where we're at. And you know it's going to be expensive. We sat down with trustees just this week. They're a faith filled bunch, by the way, wisely stewarding your generosity, but at the same time looking at how can we use that in real faith?
[00:01:06] So it's an exciting moment that we find ourselves in, but nothing's concluded. So what do we need to do?
[00:01:12] Pray. Yeah, pray for God's outrageous favor. Wisdom. As we get lots of quotes in just to work out, is this definitely, Lord, where you're taking us? At this stage, we believe it is. We really trust God for his provision. But over these next three, four weeks, we really want to feel and sense God's favor. Amen.
[00:01:32] Amen. Great. Okay. Well, it's lovely to be back preaching here.
[00:01:37] You may have noticed we've got the communion tables out, right, but we haven't taken it yet. Oh, have we forgotten? No, we haven't. We're going to be breaking bread shortly together. But I want to speak, speak to us about communion.
[00:01:52] And the first question I've got for you really is kind of, what does it mean for you?
[00:01:59] An observation, if I may, is that I just think some things in life lose their wonder because we see them too often. Do you know what I mean?
[00:02:10] Yeah. What about the stars in the sky, Right. When you first see them? I remember standing on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall about three in the morning. We were camping, it was horrible. But I looked out and the, the stars literally went from the horizon all the way over. There was millions of them. I just went, wow. First time I'd ever seen it.
[00:02:30] But then a few years later, you look up in the sky and you go, there's the plough again.
[00:02:37] Why can't I see anything? Else. And the wonder fades. What about somebody who says, I love you?
[00:02:45] The first time you hear them say it, your heart just skips a beat.
[00:02:50] And then 20 years on it goes, I love you.
[00:02:54] Yeah, I love you, too.
[00:02:56] Did you take the bins out? You know?
[00:02:59] Do you know what I mean? The wonder fades a little bit.
[00:03:04] And I wonder if communion is a tiny bit like that.
[00:03:07] The tables come out every month maybe.
[00:03:13] And have we maybe lost some of the significance of it to some, that might be the case. To others? Absolutely not. You know, you were raised and you have experienced church when communion was taken every single week. And to you it is steeped in rich meaning. Every time you come to the table, there is an encounter with God. And praise God, that is your experience. That's awesome.
[00:03:37] For others, it may be that you think, actually maybe it has lost a little bit of meaning to me.
[00:03:45] And there will definitely be others in the room who aren't used to this slightly strange thing that we do and think it's a bit odd just to have a little bit of bread and a tiny bit of wine. Normally the glasses are much bigger. Do you know what I mean? So why do we do it? What's the point?
[00:04:02] Well, communion isn't necessarily at all about trying to appease God in some way, trying to get his favor or his blessing. And it's certainly not just a religious ritual that we go through just because Jesus, who we follow, told us we must do it.
[00:04:23] That isn't why we do it.
[00:04:26] Instead, communion is an invitation to remember.
[00:04:31] It is an invitation to remember that we encounter God, the God of all history, who has been acting in the past, who is here with us right now in the present, and who holds all the future in his hands. Amen. Amen.
[00:04:51] So what I want to do is, well, I hope today we'll leave here with a tiny bit of renewed wonder around this meal. So as we take it together, we can have a little bit more awe in who God is.
[00:05:06] That's where we're going.
[00:05:07] But I want to take us back to the past to focus on kind of where it began for Jesus and his disciples in around the Last Supper. So if you've got your Bibles, we're going to be in Luke 22. I'm going to read. If you don't have it, the words will be on the screen.
[00:05:24] Luke tells us this that Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.
[00:05:33] Well, where do you want us to prepare for it? They asked. He replied, oh, as you enter the city, there'll be a man carrying a jar of water. He'll meet you.
[00:05:42] Follow him to the house that he enters and say to the owner of the house, the teacher asks, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?
[00:05:52] He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations. There they left and found things just as Jesus had told them.
[00:06:03] So they prepared the Passover.
[00:06:06] 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.
[00:06:24] After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, take this and divide it among you, for I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
[00:06:34] And he took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
[00:06:43] In the same way, after the supper, he took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
[00:06:56] Very familiar words. If you've been around church for a while, and there is a danger in that, isn't there?
[00:07:05] We can just look at this very simply and say, oh, that's where communion comes from, you know, and it can get a bit familiar.
[00:07:16] The issue with that, it isn't that you would be wrong, because you would be right. That is where communion comes from.
[00:07:21] But you would have missed the seismic shift that happened in this moment that ripped a hole in all of human history that changed everything forever. That's the issue.
[00:07:33] The only thing is, you can't spot it unless you understand their story.
[00:07:39] We have to understand the past, to have hope in the present in order to have faith for the future.
[00:07:46] So we've got to understand the past. So we're going to dig into the past today, and we are going to dig into this thing called Passover, okay? So for over 1400 years, God's people, the Jewish people, they celebrated the Passover every single year.
[00:08:08] And it wasn't just another religious festival.
[00:08:13] This was their defining story.
[00:08:16] It was a story of rescue and freedom.
[00:08:20] It was a reminder that when things looked just utterly hopeless, God saw and he stepped in.
[00:08:29] And at the middle of all of this was a battle between powers.
[00:08:35] On one side, you had Pharaoh, the superpower of the day, and he was facing up against the superpower of the universe, the Lord God Almighty.
[00:08:47] And these two titans clashed big time.
[00:08:53] So Pharaoh, well, he declared war on God's people.
[00:08:59] And they were fighting over God's people, which, interestingly, God calls his firstborn son. So his people, Israel, are his firstborn son. That is how affectionately he loves them, right?
[00:09:15] So Pharaoh, what he's done is he's enslaved God's people, he's oppressing God's people, and then he shares this edict in the land. He says, any Israelite boy that is born must be drowned in the River Nile.
[00:09:31] Super nice guy.
[00:09:33] It's quite shocking, isn't it? You can imagine what that would have felt like giving birth and then having to do that.
[00:09:41] Thing is, Israelites were quite strong ladies, praise God.
[00:09:46] But there were still many deaths.
[00:09:49] So what does God do? What does a good father do when he sees that happening to his firstborn son? Well, he steps in.
[00:09:58] So he sends plague upon plague upon plague onto Egypt. And every single one of those is an opportunity for Pharaoh to humble himself before the biggest superpower and to give God's people back to him.
[00:10:17] But he did not let God's people go until they reached the last plague.
[00:10:24] When God said something to Pharaoh, he said, on this night, I'm going to send the avenger, my avenger, the angel of death. And I will appoint him to slay your firstborn.
[00:10:43] Every last one of them, I will destroy.
[00:10:51] Judgment is a serious thing.
[00:10:54] But in the same breath, God breathes that out.
[00:10:58] He also breathes that mercy. And he says, moses, come here. I've got a message for my people and anyone who wants to be saved from this. What you've got to do is you've got to command the people to sacrifice a lamb. And this lamb has got to be perfect. It's got to be spotless. And I want you to take its place. Blood. And using a hyssop branch, what I want you to do is put the blood of the lamb down the doorposts of your homes. And I also want you to put it across the lintels.
[00:11:30] What shape does that make a cross in? The blood of the lamb. It's interesting.
[00:11:37] And God says, when the angel of death comes, he will see the blood of the lamb across the doorposts of your home, and he will pass over you so that death won't come. It's where the name comes from. He will pass over.
[00:11:54] So whilst it was still nighttime, right across Egypt, there are cries, and of two types.
[00:12:06] The first are in the Egyptian homes where there are cries of absolute grief right up to the Pharaoh, like, judgment has come. The firstborn are dead of Every kind.
[00:12:21] Yet there are cries of joy in the Israelite homes. And anyone who chose to trust in the blood of the Lamb, for death has passed over and life has come. Wonderful. Hallelujah.
[00:12:34] But then God leads his people out of Egypt and he has a straight conversation with them.
[00:12:42] He says, don't ever, ever, ever forget this day.
[00:12:50] Every year. Gather as a community, sit down, take the meal as I've instructed, and you must eat this together. And you must remember what I have done for you.
[00:13:06] But here's the problem.
[00:13:08] We're quite forgetful people, aren't we?
[00:13:11] Who's ever walked into the kitchen and they can't even remember why they're there, Right?
[00:13:17] Open the fridge. What am I doing?
[00:13:19] It's bizarre.
[00:13:21] Which means as we look at faith, maybe the greatest enemy of faith isn't doubt. It's probably forgetfulness. Do you know what I mean?
[00:13:30] I mean, how good are you at remembering what's happened in your life when it comes to faith?
[00:13:36] Do you remember the first time that you realized that Jesus wasn't just a historical character? He was real now and he loved you and he loves you.
[00:13:46] Do you remember the thrill of knowing that all the rubbish in your life didn't have to count against you anymore? Not just that, but the shame attached to it can actually be removed.
[00:13:58] It's wonderful. But how many of us actually sit there and really think about it?
[00:14:03] I had quite a unique experience the other day when we got a guy in the Gravesend site called Richard. I absolutely love Richard. He was a full tilt atheist in December this year. Full tilt, right.
[00:14:16] He would actively argue against anyone that God definitely doesn't exist and why would you bother with him? But God took him on a journey and he got saved around January. He got baptized with us. Amen in March.
[00:14:32] And then he sat in the seat of my car next to me. This week, we're about to go for a coffee and talk about Jesus and he turns to me and says, do you know what, Hugh?
[00:14:42] I just still can't believe that God has let me discover who he really is.
[00:14:47] It's beaming.
[00:14:51] That is why God says, remember what I've done.
[00:14:56] Remember who I am. Remember my faithfulness, remember my promises, because that is where faith comes from. Faith for the future will grow when we look at God's faithfulness in the past.
[00:15:12] Your faith, our faith, will grow when we look at the things that God has done in the past. How do we get into the harbor? We go, oh, because he did this, this and this, and he'll do it again.
[00:15:23] How do we see people saved? When you guys go to days out such as the Dartford festival, what happens? Well, we remember that this church was built upon many coming to salvation. It didn't grow because people were moving in from other churches. It grew through people getting to know Jesus. Do we want to see that again?
[00:15:43] Yes. And it's happening in our day. We've got to pray it in. We've got to make ourselves available.
[00:15:49] And this was the heart of Passover. It was all about remembering.
[00:15:54] Their story, was remembering that God who rescued them can save them again. He will do it again.
[00:16:04] And over 1400 years, a lot happened, right? You had the Egyptians, they came and they went. You then had the. The Babylonians, they came and they went, all oppressing God's people. Then the Persians came along and they went. And then they were now, at this point in time, under Roman oppression. But every single year, without fail, they sat around a table as families and said, oh, our God is still faithful.
[00:16:33] Our God is still faithful. He has rescued us before and he will do it again.
[00:16:42] Their past gave them faith for the future, and the future for them was looking forward to a Messiah coming, the one that would save and rescue God's people once and for all. So 1400 years of remembering, and then suddenly Jesus is sat around a table with his disciples, ready to celebrate Passover one more time.
[00:17:09] Oh, here we go. The boys have got it. So I thought, why don't we try and recreate this just a tiny bit so we can understand what was happening around that table as they hung out to enjoy Passover together.
[00:17:26] So you've got to remember. Thanks, guys.
[00:17:29] Peter is there around the table. John and James and the other disciples, all with Jesus. And they've celebrated this meal all their lives. They knew exactly how the script went, and it really was literally a script. So there was a number of things at the table that were crucial to this meal. Let me explain them to you. So firstly, I haven't got the full meal here, but have a look at this.
[00:17:55] This is a lettuce leaf with horseradish all over it. They would have fresh horseradish. I couldn't get any. I jarred it up. Sorry about that.
[00:18:04] But here we go. I think Priscilla came up earlier going, this looks nice, but that looks absolutely awful. And I went, that's the point. That's exactly it. Because these were bitter herbs. Imagine chewing on that, how it engages your senses. This bitter herb reminds them of the bitterness that they had under slavery.
[00:18:25] And then there was the bread, the unleavened bread. See how flat that is.
[00:18:30] Yeah. The other day I was chatting with someone and I said, well, why do you think it's unleavened? And they said, oh, it's because Jesus hasn't risen yet.
[00:18:37] I thought, oh, that's brilliant. That's so good. But that's not the reason. I'm really sorry.
[00:18:43] No, it was because they were in such a rush to get out of Egypt that the bread didn't have time to rise.
[00:18:49] Yeah.
[00:18:51] And yeast is quite a bad thing sometimes in scripture as a parallel.
[00:18:56] And then, of course, you had not one cup of wine, but you had four at a Passover meal.
[00:19:04] Some of you are quite interested in doing it the Old Testament way now, possibly.
[00:19:10] But you had four cups, and every single one of them reminded God's people of the promises he made to them in Exodus. This was the first couple. I don't know if you can see the titles, but the first one is the cup of Sanctification, with the promise being, I will bring you out from underneath the oppression of the Egyptians.
[00:19:31] Yet cup number two, the cup of deliverance, I will deliver you from slavery.
[00:19:37] Cup number three, the cup of redemption, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. We sang about that, you know, 15 minutes ago.
[00:19:46] And then the cup of restoration, lastly, which was all about, I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. What a great promise.
[00:19:56] And then, of course, no Passover meal would be complete without the lamb.
[00:20:03] I was thinking, it's a bit hot to bring real meat in.
[00:20:07] It's not looking good for you. That's all I'm going to say.
[00:20:10] So this meal starts to happen. They follow the script, the stories come out, the songs come out, and, you know, the first cup is passed around, all of this sort of stuff.
[00:20:23] And then Jesus rips up the script.
[00:20:27] It's time for the bread.
[00:20:29] So Jesus goes up to the bread.
[00:20:32] Here you go, Last Supper.
[00:20:34] And he says this. He says, this is now my body.
[00:20:41] Do this in remembrance of me. And he breaks the bread and just tears it apart.
[00:20:49] And he starts handing it out.
[00:20:52] Take of this. He's saying, put this into. You go through the experience of feeling what is symbolically my body that is going to be broken for you.
[00:21:06] What are they thinking? At this point?
[00:21:09] Peter's thinking, Jesus has gone nuts because he always thinks like that. Why is Jesus going off script so much? This isn't the Passover.
[00:21:17] And then Luke says, it gets even crazier because it says in the same way, after the supper, he took the cup saying something.
[00:21:28] Now I'm pausing because the question is, which cup does Jesus take?
[00:21:34] It's quite an important moment. I want you to imagine.
[00:21:38] Let's be traditional just for a minute. Imagine a guy at a romantic movie meal waiting to propose to his future wife.
[00:21:46] Doesn't he want to wait for the perfect moment in that meal? And he's counting down the seconds. And maybe his knees are shaking, maybe he's sweating a bit. He's pretty nervous. But you know what? Think about it like this. Well, if Christ is the husband, maybe his wife is right in front of them, his followers, the church.
[00:22:03] He wants to get it right. The message is going to go out forever. So which cup is is he going to pick?
[00:22:11] Well, most theologians think it was this one.
[00:22:15] And if you spot it in the story right up top, it actually says Jesus passes around the first cup. So there are multiple cups. So he skipped. But pretty much every theologian thinks he's on this one.
[00:22:27] This cup, what does it say? The cup of redemption.
[00:22:32] To redeem something, we are redeemed by blood.
[00:22:37] And this cup, out of all the cups, was the one that represented the Lamb's blood by which they were redeemed during Passover.
[00:22:47] So Jesus takes this cup and he says, this cup is now the new covenant. This is no longer the lamb's blood anymore. This is going to be my blood that is poured, poured out for you.
[00:23:05] It would have been really silent in that room.
[00:23:08] They wouldn't have been casually grabbing that cup, I can tell you that for free.
[00:23:14] Everything changed in that moment, even if they didn't fully understand it. But what Jesus was saying is everything that you have understood about Passover, every sacrifice, every lamb, every. Every glass of wine, every bitter herb, everything has been pointing towards me, and I'm about to fulfill it because I'm the Lamb of God.
[00:23:40] This was now no longer about this rescue from Pharaoh or freedom from slavery. This was about a rescue from sin and freedom from death.
[00:23:51] The upgrade had happened. And Jesus was saying, everything you've ever remembered about Passover was to teach you to remember me.
[00:24:05] And I just want to look at the details of Jesus last few days with you before we finish, because I think it's astonishing what happens next.
[00:24:16] You see, you can get most of this from Scripture, but if we were to compare the Passover lamb and Jesus as the Lamb of God, what we see is loads of similarities.
[00:24:28] You need to imagine hundreds of thousands of lambs, right? What a nightmare. To try and control those, you need a lot of sheepdogs, I guess. But they all come from the hill country around Jerusalem. And they come into Jerusalem five days before Passover.
[00:24:46] Guess what? Jesus comes into Jerusalem five days before his crucifixion, riding on a donkey.
[00:24:54] But then the lambs aren't sacrificed straight away, they are examined for four days.
[00:25:00] So everyone takes a lamb. And I mean, everyone is looking at this lamb, trying to spot any fault at all. Is it perfect? Are there any blemishes? And what happens at the end of the four days is that the. The head of the household stands up and says, about this lamb, this lamb is faultless and perfect.
[00:25:19] So what about Jesus?
[00:25:21] Well, Jesus is also examined for four days.
[00:25:25] Who questions him?
[00:25:27] You've got the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Herod, Pilate, all of them trying to find fault, all of them trying to disqualify Jesus in some way.
[00:25:38] But the reality is that at the end of those four days, it's not the head of the family, but it is the head of state. Pontus Pilate stands up and says, I find no fault in him.
[00:25:54] But there is something really curious about this particular Passover because normally Passover happens on a Friday, but Jesus followers and him did it on the Thursday.
[00:26:10] Now, this would have been really strange because, well, the little lambies, they wouldn't have been there yet. They hadn't been sacrificed.
[00:26:20] So we're at a meal without a lamb, and everyone would have been looking at this, thinking, going, hang on a minute, Jesus. Aren't we missing something quite crucial here?
[00:26:31] So pan to the Friday, right across Jerusalem, thousands upon thousands of lamb are being prepared for slaughter.
[00:26:41] And everything happens with military precision. It always has, it always will, generation upon generation. And at about 3pm or the ninth hour, what happened is the priest would take this big ram's horn called a shofar, and blow it.
[00:27:00] And as soon as that happened, lambs would be slain right across Jerusalem. One commentator said it was like a river of blood coming down through the city.
[00:27:14] Do you want to know what time Jesus died?
[00:27:18] Matthew's gospel says it was the ninth hour or 3pm at the very moment the lambs are being slain, Jesus breathes his last and says, it is finished.
[00:27:38] God doesn't make up anything.
[00:27:40] He's not a chancer. He's not into wishful thinking and manifestation. Okay? He. He's in control of all history, pulling every string.
[00:27:51] If he can take 1400 years of history and put his son on the cross at exactly the right time, can't he look after your life?
[00:28:01] Yeah.
[00:28:02] Why do we doubt him? Why do we Doubt him.
[00:28:06] Well, look, we've nearly finished.
[00:28:09] Communion points to the past in the most powerful way. But where else does it point?
[00:28:14] It points to the future.
[00:28:20] Jesus says something quite interesting at the Last Supper. He says, I will not drink again from this fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
[00:28:30] You see, Jesus, as I said earlier, wasn't just completely dismantling the past, but he was prophesying into the future.
[00:28:38] He was already looking beyond the cross. He. He was already looking beyond the resurrection. He was already looking beyond the church age that we're in. And he's looking right into the future to a moment that the book of Revelation, the very last book in the Bible, declares will be the wedding feast of the Lamb.
[00:28:59] And this will be a day where we get to gather and anyone in Christ gets to gather around another table.
[00:29:06] And we will sit there and we will enjoy this most incredible feast. And we won't be surrounded by the horrible stuff anymore, evil and death. Instead, we will sit there reclining, like these guys did around the table, rejoicing that we are now with the Lamb himself. No more death, no more suffering, just life everlasting.
[00:29:35] So every time we gather around that table and take a little bit of wine and we break the bread, we remember not just what Jesus did, but what he's going to do. Right.
[00:29:51] Maybe the band could come back up, if that's all right.
[00:29:54] Thank you.
[00:29:57] So we've looked at. At the past and a bit of the future. What about the present?
[00:30:04] What about your Monday morning, which feels maybe a little bit more like Egyptian slavery than it does the promised land? Do you know what I mean?
[00:30:12] What do you do in that moment?
[00:30:15] Well, we need to do the same thing, which is to remember.
[00:30:22] We must remember that the goodness of God. Maybe you're here.
[00:30:28] I mean, I'm thinking about that song that we sung. When we go through the valleys and the dark moments, we have unanswered prayer. Who doesn't have unanswered prayer in their life?
[00:30:38] Or at least the perspective of that? Who doesn't have questions, who isn't waiting for something?
[00:30:46] We've got to remember that if he was faithful in the past, He. He will be faithful again.
[00:30:52] We've got to keep remembering that God has not lost control of any of our lives.
[00:30:59] Or maybe today you're carrying a sense of shame that actually whenever we do communion, there's a part of you that says, I just don't really want to go near the table. I don't feel worthy.
[00:31:10] That's excellent.
[00:31:12] I'm so pleased you don't, because you're not.
[00:31:17] This is the truth of the gospel. None of us are worthy in and of ourselves to come in anywhere near that table.
[00:31:25] But what we remember is that Jesus is so worthy that we don't have to be. And what is his gets placed over us. It's like his blood washes us as white as snow.
[00:31:37] So we come boldly to that table knowing we're not worthy, but knowing that we're welcome, knowing that's what we're remembering. So if you feel like I've not prayed this week, I've not read my Bible, I feel really distant to God and I've got loads of questions. Come to that table because that's where you get strengthened.
[00:31:56] Don't ever distance yourself from God.
[00:31:59] Don't ever isolate yourself away from Him. He knows where you are and he's calling your name.
[00:32:06] You've got to come to the table.
[00:32:10] We might only get a sip, we might only get a taste, but it's the most powerful stuff in the world because it represents Christ's death and his resurrection.
[00:32:23] And for that reason, we should all remember, the reason we come to this table is because of the victory it won.
[00:32:34] Death has been defeated. Every single time we come to this table and hold the cup and hold the bread, we are declaring not just to ourselves, not just to one another, but we are declaring to every principality and power in this dark world that Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, sits on the throne now and forever. Amen.
[00:32:56] Why don't we stand?
[00:33:03] So what are you going to remember today?
[00:33:06] What is going to stand out in your heads? What are you going to remember from the story of God's people, from the foundations of the earth, all the way through to the very future of eternity with Him?
[00:33:21] Which bit are you going to remember about what God's done in your life and the fact that you're even in the room today with the breath in your lungs?
[00:33:30] What are you going to remember about what it cost him?
[00:33:34] And I want to say, out of every expectation that you have, I truly believe, as we come to the table, as we take the bread and the wine, and we don't rush it, we can expect to meet with him.
[00:33:50] We can expect as we take his broken body and symbols of his blood poured out for us, he will meet with us because he loves us.
[00:33:59] He loves you.
[00:34:02] So the band are going to play. We'll get to singing in a bit. The team are going to show us when we can go, But I would say spend a moment now just going, God, I remember. You did this.
[00:34:14] Oh, I remember that time when you said this. I remember the promises you've got on my life. They might not be fulfilled yet, but I think, trust you. You did it once, you'll do it again.
[00:34:24] Let's just spend a moment just worshiping him in our own heart, and then we'll come to the table.
