Kerry Shook - Dinner Reservations
We're concluding the series we're calling "Dinner with Jesus" with the most important dinner that Jesus ate with his disciples, the Last Supper. It was the last time Jesus would eat dinner with all of them together before he went to the cross. And it's something that we are supposed to do as we remember what Jesus did. So I want us to look at it, would you stand in honor of God's Word.
Let's look at Matthew chapter 26, beginning with verse 26. "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, 'Take and eat; this is my body.' Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you and my Father's kingdom.'" You can be seated.
And so, Jesus and his disciples gathered for the Passover, and when he gathered them for the Passover, and by the way, you know what the Passover is? It was the Jewish ceremony that celebrated when the death angel passed over the people of Israel during the last plague against the Egyptians so that they could be set free from bondage they'd been in for 450 years. You see all the plagues came and the Egyptians still didn't let the Israelites go free until the very last plague. And it was the one where God said, "I'm gonna send the death angel into the Egyptian camp and the first born is going to die, but for you Israelites, Moses tell them to 'kill an unblemished lamb and to put the blood of the lamb on the door post of every home of the Israelites so that the death angel will pass over them and spare them.'"
And so that's what they did, and what amazing, powerful foreshadowing of what Jesus was going to do, the perfect unblemished Lamb of God, who went through everything we go through: pain, rejection, temptation, but he never once gave in, and he, the perfect unblemished Lamb of God, the sinless Lamb of God, went to the cross and he died for all our sins. He poured out his sinless blood so that we could be forgiven of all of our sins and death would pass over us so we can have life down here, an eternal life in heaven one day. "O death, where is your sting"? Because of what Christ has done, death passes over us who are Christ's followers now.
And I'm so grateful for that, for his eternal life, but what powerful imagery. The blood of the unblemished lamb over the doorpost to say, "We're protected," to say that "God is protecting us". And that was what the Passover was, so they were celebrating the Passover. But Jesus turned it into something even deeper because Jesus always took dinner deeper. Took it to a whole new level, as it was all about what he was about to do, and so we're gonna take Communion in just a moment, the Lord's Supper. But I want us to see what it's all about, because it's a powerful thing that brings healing and strength as we remember what Christ did. First, I want you to see Communion is a time for remembering.
It says in 1 Corinthians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.'" So Jesus said to the disciples and all his disciples that would come, "I want you to take Communion to remember my sacrifice for all your sins". And you see, the bread represents his body. And so when we take that bread, that wafer, it represents Christ's body that was broken for all of our brokenness. It's interesting that it says that "he took the bread, gave thanks, and he broke it and passed it out".
And he, the bread of life, breaks this bread to symbolize that he was going to be totally broken for all of our brokenness so we could receive wholeness. And every one of us are broken in this broken world. We live in a broken world and we are a broken people, but yet, Christ came and he was broken, his heart was broken, so that we could experience healing and wholeness. And by the way, Jesus died from a broken heart. Medical science now tells us that when they stabbed him with the spear to make sure that he was dead that blood and water flowed out, and that happens when a heart bursts. You see the others on each side of the cross, the thieves, they died of asphyxiation. Because you had to push yourself up on the nails to be able to breathe, and when you couldn't do that any longer, you couldn't breathe.
And that's how someone would die from crucifixion, it was an extremely horrific, the most painful kind of death penalty that you could receive. That execution was there for an example from the Romans to say, "Don't disobey us or this is what's gonna happen to you". But Jesus on the other hand, he died from a burst heart, a broken heart, because his heart was broken over the sins of the world, your sins, my sins, so that we could have wholeness, that our brokenness could be made whole. And we're to remember that there's power in remembering. It's like those who have given the ultimate sacrifice so that we could have freedom. Those who fought for our country and those who are fighting for our country now so we could have freedom to worship.
On Memorial Day, we remember their sacrifice and that's really important. We'll lose our freedoms if we don't remember. We won't realize how important it is. And those who paid the ultimate sacrifice should never be forgotten. Well, Christ paid the ultimate, ultimate sacrifice when he died on that cross for all of our sins. And we're to remember because moving forward, it changes our lives. But then Communion is also a time for examining. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11:28 it says, "Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup".
You see, Communion is only for believers, because if you're not a Christ follower, it won't mean anything to you. I mean, the bread symbolizes body broken for us so that we can have wholeness, and the cup symbolizes his blood poured out for us so we can be forgiven. His perfect sinless blood, so that we could be completely forgiven, guilt-free, and get to heaven one day because heaven is a perfect place, for perfect people, and none of us are perfect, and that's why Christ came. He shed his blood so that we could no longer, we could be cleansed from all our sins. And we could go to heaven one day, and when God says, "Why should I let you into my perfect heaven"? We say, "I'm not perfect. I've sinned like everyone else, but I have received the perfect Lamb of God and his perfect blood has washed away all my sins".
I get to go to heaven because of him. And so it's only for believers, Communion is only for believers, but here's the amazing thing: If you're not a Christ follower, you've never invited Christ into your life, we're gonna give you a chance to do that in just a moment to receive Christ into your life, so that then you can take your first Communion. What a powerful thing to receive Christ and take your first Communion on the same day. What a way to start the Christian life. But we're also, as Christ followers, to examine ourselves. So first you examine yourself to see if you're a believer, and if you're not, receive Christ today. But then as believers, we're to examine ourselves. We're to let the Holy Spirit of God examine us to show us if there's any area of our life that's not what it ought to be. If there's any area of our life we haven't surrendered to Christ.
If there's any sins that we haven't confessed. For you see, as a Christ follower, Jesus will never leave you or forsake you. He'll always be in your life. You can't lose your salvation, but you can push him out of the center of your life. He's not gonna leave your life, but you can push him out of the center of your life. And what does that do? He still loves you, he will not leave you, but it breaks your communion with God, and you can't pray to him effectively. You can't walk with him effectively. But here's the thing, Jesus said, "Whenever you sin, just confess those sins and you'll be forgiven". If you confess your sins, then he will cleanse you of all your sins.
And so all we have to do is just confess, the word confess means to agree with God. It means to admit it. "Yeah, I did it". If a criminal confesses, they say, "Hey, I did the crime". And so when the Holy Spirit reminds you of a sin you haven't confessed or an area of your life you haven't surrendered to God, just say, "You're right, Lord. Forgive me". And you're right back into communion with God. And so we're gonna take just a moment and a minute before we take Communion for us to ask the Holy Spirit to show us anything in our life that needs to be confessed, and it'll be forgiven. What an amazing God we have. We'll be right back into communion. So it's a time to examine. Communion is also a time for committing. In 1 Corinthians 11:26 it says, "For whenever you eat the bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes".
So by taking Communion today, you are gonna preach the message. Isn't that amazing? Some of you are gonna preach the message. "You saying I'm supposed to come up here and say", no. I know that freaks you out, and some of you are going, "Oh, I get to preach, wow". You freak me out. So, okay, that's not healthy. But anyway, we preach a message saying, "Jesus died, shed his blood, rose again, and he's changing my life, making all the difference in my life". So it preaches the message until he returns. So it's a time for believers, say, "Lord, I wanna recommit my life to you. I wanna be totally surrendered to you. I want you to work miracles in my life. I want you to use me because you know what's best for me. I wanna live according to your purpose".
But then it's also a time for healing. Isaiah 53:5, this great prophecy of Jesus and what he would do on the cross. And for us it says, "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed". Did you get that? "By his wounds we are healed". And Communion is a time for healing, to remember Christ's wounds, to remember how he was whipped with that cat of nine tails, to remember how the nails went into his hands and his feet, to remember that crown of thorns, his blood poured over his face. We remember that it is his sacrifice and his wounds that bring us healing.
Chris: And Jesus said that when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we should look backward and we should remember that his blood covers our sins. But he also wants us to look forward to our next meal with him. This is really exciting, guys. In Matthew 26, verse 29, so this is the last verse of the passage that we stood and read earlier, Jesus said this: "I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom".
You see, the Last Supper, sorrow comes to us when we realize that Jesus Christ had to die for our sins. But he's not in the grave any longer. Jesus is alive, and there won't be any sorrow at the next meal, only pure joy. Yeah. Yeah, if you can't get excited about that, slap the person next to you or something. Not really, but it's just, this is incredible, because Jesus was sharing with his disciples and he's about to go to the cross the next day, but yet, he says, "But we're gonna have another meal together. We are going to be together celebrating that meal together". And that Last Supper meal that Jesus shared with his friends is a foretaste of his kingdom. What we call the Lord's Supper is a foretaste of the Lamb's supper, what's referred to as the Lamb's supper. That joy-filled celebration feast that we are going to share in heaven.
In Revelation 19, verse 9, says this: "Blessed are those invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb". And guess what? If you have asked Jesus Christ into your heart, if you've told him, "I believe in you Jesus. I believe that your death on the cross is exactly what was needed to cover my sins so that I can be with you in heaven. And I accept your free gift of salvation". Then you have an invitation to the Lamb's supper. That wedding supper of the Lamb. Sharing in the Lord's Supper is the start of the feast that we will eat with Jesus and his people in this new creation. The Lord's Supper is not just a symbol or just a picture, it's the real thing. We actually put bread in our mouths. We actually drink. It's the real thing begun in a partial way.
Jesus didn't say, "Now think this in remembrance of me," or "Say this in remembrance of me". He said, "Do this, eat this, drink this," why? Because heaven is real. Heaven is real. It's a real place. We're the ones living in the shadowlands. Heaven is real. And in John chapter 14, starting in verse 2, Jesus said, "My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am".
If Jesus Christ promises that there is a place for you, if he has a house with many rooms, a place for you in heaven, you can bank on it. His Words are true, through and through. He says, "Do you really think I would have told you that were it not true? I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna take you with me. You will be with me forever". Heaven is real, and God has a seat saved at his table there just for you. Let me remind you of what heaven is like. Revelation 21, verse 4, describing heaven. Heaven, it says, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever". Forever. Can you imagine? No more death, no more crying, no more tears, no more pain, no more sorrow, none of that in heaven.
Now, while we're on earth, there's a lot of things broken. There's a lot of things broken. And as a church family, we celebrate our successes together and growth in Christ together, and we also grieve together. We grieve because we're not in a perfect place yet. And knowing what heaven will be like enables us to make sense of all these feelings that we all get overwhelmed with sometimes. Do you ever feel like an aching sadness, but you can't quite put your finger on why? You think, "I don't know. I mean, things are going okay in my life right now, but I don't know, I just feel down. I feel sad. Something's missing". Or maybe there's times when you feel like crying, like something essential just isn't there but you can't find words to name it.
Well, let me tell you, that ache, that longing that's always just below the surface somewhere, that's homesickness. That's homesickness. You are homesick for heaven. We all are, we're homesick for heaven, because heaven is our real home. This is not our home here. Praise God, this is not our home. Our home is in heaven, and Hebrews, it has this statement that is life-changing if you really hold on to it. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 14 says this: "For this world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven". We're not home yet. What do you think of when you think of homecoming? Homecoming, if you're in Texas, if you grew up in Texas, I'll tell you what comes to mind.
Say, "Homecoming," and you think of mums as big as a dinner plate, with yards of ribbons trailing behind, and the bells and toys all tied on to them. Texas takes everything and just blows it up into something really big, right? But for most of the world, when they think of homecoming, they think of a tradition. It's just a tradition, a tradition of a school or maybe an army platoon, a group of people coming back home to reunite at the place that originally tied them together. They all get back together at the place that tied them together. Homecoming, coming home, is an invitation to come home to the place where you're always welcome and your arrival is eagerly anticipated.
Now, I've had a place like that in my life. My whole extended family lives in Midwest Illinois, right in the middle of Illinois, surrounded by cornfields everywhere. There's just like a little small towns dotting the area. And my dad's mom, her name is Hazel. So to me, she was always Grandma Hazel. All throughout my life, I never lived in that little town where she lived, but we would go to see her, drive to see her, fly to see her, at different times in the year. At Christmases and holidays and summer vacations.
And there's one thing about my Grandma Hazel that always stuck with me, and that was that it didn't matter when we arrived, one thing would always happen first. And that was that you'd pull up in her driveway and before you could even get both your feet out of the car, she appeared on the front porch, which meant that she had been watching us through the curtains. She'd been watching for us. And you step out of your car and there she was on the front porch. And every time she said, "Well, happy day! Happy day"! She just couldn't stop saying that. "Well, happy day"! And she made me feel like her whole life's goal had been leading up to this moment where she got to see me. She made you feel that good. She was so excited. "Happy day. This is so great".
So after Kerry and I got married, I had told him about my family, we're gonna have to go see him sometime in Illinois. You know how it is, you get married and like, okay, now I can let you in on the extended family, take you to everywhere. And so a few months after we were married, we made the pilgrimage, and we went to Central Illinois. And he heard all the stories that I told about my relatives there, my grandma, my grandpa, but when we got in that night, it was after 11 o'clock at night, it had been a long day of travel. And, of course, my grandma kept getting older, and so it didn't even ever occur to me, I mean, I thought she's gonna be asleep, we're just gonna sneak in, we'll talk to her in the morning.
So we pull up at my grandma's house, close to midnight, every light in the house is blazing. There are cars parked up and down the street. And we pulled up in the car and I thought, "Wait, surely this is a little town, like, surely this has nothing to do with us". We got out, our feet hit the ground outside of the car, and sure enough, there is Grandma Hazel. "Well, happy day! Happy day"! And we walked up the steps to the front porch with her and she was just so excited. And she opened the door for us, and there in front of us in the living room was every person I've ever known who lived around there.
My aunts, my uncles, my cousins, you know, just everybody was packed in there. And there were tables, they made a long table through the living room, and it was cobbled together of card tables and coffee tables, clearly anything anybody had that could be used for a surface was right down the middle of the living room 'cause there wasn't room in their little kitchen for this. And that table was just laden with bowls and platters of so much food. Enough to feed, you know, the whole town for a week. It was all right there. All right, and it's almost midnight! And as we came in, it's packed with people, they all turn to us, and then as one just mobbed us, dog pile, just came over. "Welcome, welcome". Hugs all around.
Grabbed Kerry and just hugged on him, even though they never met him before. There is so much love. I can't paint a good enough picture really to describe the overwhelming feeling of just acceptance and welcome and love. If Jesus is your Lord and Savior, then one day you are going to see him face to face. You'll see him face to face, and the Father is going to throw his arms wide open to welcome you. You, your family, your friends, all of us who have gone before you will be talking, eating, and laughing together in an absolute joy, pull you into the celebration of our bridegroom, Jesus Christ.