Encounter Jesus – Mark Week 11

Jesus the Bread & Wine

Mark 14: 12-25

HANDOUT

Mark Week 11 – The Bread and Wine Handout

AUDIO

Lesson Notes

We come now to the Passover and the Last Supper – it’s Thursday. Jesus will die the next day and He knows it. He is ready to establish the New Covenant that redeems us from slavery to sin and death through the shedding of His blood.

What’s Passover All About?

  • For 430 years, the people of Israel had lived in Egypt.
    • What started as a really good relationship for everyone had turned to slavery
    • Israel desperately wanted to be free
    • God had chosen Israel to be a light, to tell the world, to be the people of Promise
    • Through them, God would raise up the one who would defeat sin, death, evil, and restore creation.
    • Egypt didn’t want them to leave – they liked slave labor.
    • God worked 9 plagues to persuade Pharaoh to free Israel, but he didn’t budge
  • Read Exodus 12: 3-8, 11-13
  • Preparation for the 10th plague
    • Take a perfect male lamb and kill it on the 14th as a sacrifice to God for sin
    • No broken bones
    • Put blood on the doorframe of their house for purification
    • Eat a special meal of the roasted lamb, unleavened bread (hurried), and bitter herbs (bitterness of slavery) for sanctification
    • Then their firstborn children will be delivered from death and committed to God
    • Be dressed to leave in a hurry

Observing the Passover

  • Read Exodus 12: 14-17
  • Passover was a mandatory annual festival
  • A week-long festival
    • Start with Passover meal – celebrating and recreating the events of the Passover
    • Then weeklong Festival of Unleavened Bread – (leaven symbolizes sin)
  • The Passover was the most important event in Israel’s history with God – He freed them from slavery AND started them on the path to being a holy nation
  • A tremendous annual celebration by Jesus’ time
    • Every Jewish male was supposed to go to Jerusalem for Passover, which was to be eaten within the walls of the city
    • Lambs were brought from Bethlehem for the feast
  • A glorious celebration of freedom and God’s power
    • A large and luxurious meal, eaten reclining, because they were no longer slaves
    • A time of teaching – questions and answers to teach the  history of God’s works in Israel to the next generation
    • So they would understand His faithfulness and power

Preparation – Thursday (Read Mark 14: 12-16)

  • Verse 12 – Outside Jerusalem (probably Bethany) and need to get a place inside the city walls for the Passover meal
  • Verses 13-16
    • Jesus gives instructions to 2 disciples (Peter and John) – unclear if there was a prior arrangement or if He just knew
    • Find a man carrying a jar of water – that would have been uncommon

Betrayal Announced – Thursday (Read Mark 14: 17-21)

  • Verse 18 – They’ve begun the meal and Jesus announces one will betray Him
  • Verse 19 – Saddened – they  each ask if it is him – a construction with the implication that it isn’t him. In NIV, “Surely not I”
  • Verse 20 – One who dips bread – the Matzah into the bowl with  Him – one who is so intimate a friend they share table fellowship
  • Betraying table fellowship was the worst sort of betrayal in Ancient Near East culture
  • Verse 21 – This was also God’s plan according to Scripture – Read Isaiah 53: 1-12
  • But it’s still Judas’ fault and he will suffer for it terribly

Instituting the Lord’s Supper – Thursday (Read Mark 14: 22-25)

  • Verse 22 – Same language in blessing the bread as in Mark 6: 41 in feeding the 5,000
    • Here He is distributing the symbol of His abiding presence, His body
    • Matzah is curiously shaped – striped and scored (holes punched). This is to keep it from puffing up in any way, apparently.
    • Jesus is the bread of life. The next day,
      • He will be given stripes – whipped by the Romans;
      • His body will be pierced with nails
      • His body will be broken on the cross
  • Verse 23 – Cup – from Luke we surmise it is the 3rd cup – the cup of redemption
    • The blood of the Passover lamb redeemed Israel from Egypt, it was the price paid for their freedom
    • Now the blood of Jesus will redeem us, it is the price paid for our freedom
  • Verse 24 – “My blood of the covenant – poured out for MANY” (Isaiah 53: 12 – “bore the sins of many“)
    • Every covenant was ratified in blood (Mosaic Covenant in Exodus 24: 8)
    • The new covenant is ratified in Christ’s blood – Jeremiah 31: 31-34
  • Verse 25 – He won’t celebrate the feast again until the Messianic feast upon His return (Isaiah 25: 6)
  • Jesus wasn’t just the  Bread of Life, but the perfect Passover Lamb of god – no sin, no mistakes, from Bethlehem
  • Killed without breaking bones as the sacrifice whose blood protects all who believe in Him from the anger of God at their sin
  • 1 Corinthians 5:7, “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”
  • Hebrews 10: 10, 14, “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all… For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.“
  • The result? Colossians 1: 13-14, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.“
  • As the ultimate Passover Lamb, those who are protected by His blood will never experience death, but will live forever in the presence of God.
  • All protected by His blood have freedom and friendship with God, just as the Israelites experienced after the first Passover.

 

Next Week: Mark 14: 26-52 (Gethsemane)