Your analysis of essay in NY Times Magazine ('This Is a Religious War') hits the mark. This essay and your critique speak volumes. We must understand the times. Thank you for illuminating this deadly serious matter. -- T.O., NY
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Beloved people of God, we come to that point in Jesus’ ministry that is called commonly, the Last Supper. But it is more properly regarded as the Last Seder or the First Supper. And it is interesting. We said last week that at this point in the narrative we see that the public ministry of Jesus has come to a close as it were. And now he enters into private ministry with his disciples, his apostles. And this private ministry consists of three things. Now many of you asked me last week, I missed those things. What were they? So I will write them down for you so that you will know what it is that we are going to be looking at. This is not exhaustive, but just an outline. One was the preparation for the pasach, for the Passover, which was the foot washing. And that we read about in John 13. And the other was the Pasach itself or the Passover which we read about here. And then there is the prayer which is in John 17. This is John 13. And here we read in Luke 22. So these three things are private ministrations to his apostles.
You will remember that the last time we were in Luke we had gotten to this point of the recording of the agreement between Judas and the authorities that Judas would betray Jesus. Now this is the turning point in the narrative. And all those of you who are interested in hearing and following God has to say in the gospel accounts of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ you should understand that here marks the big shift. This is the big turn of events. The critical moment that goes from the public ministry of Jesus Christ into the private ministry between him and his disciples alone. Now the one who treats most fully of this on the night he was betrayed is John. And so we are going to be going over to the gospel of John to look at an account. There are three things that are happening on the night in which he was betrayed that I am interested in dealing with for our purposes. And one is the washing if the disciple’s feet. The second is the Passover meal or the first supper you might call it. Or the last seder or the first supper. That also happened that night. And it is connected very intimately with the washing of the feet. And the third thing is the prayer that Jesus prays for his disciples. And in all these things this is private ministry.
Now there is a parallel passage in MAT 26:14-16. Following in both accounts then is the Lord’s Supper, sometimes called the Last Supper. It is actually the last seder and the first supper. But we are not ones to make war on conventions. And thus the reading of God’s Word.
Beloved people of God I must confess that when we get to this subject I feel a bit like Jude must have felt when he wrote to his friends and fellow believers, Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation that we share, I felt I had to write and to urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. Now what I mean is not that the subject that we are addressing is as critical to the core of Christian orthodoxy as many other subjects might be. But I do wish to say that that feeling of wishing to go on to other areas is upon me. But yet this subject seems to be one that is being pummeled today. That we stand to be very confused if we are not clear on a certain number of things. I noted to you last week that the hot issue in mid-19th century among Reformed exegetes was, Will the Jews as a nation be restored to their own land? That was a hot topic. They wanted to know, was it possible for the Jewish people ever to be reconstituted as a nation in Israel? Well the question is changed as we indicated a few weeks ago. Now you guys are not going to be able to see this as well. But as Calvin said, tough luck, you know, that is the way it is. We acknowledged that in church history we have no quarrel with the notion that the Gentiles have come into the promises, the church, which is largely made up of Gentiles, has come into the place of promise and blessing that was once occupied by the Jews. This is not under contention in this church. At least not from this pulpit. But then the question arises, why did the Jews continue to exist. And in early church history, the dominant answer, the one that occurred most often was that the Jews are examples of God’s wrath. They are an example of what it is like when you disobey God. And God wants to keep them around sort of as the divine punching bag on earth. So that anything you do to them is fair game. You can kick them, you can spit on them. You can steal their land. You can steal their women. You can burn their synagogues. This is the way that worked out often in history.
Now Jesus here is spelling the judgement out for Israel that is going to take place in that particular generation. He said that there are time indicators that it is going to happen in that generation. And it says in verse 24, They will fall by the sword and will taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Now then soon after this Jesus was crucified as an atonement for his people. And he was raised from the dead and he would ascend to heaven. And just prior to that ascension Luke tells us in Acts and he is speaking to his apostles. And at verse 4, While he was eating with them on one occasion he gave them this command….(read along) to verse 8. And then in Romans 11 where Paul has been laying out the theology of the church in verse 25 we read this, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. Thus the reading of God’s word. Now, beloved people of God, let’s try to make some sense of these passages strung together by moi and see if we can make some progress in understanding what the Bible teaches about these matters.
Luke 21:24 we read last week and said that there are time indicators in this passage that lead us to conclude that they were substantially fulfilled or at least we could say fulfilled, in 70 AD. Now however we are looking at a separate question. Does that mean that that is all there is to history? Does that mean that there is nothing beyond? It says in Luke 21:24. They will fall by the sword and be taken as prisoners to all nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles. And then many people put a period there as if there is nothing else. But the text says, Until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. In ACT 1 if my calendar is correct this past Thursday was ascension Thursday. And that means that next Lord’s Day is Pentecost. And so we are going to read now the ascension and see if this in fact ties in also with our text from Luke. ACT 1:1-11 (read along)
Now this passage you know, we are approaching as it were, the end of this gospel and I suppose that I have to apologize or at least explain the sermon title, eh? Maybe that would help you get an idea where we are in this gospel. The Phoo is on the other shoot. Sorry that I apologize to our immigrant friends. We are using an American saying here which is the shoe is on the other foot. And that is a saying that there is a reversal of fortune now. Okay, things have changed. Now the shoe is on the other foot. And that is what is going on here. Only we just made a word play and called it, the phoo is on the other shoot. And we are just having a lot of fun by using that title because a phoo or phooey, which is the same thing, made it into the dictionary. They are in the dictionary. They came from the German through the Yiddish, into English and it is a contemptuous saying. It was made popular in the 30’s by Walter Windshall who would use it frequently. He would say, Phooey, phooey on that. And it is an idea of rejection and you are out of here. And that idea won’t play here. So phoo is the idea of a rejection. And when we use the word shoot we are talking about a sprig or a growth or a plant or an offspring. That sense of shoot. And in order to understand why we chose this title.
You will recall that we have a confrontation here. This is the last episode of interchange on the part of Jesus with the religious leaders in Israel. The Messiah had come to his people. He had performed all the deeds which authenticated him as Messiah. There was no lack of evidence. His character, his bearing, his manner, his teaching, his grace, what he said being consistent with the OT. Having borne witness to by the OT Scriptures, by the law, the prophets and the writings. In everything it was abundantly clear to those who could see that Jesus was the Messiah. But to many who had taken their positions in the kingdom of God and made these positions ends in themselves it was not at all clear to them that Jesus was the Messiah. But rather he was a threat to them. And they tried to trap him. And in the last sermon when we looked at the entry into Jerusalem and then following that Jesus’s solemn warnings of judgement to come upon them, so much so that the kingdom would be taken from them and given to a people who would bear fruit. It would be moved from Jewish occupation as it were, to Gentile occupation to bear fruit for God because God’s message is always to every people everywhere, he doesn’t need you. You need him. That is the perspective to have. And if you won’t serve him, he is perfectly capable of finding somebody who will. So you are the loser. God is never the loser. You are the loser.
Now we will read the text as we go along. But there are a few things that I want to say by way of introduction to you, the beloved people of God. You have seen the bumper stickers I guess. It is one of the fun things as people collect these bumper stickers and then of the 100 that they list three are really funny. So it is fun. But you have seen the ones that seem to be everywhere. My child is an honor student at such and such a place. And it got so tedious that somebody from Brooklyn decided to get one up and say, My kid can beat up your honor student. It is like this competition of what makes you special and what makes you distinct. So your kid’s an honor student, my kid will hand your honor student’s head to him on a platter. And this sort of competition and one up manship is native to man as a sinner. There is a good competition and there is bad competition. And in the passage that we are going to see there is a rather bad competition.
This is the Word of God. It is called The triumphal Entry. But it would much better, The Rocky Road.
Children, when you do your studies, most of you are home schooled, you study geology. Have you studied about rocks yet? I had a study about rocks last night and stones because this message is called The Stones and we were afraid that one or two people might think it was the Rolling Stones. And so we had to right away make a distinction we are not talking about The Rolling Stones, we are talking about rock stones. And look at what I learned. The earth building materials are the rocks. Rocks are combinations of minerals in varying proportions. A rock may be made up of one or more minerals. Pure sandstone for example consists only of the mineral quartz. Granite is composed chiefly of three minerals: quartz, feldspar and risken, no, wait a minute. Quartz, feldspar and mica. A recipe with different mineral ingredients results in a different kind of rock. The solid crust of the earth is rock. The soil itself is made up largely of rock which has been broken down by weathering. Beneath the earth’s solid crust are pockets of molten rock, melted hot rock, called magma. Can you say magma? You said that well. You would have had fun at Carnegie Hall yesterday. We missed you. Certain hard substances formed from the remains of animals and plants are also called rock. Coal which is composed of plant material is an example. Limestone contains the shells and skeletons of sea creatures and limey masses built by plants. Rocks fall into three groups. They are and you high school genius’ would remember right, but nobody else. They are igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Those are the three big rock groups. Not the Stones, the Doors and the Beatles. But igneous metamorphous and sedimentary.
Beloved people of God there is a saying today that love is in the heart. And this parable is given by Jesus in part to refute such a nonsensical an idea that love is a matter of the heart. Now this parable we could be summed up that love is a matter of your feet, love is in your feet. Where is love? Love is in your feet. How do you love? You love with your feet. What do you do, not what do you say, what do you think, how are you inclined. What do you do? There is the indicator of love. And these people in the parable have various postures toward the Lord and a couple of them show their love by their feet, by their doing. And a couple of them show their hate by their doing. And one of them shows their contempt by doing nothing. To do nothing is the same as to do the wrong thing as we will see.
Beloved people of God we are getting close to what is called the Triumphal Entry. That in the gospels the way the gospels of Jesus Christ are laid out in the Scriptures, that the first 33 years as it were of his life, are dealt with at the beginning. And the last week of his life takes up a huge portion of the gospels. We are entering that period of time, the last week of his life to get into some of the details of those teachings, to see the circumstances of his arrest, of betrayal and crucifixion at the hands of the Gentiles in conspiracy with others. And then of course his resurrection which is the climax of the book and the sending out of the apostles as we find in Luke 24. His various resurrection appearances.
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