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  IN REMEMBRANCE IN ANTICIPATION
  by Anton Bosch
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Summary: This sermon delves into the significance of the preparation for
the Lord's Supper as depicted in Luke chapter 22. It emphasizes the deep
desire Jesus had to share this Passover with his disciples before his
suffering, highlighting the importance of personal connection and
looking forward to the future kingdom of God. The sermon draws parallels
between the Passover celebration and communion, urging believers to have
a fervent desire to be in God's presence and to remember both the past
deliverance and the future hope in Christ.

Topics: "Preparation for Communion", "Hope in Christ"
Scripture References: Luke 22:14, Luke 22:17, 1 Corinthians 11:26, Hebrews 12:2, Exodus 12:3, John 6:53, 1 Peter 2:24, Revelation 19:9, Hebrews 10:22

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon delves into the significance of the preparation for the
Lord's Supper as depicted in Luke chapter 22. It emphasizes the deep
desire Jesus had to share this Passover with his disciples before his
suffering, highlighting the importance of personal connection and
looking forward to the future kingdom of God. The sermon draws parallels
between the Passover celebration and communion, urging believers to have
a fervent desire to be in God's presence and to remember both the past
deliverance and the future hope in Christ.

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CONTENT
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All right, Luke chapter 22, Luke chapter 22. We spoke last week about
the preparation and an aspect of that in terms of Judas, and this
morning we're going to speak about the preparation and the Lord's
Supper. I don't know that we'll get through today.

We'll see how it goes. We may need to conclude next week. So let's read
from Luke chapter 22, from 14 through 23.

So Luke chapter 22, reading from 14 through 23. When the hour had come,
he sat down and the twelve apostles with him. Then he said to them, with
fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I
suffer.

For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in
the kingdom of God. Then he took the cup and gave thanks and said, take
this and divide it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink
of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying,
this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Likewise he also took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new
covenant in my blood which is shed for you.

But behold the hand of my betrayer is with me on the table. And truly
the Son of Man goes as it has been determined. But woe to that man by
whom he is betrayed.

Then they began to question among themselves which of them it was who
would do this thing. Interesting how that Judas crops up over and over
in this passage. Just all the different references to him.

So let's begin in verse 14 then. So we've now, for the last months as
we've gone through these last chapters in Luke, gone through Passion
Week. Jesus has been preaching in the temple every day.

He's been going into the Mount of Olives to pray and to sleep. And he
would come down in the mornings and he would teach in the temple during
the day. This is now the last day of his earthly life, if you will,
before the crucifixion.

He'll be crucified the next day. And so verse 7 repeats what we saw in
verse 1 in that it says that when the day of unleavened bread, then the
day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed, sorry, then
came, then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover must
be killed. I remember for those who may not have been with us last week
that these are two separate feasts, but they are connected.

So when they came out of Egypt, and we're going to make reference again
to the night they came out of Egypt, you remember that they were to kill
a lamb, a lamb for each family. If they couldn't finish eating the whole
lamb, they were to club together with their neighbors, and they were to
share the lamb. They were to kill or shed the blood.

The law prescribed that the animal was to be bled to death, it wasn't to
be stunned or to be killed in any other way. And so the blood was to be
taken and put on the doorposts and on the lintel, not on the threshold,
but on the two posts and on the lintel. And that night the angel of
death would pass through, and if the blood was on the doorposts, then
the eldest in that family would be spared.

If there was no blood, then the oldest would die. If the father was the
oldest of his family, he would die, and then of course the oldest of his
sons would die as well. Of course, none of the—well, most of the
Egyptians didn't do this.

There may have been an odd one. The Bible doesn't talk about that, but
one assumes that there may have been, because there were some of the
Egyptians who were favorably disposed towards the Jews, and remember who
came out with the Jews. So there may have been some, but generally the
Egyptians didn't have the blood, and so the oldest, not only in the
human families, but also in the animal families, died.

The Israelites put the blood on the doorposts. Now remember, this was
not a matter of whether you were an Israelite or an Egyptian. This was a
matter of the blood, and so the blood was equally effective for an
Egyptian as it was for an Israelite.

An Israelite would not be spared if he didn't apply the blood. There's a
very important principle concerning the gospel. It doesn't matter who we
are.

It doesn't matter what our religion or our ethnicity is. If we have the
blood of Jesus Christ applied to our lives, the sins are washed away and
we are saved. If we don't have the blood applied, it doesn't matter how
religious we are.

It doesn't matter how good we think we are. Without the blood of Christ,
there is no remission of sins. And so that would happen, and so of
course it was called the Passover, because the angel of death would pass
over those that had the blood applied.

So they would have the lamb. They were to finish that whole lamb. They
were to eat in a particular way.

They had to have their shoes on their feet. They needed to have their
their waists girded, in other words their belts on, and they needed to
eat with their staff or their cane, their walking stick in their hand,
because they were going to move out that night. So they were eating in a
particular way.

This is important. We'll come back to this idea in a few moments. And
then they also ate unleavened bread that night for the first time,
because they were in haste.

There was no time to to put leaven in the dough and to let the dough
rise and then to bake the bread. So the bread was eaten unleavened, and
they were journeying from there on, and so they didn't eat leavened
bread for seven days. And so this is the feast of unleavened bread.

So there's the feast of the Passover, which involves the killing of the
lamb, and there is the feast of the unleavened bread, which is eating
unleavened bread for the same night in which the Passover is celebrated,
and then for seven days from there on. The Jews today make a big
ceremony of making sure that there is no leaven in the house, and even
part of the Passover Seder, what they call the Seder, what we would call
the ritual or the order of service, as the family gathers together,
there is a, they have a little book that they go by, and so there are
certain prayers, there are certain things that happen during that
process. Part of that process is a symbolic searching of the house with
a candle and a spoon to make sure that there is no leaven anywhere in
the house.

The very religious Jews are so fastidious about this that they even have
separate, a separate cupboard in the kitchen which contains cutlery and
crockery and stuff that is only used for that period, so that there's no
chance of it having been contaminated with any kind of leaven. Now I'm
not going to get into the hypocrisy of that, because obviously the
leaven speaks of sin, and you can make sure that there is no physical
leaven in the house, but if there is leaven in your heart, well it's a
waste of, it's all a waste of time. All right, so that's why these two
things are always connected, they're always spoken of as the same thing
in a sense, but they're not the same thing.

They happen at the same time, but they are two separate feasts. And so
he, Jesus, sent Peter and John, saying, go and prepare the Passover for
us that we may eat. Now it's interesting that he chooses the two closest
disciples, the two that were most trusted, the two that he would take
with him on other special occasions.

That night he would take Peter and John with him into the Garden of
Gethsemane. And he sends them on this important mission, to prepare the
Passover. Now the preparing of the Passover involved a few steps.

The first thing is that they needed a place to celebrate the Passover. I
guess you could have, you could do it outside, but generally they would,
they would want to do it inside. So they need to find a room.

Rooms were available at this time, because remember this was the time
when Israelites or Jews would come from all over the world, the known
world at that time, to celebrate the Passover. This was the highest and
most important of their feasts. And so they would come from all over the
world to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem.

And the population of Jerusalem would grow phenomenally. The various
historians give various numbers for how many people would be in
Jerusalem at that time, but it would be, it would be a massive number of
people. Edersheim, I think, speaks about over a million.

Most historians feel that that number is highly inflated. But anyway, so
people would come. One of the things that had been inscribed in the, in
the law, not part of the Old Testament, but part of their traditions,
was that you were not allowed to charge a stranger, not, what I mean by
a stranger is a Jew from outside, a Jew from, who had traveled to
Jerusalem, you were not allowed to charge them for the room.

So if they needed a place to stay, and obviously many people needed a
place to stay, you were to give them that space free. The only thing
that you could charge was the skin of the lamb that had been slain. That
was the, and that was the customary price that you would give.

Obviously skins were important those days, because it was used for all
sorts of purposes. Then the next thing would be to find a lamb. And of
course the lamb had to be approved by the priests in that it was without
spot or blemish, that it was perfect.

And so we had this whole trade going on, you remember, in the Outer
Court, where they were buying and selling, or they were selling lambs
and sacrifices. The lamb could be a sheep, they preferred sheep, but it
could also be a goat. And so you would have to find a acceptable,
certified lamb.

You'd have to obviously buy that. And then they would need a few other
things. They would need the unleavened bread, they would need bitter
herbs, which is part of the meal.

So the lamb is eaten with bitter herbs to remind them of the bitterness
of their servitude in Egypt as they served the slaves. And so, and they
would need some wine. So they would need all of these things.

And so the disciples are sent to go and get all of these things ready,
so that they could celebrate the Passover in the prescribed way. During
the Babylonian captivity, they had established many of these traditions
and had written them down, and they remain unchanged for the Jews today.
They are not necessarily biblical in the sense that they are based on
the Old Testament ideas, but many of the details of the Seder,
particularly you will see that there are four cups, none of that is
prescribed in the law.

So those are traditions, and it seems that Jesus keeps those traditions,
not because the traditions are important, but simply to not give
offense. We see Paul doing the same thing. So verse 9, and so they said
to him, where do you want us to prepare? So good question, where are we
going to do this? And he said to them, behold, when you enter the city,
Jerusalem of course, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water,
follow him into the house which he enters.

So a part of this is, it seems that there is some secrecy going on.
Remember that Judas had contracted to betray Jesus at a time when there
would not be a crowd, and obviously the Last Supper would be an
important place, would be a good place for them to come and get him,
because everybody else is in their homes, everybody else is celebrating
the Passover, and it's just Jesus and the twelve, and so that would be
an appropriate time. And is Jesus afraid of being betrayed? No,
obviously this is about timing, and again it shows us that God is in
control.

So Jesus could not be betrayed at the Last Supper. Why? Because the very
thing that we're going to celebrate this morning, the Lord's table,
communion, Eucharist, whatever you want to call it, would not be
instituted if Jesus was betrayed before the supper. So he had to be
betrayed after the supper, and so they don't want, he doesn't want Judas
to know, and so it all happens in secret, and so Jesus says to the two,
he says, go and find a place, you'll find this man, and he's carrying a
pitcher of water.

This of course was a sign. Men didn't carry pitchers of water those
days. This was an extraordinary event.

Generally women would carry water, and they would carry it in pitchers.
Sometimes men would carry water, but when they carried water, they would
carry it in a skin, not in a pitcher. In other words, a skin where they
would take, they would skin the animal, they would keep the skin intact,
in other words, they will literally peel it off the carcass, tie up the
neck and the legs, or the other way around rather, and they would then
be able to fill that and carry water, and they'd carry wine.

Remember Jesus speaks about not putting new wine in old wine skins, so
men would carry in, so for a man to be carrying a pitcher was a, this is
not for the children, this is not a picture, this is a jug with water, a
vase or a vase, whatever you want to call it, and so they would
generally, the women would carry it on their shoulders or on their
heads. And so when you find this man, and obviously he's prepared by
God, God has everything in control, everything is being set up for these
last hours of Jesus' earthly life, and then you shall say to the master
of the house, the teacher says to you, now the man who's carrying the
pitcher, if you read carefully, is not the master of the house, he is a
servant. So you find a man with a pitcher, you follow him into the
house, and then you say to the master of the house, the owner of the
house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat
the Passover with my disciples? And again, we see God's miraculous
provision, because people had been arriving by now for a week, some of
them for two weeks, three weeks, because remember people were traveling
from long distances and mostly by foot, and so they would come at
different times, we can see as Jesus is preaching in the temple, there's
this huge crowd that is following him, so by now all the room is gone,
every spare room has been given out to visitors, there are no rooms,
this is the last minute, and yet there is a room, and of course God
again had miraculously provided.

God's timing is always perfect, we must remember that. One of the things
that I think we all struggle with, and I personally struggle with, is we
say yes, we know that God will provide, but we want to know the answer
before the time, and God says no, I will provide at the right time, and
many times the right time is at the last minute. Did they need a room
three days before the time? No, they needed a room for those couple of
hours.

We don't know what time of the day this is, maybe around about noon,
because they now have to go through this whole process, and not only do
they have to acquire, I left that out, but not only do they have to get
the lamb, but now the lamb has to be slain, so they have to go to the
temple, and thousands and thousands of lambs are being slain on this,
being slaughtered or sacrificed on this day, and so each man would take,
the head of the home would take his lamb, the priests would be there,
they would catch the blood in silver and in golden dishes, and they
would pour that out at the foot of the altar, and so the man would slay
his own, cut the throat of his own lamb, and then he would take the lamb
away, so they would have to do that as well, and then obviously they
need to skin the lamb, and they need to cut it up, and they need to get
it ready for roasting, it has to be roasted. So they need a few hours
for this. When did they need the room? In those last few hours, and God
provides at the right time.

And so he will show you a large finished upper room, there make ready.
So on the second floor there would be this large room, and it's
furnished, and again Jesus knows that it's there, he knows that the man
has been prepared to offer the room to them, everything is set. And so
they went and found it just as he said to them, and they prepared the
Passover.

So they did all of the stuff that needed to be done. I think that
sometimes we have this impression that spiritual ministry is the only
stuff that is important, that only preaching is important, that all the
other stuff that is attended to on that, in terms of manual stuff that
needs to be done, cleaning and fixing and getting the place ready, are
not important things. And yet you can see here that Jesus himself is
going to preside, if we can use those words, over the Passover.

Of course that's the most important thing. Jesus is the most important
one around that table. And yet there are these important preparations
that need to be made.

And if these are not made, then how are you going to have the supper? If
someone didn't prepare the communion, the emblems that we have on the
table, then how would we have communion this morning? Somebody has to do
those things, and they are just as important as the spiritual aspects.
It's easy to say, well, you know, Jesus speaking to the disciples and
washing their feet, and those things that he does around the Lord's
Supper, and as he introduces communion and converts and really changes
Passover into communion, that there is nothing more important than that.
Well, there is nothing more important than that.

But it's still important to have the room. It's still important to have
the food that they needed on the table. These things are necessary.

And notice that Jesus does not entrust these things to anyone, but he
entrusts them to the two most faithful of his disciples. And we can
easily say, well, you know, this is no big deal. Jesus could have just
chosen, you know, someone outside of the twelve.

Why the twelve? He's got many others who are faithful and loyal. He can
choose of the five hundred. Remember there was a next level of
disciples, about five hundred.

He could have chosen one of the five hundred, or two or three of the
five hundred. No, he chooses the most loyal of the inner circle to do
these mundane things, because they are important. Folks, unfortunately
in the church we have this concept that deacon's work is not important.

Only the preacher's work is important. Everybody wants to be a preacher.
Nobody wants to be a deacon.

Nobody wants to fix and clean and do these kinds of things. And yet they
are absolutely essential to this whole picture. And we've just spent six
verses looking at the preparation.

No deep spiritual teaching here, just the preparation for the Passover.
And so these are important things. Verse 14, when the hour had come,
that would be in the evening, he sat down and the twelve apostles with
him.

Interesting that it uses the hour, the precise time when this was to
happen. And he sits down with the twelve. Now the word apostles does not
appear in all of the manuscripts, so we can't build a whole teaching on
that.

But it's interesting, even if you leave the apostles out, it's still
with the twelve. In other words, Judas is there among them. And we spoke
about that last week.

Verse 15, then he said to them, with fervent desire, I've desired to eat
this Passover with you before I suffer. This is a very important
statement that Jesus makes, and I want to spend a bit of time on this
verse. You'll see on the screen that the word fervent is in italics,
which means it was not in the original.

The original simply said with desire, I have desired to eat this
Passover with you before I suffer. Now to add the word fervent is an
important addition in order to explain the Greek word desire here. Now I
don't want you to be offended, but the word desire here is generally
translated in the New Testament as lust.

So Jesus is literally saying with lust, I have lusted to eat this
Passover with you. You say, well what's the point? And why should we use
such a profane word for this sacred moment? Because it tells us about
the intensity with which Jesus longed to be with his disciples this one
last time. You see, here's the problem.

When it comes to meeting with the saints, I don't know that there are
many Christians who lust. In other words, you have the same drive that
we have for earthly things. We lust after material things.

We lust after carnal pleasures. We lust after money, after power. And
these are things that drive people.

And we're all driven by some of those things to some extent or the
other. And it's a drive that you've got to satisfy. And of course,
that's the essence of temptation.

We don't have to, but we feel we have to. But I don't see many
Christians being driven with the same drive, with the same passion, with
the same need to be in the Lord's house. And remember, this is not just
about the Passover.

This is a moment that Jesus wants to finally just be with the twelve.
The last opportunity before it's all going to explode. And he just wants
to be with those that he loves.

He just wants to celebrate the Passover. And folk, I believe that there
needs to be, as much as we are driven by earthly lusts for all sorts of
things, we need to be driven by heavenly lust, heavenly desire, passion,
to be in the house of God, to be with the church of God, to come around
the Lord's table this morning. It's not something that we should say,
oh, well, you know, we do it every month.

Many churches do it every week. We do it so many times. It's no big deal
if I miss this week.

I can do it all this time. I can do it the next time. And I'm not going
to ask for a show of hands, but I wonder how many this morning woke up
and said, yes, today we're going to come around the Lord's table.

My bet is that not many. And yet Jesus says with desire, with fervent
desire, I wanted to do this. I wanted to be with my people.

I wanted to look back at the deliverance from Egypt, and I want to look
forward to the cross, and I want to look beyond the cross to the second
coming. All of these are part of that big deal. And so again, let me
challenge us.

What is it that we desire above all else? Do we desire to be in God's
house, to be with God's people, to be in fellowship, to come around the
Lord's table? Or are there other things that are driving us and more
important to us than those things? And so he said, with fervent desire,
with lust, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
Notice he doesn't say to eat the Passover, but to eat the Passover with
you, with you. Verse 16, for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it
until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

I'm going to come back to this verse because verse 18 speaks about
drinking the wine in the same context. So we'll put that on the back
burner and come back to it. Verse 17, then he took the cup and gave
thanks and said, take this and divide it among yourselves.

Now, I said earlier on that in the Passover Seder, there are four cups,
and I'm not going to get into the details of those four cups. This cup
is the third of the four, and this cup is not the cup of what, let's
call it the cup of communion. Because you'll see a few verses later on,
he takes the cup again, not the same cup, a different cup.

So again, if we don't read carefully, we'll say, well, and in fact, I've
heard Christians say, well, you know, we need to have the cup before we
have the bread, and they'll quote this verse. Jesus took the cup, and
then a few verses later, he took the bread. Well, that's a stupid
argument, because if that's your argument, then you have to take the
cup, you have to take the bread, and then you have to take the cup
again, because that's literally what this passage does.

He takes the cup, he then does the bread, and then he does the wine, or
the cup again. So this cup is not the actual communion. This is the
third one in that ritual.

Take this and divide it among yourselves, because I say to you, I will
not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. So
remember verse 16, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in
the kingdom of God. Verse 18, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine
until the kingdom of God comes.

What does Jesus mean by that? When will he do this again? In the New
Jerusalem, when he comes again. When will the kingdom of God have come?
Remember, that's part of what we pray. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the kingdom will come
when Jesus establishes his physical kingdom here on earth. In fact, not
the New Jerusalem, the millennium.

And so that's when the kingdom comes. So I want us to just pause for a
moment and look at what's going on here. What was the purpose of the
Passover? Now remember, Jesus is celebrating a traditional Hebraic
Passover, but he is in the process flipping it into communion.

So there are certain aspects of what Jesus is doing, the bread and the
wine, which now continues as communion. A lot of the symbolism
continues, but in a different way. And so there are two things going on
here.

There's the Passover and there's the communion, and the two things are
interposed on one another. All right. So there are different things
going on in terms of time.

The purpose of the Passover was to remind them of the day they came out
of Egypt, to remind them that the angel of death passed over, the oldest
was spared, that night God delivered them from Egypt, and he took them
on their journey to the promised land. That was part of the purpose. And
so for us, communion has an element of looking back.

The difference is we don't look back at the Passover or at the exodus
out of Egypt. We look back at our Passover. Now if you were here on
Thursday night, you remember that we spoke about the fact that we were
crucified with Christ 2,000 years ago.

Now listen to the tape. I can't get sidetracked, otherwise we'll never
get through. So when we come to the table, we don't just remember that
Jesus died, because yes, that's part of what we remember, and he's going
to talk about that.

We're not going to get there that far this morning. But part of what we
remember is his body that is broken and his blood that is shed, and we
can never minimize that. But part of what we also remember is that the
angel of death passed over us, because the blood of Christ was applied.

We have passed from death to life. We've passed from judgment into
blessing. And so part of what we remember is we look back at the day
that Jesus died the same way as they look back at Egypt.

We look back at the day that we were born again, and our lives were
changed, and we were brought out of Egypt. Remember, Egypt is a picture
of the world. When we came to Christ, we came out of the world, and we
came into our relationship with him.

And so we remember the past, but we also remember the future, because
Jesus said, I will not do this until I do so new. So he's looking
forward at the cross, and of course we'll not get into that in detail
now, but he's looking beyond the cross. He's looking at thousands of
years in the future when he will celebrate the Lord's Supper with the
church.

And we believe that that happens at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and
people have different timings on that, but that's part of the last day.
It's part of the end of time. And so part of what we remember is what
happened, but it's also reminding us of what is in the future.

The Jews have a special place setting, and this is not scripture, and so
I'm just giving this to you as a matter of interest. This is not, we can
build no doctrine on this, but they have a special place setting at
their table, a chair and cutlery and all that for Elijah. And of course
that seat is empty right through the meal, but next time they'll have it
again.

Why do they have that? Because the Bible says that before the Messiah
comes, Elijah must come. Remember we dealt with this at the beginning of
the first few chapters in the Gospel of Luke. And so part of what
they're doing is they're looking forward and they're saying, Elijah must
come.

So maybe this is the time Elijah is going to come, and then the Messiah
is going to be soon on his heels. Now remember they had this all wrong
because Elijah did come in the form of John the Baptist, and Jesus was
on his heels. But now we're looking for, so they're looking forward.

Part of the Seder also is that they will say, next year in Jerusalem. So
Jews are celebrating Passover, or they celebrate Passover all over the
world, and they're going to be doing it in the next couple of months.
Can't remember the exact date.

It's sort of more or less around the time that we have Easter, but
remember the dates are different. And they'll say, well, we're doing it
here in LA, but next year in Jerusalem. Now that statement about
Jerusalem is not just about the fact that they are looking forward to
emigrating to Jerusalem, but they're looking forward to the day that
Jesus the Messiah will be in Jerusalem, and they'll be able to do that.

So there's this constant looking forward. The reason I emphasize this is
because there is a danger that as Christians we're simply, when we come
to the Lord's table, we're just looking back. No, there is, yes, we must
look back.

He says, do this in remembrance of me. We remember Jesus. We remember
what he did.

We remember what he did for us personally. And that is important. It's
easy for communion to become an impersonal thing.

So we remember that Jesus died and he rose again and those kinds of
things. No, he died for me. That lamb that was slain, it was for those
in the family that they may be spared because that blood needed to be
applied to the doorpost.

He died for me. He brought me out of bondage, out of slavery, of sin,
and of the world, and of the flesh, and brought me into the glorious
liberty of Christ. So it's a personal thing.

And there's a real danger that it becomes impersonal and it becomes, you
know, it's a church thing. It's about us all. Yes, it is about us all,
but it's about me and about what he did for me.

And so when we come to the table, it needs to be personal. It's not just
to remind us that Jesus died 2,000 years ago. It's that he died for me
and that he set me free and he brought me out of Egypt.

And so that is the basis of our gratitude. It's not just, oh, you know,
it's great that Jesus died for the sins of the world. No, it was for me.

So I remember, do this in remembrance of me, but I also look forward.
And I'm saying, maybe next month, maybe next year, we'll be doing it in
heaven, in the presence, when he himself will break the bread and pass
around the cup. So we're looking forward.

Now you say, well, you know, we're building this all on Luke. No, we're
not. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 26, which we're going to read in a few
moments when we come to the Lord's table, for as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you declare or proclaim the Lord's death,
period.

No, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So again, there's that
element of looking forward. We're doing this, but it's temporary.

It's a place marker until Jesus comes. When Jesus comes, obviously, I
believe that we're going to have a communion, as I said, at the marriage
feast of the Lamb. And we will remember and we will understand for the
first time fully the price that he paid for us.

We will understand fully what he endured for us. We will, for the first
time, come to grips with the magnitude of this glorious salvation. And
so we're looking forward to that great day.

Now, the purpose, of course, is to remind us to not get discouraged. You
remember the problem in the wilderness was that they became discouraged
because they were never getting there. And yet every year they would
have the Passover, and the Passover would remind them that God is taking
them into the promised land.

But they forgot. You see, we can go through the ritual. In fact, the
reality is that for many, many years, I think about 38 years, they
didn't celebrate Passover in the wilderness.

And that's part of the problem. That's part of why they lost track of
the goal, of where they were going. And so we need to not just be
looking back, we need to be looking forward.

We need to come around the Lord's table and be encouraged. As we live
our lives and as life has become very challenging in many, many ways,
with pestilence and with wars and with inflation and with all of the
things that we are struggling with, with people having mental issues and
people having emotional problems, all of these things coming around us,
the thing that should anchor us is the fact that we've been brought out
of a horrible pit by His mighty hand, and He's taking us to a glorious
future. That where we are now is just, we're passing through.

And I'm not playing with words in terms of Passover. We're just
journeying on our way. Remember how they were to eat.

Now we don't bring this physically into the communion, but we must bring
this spiritually into communion. They were to eat with their shoes on,
with their belts on, and with their staff in their hand, ready to move
out. And as we come to the Lord's table this morning, I pray that we
would not be so entrenched in this world, but that we may come with our
spiritual boots on and say, we're ready to go.

And so it's reminding us He's coming, but I need to be ready. I need to
be ready to march, to walk, and to get to where He wants me to be. And
so God help us that we may begin to grasp for the fact that the Lord's
table is not a shallow thing.

Yeah, we remember His blood, His body. That's it. Let's go home.

No, there is a lot more to it than that. There are many layers to this.
And may God open our eyes as we come, because it's an important
occasion.

It doesn't just remind us, but it gives us strength. Remember Hebrews,
Jesus, we've spoken about this verse so many times, looking unto Jesus,
the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross. And as Jesus looks at what's going to
happen in the next 24 hours, less than 24 hours, what is it that
sustains Him? The joy that was set before Him.

And He's reminding His disciples, but He's reminding Himself, I'm going
to do this again, but I'm going to do it in the kingdom, when the joy
that is set before me, the church, has been fulfilled, the kingdom has
come. And so may God give us grace that as we come to His table this
morning, we may come in a personal way, that it may become real, not
just something that they did and we continued the tradition, but a
personal reminder of where we've come from and where we're going.
Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus.

We thank You for the passion with which He loved His disciples. Lord, we
pray that we may have the same passion for one another. Lord, that we
may have the same desire to be amongst Your people.

And Lord, that there may be this fervent desire, this drive, this lust
to be around Your table, that we might be reminded of where we've come
from, that we may be reminded of what it cost Jesus to take away our
sin. And Lord, that we may be reminded that You're coming again. And
Lord, that we are strangers and pilgrims.

We're walking through this world with our shoes on and our waist girt
and our staff in our hand, waiting to be taken home. Make these things
real for us, we pray in Jesus' name. Pray, Lord, for those who leave
now, that You go with them, keep them and protect them, bless them.

And Lord, for the rest of us, we pray that You would be present as we
come around Your table. And Lord, that it may be real and precious and
sweet. I ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/ma0ZPamHhbw.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/anton-bosch/in-remembrance-in-anticipation/
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