Understanding the Last Words of Jesus: A Deep Dive into the Lord's Supper

Join Don Hooton as he leads a heartfelt sermon on the significance of the Lord's Supper, drawing from the Gospel of John. Don discusses his gratitude towards the elders and fellowship, shares insights from his experiences with Harold, James Adams, Reagan, and Preston, and emphasizes the importance of Jesus' final teachings before his crucifixion. Key highlights include the meaning behind Jesus' statement, 'This is my body; this is my blood,' and a reminder to partake in communion with genuine remembrance and reflection. Don also stresses the importance of regular observance of the Lord's Supper as a unified body following the example set by Jesus and the early church.

00:00 Introduction and Gratitude
01:24 The Last Supper: Jesus' Final Teachings
04:28 The Significance of the Lord's Supper
09:08 Symbolism in the Bread and Wine
17:11 The Importance of Regular Communion
32:04 Unity and Inclusivity in Communion
38:38 Call to Repentance and Baptism

Transcript

Well, thank you all for coming today. Grateful for your presence today and coming together as we have to worship the Lord. And I would be remiss if I did not first thank the elders for the opportunity to not only present these lessons to you, that are to me very important and, um, I think some of the, um, most meaningful thoughts I've come up with in a while.

And I hope that you'll, I hope you'll feel that way when you get to the end of the week. Especially for the fellowship that you've given me in many ways from, as was mentioned, the summer training that I had with Harold and James Adams, um, as well as the opportunities that you've had in having fellowship with me and the work that I've done in Africa.

And I'm great grateful for these blessings and these opportunities, but I'm really grateful to Harod Harold for his. Uh, good influence over me and really grateful that I can be with him, uh, these couple of days. And for Reagan and for Preston. Looking forward to being and expanding our relationship together as we serve the Lord.

So the basis of the lessons come from the narrative that occurs in the Gospel of John, from John chapter 13 through John chapter seven. Teen, though not exclusively, but from that narrative that Jesus spins with the disciples, the apostles. In the upper room before he dies. Now he's there. And like most of us, if you're nearing the end of your life, the things that you're going to share with the people that you love are gonna be what you think are the most important things that you want them to remember because you're about to go away.

And of course, Jesus knew that when he died that he would be raised. He knew it. He wrote the story with his father. Still, he's impressing on them in these last days while he is alive, before he is erase, what I believe are the first things that you and I need to look at as being followers of his, the most important things.

None of them are more important than the other. They all belong together, and so that gives me the opportunity and the parenthesis. Please come every time. Every lesson that we're gonna talk about are the, from the words of your savior, your king, about what he believes you need to be. Now, I know you can hear it online, and I know you can read it in your book like I have read, but there's something significant about the fact that Jesus sat across a figurative table with the 12.

Told them these things face to face, person to person, flesh to flesh. So that eye to eye, his heart would reach theirs. Isn't that what we do together in encouraging one another in the work of the Lord? So when we look at these last words of Jesus.

Thing that he keeps emphasizing are the things that I'm gonna try to emphasize to you this morning. In the Bible class, we talked about this five repeated statement that he calls a command. That he says is a, a mark of your discipleship as a follower of Jesus, that the world will know that I have sent you that if you love one another, it is not an option.

It's not a easy thing to go through. It is a command, and just like Jesus will say in the sermon of loving your enemies, Jesus says that we're to love one another. So today we consider something else that he said in the context of that upper room. Not recorded by John per se, but still in the context of that room.

The central, if you will, event of why we come together, which is to remember the Lord in the Lord's supper of which we've just done, and our brother who led us did a fine job. It proclaims the death of the savior. It explains the meaning of the new covenant. It validates the promise of Christ's return. So notice when Paul says in one Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 23, he says, on the night when he was betrayed, the central reality of the beginning of who we are as Christians begins with the words of Jesus.

And on the night that he was betrayed, he set up for us this memorial that we have just partaken of. This is not something about our tradition and our church heritage. This is nothing about the way the elders think would be meaningful for us. This is what your savior and your king said you need to be doing.

He says on the night in which he was betrayed. Luke tells us in Luke 22, verse 14, when the hour came, he reclined at the table. And the apostles with him, and then he said to them, I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Now I think I can say that I have earnestly desired or fervently desired that if that came out of the mouth of my team, that's important.

Wouldn't you agree this was something he was looking forward to, that he had not talked to them about? All of his ministry for three years. He had wanted to talk to them about it, but there is no record in the gospels. I'm not saying that he didn't, but there is no record in the gospels that he ever mentioned it.

But he says, I have earnestly desired to have this meal with you, this Passover with you, because this is gonna give you an insight of not only who I am to you, but who I want you to be. So in Luke 22 in verse 17, I tell you from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.

Jesus saw this as not just a single event, but he saw this as something that would connect the beginning of his work with the disciples to the very ending. I will not share this again with you until the Kingdom of God. And then I want you to notice Matthew 26 in verse 26, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take and eat it.

This is my body. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin. Luke's gospel were recorded this way. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, Jesus said, take this and share it among yourselves.

For I tell you, from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them and said, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he also took the cup after supper and said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

And then when Paul recounts it in one Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 23. Paul himself not being present in that upper room, but being instructed by the spirit's revelation and perhaps even interaction with Jesus himself after he appeared to Jesus. On the after he appeared to Paul or Solo Tarsis on the road, he recounts it to the Corinthian church and says on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he given thanks, broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Now, I repeated all of those words to you, number one, I'm, I'm sure you've read them and heard them many times, and I think that in many ways Christians are over familiar with these words that Jesus used on this memo, memorable night. I'm not suggesting that we're not supposed to remember them or, or repeat them.

You know yourself that sometimes you become so familiar with something in a routine that you often give it little thought. And I think sometimes all we are worried about is making sure I can't use it as an illustration anymore 'cause you don't have a table there. But we, we engrave it on a table that says do this in remembrance of me.

Right. The real question is we engrave it on our furniture, but do you really engrave it in the moment when you partake? Do you engrave it in your heart or in your mind when you're thinking about what you are eating and what are you partaking of? I want you to see that while it's important to Jesus, that the bread that he takes is the bread that we use.

That the fruit of the vine that Jesus takes is the fruit of the vine that he, we should use. We'll talk about that. But Jesus said, remember me.

He wants them to look at this and recognize this is, this is me. This is my body, this is my blood. Remember me.

It's almost impossible, I think for us as Americans to conceive the astonishment, maybe the dismay and the horror with which these early disciples heard Jesus say these words, holding up this bread. This is my body. This is holding up the the cut. This is my blood.

To eat the flesh and to drink the blood of a person is really, in most cultures, considered abominable To Jews. It would've been no different, and Jesus didn't mince words. He says, this is my body. He says, this is my blood. But you realize that when he speaks those words Exactly. What would've come to their mind?

I think first of all. You're gonna die.

You're the Messiah. You're the one that God has sined. You have taught us all of the ways of living and the Es issuing in of the new Kingdom, and now you're gonna die.

This is my body, this is my blood.

But if they had followed. What we believe through history, the customary practice of this meal of the Passover, Jesus was going to teach them something that we sometimes forget.

When I preached in Australia a long time ago, the church where I worked north of Sydney, no, I had that wrong South of Sydney. Uh. Was a church that was initially started by the influence of English Christians from the church, from from, uh, England, the churches that were in England. And so there, the way that they conducted worship was different than Americans.

Um, the one who came and spoke to us about the Lord's suffer would not come up here until what they called the president of the assembly. Could come up here. I couldn't walk up here and start preaching until the president said, Don come up and deliver us a letter of ex, a word of exhortation. Uh, Daniel could not get up and lead singing.

You could not lead a prayer until the president said, come up here and lead. And that, that sounds we're, we're, we're democratic Americans like, okay, that's weird. We're not gonna do that. We had some Americans who were stationed there, and this is weird. I don't like this. Well, I'm not sure it's wrong. They were trying to do everything.

You know the words in King James, one Corinthians decently and in order, so they took that to the length of law on that. He was called the president of the assembly. That was his assignment in

the Passover feast. That was a president. When a group of 10 or more were gathered together, the president would lead the conversation. And during that process, this is what the president said, holding up the bread. This is the bread of affliction, which our fathers ate in the wilderness. Now, if I was a 6-year-old and I would've heard that, I probably would've gone, Ooh, I'm not going to eat bread.

That's that's old. That's hundreds of years old. Why am I going to eat this bread? Which is the bread that your father's ate in the wilderness. How did you keep it? They didn't have refrigerators, right? Well, everybody knows what that really means. This represents. The bread that our fathers ate in the wilderness doesn't take a rocket science or a Greek lexicon to figure that out, but yet that's exactly when they partook of that Passover meal before the Lord's supper.

That's what would've been said. And then Jesus says, and holding up the bread, and this is my body. They didn't think that that was literally the flesh and blood of the flesh of Jesus any more than they would've thought that that bread had been transported somewhere thousands of years from what Moses was carrying around, right?

This is the bread of affliction, which our fathers ate in the wilderness. So when Jesus says, this is my body, the body that would soon be on the cross. Jesus is teaching them just like your fathers knew, God provided for them the bread they needed to be sustained in. I'm going to provide for you the redemption that you're going to find in my body, the sacrifice of my body.

This is my body because Jesus wants us to remember him. The writer Hebrews will say in chapter 10 in verse one, since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the reality itself of those things, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continue to offer year after year, talking about the old law.

Otherwise wouldn't they have stopped being offered since the worshipers purified once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sins, but. If, but in the sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins year after year for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, as he was coming into the world, he said, you did not desire a sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me.

After he says, he then says, see. I have come to do your will. He takes away the first to establish the second, and by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all this is my body. Yes, you ate about a half inch quarter piece of bread, but your mind was to be inflamed with the memory.

Of the sacrificial life of a lamb offered for you. This is my body. It is symbolic. It is not literally his body, but if it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goods to take away sins, and the body that Jesus had was prepared for him, for him to be, let me back up and say this. I once had a conversation with someone who told me, whom I greatly respect.

He made this comment and he said, uh,

if God could have saved us another way, would he have done it? And he was asking that question because sometimes we, we talk about all the things God could have done, like not sometimes like we even know, but I mean, we talk about those things, but. His point was why would he have put his son through everything that he went through if that was not the only way

you prepared a body For me, the son says to the father and I have come to do your will, so that through the offering of the body, once for all time, I can sanctify them. The body we remember is the sacrificial lamb. The body we remember is not the raised Lord. The body we remember is the sacrificial lamb.

But then Jesus says, this is my blood. Again, coming from the book of Hebrews, we're gonna skip through verses 15 through 28 with just this emphasis. Therefore he is mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance because a death has taken place for redemption from the transgressions committed under the first covenant for Christ, did not enter a sanctuary made with hands but into heaven itself so that he might now appear in the presence of God for us.

He did not do this to offer himself many times as the high priest iners the sanctuary yearly with the blood of another. Otherwise, he would've had to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But now he has appeared one time at the end of the ages, the end of the age of the Jewish world for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself.

This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you. Notice verse 21. I'm sorry, verse 20. This is the blood of the covenant that God has entered, has ordained for you. Sadly, these words always end up in argument, the thing that often happens in our religious conversations, because we are constantly combating religious error, and I need to remind you, that's what Jesus did.

He combated the religious error of the Pharisees. He combated the religious error of the Sadducees. And if Jesus did it, so should we, because there is only one truth that God has revealed, and it is our job as disciples to know what that truth is and to share it with the world.

But sadly, these words have become the cause of even violent disagreements. When Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blo blood, did he mean it to be literally his body and his blood? I think I've already established that if he held up the bread as the Jews would've done during the Passover, this is the bread that our father's ate and the wilderness they would've known right away when he handed up, this is my body.

They would've known that it was figurative. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. If I showed you on my phone a picture of Ellis and I said, this is Ellis, by the way, that's my grandson. Okay. No, sorry. This is our grandson. But if I, if I said, this is Ellis, then he wouldn't have any difficulty understanding that, you know, Ellis is not a flat screen.

You know that the language that I'm using means this picture represents him. This is my body. So Jesus is teaching them what he wants them to remember that what this is is about him.

That kind of excessive literalism means people are trying to prove a point without trying to look at language the way we use it normally, but likewise. We don't need to swing the pendulum the other direction and think that all we're eating is a lump of bread and a swig of juice.

When I was a kid or younger, uh, the church where I grew up in San Antonio, the young man helped with the serving of communion. And you partake of communion like we do at the Woodlands with the elements in, in a cup. And we all have, we're giving it before and we all take it for where we are, but. Back in the old days when the elements got passed, at a very defining moment as a young man where I was serving the bread and the fruit of the vine, and on the lane that I was chosen and assigned was sitting a woman who actually was a woman that I worked for.

During the summers or during, during a lot of part of the year, I would mow her lawn. I never mowed her lawn to her satisfaction. She would regularly come out after I had done it and I missed a spot on the edging and I think I caught her one time getting a pair of scissors and correcting the line. She was quite meticulous and I was not.

I was a typical teenager, probably mowing the lawn, hot San Antonio humidity. I was ready to be out of the humidity and inside and the air conditioning. But anyway, that's who she was. And when she arrived to services, she was always immaculately dressed. She was a tiny little woman, probably about five foot tall.

She would always wear a beautiful hat, usually a flat hat. I don't know what they're called, ladies, but a little flat hat. Okay. And she would always wear gloves. Now, who in their crazy world, in the middle of San Antonio Summers, would wear gloves all the way up to her elbows. But she was dressed to the hilt whenever she came to worship.

So I'm passing the communion. We come to the bread

and she had forgotten to take her gloves off. So she's sitting on the end like our sister Adams there. This is not Sister Adams, by the way. Don't go away with that illustration. And I hand it to her and she realizes that she has her gloves on. And I could see the panic in her face. She was probably in her sixties, seventies.

And so I just stood, she handed it back to me. I said, okay, well, I'll just stand here and wait. And there she goes, taking off her gloves, and of course it's humid. We had air conditioning inside the church building, but back in the day, the air conditioning then didn't really take away the humidity like it does today.

And it took her, at least I was a teenager, it probably took five minutes in my brain, but it probably took about 30 seconds for me to wait for her to take her glove off.

And it finally got off and she reached up and grabbed the plate and she l her finger, and she took a tiny little crumb that had already been broken off the cracker and put it on her lip, I mean on her tongue. And she handed me the plate back. It was a defining moment for me as a child or teenager and thought, but did you remember him?

Now, I don't know what she did, nor am I her judge,

but taking the Lord's supper, when Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. Licking your finger and getting the tiniest little cracker so that it doesn't spoil breath, it's hard to believe that you're remembering the body. Of the lamb of God who gave his life and his blood so that I could have redemption, a sacrifice that I would even be.

I love Daniel Putin, but I would, it would be very hard for me to willingly just give up my and die, though I think I might die for him. I'm nothing like Jesus 'cause I'm a sinner.

Licking your finger, putting it on the plate. Are you remembering? That's what Jesus wants us to think of when we partake of the Lord's Supper. This is me. This is my body. This is my blood. And so while we might not like the excessive liter literalism that we're talking about, some body and some blood, but, and I understand that because people have made it what it is not, but Jesus said, do this in my memory.

The text in Matthew 26, we've read it blessed. He blessed it. He broke it. He gave it to the disciples and he said, take and eat it. This is my body. He says, of the fruit of the wine, this is my blood. And when Paul repeats that, as we've already noted, he says, the cup is the new covenant in my blood. I want you to recognize that when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, that connected the meaning of what it should be.

This is the blood of the new covenant. This is the covenant of my blood. This is the dawning of this new covenant that Jeremiah prophesied about, that God has worked out for century upon century. For you, you need to remember me and not worry about when are the Astros. The Cowboys gonna start and not worry about what my casserole is looking like in the oven.

We're not worried about when is that preacher gonna sit down.

Jesus says, I need you to remember me. And he says, as often as even that language itself, as often as talks about a frequency. If I told you that he goes to the gym as often as I do, I've now told you that that person I'm talking about goes as often as I do. That means I go more than once. That immediately ign ignites my, my understanding that there's repetition.

Any church today who believes they're partaking of the Lord's Supper annually or quarterly. In honor of the Lord are not in honor of the Lord because the text clearly says, and on the first day of the week, we assembled to break bread. That's what the Bible text says, that when disciples came together, it was for the purpose of taking bread.

And not only was it significant in the fact that it was the first day of the week, we use the illustration. I think it's a great one. If I told you guys. You'll get paid every Friday. You get paid on Friday, what will you assume? Every time there's a Friday in the week, I'm gonna get paid.

It doesn't take a rocket science to figure that out. So let me quickly sum up this point so I can get moving on to the next look in Acts 20, verse six and seven. The context of this is that. Luke says, we sailed away from Philippi after the festival of 11 Bread, and in five days we reached them at Troas, where we spent seven days and on the first day of the week, we assembled a break bread.

They got there,

but it wasn't until the first day of the week. They had been there seven days, but it wasn't until the first day of the week that we assembled together to break bread. I don't know what he did the other days. I do know what the disciples did on the first day of the week. They gathered together to break bread, and I know that that's significant because when you get to verse 16, Paul had decided to seal past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia because he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible for the day of Pentecost.

If it didn't matter which day. Why didn't Paul say, I need to be in Pentecost? I I need to be in Jerusalem on Pentecost. I'm here in town. Let's have the Lord's Supper. Why did he wait till the first day of the week when he'd been there for several days already? Because the day of the Lord matters. Frankly, everyone, because the spirit inspired, apostles told you when it was the first day of the week.

That's the reason. No church organization, no convention, no person clothed in clerical robes has the right to speak for God in a way different than the apostle spoke on the first day of the week we gathered together to break bread, but there's something else that Jesus says. He says, all of you, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.

Every disciple that was in that room, Jesus said, drink. Now I know there've been times in my life when I've come to worship and I felt like a fool. I felt like a hypocrite. I felt like I had not lived up to the Lord's wishes like I should have, and I always felt unworthy to partake of the Lord's Supper.

Now, Jesus says, all of you take it. And he is not telling children and unbaptized believers. That's not what the point is. The point is, is that if you are a disciple of Jesus, he says, all of you need to drink it. All of you need to remember me. All of you need to realize that the reason that you're here is not because Grandma Jones from three or Grandma Great Grandma Jones.

I taught you the gospel. That's not the reason you're here. The reason great Grandma Jones taught you the gospel is because of Jesus. And the reason that you are here is because you have come together to remember the man who said, this is my body. This is my blood, because I am the son of God. I am the Messiah, and I've come to set your souls free from sin.

All of you. None of us are worthy. None of us are wiser than Jesus. This is for all of us. There is nothing noble. There is nothing more meaningful. There is nothing more spiritual. There is nothing more about doing something different than the king of glory commands and the inspired apostles of the King instruct.

We all need this. You know the passage in Acts two, repent and be baptized. Each of you in the name of Jesus Christ. For the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children. For all who are far off, as many as our Lord, our God will call to himself.

That's what Peter said. All of you, everyone in this room, if Peter was standing here, he'd say, all of you need to repent and all of you need to be baptized. Don't tell me that it's not for you. It is for you. Please don't tell me. Remembering the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, your savior, and your king is not for you.

Jesus says it is. Eat all of you. Drink all of you, because Jesus says, remember me.

Maybe you've ever studied that in the New Testament, the congregations that were following Jesus Christ were not called uniformly the same title. In fact, I don't think they gave as much emphasis in the New Testament as we have to do in our culture today. Sometimes the disciples were churches of God, sometimes they were, uh, different descriptions and certainly churches of Christ salute you in Romans 16.

Indicate that that was a title that they identified those congregations with. And what I am grateful for

is that we are a body who are announcing to the world that we belong to him, that we don't belong to Martin Luther, that we don't belong to a country called England, and that we don't look at. Ourselves as being a universal church under the rule of one king or one head, or one vicar or one whoever. We belong to Christ because the communion that we partake every week on Sunday is supposed to remind you who you follow.

And he took the Brad gay thanks, broke it, gave it to them and said, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

So if you're ever introducing the communion and you struggle about what to say, just remember this. Your job as a worship leader is to put in the minds of the people that are worshiping, not your cute favorite joke, not what I was reminded about when I was changing the flat last week. I need you to see Jesus.

Maybe if we will spend more time making what we do and what we say all about, what God emphasized, the first things that the Son of God said in those last words, those last commands,

maybe we'll remember like Paul. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in, the body I live by, the faith and the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Everyone's pardon? Everyone's true knowledge of who God is and everyone's future and everyone's legacy.

It's tied up in him.

And Jesus told those disciples as he saw, sat across from them at that table. Do this to remember me. And so when you gather on the first day of the week, every one of you

remember him. If you're subject to Heaven's call, heaven is calling you to repent of your sin. You can only do that if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who gave his life for you, so that your sins could be remitted by the grace and the mercy that is found in God who gave his Son as the atoning sacrifice for your sin.

When that message was announced, even on the very first day, as we've read, Peter said when they responded to the charge that they had crucified the Lord of glory, and they said, what shall we do? Peter said he didn't mince words, repent,

and he said, be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. If I am going to honor Jesus in front of all of you today, I am not gonna say anything different. And if you have not been baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, I plead with you to repent and be immersed into water for the forgiveness of your sins, because that's what the Bible says because God loves you.

Don't let people change what God has done for you and honor him today with your obedience as together we stand and as we've seen.