Anointing, Last Supper (Part 2)

The Life and Teachings of Christ — Steve Gregg

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Anointing, Last Supper (Part 2)

The Life and Teachings of ChristSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg discusses the Last Supper and the significance of Passover in Christianity. He emphasizes that Jesus established a new covenant with God through his blood and body, as part of the Last Supper. Gregg also critiques the Catholic Church's doctrine of transubstantiation, arguing that the idea of the Eucharist as the actual body and blood of Jesus was more of a political tool for church control over people rather than a spiritual truth. Finally, he touches on the betrayal of Judas and how the Bible portrays him as a bad guy who ultimately suffered a tragic fate.

Transcript

It seems that, apparently, after Jesus rebuked Judas on this occasion in front of everybody, and stood up for the woman against Judas, that Judas, you know, he got bitter. And this bitterness led to his receiving Satan into his heart. And that is what caused him to go and to do what he did, to betray Jesus.

Now, there are some who try to reconstruct the character of Judas and try to redeem Judas, somewhat, by their historical reconstructions. Most of these people are not Christians. Some of them are Christians who have fallen under the spell of non-Christians who have made up this alternate story.

But there are many who say that Judas betrayed Jesus for ostensibly, or what he thought were good, virtuous reasons. The story is sometimes told this way. That Judas first attached himself to Jesus because he hoped that Jesus might overthrow the Romans.

And as the ministry of Jesus wore on, and Jesus made no moves in that direction, Judas began to feel like, wow, Jesus is either too shy, he's too intimidated, something's preventing him from making his move. But Judas really did believe Jesus was the Messiah, and that he had to make a move at some point. And so Judas sought to force Jesus' hand, thinking that if he could just put Jesus into a crisis situation, an actual confrontation with the Romans that would require Jesus to do something, that Jesus would then exhibit his miraculous power, which he'd been exhibiting in various ways throughout his entire ministry, to destroy the Romans.

And so that Judas really wanted to help Jesus gain the kingdom. That he was somehow impatient with Jesus, or felt like Jesus needed to be nudged a little bit, and therefore what Judas did, he did more or less for the sake of his country, he did for the sake of Jesus and his kingdom, and he went out and did something to try to force Jesus' hand, to exercise the power that he knew Jesus had at his disposal, in order to get Jesus to take the kingdom by force. This is a story and a scenario that I've heard in many, many places, even though it's totally contrary to the scripture as far as what Judas' motives were.

There are even places where this is popularized, like in the rock opera that came out back in the 70s, called Jesus Christ Superstar, the hero of which is Judas. And Jesus is sort of a neurotic, strange, messianic figure who's not quite sure who he is or what he's supposed to do. And Judas in that rock opera is again portrayed as a good guy, as a hero, who realized that Jesus was simply not on a course that was going to be good for Israel or for his own movement, so out of patriotism and out of basically goodwill toward Jesus, he went ahead and betrayed him.

They even portrayed as if Judas didn't want any money for it. That the chief priest said, well, let us give you something for your trouble, we'll give you 30 pieces of silver. And he said, no, no, I don't want the money, but they forced it on him, so he took it reluctantly.

It's interesting how many parties really want to vindicate Judas. And yet, the Bible says that Judas did what he did because Satan filled his heart. Furthermore, Judas wasn't even a very nice or good person before that, because he had been stealing from the treasury.

He was a dishonest man. In fact, back in chapter 6, about a year before the crucifixion, Jesus said, have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? Speaking of Judas, already he saw in Judas the same kind of murderous intent that he said existed in the Jews in general, who were of their father the devil and wanted to kill him. It says in John 6, verse 70, Jesus answered them, did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve.

So, that's a full year before the crucifixion in John chapter 6. So, Judas was just a bad guy. He was just a child of Satan. He was greedy for money.

He allowed himself to be filled by Satan himself. And he even bartered, or I should say bargained, for Jesus' betrayal. In Matthew 26, verse 15, he said, what will you give me? What are you willing to give me if I deliver him to you? The first consideration he has is money, not the last.

It's not like he reluctantly took a little money that they forced on him. He comes and says, listen, how much can I get out of you guys if I betray him to you? They said 30 pieces of silver. And so, he said that's good enough.

Now, perhaps the desire to rehabilitate Judas in the modern mind comes from the fact that so many people would have done the same thing he did. So many people are more like Judas than they are like Mary. I don't mean Christians are, of course.

No Christian is really like Judas. But Judas has become a very famous person because of what he did. Everybody in the Western world, even those who don't know Christ, know who Judas is.

Judas Iscariot. He's notorious. And yet, many of the people who know of Judas know, perhaps in their hearts, that they would not do anything differently than he did.

They wouldn't have stuck with Jesus through times of suffering and persecution and poverty and so forth. And they would have done something similar. Now, a lot of people, I don't think, will admit to themselves that they'd do the same thing Judas did.

But Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. I think a lot of people have betrayed Jesus for a lot less than that. A lot of people have turned against Jesus and have not been paid a penny for it.

Judas, at least, held out for money. And so the desire to make Judas a little more rehabilitated, his image to be vindicated somewhat, apparently some people feel compelled to think of him as possibly a good guy. I can't help but think this is because of the resemblance between Judas and themselves.

And there doesn't seem to be any other good reason why anyone would want to do this. Well, let's turn now to Luke. And what we come to in Luke chapter 22 tells of the Last Supper.

Yes, we've come that far. We're now all ready to Friday evening. I'm sorry, Thursday evening.

Jesus was crucified on Friday, but the evening before, he met with his disciples for the Last Supper. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this. For reasons of comparison that I've done, I prefer to use Luke's version, if we have to pick one of them.

And we'll start at verse 7. Luke 22, verse 7. Then came the day of unleavened bread. Apparently it was two days earlier that Judas betrayed Jesus, judging by the time marker in Matthew that we just looked at. It was two days before Passover.

But, then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John. This story is also told in Matthew and Mark, although Peter and John are not named as the two that he sent, just as two of his disciples.

Here we read, he sent Peter and John saying, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. In other Gospels, it sometimes has the disciples initiating the question. Where do you want to eat the Passover? We're going to have to kill the Passover lamb tonight.

Where do you want to do it? And he gives an answer. This may simply be Luke's way of compressing that into a single verse. Jesus said, go and prepare the Passover that we may eat.

So they asked him, where do you want us to prepare? And he said to them, behold, when you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house which he enters. Then you will say to the master of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? Then he will show you a large furnished upper room there make ready.

So they went and found it as he had said to them, and they prepared the Passover. Now, it's interesting that when they said, where do you want to have the Passover? He didn't just give them an address or the name of the person whose house it was. It seems almost certain that it was the home of somebody that they all knew.

The reason I say that is that it does not indicate at all that the room was rented. And that they were supposed to say to the owner of the home, the teacher wants to know where he's going to eat the Passover. And they have a room already designated for him.

It would appear that somebody friendly to Jesus and almost certainly someone the disciples knew. Because they were with him almost all the time and people that he knew, they would likely know. Was the host in this case, that is provided an upper room.

Traditionally, the upper room was in the house of John Mark or John Mark's family. John Mark being a young man, we know that later on in Acts chapter 12, the house of John Mark's mother was the scene of a prayer meeting when Peter had been put in prison. And they were having an all night prayer meeting at the house of John Mark's mother when actually an angel came and did deliver Peter from prison and he came and knocked at the door.

There's really nothing to prove or to really determine that the upper room was in the house of John Mark's family. But it is a possibility and for some reason it's stuck as a tradition for a very long time. In any case, as I said, I believe that the house was owned by somebody known to the disciples.

So why is it that Jesus didn't just tell Peter and John, go to the house of so and so. And we'll do it there. I think the reason he did it in this more clandestine way was that Judas, as Jesus knew, had already made arrangements to try to deliver Jesus to the chief priest in a private setting.

The Passover meal was going to be just such a private setting. And if Judas knew where it was going to be in advance, he might well have gone and told the chief priest and they could have come and intercepted Jesus there and arrested him there and he might never have had the last supper or had occasion to give the upper room discourse. That was a very important final word, final message that Jesus gave to his disciples.

It's possible that he gave it in this veiled manner in order to conceal from Judas where it was going to be. Because as I said, he could just give an address or he could just give the name of the person whose house it was in and Peter and John could have gone there. But then Judas also would know where it was going to be.

Instead, he says, you go into the city, no doubt meaning Jerusalem, you'll see a man with a pitcher of water in his head. Well, that's unusual. Usually the women carried the pitchers of water in their head.

This would be a slave, a servant, no doubt. And he says, you'll know that you're looking at the right guy because he'll have a pitcher of water in his head and not many will be carrying pitchers of water in their head. Follow him through the windy streets to wherever he goes and whatever house he goes into, you go in there.

That doesn't mean it was a house they weren't familiar with, but it was just one that he didn't want to identify there as he was telling them in advance where he was going to have the Passover. Just follow this guy and when he goes into the house, that's the house to go into. Then go ask the owner of the house where the room is that the teacher is going to have Passover with his disciples.

No doubt when Peter and John finally came there, they may well have recognized the house and known the owner of the house. But as I say, if Judas had been informed in advance of where it was going to be, he could have arranged for Jesus to be arrested there. And as it turned out, he never did find out where the place would be until he went there with Jesus and the other disciples.

But he did leave that room to go and alert the authorities that Jesus would later that evening be in Gethsemane. And that's where they did catch up with him. Anyway, I think it likely that Jesus had made all these arrangements before.

That the man with the water pot was going to be waiting for the disciples to come and to silently, upon seeing them, see their presence as the signal that he was to put the pot on his head and walk into the right place. And all this had no doubt been arranged before by Jesus either through messengers or by himself personally. Then we come to the actual Last Supper.

Now, that is recorded here in verses 14 through 23. It also, of course, has its parallels in Matthew 26 and in Mark 14. Interestingly, John's gospel doesn't really record the Last Supper.

But it records more detail than any of the other gospels about what took place in the upper room. Mark and Matthew and Luke tell us of the ritual that later became the ritual of the church, of taking communion, when Jesus established the new covenant by the giving out of the bread and the wine to his disciples there and making a rather untraditional Passover for them. John doesn't even tell us of those details.

He tells us of things that are left out by the other gospels. He skips right over this meal and goes on to talk about things that Jesus talked about at the table after the meal was over. Or even about Jesus rising from the table during the meal and washing the disciples' feet.

We'll come to that in our next session. We won't deal with that now. But in the Synoptics we have, in every case, this story which became a very important tradition in the early church.

The Apostle Paul recalls it in 1 Corinthians 11 when he's trying to correct the Corinthian Christians in their unruly manner and unworthy manner in which they were taking the meal. He reminds them of how Jesus instituted this in the upper room and he gives the conversation and so forth. So we have it in four places in the New Testament.

In the three Synoptic Gospels and also in 1 Corinthians 11. And we'll take a look at it. It says in verse 14, And when the hour had come, he sat down with 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 the bread and 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. Now, it says in verse 14, when the hour had come, both Matthew and Mark say in the evening this happened.

It happened probably just after sundown. Jesus may have made his trek into Jerusalem from Bethany after dark to avoid arousing much attention. It was the evening hour when he came.

And they came to the house which Peter and John had previously prepared the meal in. And his statement of verse 15 was somewhat ominous. He said, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

He had eaten Passover with him probably a couple or three times before. There are at least two other Passovers in the ministry of Jesus recorded, and there could be three others, as we've talked about before. No one is quite sure whether John 5-1 is talking about a Passover or some other feast.

But many feel there were a total of four Passovers in the ministry of Jesus, and the disciples probably would have eaten at least one or two of them previously with him. But the Passover meal had a regular ritual from which Jesus departed slightly on this occasion. I suppose we are to assume that he went through most of the regular ritual as it was customarily done, with the exception of the details that are recorded here, which were definitely out of the ordinary.

The Passover, as you know, was a yearly celebration of the Exodus and of the fact that God had caused the nation of Israel to come into existence as a result of delivering them out of Egypt. That deliverance was accomplished by God twisting Pharaoh's arm by a series of ten plagues, the last of which was actually the killing of Pharaoh's own firstborn son. And not only Pharaoh's, but the firstborn of all of Egypt, with the exception of the firstborn of those households who had observed a ceremony that God had prescribed for them.

They were to kill a lamb, put the blood on the lentils in the doorpost and eat the lamb that night. And then if there was blood on the doorpost, the death angel would pass through Egypt and God said, I will pass over you if I see the blood. And so the Jews, forever afterwards, which was commanded in, I think, the 12th chapter of Exodus, chapters 12 and 13, were commanded to keep the Passover as a remembrance of this forever, throughout all their generations.

And they were to do so by eating an actual lamb at Passover time, but they also had a ritual of eating unleavened bread, or matzos, and drinking ceremonially from a certain cup several times. And the cup did represent the blood of the lamb that was slain in Egypt, which became the ticket for Israel out of Egypt, the blood that was put on the lentils in the doorpost. The unleavened bread represented the body of the lamb that was slain, that they ate that night before they fled from Egypt, which strengthened them and gave them the ability to make a long trek in the middle of the night.

Now, probably, in the previous occasions, when Jesus had eaten Passover with the disciples, he didn't depart from the normal ritual at all. But he says, I have had great desire to eat this Passover, I mean, this year. There's something special about this year's Passover, that's different from the other times I've eaten with you, and I've been looking forward to it.

It's been with great desire that I eat this Passover with you before I suffer. And the principal thing he did differently was that when it came to drinking the wine and eating the unleavened bread, he associated it not with the blood and the body of a lamb, which had been the deliverance from Egypt, but with his own blood and his own body, which was accomplishing another exodus, and with the establishment of a new covenant. He said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

You see, the older covenant was established almost immediately upon the escape of the Jews from Egypt. When God brought them out of Egypt, he brought them out to Mount Sinai, and there he established a covenant with them, which had been in force for about fourteen, fifteen hundred years at the time Jesus sat in the upper room with his disciples. Therefore, the eating of Passover represented the whole complex of exodus events, namely, God's deliverance of them from Egypt and his establishing a covenant with them at Sinai, making them his people.

But Jeremiah had said in Jeremiah chapter 31, in verses 31 through 33, or through 34, Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, had said that God was going to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob, and it would be a spiritual one, where he wrote his law in their hearts and so forth. And certainly Jesus was referring to that passage in Jeremiah when in Luke 22, 20 he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. He was saying that as the former Passover celebrations had looked back to the establishing of the old covenant at Sinai and the deliverance from Egypt to the disciples, he was now giving new meaning to the ritual.

It would commemorate the sealing of a new covenant, which is established on his own shedding of his blood and on his own body being broken for them. And so this gave a new twist, an entirely new twist to the Passover. Now, we still keep Passover, but we don't do it in the Jewish manner.

There are Christian churches that bring in, often they bring in rabbis or Hebrew Christians to come and officiate at a Passover-style communion, especially around Easter time. I know of many churches that bring in some Jewish believer. Some Jewish Christian organizations offer this service to churches if they want to have a traditional Passover Seder held on Good Friday or sometime around Easter in order to give Gentile Christians an appreciation for the ritual.

And it was rich with symbolism that is fulfilled in Christ. However, it is not necessary for us to actually take a Seder or to continue keeping Passover in that manner. There may be some value in appreciating all the symbolism of the Jewish Seder, but it is not one of the things that is an obligation of Christians to do.

It has become a tradition, however, for Christians to commemorate Passover with something less elaborate of a ritual. And all of you are familiar with it, depending on the denomination or background that you have. You may come from a church that takes communion every week.

There are churches that do this every Sunday. The early church apparently did this. There are churches like the one I was raised in that do it once a month, usually the first Sunday of each month.

I believe the Presbyterians do it four times a year. And there are probably groups that do it less often than that. It proves that the Bible doesn't tell us anything about how often it needs to be done, or else all Christians would do it with the same frequency.

The Bible nowhere says how often this is to be done. And Paul, in telling about this in 1 Corinthians 11, says, As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the Lord's death until he comes. Which indicates that the Christians were, with some frequency, at some regular intervals, eating and drinking the cup and the bread and commemorating the death of the Lord, and would continue to do so until Jesus comes.

That's what Paul says, for example, in verse 26 of 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11, 26, Paul said, For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now, this ceremony has been called by different names.

Paul calls it the Lord's Supper. Sometimes it is called Communion. The word Communion in the Greek is koinonia, and it means a sharing, or a commonness of life that is shared together.

And Paul uses this actual word in another passage, in 1 Corinthians 10, when again he is talking about this ritual practiced in the early church. In 1 Corinthians 10, and beginning around verse 14, Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak to you as wise men.

Judge for yourselves when I say, The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and of one body. For we all partake of that one bread. And he goes on.

Now, he says that the cup of blessing and the bread that they blessed was the communion of the body and the blood of Christ. Communion, as I say, in the Greek koinonia simply means a sharing in the life of. And the Christians would get together with some regularity, probably every week.

We know eventually, in the 2nd century, the Christians met every week on Sunday to do this, and that may be a practice that began in apostolic times. And they would drink wine, and they'd eat bread to celebrate the shared life that they had in Christ. Now, in all likelihood, and there is evidence of this, in the New Testament, this ritual was associated with a love feast in the early church.

It was not just a wafer and a thimble full of juice, but it was in association with an actual feast that was a love feast of the Christians. They would take the communion. In fact, the entire church service in the early days seemed to be organized around a feast.

Moishe Roseden, who is the founder of the Jews for Jesus, and still is the director of that organization, whom I've known for many years, tells in his testimony of his conversion from Judaism, or from a Jewish background. When he became a Christian, he was saved in a Baptist church, or at least joined a Baptist church shortly thereafter. And he had a hard time adjusting to the Christian customs as opposed to the Jewish customs he'd known before.

And one Sunday, he was sitting in church, and it was announced from the pulpit that the following week they would be taking communion together, and that people should come with their hearts prepared for communion. And he had a friend in the church who was a deacon. He pulled him over and said, what's this communion that they're talking about? And his friend said, well, you're a Jew.

It's like Passover. And so Moishe Roseden said, oh, he didn't know that Christians did that too. And so he was really looking forward to the next Sunday.

In fact, he made sure he didn't eat any breakfast before coming to church, because to the Jew, a Passover is a major meal. And he thought, well, it's interesting that how are they going to have the communion in here with all these benches? I guess they're going to take the benches out and bring in tables. But when he got there the next Sunday, there were no tables, just benches.

In fact, the only thing that was out of the ordinary was they were apparently going to have a funeral, because there was a big thing in front covered with a sheet that looked like a casket. So he thought maybe he'd heard him wrong. Maybe he got the days wrong.

He thought it was going to be a Passover meal, and it turned out it was perhaps going to be a funeral. And he thought it strange as he listened to the sermon all through the service that there was no mention of who was under the sheet. He thought that there would have been some mention of that.

And when the sermon was all over, to his surprise, when they removed the sheet, he saw these little silver platters with things, and they got passed around. And he asked his friend the digger, he says, what's that there? And he said, well, that's the communion. And so he waited until he was served.

And he says what he got was this little prefab wafer, a fraction of an inch long and a little tiny thimble-sized cup of juice. And he says, this is what they call Passover? This is what they call their version of Passover? And you Gentiles say we Jews are stingy. You invite us to a feast and you give us a little tiny bit of juice and a little tiny cracker.

But that is, of course, the way the culture has developed. The early Christians actually did have a feast along with communion. And I don't know when it changed.

I imagine it was very probably through the influence of Catholicism or at least some of the customs of the Eucharist that began to develop maybe before actual, possibly before the papacy came into power. I don't know the exact timing. But of course, with the rise of the Roman Catholic traditions about this came the idea that a wafer becomes the actual body of Christ when blessed and the cup becomes the blood of Christ.

It became more of a ritual than a feast. And it became unnecessary to have a whole meal. They could just bring the wafers and a cup to church and they could just stick it in as part of the service.

I'm afraid I don't know the years or the timing when this changed or what stages it went through. But obviously, Protestants have bought into the whole idea that communion is just a little ceremony that you throw in the middle of or at the end of the church service. But the early Christians did have something much more like a Passover meal, though probably without all the ritual of the Seder.

But it was a love feast and they did eat bread and they did drink in such a way as to commemorate the death of Jesus. Now, in addition to calling this the Lord's Supper and communion, of course, there's the term Eucharist that's used of it. The Roman Catholics call it the Eucharist.

This comes from the Greek word that means giving of thanks. And probably that's because here in verse 17 it says Jesus took the cup and he gave thanks. And the Greek word for giving of thanks is Eucharistos or something like that.

It's from the English word or the word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for giving of thanks. Now, there is, of course, difference of opinion as to the actual meaning of the ritual in different traditions. The Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, and say the Baptists would all have very different ways of looking at what takes place.

To the Roman Catholic, the belief is transubstantiation that the substance of the wafer and of the wine actually is transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Luther didn't quite go along with this after he reformed things, but he held to a view very close to it. His view is called consubstantiation and his view was that the actual body and blood of Christ is above and below and to either side and through the wafer and the drink, but it didn't actually become the body and blood of Jesus.

It's hard to know exactly how that differs from transubstantiation in fact, but both views are very hard to justify scripturally. The Anabaptist view was and is, and many modern evangelicals have the Anabaptist view of this, that nothing supernatural happens to the bread or the wine. It's just a ceremony.

Just like nothing supernatural happens when you're baptized, it's just a symbol of something and it's something to commemorate or to celebrate a certain thing. And taking communion to, at least those of the Anabaptist heritage, is really just a memorial to remind us of Jesus' death for us. And that seems to agree pretty well with the actual wording, especially of what Paul says about it in the passage I mentioned a moment ago in 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

Because if you look at Paul's rendering of what took place at the meal, in 1 Corinthians 11, beginning with verse 23, Paul says, For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, Eucharist, he broke it and said, Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim, you declare something, the Lord's death until he comes.

It does not say you participate, you actually eat the flesh and blood of Jesus, but you proclaim something by this symbolic gesture. You do something to remember him. And so that would seem to be the basis for the idea that the communion meal is really just a remembrance, just a memorial.

Now, in favor of the view that the wafer and the wine actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus, it is argued, first of all, that Jesus said, This is my body. This is my blood. And there were many debates around the time of the Reformation about this, because some insisted, and some still do, that when Jesus held up the bread and said, This is my body, that he, you take that quite literally, it really is his body.

And that if you make it out to be anything less than his body, for instance, just a piece of bread that represents his body, that you are not taking Jesus seriously, and the same thing with the cup. That's principally the argument. Now, to me, that's quite an unreasonable thing to take it that literally.

It's obvious that people continually discuss symbols as if they were the thing. If I showed you a picture of my family, and I pointed out all the faces, and I said, Now, this is my wife, this is my son, my oldest son, this is my two daughters, and this is my youngest son. You wouldn't believe that I was saying my wife is really this image on this picture, that I actually carry my wife and family in my pocket with me.

You would realize that what I'm saying, even though I'm saying this is my wife, these are my children, that I'm saying that these are a representation of my family. These are the image, or I carry this as a symbol of their presence. I mean, I don't get that philosophical about it, but the idea is, I might use the language, this is my wife.

If I was trying to show you how to get somewhere on a map, and we open up a map, I say, Now, this is Main Street here. That's not really Main Street, this is really a printed piece of paper. But what's on the paper represents an actual street called Main Street, and we would commonly say, Now, this is First Street, and this is Third Street, and you want to go down here, and this here is the Walmart store.

And it really isn't. It's really just a representation, but it's a very common way of speaking. And it would be very strange for people to insist on a literal manner of interpretation of those kinds of remarks.

Furthermore, it's very difficult to believe that Jesus was making a literal statement about the bread being his actual body, since his body was still alive. His blood was still flowing through his veins. And as soon as he said, This is my body, if he was acting as a priest, actually transforming the bread into his body, we would expect that some part of his body disappeared about the same moment it became bread.

His body was sitting there with a certain number of molecules in it. And if some of those molecules became, the bread became part of his body, then it would be at the expense of some of the molecules in his body as he sat there. I mean, it just isn't a reasonable way to exegete the passage.

I'll tell you what I think is the rationale behind this transubstantiation doctrine. You see, Jesus said in John chapter 6, Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has eternal life. And he said, Anyone who doesn't eat my body and drink my blood does not have eternal life.

And of course, in my opinion, when Jesus later in that same conversation said the flesh profits nothing, the spirit gives life. And the words I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life. He's saying that I'm speaking in spiritual symbols here about my body and my blood.

The words I'm speaking are spiritual. My words are life. The spirit gives life.

The flesh doesn't profit. He just said, If you eat my flesh, you'll have life. Then he says, The flesh doesn't do it.

It's the spirit that gives life. So he's basically saying, What I said about that is to be understood spiritually, not literally. You don't really have to munch on my flesh literally.

But because of the, again, desire to take his words as seriously in a literal form as the Jews mistakenly did, certain Christians have felt, Well, you've got to actually eat the body of Jesus and drink his actual blood in order to have eternal life. And I think it became a political thing in the church to control people, to say, Listen, the only way you can literally eat his flesh and drink his blood is if a priest magically transforms the bread and the wine into his actual body and blood. And that means you have to come to church where the priest does this magic trick.

And if you don't go to church, you won't be able to do it because the bread and wine you have at home aren't the body and blood of Jesus. It only happens when the priest does his little thing over it. And therefore, in order to have eternal life in you, you have to eat the body and blood of Jesus.

The only way you can do that is to go to the Catholic church and to be subject to the terms for being allowed to the communion table. And if you do anything that displeases the Catholic church, they excommunicate you. That means they remove you from communion.

You're out of communion. You don't get to take the Mass. You don't get to take the Eucharist.

And of course, that means you die and go to hell because you cease to eat the body and blood of Jesus. Now, in my opinion, that perverts the whole spiritual meaning of what Jesus said. And basically what it does is gives the church a political power over people because the church has the power to say who they will and whom they will not allow to eat at their table.

And only their table with the priest pronouncing certain hocus pocus over things, if you'll pardon my irreverence, is able to turn this stuff into something spiritual that will give you life. And it's, in my mind, it's a result of the corruption of the church as the church began to get further and further away from the spiritual nature of it that Jesus established and the apostles enforced. I think that rituals and power trips in politics became more dominant in the shaping of the culture and the practices of the church than the teachings of Jesus did.

Anyway, that's my opinion about it. Now, we have here in verses 21 through 23 Jesus predicting that somebody at the table with him was going to betray him. Actually, though Mark and Matthew both, in their versions, have this prediction, they place it before the Lord's supper.

Luke obviously tells us about the Lord establishing this ritual and then predicting the death, excuse me, the betrayal of himself by someone at the table. Mark and Matthew place the announcement that someone there at the table would betray him before the actual supper. And because of that, it's not clear what the order of events was.

Shortly after Jesus announced that one would betray him, according to John chapter 13, John asked Jesus, Who is it that's going to betray you? And Jesus said to him privately, in a whisper apparently, The one that I give this sop to. And Jesus dipped a sop into the bitter herbs and he handed it to Judas. And the Bible says in John chapter 13 that as soon as he received the sop, Judas left.

Now, if all that happened before Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, which would agree with Mark and Matthew's chronology of things, then Judas would apparently have left the room before Jesus washed the disciples' feet, before he established the new covenant with them. If it happened in the order of events that Luke gives, rather, then Judas was present to take communion with the disciples and was apparently also there when Jesus washed the feet. We don't know which order is correct.

It may be a little easier for us to stomach that Jesus established the new covenant with the disciples after Judas was gone, since Judas obviously was not a participant. However, if Judas was there at the table and did take the supper, it shows that a person could eat, as it were, the body and blood of Jesus and still be damned. Because there's really nothing that would physically have prevented Judas from eating the bread and drinking the cup and going through the ritual, although Satan had already filled his heart and he was the son of the devil, the son of perdition.

In any case, Jesus predicts that one at the table will betray him. In verse 22 he says, Truly the Son of Man goes as it was determined, but woe to the man by whom he is betrayed. Mark and Matthew make it a little longer statement and explain the woe a little more detailed.

Matthew and Mark both say it would be better for that man if he were never born. Some have wondered whether Judas might have repented in the end and been saved. We read of Judas having regrets and hanging himself, but I don't think we can assume that he ever repented to the point of salvation because how then could Jesus say it's better for that man that he was never born? Someone might say, well, he's so notorious for what he did, even if he went to heaven.

The guy would have been better off never born, but I don't see that as true. If a person went to heaven and was going to live eternally with God, I don't see how, regardless of what evil things he did in his lifetime, if his ultimate destiny is to live forever in heaven, then I personally think that would suggest that he went to hell. It couldn't be said that it was better for him that he was never born if he actually ended up in heaven.

He is called elsewhere the son of perdition. Perdition is a reference to damnation. He called the scribes and Pharisees sons of hell.

Remember, he said they cross land and sea to make one proselyte and then they make him twice as son of hell as themselves. Judas was a son of hell too. He was a son of perdition.

And therefore, his citizenship was not in heaven but in hell, and I don't believe that we'll see him in heaven. If Jesus said, in Mark and in Matthew, it would be good for that man if he had not been born. It's better to never be born than to be born and go to hell.

Also, it says here in verse 23, and they began to question among themselves which of them it was that would do this thing. Matthew actually goes on and says that Judas himself asked Jesus, Rabbi, is it I? According to Matthew 26, verse 25, Judas said, Rabbi, is it I? And Jesus said, you have said it. However, John 13 gives us more detail but we're going to wait on that until next time because John 13 supplements some of this in ways that it's hard to know the exact chronology so we'll wait until we can look at John 13 in some detail which will be next time.

And then we'll go on from there. And that's where we'll quit today.