Episode Details

The Lord’s Supper

Mark 14:22-25, Remsen Bible Fellowship, 05/25/2025

Introduction

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Why do Americans celebrate memorial day? Beginning in 1868, Americans began to set aside a day to remember the sacrifices of those who had died in the Civil War. This expanded throughout the course of the late 19th and into the 20th centuries, and the last Monday of May was officially set aside by the federal government to celebrate Memorial Day beginning in 1971. Of course, it is also now generally seen as a time when we can remember all of those we have loved and lost, while maintaining that particular emphasis on those who served our country through military service. As an aside, I’d encourage you, if you are able, to attend one of the memorial day programs in the area. There’s one here in town at the Cemetery, at 10am, and one over in Oyens at 11am later. The one here in town, if the weather is bad, will be just down the street at the City gym. There’s a service at the cemetery in Marcus at 9:30am. Oyens does a very nice job, if you don’t have a particular attachment to one of the communities. It’s important to remember. To remember those who went before. To remember sacrifice.

The Jewish people also have a Memorial day. The feast of Unleavened Bread, highlighted by the Passover meal, was described by God in this way: “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD” (Exodus 12:14).

What were the people of Israel supposed to remember on that day? They were to remember the salvation worked by God as he brought them out of Egypt. We discussed this some last week, but to refresh your memory on the Exodus story: After 400 years of sojourning in the land of Egypt, God determined to save his people from their Egyptian oppressors. For this purpose he had raised up Moses, to deliver the people from the hand of Pharaoh. Over and over, the Lord commands Pharoah to “let my people go, that they may worship me”, and Pharoah steadfastly refuses. In chapter eleven, God described for Moses the dreadful devastation which would come when he stretched out his hand over the land—the firstborn males in all of Egypt would die: both animal and human, from the slave girl grinding grain to Pharaoh on the throne. The firstborn would all die.

It is in chapter 12, then, that the Lord gives Moses instructions for this meal—a meal to be eaten in haste, consisting of bitter herbs, unleavened bread (all the leaven was cleared out—the two-fold purpose being the haste with which they would leave, and the symbolism which came to associate leaven with sin), and the passover lamb. This lamb, a spotless male from the flock, was to be killed and then roasted whole. The blood was to be taken, then, and sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel of the house using a hyssop branch, and when the angel of death passed through Egypt, any house that was covered by the blood would be passed over.

When the angel of death visited that night, Exodus 12:30 tells us, “Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.” The Lord had visited judgement on the enemies of his people, but Israel had been kept safe. Verses 31-32 continue, ‘Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”’

Of course, the story doesn’t end there—in chapter 14 we read that Pharaoh, though he had that lucid moment after the death of his son, hardened again against the Lord and his people. He rides with his fastest chariots out into the desert to overtake them, and has them pressed against the Red Sea. But the Lord protects his people from behind with a pillar of