FROM SYMBOL TO SUBSTANCE (2): FUELED BY LOVE

(Luke 22:14-20)
July 2, 2017

Read Luke 22:14-20 This passage is unique. It is at once the last official
Passover and the first Lords Supper. Passover was the annual Jewish feast
that commemorated God delivering Israel from Egyptian captivity. But it also
looked forward to an ultimate rescue deliverance from sin not just for Israel
but for everyone who would believe. Israels deliverance was the worlds
greatest object lesson symbolizing ultimate rescue from sin, guilt and death.

But symbol without reality is useless, right? What is promised must eventually
be delivered. What is anticipated must be actualized. A few years ago I took
Patty to an anniversary dinner one night at a nice restaurant at the beach. With
dinner over I slipped her a small box wrapped as a present -- one of my few
good nights! Inside the box, she found a keyring, and she immediately knew.
It symbolized a new car and I got a lot of mileage out of that gesture both
from her and the waitress. Shortly, she picked out that new car. The fact that
she drove it 20 years is another story. But that was a good night.

But what if I hadnt delivered on that promise? Would she have treasured that
symbol? Stored the keyring in a jewelry box? I dont think so! The symbol
was only good when it was actualized. The promise had to appear.

Thats what Jesus is teaching here! What Passover symbolized were useless
unless realized. So in the middle of the Passover feast Jesus suddenly shifts
gears and initiates a new memorial, the Lords Supper commemorating not
deliverance symbolized, but deliverance realized! Its a profound text
showing us 7 truths about deliverance, symbolized in Moses; realized in Jesus.

I. The Need for Deliverance Just as the Israelites were hopelessly

enslaved by Pharaoh, so every person ever born is hopeless enslaved to sin.

II. The Mediator of Deliverance God sent Moses to deliver Israel.

Now He has sent Jesus to be our deliverer. God warned Israel in Exod 33:5,
if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.
Such is the intensity of Gods holiness. They needed a mediator as do we for
Heb 12:29 reminds for our God is a consuming fire. Access to God requires
a mediator or we would be destroyed instantly.

III. The Price of Deliverance

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Sin does not go easily. Theres a price. So God imposes a final plague: Exod
11: 4) About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5) and every
firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits
on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the
handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. Its a death sentence for every
first born in Egypt. Ethnic background wont help. Its imposed on Egyptian
and Israeli alike. Riches wont help. The sentence covers from Pharaoh to the
lowliest slave. Good works wont help. The situation looks hopeless.

But, God says, there is one way. Take a furry little lamb, kill it, eat it and
put its blood on the door. Do that and the angel of death will pass over
that house. Theres safety under the blood. The perfection of that little lamb
prefigures the perfection of Jesus. So now we have Jesus taking the cup in v.
20: This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Safety is found only in applying very precious blood.

That is an offensive message. It comes under fire in amazing places. It was

lost at Southern Sem by the early 90s. Dr. Al Mohler was appointed president
to get it back. But he describes his first day as a student there in the mid-70s
by saying in his first class, first hour there the class was asked to intro
themselves and explain why they were taking the class. The line wound
around until it came to one young woman who was studying to be a
missionary. She said she was taking the class because she wanted to know
more about Jesus Christ and his shed blood. The professor exploded. He
said, There will be no more bloody cross religion in this classroom. Is this
understood? He said, That is not tolerated. It is beneath dignity and self-
respect to believe in a God who had to kill in order to forgive. In Seminary.

Did God say that? No! Human wisdom said that. God said, Eph 2:13: But
now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ. No blood; no salvation. In a passage we read last week,
Exod 24:8: And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said,
Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in
accordance with all these words (the Law). That symbolized the great reality
Peter described when he said weve been saved by sprinkling with his blood
(I Pet 1:2). There is symbol turned into reality. No blood; no salvation.
Offensive yes to ancients as well as moderns. The bloody mess of the cross
has always been offensive. Its meant to be offensive to show us how awful sin
is to a holy God and how precarious our position with Him.

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But when the blinders come off, we begin to see the cross differently. When
we realize it was the only way God could maintain His holy opposition to
sin, and still save the sinner we begin to see the beauty of the cross. We
begin to treasure it when we see its where He paid the price of His own
demands for our deliverance. I Pet 1:18-19: knowing that you were
ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with
perishable things such as silver or gold, 19) but with the precious blood of
Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. When we see He is our
lamb without blemish, and His blood is the price of our deliverance, how we
cherish it, realizing the price of sin is either our own life, or our life hidden
in Christ. Hes our price.

Any place where there are a lot of sheep, youre liable to see a little lamb
running around with an extra fleece tied onto its back with little holes for its
legs. Whats happened? Its extra cold! No! Its mother died. Without a
substitute mother it will die as well. But other ewes reject it because it does
not smell like their own. Its not theirs. But if another lamb has died, the
shepherd will skin the dead one and use its fleece to make a cover for the
orphaned lamb. The mother will smell her own lamb and accept it as one of
her own. Covered by the identity of another; delivered by the death of a
substitute. So even nature teaches what was realized in Jesus who by a single
offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified
(delivered) (Heb 10:14). What grace!

IV. The Motive for Deliverance

Why did God deliver Israel? To show up Pharaoh? To demonstrate His power?
To make a point of His sovereignty? Yes! But the primary motive? Moses
knew. Exod 15:13) You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you
have redeemed. Gods love saw the need; Gods love sent Moses; Gods love
planned and executed the deliverance; and it is Gods love that Passover was
intended to commemorate. Love is the reason!

And so Jesus tells His disciples: I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover
with you (15). Why? Because He loves them. He longs to share this last
commemoration with them. But He has more on His mind than the past that
Passover celebrates! I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you
before I suffer. Jesus isnt just thinking of Gods love demonstrated in the
past. He is anticipating the ultimate expression of that love when He will
become the personification of Gods love in the most dreadful and final way.
And He has known from the beginning where His life is leading.
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Turn Lu 9. Jesus has taken Peter, James and John to a mountaintop. Awaking
from sleep, they find the earthly veil of flesh removed and He is shining forth
in all His glory as God. Amazing picture. Lu 9:30: And behold, two men
were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, 31 who appeared in glory and spoke
of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. His
departure. Only the word isnt departure. The word is exodus. Theyre talking
about the exodus. Only its not Moses great exodus. It is the greater exodus
of Jesus. It is the exodus where He will not only be the mediator, but also the
sacrificial lamb, absorbing in Himself the sin of all believers. The salvation
Moses and Elijah have on credit is due. Jesus knows whats coming.

Imagine living with the conscious awareness that the most painful physical,
emotional and spiritual devastation of all time is coming your way. And
imagine knowing that you could avoid it that you have the power to call it
off but if you do, every friend you have, every person you know, and in fact,
every person who ever lived will be eternally damned to suffer the fate you
are escaping. Imagine carrying the weight of that knowledge thru years of
preparation. Imagine explaining it and no one understands. You are all alone
with your burden. Imagine knowing that in your moment of greatest need,
every human friend will abandon you and so will God the Father Himself.
Its headed your way like a cloud of toxic gas the soldiers in WWI could see
coming, knowing its horror but with no escape.

Knowing all that, could you say, My dear friends, I have longed to
commemorate this coming event with you before I suffer? Could you do
that? Knowing that your friends will shortly cut and run? This is the love of
God. Beloved, you have no idea how much God loves you. You have no idea.
This wasnt just for the disciples; it was for you, too. This is the motive for
deliverance. Jn 13:1: Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus
knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father (His
exodus), having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the
end. Warts and all, He loved them. To the end. All the way to the cross. No
shortcuts. No abandoning them as they would abandon Him. No turning back.
Knowing all that was coming, He loved them all the way to the end.

Listen, if it is the infinite character of Gods holiness that places our eternal
existence in jeopardy because we fall short of His glory and it is; it is the
infinite character of Gods love that provides the only means of deliverance.
Before you shake your fist at God at the thought that He would condemn you
for your shortcomings, you better take a look at the cross where at the expense
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of a rupture in His own triune Person He paid the price for your rescue.
Youd better look there because what His holiness demanded of you, His
love delivered for you. And it wasnt because you were so lovable any more
than His disciples. He didnt find them so irresistibly attractive and intelligent
and wise that He was driven to die for them. Paul tells us in Ro 5:8, but God
shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were still sinners. Remember Hab 1:13? You [God] who are of
purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong. That doesnt mean
Gods not aware. It means His character is so holy He could never tolerate the
least sin. Our least offensive thought, word or deed is so offensive to Him that
He cannot stand to look at it or us. Yet, Pauls point is, while you and I were
still like that still in our sin God loved us and Christ died for us. We will
never understand the love of God. We love for what we find in others. So we
love the good and beautiful and hate the ugly. God loves not for what He
finds in us but for what He finds in Himself or we would all be doomed. We
are not naturally beautiful to Him. His love is the most priceless gift we have;
it is why God sent a mediator to deliver. The motive is love.

Garrison Keiller of Lake Wobegon fame told of the pain he endured in

choosing up baseball teams. "The captains are down to their last grudging
choices the slow kid for catcher someone to stick out in right field where
no one ever hits it. The scrubs, the remaining kids they treat as handicaps.
If I take him, you have to take him. Sometimes I go as high as sixth
usually lower. But just once just once I'd like Darrell to pick me first
and say, I want him the skinny kid with the glasses and the black shoes.
You. I want you. But I've never been chosen with much enthusiasm. Is that
you? Perhaps in this life youve never been chosen with much enthusiasm. But
I tell you that in spite of yourself, by God you have been loved and chosen
with great enthusiasm. Having loved His own . . . He loved them to the
end.

Conc C. S. Lewis gives a beautiful picture of all this in The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe. One of the four children, Edmund, is enticed by the wicked
witch with Turkish Delight candy and soon finds himself enslaved. When the
great lion, Aslan, comes to his rescue, the wicked witch contends that every
traitor belongs to her and she has a right to the blood of every sinner. But to
the amazement of all, after a private conversation with Aslan, she lets the boy
go. But later that night, Aslan surrenders himself to the witchs camp allows
himself to be shaved of his magnificent beard, ridiculed, beaten, spat upon and

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tied to the Table of Stone. There the witch draws near with a razor sharp knife
plunges it into his heart, killing him as the children watch from a distance.

Next morning, Lucy and Susan return to get Aslans body, but they find the
Stone Table broken and Aslans body nowhere to be found, until suddenly,
they turn around and there he is, larger than they had ever seen him, shaking
his great mane, fully alive and well. They begin to weep with joy and hug and
kiss him, but then they ask, What does it all mean? Aslan replies, It means
that though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a greater power still
which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.
But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and
darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different scene a
bigger picture. She would have known that when a willing victim who had
committed no treachery was killed in a traitors stead, the Table would crack
and Death itself would start working backwards.

This is what it means for the price and motivation for deliverance symbolized
in Passover to come alive in Jesus. Because the sinless Savior died / My
sinful soul is counted free; / For God, the Just, is satisfied / To look on Him
and pardon me. Thats the gospel. Death is working backwards for
believers. Thats how Gods love can trump Gods holiness -- if you let it.
Lets pray.