The pattern and position of greatness

Luke 22:24-30…

Once again, Jesus is contrasting the way of the world with the way of the Word. According to our natural way of thinking, the person who is served is greater than the one who does the serving. This is how it normally plays out in secular society. But Jesus often wants us to do the opposite of what seems natural. The greatest person should be the greatest servant.

The issue here is not whether some saints should be greater than others, but rather how they use their greatness. Jesus said the great Christian is marked by the fact that they don’t use their position to push people around. While they may be the greatest, they are not to act like it, or to demand they be treated like it. They are characterized by servanthood.

Jesus never commands us to give up life, money, family, and power for nothing. He calls us to give up the temporary and imperfect things of this life in order to lay them up for the next. We are to give up wielding our platform, position, and power for ourselves. We are to serve Christ by serving His people, in order to be given a place of honor in His kingdom. In His kingdom, the disciples are promised that they will sit at His table, and that they will be given thrones on which they will be seated, and from which they will rule.

We are to pattern our lives after our Master. In fact, we do. Whatever pattern we are following is indicative of whom our master is.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

The meal of the Messiah

Matthew 26:26-29 / Mark 14:22-25 / Luke 22:15-20…        

This was the Passover, the night on which for over fourteen hundred years, the children of Israel celebrated God’s deliverance through blood and out of Egypt. In the shadow of where Solomon’s Temple had been built, where David had appointed the altar of thanksgiving to God (2 Chronicles 3:1), where Abraham had given up Isaac and the substitute had been found (Genesis 22:2), Jesus is instituting the Lord’s Supper. Here we see that Christ is the true Passover Lamb whose blood sacrifice establishes the New Covenant (Hebrews 9:15-17).

The Last Supper is the precedent for the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). His body, represented by the bread, is symbolic of His sinless life. His blood, represented by the cup, is symbolic of His atoning death. We don’t need His physical body and blood to come to us today, we need what His physical life and death brought to us for eternity. Jesus lived the life we should have lived and died the death we justly deserved. But on the cross, God treated Jesus as if He lived your life so He could treat you as if you lived His life (2 Corinthians 5:21). That’s the Gospel. Faith is spiritual eating.

I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Not only does the Lord’s Supper help us to remember the past, it also is a reason to look forward to the future (1 Corinthians 11:26). Just as the Passover was a symbol of the Lamb of God, so the Lord’s Supper is a symbol of an even greater feast: the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-9). How glorious will that day be when we, in our glorified bodies, sit down with Jesus as His bride, and feast at the banquet table of heaven!   

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

The point of no return

Matthew 26:21-25 / Mark 14:18-21 / Luke 22:21-23 / John 13:21-30…      

But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. Now this got the disciples’ attention. They might not as yet understood all the significance of the foot washing, or how it reflected so badly on them, but this they can understand right away and right well. Jesus was not only saying that one of them would betray Him, but that the man was doing it as Jesus spoke.  

We think that because we have not as yet committed the treacherous act, that somehow we have not as yet betrayed our Lord. Yet Jesus knows, and you should know, that the deeds of the damned start long before they come to full fruition (John 13:2). The trail of a traitor starts in the mind (James 1:14-15).  The world feeds it, the devil enflames it, the flesh indulges it.

Thankfully, we can turn around and start going the other way (1 John 1:9). Yet there does come a point when we have so yielded ourselves to the destiny of the devil, that there is no turning back. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly."

Jesus’ statement called for self-examination. We see that while the rest of the disciples asked his Lord if it is him; Judas asks the Rabbi. After all Judas has seen and heard, Jesus is still only a teacher to him. Many are the same, seeing Jesus as only a way to something else.

You have to get past the point of no return or you will one day turn back from following Jesus. If to you, He is truly God, then you’re good. If not, then eventually, you’ll turn and be gone.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©