Communion Sunday

Well, welcome to you today on every campus in Yorktown and Newport News, Virginia Beach and online, and of course, the men at Indian Creek Correctional Center. Oh, I'm so thrilled you're here today, and I hope you're already making plans to be back to celebrate the greatest day in the history of the world with us next weekend. And listen, don't come alone. Bring everybody you know, because everybody needs to know that Jesus is alive. Oh, come on. I said Jesus is alive. The next weekend is the perfect opportunity to invite your one more, somebody who is close to you, but far from God. And don't forget, you can pick up a one more card to remind you to pray for your one more right out the invite kiosks in the lobby, or just follow the link in the chat online. You know, some of the most remarkable life changing stories that we've ever heard at Water's Edge Church have come from people that were invited by a friend to celebrate Easter with us, and God changed their lives forever. And I'm praying that's exactly what's going to happen for many people next weekend. Well, I'm sure that you can already tell today is a special Sunday, and so I wanted to approach it and preach the sermon in a little bit of a unique way. This church, well, it reminds me of the churches that I grew up going to. I sat in a pew just like this one as a kid, as a teenager, almost every Sunday of my life, and God moved powerfully in my life. Now, I'm going to be honest. There were some Sundays, especially as a little kid, that I fell asleep on a pew like this one. And then as an older kid, there were some Sundays where I would get the church giggles sitting on a pew like this one, and my mom would have to reach over and pinch the mess out of my arm. And then as a teenager, I'm quite certain, I passed a few love notes to cute church girls sitting on a pew like this one. So it wasn't every Sunday that God moved powerfully, but I am so incredibly thankful for all the

ways that God worked in my life sitting in a pew just like this one. And on Sundays like today, I love to reconnect with the past. You know, historically, we call this Palm Sunday. It's the day we celebrate Jesus's triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem. We're going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but I also want to make sure you know that we've set aside today as Communion Sunday. So as you entered one of our auditoriums today, you should have received a little communion cup. And I want you just to hold on to that until a little later in our service when our campus pastors come out and help lead us through communion. By the way, if you didn't receive one of those yet, our ushers are ready and they would love to help you get one right now. And if you're joining us online, well, this would be the perfect time for you to grab some crackers and some juice or maybe some bread and water, whatever you have available. We're going to use that a little bit later when we celebrate communion together. Now I get it. Communion might be a new word for some of you, depending on your background, on your religious experience, the church that you grew up going to. It's often referred to as communion or the Lord's Supper. Maybe you've heard it called Holy Eucharist or the Lord's Table. It's all referring to the same thing. It's all talking about that scene where Jesus gathered with his disciples in the upper room and they shared one final meal together consisting of bread and wine. I'm sure you know the scene. Da Vinci portrayed it like this, making it perhaps the most famous scene in all of Christianity. That painting actually reminds me of a bad Jesus joke I heard once. You ready for it? Jesus and his 12 disciples, they walk into a restaurant and Jesus says to the hostess, a table for 26, please. Confused, the hostess does a quick head count and says, but wait, there's only 13 of you.

And Jesus replies, yeah, but we all want to sit on the same side of the table. It's funny, right? You get it? Oh, come on. You get it? They're all on the same side, like the painting. Okay. My wife told me that was a bad one and I shouldn't use it, but I was like, I'm going for it anyways. We're going to get to that last supper scene shortly. It's the scene that kind of marks the end of Holy Week. It happens just before Good Friday. But first I want to make sure you see the scene that kicks off Holy Week. Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday. That's the day where we celebrate Jesus's triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem. He's riding on a donkey. The crowds have lined the streets. People are waving their palm branches. They're shouting, Hosanna to the King. This is how John records that day in the Bible. He writes this. The next day, the great crowd that had come for the festival... Now notice a little word, the festival. We're going to talk about that more in a moment. They heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches. They went out to meet him, shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel. And y'all, it was a celebration as Jesus entered a celebration that coincided with a Jewish festival.

And that's why the streets of Jerusalem, that's why they were packed full of people. I don't know, maybe picture something like New Year's Eve in New York City. There were people literally everywhere because Jewish people from all over had traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate this ancient tradition, an ancient Jewish festival known as Passover. That's the festival that was being celebrated on the day Jesus entered the city on the day that we call Palm Sunday. People had gathered to celebrate the Passover festival. Now, what is that? What is the Passover festival? Well, it was the festival that was created and commanded by God in the Old Testament that had been celebrated for over 1,400 years before Palm Sunday. I want you to think about that. This is a rich, ancient tradition. It was passed down from generation to generation to generation. And it goes all the way back to the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus. And that's what God tells his people to create an annual celebration. And he called it the Passover. It was a celebration where they would gather for a meal. They would sacrifice a lamb. They would eat the meal together. And the ceremony was to be called the Passover. In fact, I want to show you an explanation of the Passover from the book of Exodus in the Bible. It says this, when your children ask you, what is this ceremony, this Passover meal ceremony? What does this mean to you?

Tell them it is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. Now, you need to know this story, because if you don't know this story, then honestly, Palm Sunday and communion and really next weekend Easter, it really won't mean much to you today. So so let me remind you of it. God's people are in Egyptian captivity for four hundred and thirty years. Now, let that sink in for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. God's people, they aren't living the life that God wants for them. They're living a life as slaves. They're enslaved in Egypt and on their own. Well, they can't get free. By the way, that's a picture of our lives. You know this already. You know that sin enslaves us, that sin and the punishment of sin. It's so great that on our own, we can't get free of it either. But God, God sees them. And God hears their cries. And God answers them. And God rescues them. And God uses a guy by the name of Moses. Maybe you remember this. Their leader, Moses, goes to the Egyptian Pharaoh and says, on behalf of God, let my people go. And Pharaoh, he thinks about it and says, Nope, that's not going to happen. And so to punish Pharaoh and to rescue his children, God sends a series of 10 plagues, everything from frogs to locusts, to darkness, but the last of the 10, well, it was the worst of them all. For the 10th plague, the 10th punishment, God says,

I'm going to send the angel of death to every home tomorrow night. And the firstborn of every family is going to die. This is how far God is willing to go to rescue his children. The firstborn of every family will die because they will pay the punishment for the sin of the people. God says to Moses, you tell my people, if they'll go out into the field, they'll find a spotless lamb. And if they'll kill it and take the blood of that lamb and put it over the door frames of their home, when the death angel comes to their house, if he sees the blood of an innocent lamb, that he will pass over their house. And the firstborn of their home will live and will not die. And I just need to make sure you get this. God was in essence saying the blood of an innocent lamb is what will keep you from experiencing my punishment. The sacrificed lamb evidenced by the blood on the doorframe of your house. It will cause the death angel to pass over your house and you and your family will live. So sure enough, that night, the angel of death came and took the life of the firstborn of all of those who didn't have the blood over the doorpost. But the death angel passed over the houses that had the blood of a lamb over their doorpost and their firstborn's living. lived, and Pharaoh relented, at least for a time, and God's people were rescued, and they escaped Egypt, and they escaped bondage and slavery, and they were free to live as God intended for them to live, ultimately in the promised land. But from that event, God said this, once a year, once a year, I want you to have a ceremony, a celebration. I want you to call it Passover, because I never want you to forget what I did for you in Egypt.

I crossed over the homes of those who had the blood of a lamb on the doorpost. You escaped my punishment because of the blood of the lamb. And so for over 1,400 years, God's people gathered once a year, and they would kill a lamb, they would sacrifice it and eat it, really as a way to remember the Passover in Egypt. That was the tradition. Hey, that was the celebration that brought everybody to Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday. They were arriving early. They were ready to celebrate. Now, fast forward just a few days. Fast forward to the end of the week, to Thursday of Holy Week, and let me show you what the Bible says. Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John saying, go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover. Where do you want us to prepare for it, they asked. And he replied, as you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters and say to the owner of the house, the teacher asks, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you to a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there. I really love this. Jesus sends his disciples to find a dude in the city and say, hey, Jesus is throwing a party at your house tonight. We'll be there at seven. So look, it says this. They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table and he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, take this and divide it among you. For I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it and he gave it to them saying, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. Now, this all happened on the Thursday before Good Friday. So Jesus was about to be arrested, then crucified and buried. And in the moment, these disciples, they're reclining at the table with Jesus and y'all, they had no idea that the picture Jesus was showing them, that the metaphor Jesus was illustrating was actually about to result in his own death and burial. They didn't know in that moment, the significance of the moment like we know it today. All they knew was this, they were there celebrating the Passover with Jesus. They were there to celebrate a Passover meal, but instead, Jesus says, hey, there's a new covenant and he takes some bread and says, this is my body broken for you. And he takes some wine and he says, this is my blood poured out for you. And I don't exactly know what the response was in the room, but in my mind, I have to imagine that at least a couple of the disciples probably gasped because they looked around the room and they didn't see an innocent lamb. They looked around the room, they didn't see a lamb being sacrificed. And I have to wonder if they started to understand that Jesus was saying, I am the lamb. I'm the lamb to be sacrificed. My blood is the way to escape God's punishment for sin. I don't know whether they got it that day or not, but you can't miss it. The first Passover, it was simply a foreshadowing of the ultimate Passover. It was a precursor of what was to come. This is why Jesus's cousin, John the Baptist, cried out when he first saw Jesus.

Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is why Peter wrote, and he said to us, for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed. No, it was with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, way before, way before that first Passover. But he was revealed in these last times for your sake. Think about that. for your sake and for my sake, so that we could be saved. And then, in case you're a little bit hard-headed and you still don't get it, well, the Bible actually ties it all together for us to make sure that we all get it. The Bible says this, Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed for us. Sacrificed for you and me. You can't miss it. The Passover was celebrated for 1,400 years with a lamb, but it will be celebrated for the rest of time as we know it, with the lamb being the sacrifice of our sins. Jesus is the lamb, and his body was broken and his blood was spilled so that we would be spared the punishment for our sin. And if the blood of the lamb is over the doorpost of your heart and over the doorpost of your life, you will live and your sin will be forgiven. Do you see it, everybody? What was has been fulfilled in and through Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover, because Jesus is the Passover lamb, sacrificed for our sins, slain for our freedom, and his blood applied to your life, it'll save you forever. Shortly after that Passover meal, Jesus would be arrested, beaten, bloodied, crucified, buried, and like we'll celebrate next weekend, Jesus would defeat death, hell, and the grave and rise again. Hallelujah. He's alive. And then he sent his Holy Spirit to empower the church. And when the church began after Jesus' resurrection,

regularly when the church gathered, they would remember not the Passover in Egypt, but they would remember a new Passover. They would not go out and sacrifice a lamb because the lamb had already been sacrificed. And so they would gather together and take some time to remember what Jesus had done for them on the cross. They would remember the grace and the goodness, the kindness of Jesus offered freely for their forgiveness on the cross. Paul actually told the early church this. He said, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Now, look at that last line. You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. See, a lot of us, we might have grown up not thinking too much about communion. Maybe you grew up in a tradition that took communion every Sunday or once a month or once a quarter. Notice the Bible doesn't tell us how often we should do this. It just tells us that whenever you do it, you're making a proclamation. Communion is about so much more than just eating some bread and drinking some juice. We're actually proclaiming when we take communion. We're proclaiming that Jesus was a sacrifice that was made for our sin once and for all. We're proclaiming Jesus died. Don't miss this part. We're proclaiming that Jesus, he's coming again. Oh, I love that. Communion. It's about remembering Jesus's death. Yeah, he died. We remember. We look back with gratitude for his sacrifice. But we also look forward because Jesus is coming again. The early church used to cry from the depths of their soul, Maranatha. That just means come quickly, Lord Jesus. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Come. There's coming a day when Jesus will return and he will take all of us who know him with him to our forever home in heaven. When we get there, we won't just eat a little piece of bread and drink a little wine or juice, but we will celebrate the marriage supper of the lamb. It'll be a feast of all feast and the lamb, Jesus Christ himself, will be the head of the table. You see, there's so much more to this communion celebration than what you might realize.

We look back and we remember. We look forward with anticipation. And we also look inward to our own lives. Paul continued and said this to those early Christians and to us today. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. You see, we look inward to examine our own lives. And when we do, we ask two questions. And I really want you today to ask these two questions of yourself. First, has there ever been a moment in time where the blood of Jesus was applied to the doorframe of your life where you accepted his love and his grace and his forgiveness? Is Jesus your Lord and Savior? Meaning, have you accepted the offer of salvation that Jesus gives? If your answer to that is no, then today is your day to say yes to him. Today is your day to make him your Lord and Savior. And I'm praying that many of you would say that today and give your life to Jesus. In fact, in just a moment, I'm going to help you do that. And then when we take communion, it's going to be one of the most meaningful moments of your life. things that you've ever done. But here's a second question. The first one is, is Jesus, my Lord and Savior. And then number two, I want you to look inward and ask, am I living my life for him? Listen, Jesus gave his all for you so that he could be everything you need, everything. And because he's everything I need, I'm going to give everything I am to him and I'm going to live for him. Am I living my life for him? Because nothing makes me want to be more holy, more like Jesus, more in step with his word, more of who he's called me to be than remembering his death and anticipating his return. He died for me, so I want to live for him. And he's coming back for me, so I want to live for him. Communion, oh, it's the perfect time to consider your life, to confess any sin, and to ask God to help you follow him more closely. So in just a moment, your campus pastor will be out to lead us as a church family all together to take the Lord's Supper. But first, I want to ask you to really use these next few moments to prepare your heart for communion. Our band is going to come. They're going to lead us in one more song. And as they sing, this is really your opportunity to ask these two questions. Is Jesus my Lord and Savior? And am I living my life for him? You may want to just sit and reflect quietly as the band sings. You may want to stand and worship with them. You may want to slip down

to your knees as a posture of worship before the Lord. But these next few moments, they really are for you to let God speak to your heart and to prepare your heart for communion as we worship the one who is our Passover lamb. So now, would you bow your heads? Would you close your eyes? And if you don't know today that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, this is your moment to receive his love and his forgiveness. The Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And today, it's your day of salvation. So if you'd like to say yes to Jesus today, if you'd like to make him, your Lord and Savior, I'm going to lead you in a simple prayer right now. You just pray this prayer silently from your heart to God. And if you'd say, Pastor, include me in that prayer. Oh, I'm ready to give my life to Jesus. I'm ready to be saved. This is my salvation moment. If you want to be included in this prayer, would you just shoot your hand high in the air right now? All over the room. God bless you. And I just want you to take this moment to mark it so you never forget it. Anybody else ends up all over the room and online, you can just let us know over in the chat. I'm giving my life to Jesus today. You can put your hands down. Pray this now and really mean it. Say, Jesus, I want to know you. I want my sin forgiven by you. I want to be made right with God in heaven through you. And I want to live my life for you. So come into my life and be my Lord and Savior. And God, I thank you for every person praying that prayer today. And for all of us, all of us looking inward, looking back to remember and looking forward today with anticipation. I pray that these moments might draw us closer to you as we celebrate you, Jesus, our Passover lamb. It's in your name we pray. Amen.