Ep. 1: The Last Supper | The Crucifixion of Jesus

Your life is shaped by story, the stories you've lived, and even stories you haven't lived. Do you know the history of humanity was changed on a Friday 2,000 years ago? It's what's known as Good Friday. It's the last day of Jesus' life before He was crucified on the cross. Maybe you've heard this story before, maybe you haven't. What we're going to do today is, at the top of every hour, give you a new, fresh, powerful, and unique perspective on the moments that happened in that Good Friday and relate them to your life. Because God has a new place He wants to get you to. And today, we believe you can get there, if you're willing to sink into those moments in the story of Good Friday. To start off, we're going to go to my friend Hannah and talk about the last meal that Jesus ever had, the Last Supper. Have you ever seen that picture of Jesus and His disciples, and they're like, all on the side of the table, and they're all like, posed? You know, like, that? You know, that picture's really funny. I can't say that it's an accurate description, but what that picture's trying to get at is what would have been called the Last Supper. They call it that because it was the last time that Jesus would have sat down with His disciples. But let me tell you, everyone who was present at the Last Supper except Jesus, would not have called it that. They wouldn't have known that it was the last time that they were going to eat with their master. And so they also wouldn't have called it the Last Supper because it was called the Passover. It was a celebration of the Jews being freed from Egypt, being free from slavery and bondage, and celebrating how God brought them out of that land and into a new one. It was a big deal. So much so that every single moment of it was planned down to a tee. You could walk into a Passover celebration,

and you would know what would happen from top to bottom, from moment to moment, minute to minute. You could guess. You could say, oh, in three seconds, he's going to say this, and she's going to say that, and he's going to say this, and he's going to say that. It was down to the letter. So let me tell you how surprised, shocked, maybe even scared his disciples were when Jesus broke protocol. Jesus said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. You can find that scripture in Matthew. And let me tell you, the disciples wouldn't have just been excited about taking the bread that Jesus was talking about, eating the bread. They would have been like, did you just hear what he said? It would have been the equivalent of waking up on Christmas morning and being like, everyone, everyone, the presents, let's get the presents. OK, but don't open them. Let's go outside and instead sing a song. Everyone would be confused and probably angry and probably mad. But that's a whole different story. So that is the equivalent. We don't have much in our culture that follows a protocol like the Passover ritual would have. But you get my drift if I'm talking about Christmas. Jesus broke that protocol when he said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. And then he had the nerve to keep going. He said, this is the blood of the New Testament, not just the blood, my blood. I'm going to shed this for you. Drink all of it. And now he was referring to the wine. And today we don't always have wine when we think about the Last Supper, but maybe we have grape juice. That's PG-13. Whatever's your drift, no problem. Jesus would have given them this wine and they would have been confused. They would have been shocked. We look at that scripture and we kind of just graze over it, but they had a human moment. They were like, God, Jesus, why are you breaking the protocol? What are you doing? Why are you changing it up?

Why are you switching it up? There's no need for that. We know how this goes. And you know what? Jesus was trying to tell them something. He wasn't just suddenly dropping a hint about how he was the Messiah and was going to fulfill the prophecy of dying a death on a cross to save humanity. He was giving them overt reasons that says, this is my body broken, my blood poured out. And yet the disciples were still confused, still shocked, still really thrown off their game. Still maybe scared, maybe angry. I don't know, but they were human. And even with this big hint, they still didn't get it. Even with this giant, massive clue that Jesus dropped, they still did not understand. They still didn't understand that he would die, that he would die a cruel, cruel death to save us, that he would love us so much to go to the cross to endure a terrible, terrible death. They still didn't get it. So maybe you're in a space right now. Maybe you're like me. Anything that deviates from the plan that you and him had worked out, that you thought you should have, the thing you thought you should be doing, the person you thought you should be with, the kids you thought you should have by now. Anytime there's a deviation from that plan, you get upset. You get confused. Maybe you get scared. And I want you to know that if the disciples who walked the closest with Jesus, who lived among him, talk with him, learn from him, they were his friends. They laughed together. They cried together. Even if they didn't understand this moment, when Jesus deviated from the plan, when he did something different and he still met them there, he didn't judge them. He didn't kick them out. He didn't say, oh my gosh, y'all are so silly.

He didn't pop up out of that poster and get mad. He just loved them. He sat and broke bread with them anyway. He allowed them to sit at the table anyway. He invited them to indulge in the bread and the wine anyway. That's true for you. My brother, my sister, my friend on the other side of this screen. That's true for you. Even if you're confused about what God's doing, even if you don't know him and it's a scary thought to get to know him, because maybe you have to give up some things for that, he still wants you at the table. He's still inviting you into the last supper because even though it was the last and the disciples didn't know it, it would produce good. It was good for it to be the last supper because it meant that Jesus would go to the cross and he would save you and he would save me from everything we can't save ourselves from. It means he would go to the cross and he would bear the sin and the shame that you and I do every single day. It means that he would go to the cross and he would die so that you and I would be worthy. Hey friend, that's for you. This last supper was for you. And so if you're like the disciples, confused, shocked, angry at what God's doing, maybe you just don't get it. I want you to be encouraged. You still got a seat at the table.