Sermon – Maundy Thursday – Matthew 26:26-27 – 4/13/06
April 15th, 2006Click play to listen to the audio version of this sermon.
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“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
I. Jesus Offered Wine Mixed With Poison
A. The Poison Jesus Refuses
In Psalm 69, David expresses the agony of a man who has been betrayed by those whom he loved and who can find no mercy from man. “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched.” (vs.1-2).
And then with this parched throat of his, he pleads, “You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed; all my enemies are before you. Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.” (vs.19-20).
The only response that David gets for all of his pleas for mercy is poison. “They gave me poison for food and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” (vs.21).
As the trial before Pilate and the Jews comes to its end and the verdict is settled, Jesus is stripped of the robe he had been costumed in and the soldiers put his own clothes back on him. (Matthew 27:31). From Pilate’s chambers, the soldiers lead Jesus in a procession through the city, outside the walls to the place of execution known as “the Skull.” In Aramaic – “Golgatha.”
And when they came to the place, they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall. It was meant to be a tranquilizer to sedate Him while they nailed Him to the wood. But when He tasted it he would not drink it. He had yet seven last words to speak to the world and He would speak them with a clear head and plainly so that all the world might hear them clearly and plainly.
In Proverbs 31:6-7 it is written, “Give strong drink to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.” But Jesus would accept no merciful anesthesia in his terrible suffering and anguish. He would experience the full force of God’s judgment against sin. Your sin, my sin, the sin of the world – all punished in Jesus on the cross. There would be no mercy available to Him so that there would be no wrath available for sinners like you and me. There would be no escape for Him from the pain and suffering of separation from God so that you and I may be fully accepted by God and holy and righteousness in His sight.
This is He who led Israel through the dry desert, giving them food and drink along the way as He brought them to into a land flowing with milk and honey. But now, in His time of hunger and thirst, He is offered poisoned wine.
Just when the Lord needed a drink from the vineyard that He planted with His own hands in the hopes that it would produce a sweet wine for His pleasure, He is “scorned, disgraced and shamed; all my enemies are before me. Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none…“They gave me poison for food and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” (Psalm 69:19-21).
B. A Life Giving Drink Jesus Offers How can we help but contrast this treatment which Jesus is given here to the treatment which Jesus gave to His disciples in the Upper Room. “Take and eat, this is my body given for you. Take and drink, this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.”
In complete contrast to the poison He is given to drink, He gives bread and wine that gives eternal life to all who eat and drink of it in true faith. For in the bread and in the wine is the body and blood of Him who died on the cross so that we would live in heaven.
This is heavenly food that Jesus our Lord offers to us to eat and drink. Just as He led ancient Israel through the desert, feeding them along the way, bringing them to a land of milk and honey, so He continues to feed His New Israel with food and drink from heaven itself.
Here is food and drink that Jesus offers all who are scorned, disgraced and shamed by sin. Food and drink that gives real comfort and real help to those in distress because Jesus is truly present in the bread and the wine.
This is no symbol that helps us to remember what God did long ago when Christ was crucified. Symbols have never satisfied a hungry heart and a thirsty soul. This is God doing Christ crucified in us and for us every time we eat and drink the crucified body and shed blood of His Son.
II. Jesus Offered Vinegar On The Cross A. I Thirst But now, let us return from the Upper Room to Golgatha once more. Having refused the wine mixed with poison, receives the nails through his hands and feet and is raised up on cross to die. What began in the Upper Room and moved to the Mount of Olives has continued all through the night and is now early in the afternoon of the following day. In all this time, Jesus has had nothing to eat or drink and has sweat profusely as He prayed and as He was being tortured. As He hangs from the cross, dehydration begins to set in with vengeance.
In Psalm 22:15, David cries to the Lord, His God, “My strength is dried up like a piece of pottery, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth…” Now Jesus, the Son of David prays the same prayer. It is as if Jesus has hardly noticed his condition because He was so absorbed in accomplishing the work He was sent into this world to do. But now, “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, he said, ‘I thirst.”
Surely, His thirst was physical thirst. He was experiencing hell for our sake. The rich man had called out from hell to Abraham and begged Abraham “to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” (Luke 15:24). Jesus is experiencing the fierce thirst for which there is no relief in hell.
But just as surely, His thirst was also a spiritual thirst. He had been cut off from His heavenly Father which His own words would soon attest to. How He thirsted for the love of the Father.
This is the thirst that the Psalmist had seen coming when he wrote, “As a deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God.” (Psalm 42:1). “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1).
“A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John 19:29-30).
B. We Thirst Once again the contrast between what Jesus is offered in His thirst and what He offers us in ours in enough to bring us to our knees. We have a spiritual thirst that we cannot satisfy ourselves because we too thirst for God, the living God. We are thirsty because, in our sin, we disobey God and go our own way and in doing so, we cut ourselves off from God.
Our cry in our thirst can never be the same as that of Jesus. Because Jesus was forsaken by God, God will never forsake us. And so our cry must always be, “My God, My God, why have I forsaken Thee?”
And to all who so cry to God, God replies saying, “Blessed are all who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” It is to all who hunger and thirst for the living God that the living God comes to satisfy our hunger and thirst with Himself in the bread and in the wine. Here is the drink that revives the soul of all who thirst, for it takes away all of our sin and unites us to God.
To all who cry, “I hunger,” “I thirst,” Jesus comes saying, “Take and eat, this is my body given for you. Take and drink, this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.”
Related Entries:
» Sermon – Maundy Thursday – "Do You Know What I Have Done For You?" – John 13 – 4/5/07» Sermon – Maundy Thursday – "Why Baptism and Communion?" – 1 John 5:6 – 4/9/09
» Holy Week – 2006
» Maundy Thursday – "The New Covenant – In Remembrance Of Me" – 1 Cor.11:25-27 – 3/20/08
» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» Sermon – Lent 3 – "If You Knew The Gift Of God" – John 4:5-26 – 2/24/08
