EASTER SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
MARCH 23, 2008
LUKE 22:7-20
I’m wearing sunglasses this morning. The sun is bright! The Shekinah glory is on your collective faces and there’s a little bit of a reflection off that snow up there too. Really, I can remember—this is our 19th Year at Fiddler’s Green, at Coors Amphitheater—and I can remember in the very earliest years there was snow up there. I began to talk and I looked up there and saw my son Drew, who was 11 years old at the time, just kind of sliding down the snowy grass up there and paying no attention to his dad. I’m hopeful this morning that we can all take a few moments and just focus on the Word of God. Our scripture this morning is taken from Luke’s Gospel, the 22nd chapter. We begin with the 7th verse. It’s Luke 22:7-20.
Then came the day of unleavened bread when the Passover Lamb had to be sacrificed, and so Jesus sent Peter and John saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it.” “Where would you have us prepare it?” He said to them, “Behold, when you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house which he enters and tell the householder, ‘The Teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?’ He will lead you to a large upper room, furnished. There make ready.” And so they went and found it as He had told them and they prepared the Passover. When the hour came He was at table and His apostles were with Him. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, and I tell you that I shall never eat it again until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.” He took a cup and when He had given thanks, He said to them, “Take this. Divide it amongst yourselves, for I tell you I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.” He took bread. When He had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is My Body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Then likewise, after supper, he took a cup, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in My blood.”
This ends the reading from God’s Holy Word. Let’s pray together before we have our message this Easter morning. Dear Father, may the words of my mouth, may the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
Whatever happened to the Holy Grail? Did Joseph of Arimathea really take the Grail from Jerusalem to Glastonbury? Did the Grail really reside in England? Did it come to reside in England? Did King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table really quest for the Holy Grail and did King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table ever really exist? Was the Holy Grail a talisman, as some claimed it was? Was it really endowed with the power of the Son of God?
This morning most of you will be glad to know that I will answer none of those questions. I do, however, want to focus on the cup of Christ. I want us this Easter morning to focus on the cup of Christ, which many have been called The Holy Grail. This is the cup that Jesus used that Easter Week. This is the cup with which Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper—the Eucharist, communion. This is the cup with which Jesus shared the Passover with His disciples the night before He went to the cross, the cup that Jesus shared with His disciples three days before He rose from the dead. This cup is sometimes called the cup of Christ. It is sometimes called the Passover cup.
We know that that night before Jesus went to the cross the cup was filled four times. These are the Four Cups of the Passover. This was true in the time of Jesus. It is true in Jewish communities today at Passover, at the Seder meal. The cup was filled four times and each filling of the cup had special meaning and the meaning points to Christ. The meaning points to Easter itself. So this Easter morning we look at the Four Cups of the Passover, the four fillings of the cup.
The first cup was called The Cup of Sanctification. Kos Rishon means “The First Cup” and it was called the qadas, which means, “to sanctify.” And so before the meal was served that night, Jesus would have filled the first cup and it was the qadas, the First Cup of the Passover, the cup of sanctification. They would have remembered the Passover passage from Exodus, chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, and the first statement in that passage. “I will sanctify you from the land of Egypt.” I will separate you from the land of Egypt. I will set you apart from the land of Egypt. I will sanctify you from the land of Egypt.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the Cup of Sanctification. He’s the only one who can sanctify us. I think most of us, when we think of sanctification, think of sin. We think of sinlessness. We think of holiness. We think of saints. I think for some of you, perhaps a few of you, that might be why you rarely go to church. You rarely go to church because churches, in your view, speak too much about sin, too much about sinlessness, too much about holiness.
I remember just a few years ago I was driving my car on the south side of Denver and I needed gas. The car was also dirty, so I pulled into a gas station that had a car wash, filled the tank up, paid for the car wash, and then went and punched in the code and drove my car into the car wash. The door went down before me, the door went down behind me, and then the machine began to work, and my car was just covered with soap and suds until you could see nothing. Then suddenly it all shut off. It all shut off and I was trapped in a car wash. The door was shut in front of me. The door was shut behind me. I couldn’t find a way out. The whole car was covered with suds. I was trapped in a car wash.
Of course, I think for some of you that’s how you feel about church. You view church as just kind of like being trapped in a car wash; a whole bunch of suds and sin and you can’t get out. That’s really not what sanctification is all about. We don’t sanctify ourselves. We’re not sanctified on the basis of our own sinlessness. We’re only sanctified on the basis of the sinlessness of Christ. When you accept Christ as Lord and Savior, His sinlessness is imputed to you and you are vested with His righteousness. You are covered with His holiness. It’s not your sinlessness. It’s His sinlessness and that’s why He is Jehovah M’Kaddesh. He is the qadas. He is the “sanctifier” and He fulfills the Cup of Sanctification.
There was a second cup, and when the second cup was poured the meal had already begun and the disciples and our Lord Jesus would have already had unleavened bread and they would have had lettuce greens. Then there was the pouring of the second cup. The second cup was called The Cup of Deliverance. They would have remembered the Passover passage Exodus 6:6-7 and the second phrase of the Passover passage: “I will deliver you from Egyptian slavery. I will deliver you from Egyptian bondage.” Deliverance.
This was a typical Passover meal, and I’m sure that night they reviewed how God had delivered the children of Israel from Egypt. They remembered the Red Sea and how the sea parted and the Israelites, the children of Israel, crossed the Red Sea as if upon dry land. They would have remembered how the Egyptians, when they tried to do the same, were drowned. God had delivered them.
They would have remembered the Ten Plagues, the Ten Plagues through which God delivered the children of Israel from Egypt. This is traditional in a seder meal, to recall the Ten Plagues. The first plague was blood. And the Nile turned to blood as God spoke to Moses, “Let My people go.” The second plague was frogs. The third plague was gnats. The fourth plague was fleas. The fifth plague was cattle or livestock. The sixth plague was boils. The seventh plague was hail. The eighth plague was locusts. The ninth plague, darkness. The tenth plague, death.
When the Passover meal was served and while the deliverance was being discussed, it was typical at least in some subcultures of the Jews to equate the Ten Plagues with the gods of Egypt and the reputation of those gods. So, the Egyptian god Heqet was portrayed by the Egyptians with a frog head. The Egyptian god Hathor was portrayed as having a cow head. You might be thinking, “Wow. There must have been Egyptian gods with a locust head, a flea head, a gnat head… not true, but each of the Ten Plagues did relate to one of these gods of Egypt. Darkness was an assault on the Egyptian god Ra and the Egyptian god Horus, who were sun gods. Death was an assault on Isis.
And so, the Egyptian gods were refuted during the Passover meal. The idea was that God is delivering us from the gods of this world. The One True God is delivering us from the gods of this world and the gods of the Egyptians. Then, of course, they would focus on the Tenth Plague. They would focus on death. They would focus on the Passover Lamb and how the Passover Lamb had been sacrificed and the blood of the Passover Lamb was placed on the lintel above the door of the Jewish homes so that when the angel of death passed over Egypt destroying the firstborn, the children of Israel would be spared, delivered by the blood of the Passover Lamb.
Understand, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Cup of Deliverance. In the Book of Romans, chapter 11, in the Book of I Thessalonians, chapter 1, Jesus is given this title, The Deliverer. He delivers us and He delivers us from sin and from death. As you’re sitting there this Easter morning, you don’t need to fear death because Jesus is the Passover Lamb. He is the Lamb of God. He is the Temple Lamb and He has protected you from death.
I know all of you have heard of Victoria, who was queen of England. She ruled the British Empire for 63 years, longer than any other British Monarch. She was by all accounts a woman who loved Christ. She was a committed Christian. When she first ascended the throne, at her coronation when she was just a young lady, they played the Hallelujah Chorus, and they sang the Hallelujah Chorus as we will at the conclusion of the service today. In the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus, Victoria, this young lady ascending the throne, got down on her knees when they came to the part of the Hallelujah Chorus where they said of Jesus Christ, “King of Kings, Lord of Lords.” Then when she rose, the whole congregation rose with her. That was her coronation day. It appears, historians tell us, that though she believed in Christ she still had a fear of death.
When she died in 1901, her son Edward VII went to the Island of Wight to the Osborne House, which was one of the royal palaces of Queen Victoria. He went up the stairs in the Osborne House to this room that had always been locked, which he had never been allowed to enter. He had the key now. His mom was dead. Edward VII opened the door and went into that room where only his mom had gone before. In that room he saw nothing but photographs of dead people. There was nothing but photographs of dead people hanging on the walls and filed in boxes. Somehow, at least most historians believe, Queen Victoria, though a Christian, still had some peculiar fascination and maybe fear of death. You don’t need to fear death.
My mom died this past year and has joined my father in heaven. We had one of our elders at Cherry Hills Community Church die this past year, Keene Smith. One of our Sunday School teachers, Bill Morris, died this past year. Wonderful servants of Christ died this past year, but they’ve all been delivered. They’ve been delivered by Jesus Christ through His fulfillment of the Second Cup of the Passover, the Cup of Deliverance. He delivers us from death and they are even now with Christ.
The third cup is The Cup of Redemption, and Jesus would have filled the third cup right after the main meal. They would have shared the stories of deliverance and then they would have eaten the main meal, the Passover lamb. They would have had lamb and vegetables and bitter herbs and then the third cup, sometimes called The Cup of Blessing, because a blessing was said right after the eating of the Passover meal. A blessing was said before the meal and after the meal, but normally in the community of the Jews, the third cup was called “The Cup of Redemption.” They remembered the third part of the Passover passage in Exodus 6:6-7, “I will redeem you. With a demonstration of power and judgement, I will redeem you.”
Now, I know that virtually everybody in this stadium this morning, virtually all of you in this amphitheater, has heard of Charles Dickens. When you think of Charles Dickens you don’t think of Easter. When you think of Charles Dickens, you think of Christmas—you think of A Christmas Carol, you think of Ebenezer Scrooge, you think of the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future. The truth is that Dickens wrote five Christmas books, the first of which was A Christmas Carol, but Dickens also wrote other books. He wrote Great Expectations. He wrote Oliver Twist. He wrote David Copperfield. He wrote The Pickwick Papers, and of course he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, a masterpiece.
When you think of Charles Dickens, maybe you should think of Easter because, you see, his book A Tale of Two Cities has a theme of substitutionary atonement. It has a kind of Easter theme. It tells the story of an Englishman who died in place of his friend, a Frenchman who would have died during the French Revolution but did not because his English friend went to the guillotine. When his friend died in his place, as his friend was going to the guillotine, he said, “It is a far, far better thing that I have done than I have ever done before.” In the book, he recalls John, chapter 11, where Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. He who believes in Me will never die, and He who dies and believes in Me will always live.” This is the book you ought to read. In fact, you ought to read all of the works of Charles Dickens. He’s just an awesome, awesome writer and author and, indeed, with tremendous Christian messages.
Substitutionary atonement, dying in the place of another, is what redemption is all about. You think of the Passover lamb in some sense as being killed, as dying, so that the children of Israel would not have to die. You think of the temple lambs offered in the temples of Israel as dying so that the people would not have to die. You think of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when the blood of animals was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant by the High Priest of Israel in the Holy of Holies. This was done—substitutionary atonement—so the people would not have to die. But Jesus has come and He’s put sacrifice to an end. The whole sacrificial system has come to an end because He is the Lamb of God and He has died in our place in substitutionary atonement. He is the Redeemer and He lives. He has paid the penalty for my sin and He has paid the penalty for your sin. As it says in the Passover passage, He did this with a demonstration of power.
The Fourth Cup is given in conjunction with the fourth and final phrase in the Passover Passage in Exodus 6:6-7, and that passage says, “I will acquire you as a people.” And then it moves into verse 8: “and I will bring you into the Promised Land, the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The fourth cup is sometimes called The Cup of Promise. It is sometimes called The Cup of Completion. It is sometimes called The Cup of the Kingdom, but it is Jesus who fulfills all four cups, and He is King of Kings and He offers to bring you into His kingdom. He offers to sanctify you. He offers to deliver you. He offers to redeem you and He offers to bring you into His kingdom.
Julius Caesar lived in the 1st century before Christ. He was a great orator, a great statesman, and most of all a military commander and strategist. He expanded the Roman world, conquering surrounding nations. Of course, many times after his conquest, he would return with his legions to the eternal city of Rome. He would make his triumphal entry. You know this and you have seen it portrayed in movies how Julius Caesar would lead a procession down the Via Sacra to the Roman Forum, to the heart of the Roman Empire and crowds would line the street. Julius Caesar would ride in a chariot of gold pulled by a team of white horses. Before him would be trumpeters and Roman senators and behind him the spoils of war. Behind him were the Roman Legions; behind him were prisoners bound in chains. He would ride into the royal city and historians tell us that he did this perhaps four different times throughout his military career and the crowds would, in the thousands, line the Via Sacra and they would shout, “Hail, Caesar! Hail, Caesar! Hail Caesar!” “Vini, vidi, vici,” Caesar would say. “I came. I saw. I conquered.”
In conjunction with Easter, we remember that Easter Week began with the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus came humble and lowly and riding on a donkey. And crowds lined the streets, and they threw palm branches before Him as He was entering the Holy City to die and to rise again. I think by any rational analysis the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem pales when compared to the pomp and the majesty of the triumphal entries of Julius Caesar, and yet is it not true that today Jesus is Lord? Nobody today worships Julius Caesar. Nobody calls Julius Caesar Lord. I’ve said before that people call their dogs Caesar. People call their cats Caesar. People call their salad Caesar. But, you see, Jesus Christ is Lord and today on this earth 2 billion, 2 hundred million people call Jesus Christ Lord, because He’s won the greater victory. Caesar conquered nations. Jesus conquered sin and death. He has fulfilled the Four Passover Cups. He’s our Sanctifier. If you receive Him as Lord and Savior, His holiness will be imputed to you and you will be declared a saint. Though we’re all messed up and we’re all sinners, still He will declare you a saint by His own holiness imputed to you.
If you receive Him as Lord and Savior, He will offer you the Cup of Deliverance and He will deliver you from death and fear of death. He will deliver you from the devil and all of his minions. If you receive Him as Lord and Savior, He will redeem you, pay the penalty for your sins by His own sacrifice and by His own blood, and He will bring you into His eternal kingdom and give you heaven itself. He will give you a new body that will be fit for the heavens. Epouranios is the Greek word—“fit for the heavens.” He’ll give you a new body that is indestructible, aptharzia, which means, “no more subject to decay.” He’ll give you a new body that’s powerful. It’s the Greek word dunamis, from which we get the word “dynamite.” We will receive a new body that is spiritual, the Greek word pneumatikos. It won’t be governed by the flesh. The new body will have higher principals. It will be governed by the Holy Spirit within our spirit. And that new body will also be glorious, the Greek word doxa, from which we get the word “doxology.” It will be worthy of praise and you will have heaven itself. Paradise. The New Jerusalem. The New Heavens and the New Earth. It’s all His to give if you would receive Him as Lord and Savior.
As we close this Easter morning, I want to give you a chance to embrace the Lord of the Passover, the Lord of Easter, the Fulfillment of the Four Cups, Jesus Christ. Let’s close with a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, thank You for each person here. Thank You for Your love and Your mercy. Thank You for Your grace. Thank You for loving us. I pray, Lord Jesus, that Your blessings would be on everyone here. Lord, I pray that if there is someone here who has never received You, who has never embraced You, that this Easter morning would be that morning. Lord, in the quietness of this moment, in the stillness of our hearts, I pray that they would say this prayer with me. “Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Thank You for dying on the cross for me. Thank You for paying the penalty for My sins. Wash me whiter than snow, whiter than the snow that fell in the night. Remove my sin from me and sanctify me. Lord, deliver me from death and redeem me by your blood. And Lord Jesus, bring me into Your kingdom. From this day forth I want You to sit on the throne of my life. From this day forth I will seek to follow You.” Thank You, Lord Jesus, that when we say that prayer You save us and we are Yours and You never let us go. Lord, bless us all and help us to live for You. As we leave this place help us to always live for You. We love You. You are our Redeemer and You live. We pray this in Your name. Amen.