Published: May 15, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 2 - Part 13 | Scripture: John 6:53-60
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in Jesus name. Amen. So tonight um we're going to uh seek to apply or to understand the impact of Leviticus
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17 on the the New Testament in particular uh Jesus and and his ministry. Lord willing, next week we'll finish up the session with an overview
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of where we've been since Leviticus 1, but with an emphasis on uh New Testament application of of all that we've learned. Um, stopping at chapter 17 is
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logical because the tabernacle is not really mentioned again for the rest of the book. Uh, we've been dealing with we've been centered on the tabernacle from the very beginning. Um the
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tabernacle was dedicated in the at the end of Exodus with the Shikina coming down on the tabernacle. And then we go into Leviticus chapters 1-1 17 are really about and they're centered on
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that tabernacle. 18- 27 are more centered on the camp and the assembly of Israel. So that Lord willing will be our next session in Leviticus um next year.
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All right. So in looking at the the New Testament treatment of treatment of blood, you certainly don't lack for
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passages in the New Testament that deal with the blood of Jesus Christ. And it in fact it's so ubiquitous that as believers we we tend to take for granted that this was to be
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expected that the Messiah would shed his blood. Um and to an extent there is of course Isaiah 53. Uh there are a number of places and certainly the the entire
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uh typology of the sacrificial system points to that one perfect sacrifice and the shedding of the perfect innocent blood. And Hebrews in 9 and 10 they
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really he really deals with that. I'm not so sure, however, for second temple Jews that the idea of the Messiah shedding his blood was was all that self-evident as it has become to us. And
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so, we tend to read all these passages about the blood of Christ with a with a complacency born of just repetition. And
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I think if anything Leviticus 17 should do, it should cause us to step back, try to put on uh second temple sandals and
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listen again to what is being said about the blood of Jesus Christ. And even in something as uh well-known, common and
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again sometimes taken for granted as what are known as the institution narratives. There are uh four of them.
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by institution. What we mean is the institution of the Lord's supper. Those four are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians 11. Okay? And that kind of tells you where we're
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headed. All right? So they there's Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians 11. Those are
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the four institution narratives. In the night in which Jesus was betrayed, he took bread. Okay, so the obviously the synoptic uh records are of that night
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and Paul in first Corinthians is reminiscing. Um obviously he was not there and so in that point oh however he is writing this is what's really u
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somewhat um disturbing he's writing his letter apparently uh well before any of the gospels were written. So the first
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of these narratives these institution narratives is actually this one uh chronologically. So I don't know what you do with that. Probably nothing. Um but these institution narratives are are
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very well known in the Christian church whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. Um and of
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Now what Jesus does in the institution of the Lord's
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incredibly radical but it is also very much reminiscent of Exodus 24 which we're going to look at here briefly in a moment um but normally
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doesn't enter into the the communion ritual. But the his body of course is the
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and his blood is the wine and they were to be eaten and drunk. Now, right away, the second part of it ought to be a bit alarming, especially
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after Leviticus 17, where the consuming of blood is forbidden. In fact, it's forbidden with the um uh with the discipline or the
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judgment that God himself would set his face against the person who did this, who would consume the blood. And yet we hear you know we have this situation
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where Jesus is instituting a ritual among his disciples that is to be done whenever you do this. And so in other words it's it is not only a sacrament. It is an ordinance. It's to be
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done. But it involves an element that would would have been rather shocking for which there's no parallel in any Jewish ritual up to that point. And that
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is drink this is my blood. Okay. Um now what he says about the blood is is
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itself not without precedent. in in fact what he says there would have echoed in the disciples minds with the words of Moses in Exodus 24 and I want to read that
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it's a rather lengthy passage uh so Moses actually I think I'm going to look it up it up in I have trouble with italics
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um so and it's in italic I don't know why I use italics but because you all don't have trouble with italics that's why I do I can't even read my own notes. All
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right. Um, starting in verse three, um, here. Where are we? Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances
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and all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do." Yeah, right. Well, that's not in there. I'm sorry. And Moses wrote down that's in
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Deuteronomy. Sorry. uh the great the g the great yeah right song of Moses. Um and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And then he rose early in the
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morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel. Notice this is before the building of the tabernacle. Okay, let's get the chronology right.
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This altar is at the foot of Si. But there's no tabernacle yet. And there's no ironic priesthood yet. And there are no sacrifices ordained yet. And that's
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that's yet to come. And he sent young men of the sons of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. And Moses
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took half of the blood and put it in basins. And the other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the blood of the covenant and I'm sorry, the book of the
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covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient." So Moses took the blood
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and sprinkled it on the people and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance
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with all these words. Behold the blood of the of the covenant. Jesus says, "This cup is the blood, my blood of the new
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covenant." So, there's a direct connection there. Um, it it's not a citation by Jesus, but it's more than an echo. It's an illusion. If you remember
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from biblical theology, it's that it's that middle one where it's a strong enough reference that those who were familiar with the Torah would have
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thought, "Oh, that's what Moses said." And he sprinkled the people with the blood. So the connection here with the blood is
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Now we tend to associate the Lord's supper with supper with Passover and in fact uh Presbyterians teach that the Lord's supper has taken the place of Passover.
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I will submit to you but not defend it tonight but I will submit to you that that is an unnecessary connection that that in fact the writer
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of Hebrews associates the death of Christ more with Yam Kapor than with Passover. Now that is not to say that the Lord's death is not associated with Passover. He is our Passover lamb and he
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died at died at Passover, but he could have died at Yom Kapor just as biblically. The death of Jesus Christ is
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the summation of all of the feasts and sacrifices and festivals of Israel. It should not be overly associated with any one of one of them like we've done with Lord's supper
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and Passover. Okay. Um, for whatever reason, and I don't know that the the Bible is explicit in terms of why Jesus died at died at Passover because the we like to go on
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with that and say what what you know what the blood if it's sprinkled, it's spread on your heart, the lentils of your heart. I'm sure you've heard that in a sermon. I don't think your heart has lentils, but I'll leave that up to Martha. Um, but the idea of I mean
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Passover then becomes the meaning of Christ's blood. Again, Hebrews 9:10 says, "No, that's not the meaning of Christ's blood. The meaning of Christ's blood he associates entirely with the
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Yam Kapor sacrifice and festival and not the Passover one." So, again, I don't want to minimize the significance of Passover. I simply want to say I think it's been
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it's been overdone and it takes our eyes away from other sacrifices and particularly the centerpiece of centerpiece of Leviticus which is Yam Kapor and in fact
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it was the centerpiece of the covenantal life of Israel every single year at Yam Kapor. Now, Passover was also remembered, but Passover was a memorial
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feast and they remembered the deliverance, but Passover itself was not a sacrifice. The sheep were slaughtered and their blood were sprinkled on the
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doorposts and the lentil, but it was not one of the the theim, the other sacrifices that we read about in Leviticus 1-7. Whereas Yam
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Kapor is both a burnt offering and a peace offering or I'm sorry a a purification offering.
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Peace offerings. And burnt offerings. Wouldn't the lamb at Passover qualified as a peace offering? It would have qualified as a peace it would have qualified as a peace offering because they ate of it. Yeah, absolutely. However, it's not called a
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peace offering. Okay. That's all I'm saying. I mean there there are elements of it of course you know they they brought the lambs to the tabernacle to be slain and in Jesus' day they took
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them to the temple to be slain and they did eat of them like a peace offering but it's not called that. Passover is unique among the offerings. It's not really a sacrificial
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uh tabernacle offering. Um in fact I'm I'm not sure. I'd have to do a little bit more investigating, but I I don't know that on Passover there are any particular requirements for the
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manipulation of the blood. That's significant because no other offering is silent about the manipulation of the blood. Okay. So that
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it sets Passover off. And and so what what I want to say is Jesus fulfills Passover. Yes. That is a line of thinking. That is a a train of thought
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that he is the the final station. Okay. But that's not the only train. He's also the fulfillment of Yam Kapor. And and I will submit to you that as we're in
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Leviticus, Yam Kapor is the central day. And then when we go to the New Testament, the Testament, the one feast of Israel that is most closely
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associated with the crosswork of Jesus Christ is the day of atonement. in Hebrews 9 and10. Okay. Other illusions are made. Christ our Passover has been
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sacrificed. Yes, absolutely. Um but he doesn't go into nearly the detail that the writer of Hebrews does in connecting the death of Jesus and his blood. That's the significant thing. He entered into
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the heavenly sanctuary with his blood. And that's really what it's all about when it comes down to these sacrifices is the blood and the manipulation of the
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blood. Now in this covenant here, the blood of the covenant is sprinkled on the people. Okay? So we can say this about
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this covenant. The
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blood, right? The blood is sprinkled on the
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So, while there's a a very clear connection between what Jesus says in the upper room and what Moses says at the foot of Si, there's also a very significant difference between what Jesus says and Moses said, especially
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with what Jesus says regarding his blood versus what Moses Jesus did with the blood of the sacrifices on that day. So in fact, the closest the people get to
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the blood at all is here when it's sprinkled upon them. That doesn't happen again as far as I know. I mean, I don't I don't know of any other ritual that
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that comes to mind in which the people are sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. That's it. This is it right here. They're consecrated. And then we move on to the tabernacle and um and you
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have the application of blood to the the people's you know the the right ear, the right thumb and the right big toe. You do have that but this is the most um uh
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uniform uh universal application of blood that you have in the Old Testament ritual where Moses sprinkles them with the blood of the sacrifice on that day. So we're ahead of the tabernacle. We
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have this we have this establishment of the blood of the covenant.
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the Torah. That's what he's talking about. These words, these commands that the Lord has given me. That's the That's the covenant that he's speaking of. We might call it the Ten Commandments, but I
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think it's broader than that. But this this would be not the Abrahamic covenant, but rather the Mosaic covenant, which is a subset of the Abrahamic covenant,
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Abrahamic covenant, right? Does that make sense? Okay. Um, but it it's it's not. In fact, if we went to Paul in Galatians, we would see that the Mosaic
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covenant, you know, the dispensationalist tells us is the church age is the parenthesis. Paul actually tells us that Israel was the parenthesis, that Moses was the parenthesis because he goes back to
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Abraham and he says the law that came over 400 years later does not nullify the promise. So, he jumps over Moses. Uh so it's actually biblically it's Moses
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who Moses and Israel that are the parentheses. Um we are actually with Israel the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant which moves through Moses but then on to Jesus. Okay. So yeah, that's
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a good question. What covenant is he talking about? Well, he's talking about the covenant that would be centered on the tabernacle and later the temple. So he's talking about what we refer to as the old
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covenant. Okay? He's talking about the covenant that was written on tablets of stone as contrasted with the promise of the new covenant when the laws of God
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would be written on our hearts. So it is centered on God's law and statutes and commandments. That's that's what Sinai is. The writer of Hebrews says we don't we don't come to
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Mount Si burning with fire, right? We don't we don't come to God through the law. He says rather in chapter 12 we come to come to Zion. Okay. So uh that contrast then is
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is throughout the scripture actually. Um Sinai represents law and it represents judgment. Um and so uh this covenant is
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established. But the point I want to make is that what Jesus is saying in the upper room in the institution narratives is a direct reaching back to what Moses said at Mount Si.
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And he's saying it in a in a radical way. He's saying this is my blood. Okay? He doesn't say this is the blood of the new covenant. He says this
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is my blood of the new covenant. And so no other animal sacrifice will will take the place in this new covenant. It's only Jesus's
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blood. But more than that, he tells them to drink it. And and that must have been a shocking
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thing that they heard. Only I'll submit to you that they had already heard it. Recorded in the Gospel of John
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chapter 6. Now, as I said, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul. And then there's John. And like much of what John has
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[Music] written, it causes a lot of trouble in the in the interpretation and exugesus uh of the church in in later years. That's John
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That's John 6. Now John 6 is uh literarily it has the name of the the bread of life
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discourse. It is one of the many I am passages in John and of course it's where he says I am the bread of life. So
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it the the overall rubric of John 6 is of course the feeding of the 5000. Uh but that's the historical setting for the bread of life discourse. So John 6
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and we're going to be looking primarily at verses 53- 60. And then the first thing the the context is
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context is the bread of life
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But what we read in John 6 was um is this is this is where Jesus says Jesus says something that causes a large number of his followers called disciples by the way to no longer walk with him. Okay. He
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finally I finally I mean he has been speaking as one with authority. He has been speaking not as the scribes do, but but with again with that authority. He's been saying things
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that astound the people and confuse the leaders and even uh even humiliate them in some cases. But now he seems to go totally off the side of the cliff. In
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verse 53 in John 6, um he
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says, "Jesus therefore said to them, and this is not only is this in the I am passage, it also is one of the places in John where Jesus prefaces his statement with the amen." Amen.
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The truly truly or verily verily if you are King James truly truly I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life
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in yourselves. Verse 55 or going keep going. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my
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flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. How do you think you'd respond if you had heard Jesus say this on that
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You'd be horrified. Not only is what he's saying sounding like cannibalism, which some took it to be, and later unbelievers, especially gentile unbelievers, claimed that the
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early Christians were cannibals uh because of their Lord's supper and and the idea of the body and the blood of of of their Messiah, their God that they were eating.
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were eating. But I eat my flesh would have been bad enough. But at least the flesh of some of the sacrifices was to be eaten. In
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fact, most of the sacrifices, the only one that was forbidden was the burnt offering and then the day of atonement offerings. Even the purification offering on the day of atonement was to
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be entirely burned outside the camp. Um, so but we saw that the priests had had uh their food from the altar and then with the peace offering as Aaron noted
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the peace offering was meant to be shared by the offerer with his own entourage, his family and friends. And then all of it was supposed to go to the some of it was supposed to go to the
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Levites. So from all of the offerings, the flesh was food. So if he had stopped there, you know, it's like, okay, I I see the connection you're making. We'll
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just treat it kind of metaphorically and, you know, not say that you want us to chow down on you, but you're you're you're referring to something that we're familiar. Then he says, "Drink my
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blood." And if you were having trouble before that, that would have thrown you right over the edge. And even when um when Jesus later after many of
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the disciples have left him and he um he says in verse 67, "And Jesus said therefore to the 12, you do not want to
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go away, do you?" Simon Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
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G Peter said, "Nah, Lord, we understand what you're saying. We got it. We're good with it." Now, he didn't say that. He said, "Yeah, but where are we
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going to go?" I mean, think about it. Yeah, what you just said was really weird, but we got no other place to go. You know, that's why they stayed is because
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they knew they had no other place to go. But they I don't think for a moment they understood what he was saying. I really don't. at least not at that time. Now to the disciples he did back off a little
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bit in verse 60 or is it 61 um he
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says no um no verse 63 forgive me it is the spirit who gives life the flesh profits nothing the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life now this was to his disciples okay
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um many of the disciples had already said in verse 60 uh this is a difficult statement who can listen to it and then later on in verse 66 and as a result of
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this many of his disciples withdrew and were not walking with him anymore. So he's already kind of given indication that that what I'm saying is is spiritually understood as Paul says in
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in second in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 that it's it's the spiritual man who apprises the things of the spirit. the natural man is unable to and unwilling to. And so, this is kind of an example
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of how something's being said in a very physical graphic manner that is not to be interpreted that way literally. Um, and nonetheless, even
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metaphorically, I mean, metaphors are, yeah, they're they're illustrative. They're meant to to kind of illustrate a point and they they should have some
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connection, but you don't make a metaphor out of something that is expressly forbidden by scripture, which is the con the consumption of blood. What what is that
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a metaphor a metaphor for? You know, it's so shocking. And I think it should shock us. Um, I don't think it shocks us because we we've been
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taught. The two primary ways that this uh passage in John 6 has been interpreted is what we've been taught either if we grow up Roman Catholic or
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maybe Coptic. I I think they probably do the same thing. Greek Orthodox does the same thing. In one way that's eukaristically that this is essentially John's institution narrative. That's one
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way of thinking of it. The typical Protestant view is that this is entirely figurative. The metaphorical interpretation and this actually has its
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roots in Augustine. So it's it's not something that started in the reformation. It started in the fourth century, early fifth century with Augustine. The idea that what Jesus is
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saying here is really just another way of saying believe in in me. And we'll look at that. I want to look at those two tonight because I think we're going to find that both of them make certain
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presuppositions that allow us to defang the text and to take the bite out of it. Okay, that make sense.
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Right. change. Yes. Well, still bread, still wine, but it really has the essence of it, right? Uh well, um not the essence because that would be would be transubstantiation. Um Luther's view
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though he never used the word that Luther's view has become known as consubstantiation. He believed in the ubiquity of the body of Christ that the body of Christ is
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everywhere. And so that the when you eat of the bread, when you drink of the wine, the body of Christ is in, through, and around the bread. The bread does not change its essence. It's still bread.
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The wine is still wine, but the blood of Christ is is permeated. It's it's really it's not much better than transubstantiation.
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Um Calvin tried to cut the Gordian knot and a famous statement that's attributed to him is bread and wine in the mouth, flesh and blood in the heart. That's
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known as the the spiritual interpretation that most Protestants do follow. But Luther did not move far enough away. He all he did was he tried to move away from the philosophical
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um uh what's the word gymnastics of transubstantiation. The idea that that a that a substance can change its essence
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without changing its accident. That the bread remains as far as we can see and taste bread. That's its accident. But its substance has changed from bread to
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flesh. That that overturns all philosophical thought. There there's nobody who says you can do that. Accidents are secondary to to essence
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and they go with it. Okay? So you if you have the if you have the accident of bread, it's because you have the essence of bread. You you don't have the essence
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of flesh and the accident of bread. Um, and so Luther recognized that um that transubstantiation is a philosophical fiction. But then he came up with one of
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his own. Uh because as he said to to Zwingley at Marberg, as he wrote on the table, Hawk Es Corpus Mayo, this is my
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body, you know, and he took that literally. But then he had to figure out how do I do that, right? And so this helps actually it helps that that line
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of thinking. So we have two ways of looking at this. And this is tonight's really more of an exugesus of John 6 than it is of Leviticus. But hopefully you'll see the application of Leviticus
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to the exesus of the New Testament because in both the Eucharistic and the metaphorical interpretation, no mention is made of Leviticus 17. None. Okay?
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they they go at it in a either a prospective manner because this is occurring. Obviously, this is up by Galilee. Uh Jesus has just fed the 5000.
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So, this is a ways in time before the last supper, right? So whatever it is, if this is John's institution narrative, it's clearly pulled forward in time from
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Matthew, Mark, and Luke because this is not the night in which Jesus was betrayed. All right? So that they're either looking ahead prolleptically and saying, well, John is is giving the the
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institution narrative within the narrative of the feeding of the 5000 and the mana from heaven. And so John is is kind of giving, pardon the pun, more
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meat to the institution narrative by the example of the feeding of the 5000 and the reference of the mana in the wilderness and Jesus saying, "I am the bread of life." Okay, so that's that's
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the eucharistic. So we're going to look at that one first. Um that one is
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Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I don't have any trouble seeing it. I don't know why you do. Come on up here. Hey, I feel your pain. Um
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Yeah. I I'm sorry. I will I'll try to like write larger. So, the eukaristic view is it looks forward.
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Now, we don't like the word Eucharist because it's roish. All right? Um but there's nothing wrong with it. It means thanksgiving. And and as I've said
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before, you know, when we look at Romans 1 and we look at the chief fault of man in Adam was that he refused to give thanks. Now, I I'm not suggesting that we start saying, "Well, it's the first
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Sunday of the month. Prepare your hearts for the Eucharist." Okay? No, I'm not going there. But I don't think we need to be afraid of the word because it it it has a meaning. And it is what the
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early church called what we call the Lord's Supper. And frankly, we only I mean, we have biblical basis to call it the Lord's Supper, but really historically, we only really started
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calling it that during the Reformation, which means we were kind of reacting against the Catholic Mass. But what we really needed to react to in the Catholic mass was their doctrine of the
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Lord's Supper, not the name they used. So there, so when I say Eucharistic, I hope you know, don't get your hackles up. I'm not going ca going back to my Catholic roots. Um it's just it's what
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the word was used historically and it it has a very good meaning. Um but but what we're dealing with here is that this is essentially then
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narrative. Now this has the benefit of sounding like transsubstantiation. eat my flesh and drink my blood. And so writers from the second
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century on have taken these words literally. So this did not form out of a a a vacuum in the Roman Catholic doctrine. There were those who believed
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somehow what the Roman Catholic Church did over the centuries was they added a philosophical foundation for what many people had people had already believed by faith.
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that the bread and the wine somehow became the body and the blood of their Lord. They didn't have a philosophical way of expressing it, but they still fought that way.
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back then. No, I mean that developed that that certainly developed over time and and then also the the um the keeping of the
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cup from the ley that that's all development uh in the middle ages. Uh I don't know that they had um they did not have the elevation of the host or the
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procession of the host. All of that comes later. Uh we don't have a lot of record about him until the middle ages. Um but you can read in some of the
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writing of the Petristic fathers an almost a literal interpretation of the body and the blood but without any philosophical or technical explanation of how this should
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happen. So you can actually interpret it both ways. You can interpret it as a literal transubstantiation or you can interpret it as literal spiritual that yeah we're we're using the same language
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Jesus used but we understand that the bread's still bread and the wine is still wine. Uh and and there I don't think there's anybody that I can think of. Irenaeus uh comes to mind but what he had to write um I can't think of
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anybody who actually said the bread becomes literal flesh and the wine becomes literal blood. Okay. If you know of somebody, I'm interested to hear, but I don't of the of the major Petristic
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writers, I don't think anybody went that far. That that's going to come later. But there's still a sense in which there's a there's a a reality, even if it's a I hate to use this as if
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it it's contradictory, a spiritual reality that that is actually real. I mean, if it's spiritual, it's still real. Um, but there is a reality to this that can be lost when it is interpreted
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entirely figuratively. entirely figuratively. So what I'm actually going to say tonight is that the Protestants lost some things. Some in some respects the
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Protestants in the Reformation and afterward did not get rid of everything they should they should have and in other respects they got rid of too
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of too much. That they reacted too radically to what was a false teaching to the point that they lost connection with the truth itself. And I think that's that's the
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case with John 6 that we've we've reacted against a false teaching, but we've reacted so strongly that the pendulum has swung to another false teaching or at the very least uh um a
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misapprehension of the meaning.
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Well, yes, we we don't really understand it. We just do it because we're told. Uh the primary discussion we've had over the years in that regard has to do with the word sacrament versus the word ordinance. Uh Baptists especially do not
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like the word sacrament. And that's because from their Anabaptist heritage, they're they're the farthest. You know, you look at those holiness zones. uh when you look at the
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Protestant zones and and distance from Rome in terms of doctrine, the Anabaptists were the f far farthest and still staying generally within Orthodox Christianity.
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And so modern Baptists have tended to to shy away from words like Eucharist or sacrament because it sounds very Roman Catholic. And and so we say that baptism
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and the Lord's supper are ordinances. Well, what is an ordinance? It's a bomb. Um, an or an an ordinance is a command, right? Why do we do this? Because Jesus told us to. Well,
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good. That that's really understanding what the Lord is bringing about in your life. You're just doing it because God told you to. Uh, and obviously you need to do what the Lord told you to do. But
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I think it's equally obvious that the Lord did not intend you to just simply blindly do what he said and never give any thought as to why. Um and so we lose sight and touch with the idea of a
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sacrament which from 1 Corinthians 10 in the Lord's supper you can see that Paul did not consider it merely an ordinance you know you know he says the bread that we eat is not a partaking a
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coinia with the body of Christ the wine that we drink is it not a coinia with the blood of Christ that's a tough one for Baptists that passage okay Roman
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Catholics eat it up then drink it up literally I caught myself in the middle of that one. Okay. So, is this John's institution narrative? Well, um, no,
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it's not. Um, it it it's that is a uh an anacronistic hermeneutic that is reading back into an
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event another event that clearly took place later. place later. So on the one hand we can say um no that
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anacronistic a oh I'm sorry I thought you had your hand up. Okay so on the one hand we can say this this is not what Jesus is getting at in John six.
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But on the other hand, he is using words that are um not really obviously not reminiscent uh but they're almost again they're like prolleptic that these
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are the same kind of wording that Jesus is going to use in the institution narratives. There's going to be the eating of his body. There's going to be
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the drinking of his blood. So on the one hand, no. But on the other hand, we might say maybe. Okay. There there are the the
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eating and
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Okay. And so this causes a lot of trouble among modern scholars. U modern Protestant Protestant scholars have have kind of kind of um they they've they've shed the
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knee-jerk reaction to Roman Catholic terms um and attitudes. They they've shed that in in some cases they've shed it too much and and are moving in some cases back toward
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Roman Catholicism. But others have have looked at this and said, "You know what? we've kind of reacted against the mass and and the Roman Catholic doctrine. And in doing so, we've we've uh we've missed
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the truth that when you read John 6 and you read what Jesus says, you've already read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, if you're doing your yearly
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read through the Bible, you the those are written now. And so we've read the the institution the institution narratives and we hear what Jesus is saying by the the Sea of Galilee and it
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sounds like what he's saying in the upper room. And I think there's much in that and and I I went into that when we did the theology of John. So I'm not going
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to go through that again. But I think what we're we're getting at here is that it is in a sense prophetic that
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prophetic that John 6 instead of looking for the institution narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul,
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instead of looking to them to explain John 6, might it be the other way around? and that Jesus's teaching in John 6 is
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actually the background for the institution of the Lord's supper. Does that make sense? Oh, obviously chronologically it comes
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before. Why not let it, you know, why not keep it that way instead of trying to make it and pull it pull it back or forward in time so that it's John's
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institution narrative. No, no, it's not. It's not the Lord's supper. And yet, when you read it and you and you see the the radical things he's saying
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here, we need to let what he's saying in John 6 inform us as to the meaning of the Lord's supper later. So, it's um So, what what am I saying here? Let me get my pen back up here and finish. John
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6 gives the um foundational
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meeting of the of the later Lord's
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supper. So we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. We don't we don't have to say, "Oh, no, no, no. We're not going to use the word Eucharist here because that sounds romish. We're not going to we're not going to see in this any illusion to the Lord's supper. We're not going to try to
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say that John is is giving his narrative in a different form. No. Uh that's not even a hermeneutically that's not even a fair thing to do with John as an author.
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Clearly the context of this is completely different. And to say that looking back on it, John was remembering the feeding of the 5000. And in and in his remembrance, he used the Lord's
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supper to help describe the events. That that's illegitimate. You can't pass that off as Jesus's teaching. That's just John's imagination. Okay? So, no, we don't go
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there. On the other hand, we don't we don't try to find transubstantiation in John 6 and somehow justify that doctrine. But we also don't, you know, cut John 6 off from the
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conversation of the Lord's supper. And that's what much of Protestantism has done is that John 6 doesn't even enter into the conversation of what does the Lord's supper mean? No, we're not even
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going to talk about that. And yet it's it's probably the biggest meaning of the Lord's supper that we're going to find in scripture. So we let it let it still
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have that connection that is that is clearly made by the terminology used and yet don't don't make them, you know, kind of juxtapose them as if they're somehow the the same
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ritual. Jesus is not he's not establishing a sacrament in John 6. He's teaching something about himself and about those who will have
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eternal life. So there's the essence of what he's teaching is eternal life has its source in Jesus Christ.
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Now, when we take the Lord's supper, it probably wouldn't do us any harm at all to meditate on John 6, to hear Jesus saying, "If if you if you eat
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my blood and or eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have eternal life, and I will raise you up on the last day." That's really kind of what we're
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remembering. Not just that he physically died on the cross and shed his blood. That's that's the historical reality that we remember. But but should we not
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also remember the meaning of that historical reality? It it's otherwise it is really just as many Baptists view. It's just a memorial meal. It it's nothing more than
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a like a birthday a birthday dinner. We're just remembering that Jesus did something. But we really don't understand what he did and how it impacted me except I believe and I'm
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going to heaven when I die. But I think John 6 says, "No, no, it's a lot more than that.
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Yes. That that that is and that's good. That's right there in the passage. And it also alludes then to his prayer in John 17. You know the I but there there's a there's a still even the
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terminology we understand the well we don't understand but we understand the concept of being
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in him. Paul uses that phrase in him in Christ. And we then we understand then when Jesus says if if you abide in me and I abide in you or sometimes he says
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if my word abides in you know so we understand there's some intimate inter relationship that we now have with Christ. Okay. um that that we are in him
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and he is in us and and in that sense as he says in John 17 we are in the godhead and the godhead is in us is that's pretty
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radical in and of itself but at at no point in that discussion do you necessarily have to start talking about eating him and drinking his
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drinking his blood and that's what I want to point out. I mean you're you're absolutely right that that's the the essence here is the idea of what does it mean to have eternal life and clearly it is to be abiding in
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Christ and Christ in you. Okay. But again you can teach that and Jesus taught that but you don't necessarily have to go as far as he does
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with regard to the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. also thinking
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But now the cup no longer will right and and it so it's in drinking that cup of wrath. He sheds his
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blood which blood then we must drink. you know it but but you still end up at a place where any Jew would find
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abhorrent. Other pagans, as we talked about last week, other pagans wouldn't have a problem with that because it was widely believed in the ancient world that the drinking of blood of an animal
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or another person was an absorption of their life's power into your own. So if Jesus had a pagan audience here, they
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would have been said, "Preach it, brother." you know, they they would have understood what he was saying in terms of of his life becoming becoming um augmenting theirs. But he's not saying
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that. He's not saying you need me to augment your augment your life. He's saying if you don't drink my blood, you have no
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life is what he's saying.
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becomation and we are all abiding in that way. But as far as Yeah, it we we absolutely are. His blood is central to that. But but even in the idea of a blood covenant
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and a blood oath, the the way we've often been taught it's done among the pagans and even up into the the modern era among some tribes is the transfer of
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blood. The Jews didn't do that. Okay, that you know again we need to think of this and hear this as a Jew because we've been spending weeks now in
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Leviticus and and from our position now in Leviticus we come forward to the to the Sea of Galilee and we hear Jesus and
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it's o you know what's this schmuck talking about? We It's really very very radical and and I'm and I think this first of all is just too convenient that somehow
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we could just say that we pass this off as John's version of the Lord's supper. And I think that's all you know we just we just do the same thing in the Catholic Church. We're doing the same
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thing in our transubstantiation is we're doing what Jesus said in John 6. Now you don't have a clue what you're doing because you have not interpreted this passage correctly. But on the other hand, when we look at the metaphorical
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one, which is the predominant view of most Protestants, so we're going to turn um the eucharistic view and now the metaphorical
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view. Okay. And just uh you know this this view, the eucharistic view is
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A do the Coptics teach this type of a view of John 6? Okay. All right. So, probably Greek Orthodox, Coptic, the the that tradition, although it's very different than Roman Catholic in other
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ways. Yeah. In some ways is very much the same. This view is the predominant view
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Protestants. Okay. So, and this view is also plausible because this view recognizes an important parallel within the text between verse 47 and verse 5 uh
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53. Both of them are truly truly statements. Okay. So, we're going to look at this metaphorical
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Amen. And so it's a it's an emphatic way of saying what Paul might say in his pastorals, this is a a faithful and true statement. So when Jesus says verily verily or truly truly it's not that you
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ignore any of the other things that he says but it it kind of highlights that what he's saying is is very core basic truth and probably not easily
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understood. Okay. So the two ones that are parallel verse 47 and verse 53. In verse 47, Jesus
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says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life." Verse 53, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
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life in yourself. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life."
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Okay. So there's the connection. First of all, you have the truly truly he who
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life. Verse 53. He who
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life. Exoggetically, you can't pass by this parallel. It's introduced with the same common amen. Amen. It has a prot which is apppidosis and a protas. Is
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that right? First and second. Apidosis. Protasis. No. Protases would be first. Okay. Anyhow, it's like an if then statement. Okay. You have an if this and a then that. If you believe then you
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have eternal life. If you eat my flesh and drink my blood then you have eternal life. So the structure of the sentences as well as the introduction to them demands us to exogetically recognize
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these are parallel statements. And so this is what Protestant commentators do. They simply say believing. That's what it means is to
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believe. And they can go back to Augustine who Augustine who said, and I wish I could remember it in the Latin. Always sounds better in the
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Latin, but um I saw a comedian who um who said the new pope, Leo the 14th, in one of his first
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speeches, he said that it's important that the Roman Catholic Church modernize. Of course, he said it in
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um, believe and believe and you have eaten.
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Okay, I mean this this, you know, this not and that's not all Augustine said, okay, but you know, we like to pick it out and say this one works for us Protestants, you know, and that's what they do. It's like Protestants and um
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and Catholics are uh are vultures and Augustine is the carrier and then we just pick pieces of flesh out of his tracks and say this works for us. It's
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like that's a vivid image for you. Um all right so believe and you have eaten. Well okay so is is this really what we
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are all about? Well one author says
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John and and he actually writes a fairly lengthy article that I've quoted some in the notes because it it it's again it's a plausible way of thinking of it. But one of John's main concerns uh with regard to the spirit of
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antichrist, the spirit of antichrist is is anyone who denies that Jesus has come in the in the flesh. And John actually says this several times in his letter in different
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ways, but the idea of of the incarnation, the the flesh and blood. And so, um, first