Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Communion is a symbol of a covenant that God has made with his people that's irrevocable. We'll talk about it next on Light on the Hill.

Guest (Female): The peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.

Guest (Male): One of the most obvious signs of the fall of man centers around man's inability to keep his commitments. We seek to make promises and oftentimes fail to keep them even when we mean to and even when we have the best of intentions. That's perhaps the most striking part of the passage we're about to look at at Light on the Hill. Contrary to popular belief, this passage does not deal with the subject of communion as much as it deals with another subject, one that is so consequential and so significant to the time in which we live that the devil is working overtime to make sure you never see it.

Here's Pastor James Kaddis in Mark chapter 14.

James Kaddis: Okay, we are going to start in verse 22. Now, where we left off, they are eating the Passover at this point. And as they are celebrating the Passover, Judas gets called out and he goes on to do what he has to do. And that's sort of where we left off. And so now Jesus is administering what we would call communion today. And the implications that follow it are pretty remarkable. And what's happening here is pretty remarkable. Now, the context that I want you to frame this in is the purpose of communion and the purpose of what Jesus was doing in the moment that he was doing it.

Now, I know that one of the temptations I had in going into this was spend a lot of time talking about the Passover and how the Passover works and as a feast, the things that they're supposed to do and how those obligations created by the context by which the feast was celebrated met something for people spiritually. It's a lot to get lost in, okay? And the reality of it is what I need you to see was the intended effect of the ceremony rather than the details of the ceremony itself. Now, don't get me wrong. The details are important and they become consequential at certain points in the Gospel account, especially when you start getting into some of the accounts that Matthew gives us and some of the things that we learn there.

But within this particular context, there is an intended discussion. There is an intended communication. There is an intended purpose for us to be able to grasp something that is hugely consequential to the life that we're living in the moment in which we are living it. And that's why we're going to spend more time talking about that. So, let's jump in and let's talk about this. Now, remember, the Passover at this point was a foreshadowing of that which was to come. When Christ was crucified, then what it was was it was utilized as a tool to remind people of what Christ had done.

That's why Jesus when he broke it said, do this in remembrance of me. So, prior to the time that this was solidified by the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection of Christ, prior to that time it was something that pointed us to the Lord, right? And the idea was really simple. The celebration of the Passover is complicated yet very simple at the same time, right? Simple but not simplistic might be the better way of putting it. How do we know that? Okay, let me show you the general picture during the time of the Exodus. Of course, we spoke about this already as we went through the book of Exodus together.

But during the time of the Exodus, you have to understand the context by which the Passover actually was even created, why the feast was the way it was at the time that it was made to be what it was. Okay? And you have to start off with the fact that God had called Moses after being in the wilderness for 40 years to come and to lead his people out of the 400 years of slavery that they found themselves in. Very interesting situation by the way, whether or not you want to argue of God sovereignly allowed that slavery condition to happen.

I think he did. There's a lot to be said about that, especially when you examine the time period in which Joseph was ruling over Egypt, the second most powerful person in the world. But there's really it's not consequential to this discussion. But what is is to get into the role of Moses in understanding that Moses was placed by God within a very specific dispensation by which he was called to take his people out of the place of bondage and slavery to the Egyptians. And what happened in leading up to that was pretty powerful, okay? It was something that every single Christian should be familiar with.

As a matter of fact, this is so interesting. In the book that I wrote concerning the book of Revelation, I actually talk about this in the first book. The second book that's coming, I will actually talk about it even more. But so many of the plagues that you actually see in the book of Revelation very much parallel some of the plagues that you actually see in the book of Exodus. And I think God intended that purposefully simply to point to the same things that the Passover points to. So, what happens is God utilizes a series of supernatural events initiated by Moses when the Pharaoh does not want to listen to Moses in order to do what God had wanted him to do in having his people being released from bondage and slavery.

And by the way, it wasn't just a simple set of things like, oh, you don't want to listen, you're going to get cursed. No, it is a lot deeper than that. There were lots of messages that were uniquely designed to teach the Egyptians lessons that were not ambiguous, right? Lessons that were very direct, lessons that were very eye-opening. I'll give you one example of this, right? And this is something that's that's a really important picture. One of the plagues that God initiates is the plagues of frogs. Okay? Now, this is really interesting because there there's a reason why God would do this.

God did this because frogs were creatures that the Egyptians worshipped. And they worshipped them greatly. They had high regard for the frogs. Now, God knew that the Pharaoh would promise that he would stop doing what he's doing. And God also knew that the frogs, the plague of the frogs would eventually go away. So, the way God made it go away was unique in that God in the midst of what was happening didn't just send the frogs off to go ribbit ribbit ribbit somewhere else. He made sure that the frogs died in their midst. And when the frogs died in their midst, understand what they did.

They took the frogs and they put them in in heaps, in piles, which is something that you would expect anybody to do because the next general step would be burn them, right? But they put these frogs in heaps and they put them in the middle of their existence. That's the way the language seems to kind of put to us. And they did nothing with them. They left them in heaps. Why did they leave them in heaps? Why did they not burn them like they probably should have done? Not probably, they definitely should have done it because they worshipped those things.

They worshipped frogs more than they worshipped the true and living God. And so you know what ended up happening? You had a situation by which another plague comes in. And that plague becomes responsible for all kinds of little tiny eggs being laid into those frogs. And then what comes after that are maggots which turn into the plague of flies. And if you think about what happens in that context, Egyptians shaved their body hair because they hated flies that much. They were disgusted by it. So, what God was trying to communicate is you embrace something that disgusts me, then I am going to bring something in the midst that disgusts you that you might enable with in order to experience that which God wants you to experience.

Very important to understand that.

Guest (Male): Remember, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

Guest (Female): The peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you. Cuz all I need is you.