Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Titus
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Mark 14:22-25
As they ate, Jesus took bread, offered a blessing, and broke it. He handed the pieces to His disciples.
Jesus: Take this and eat it. This is My body.
He took a cup of wine; and when He had given thanks for it, He passed it to them, and they all drank from it.
Jesus: This is My blood, a covenant poured out on behalf of many. Truly I will never taste the fruit of the vine again until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
When we considered these words in Matthew 26, we discussed the importance of stopping to remember the importance of the participating in the Lord’s Supper with other believers. The fact that we should not just let it be another ritual, but we should stop and think about the meaning of the elements used and what they represent as we consume them.
I hope since then, each time you’ve taken the bread and cup in communion, you’ve stopped and thought deeply about Jesus’ sacrifice and the love He expressed for you in giving Himself so that you might have forgiveness for your sins.
Today, I want to focus on a couple of the words He spoke to His disciples that once again I’ve not considered in this way until today. Jesus said, “…I will never taste the fruit of the vine again until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
I’ve often referred to the cup and the bread as symbols of Jesus’ body and blood. I’ve preached about it. I’ve studied it. I’ve shared those symbols as part of the Lord’s Supper and used the words of the rituals written for it many times. I’ve read these words to congregations dozens of times through the years. But today, they struck me in a new way. It’s interesting the way God does that to us sometimes. Here’s what He seems to say to me today.
If you’ll remember, Jesus’ first miracle took place in Cana, a small town in Galilee. His mother, some of His friends and Jesus attended a wedding. These were big events in Jesus’ day, just as they are today. Weddings marked the beginning of new families. Weddings joined man and woman in a ceremony before God that bound them together for life and created the bond instituted by God for relationships that would provide a helpmate to get us through life’s toughest battles. Weddings were important.
Consequently, weddings took a great deal of preparation. Like many weddings today, they included lots of food, music, ceremony, laughter, dancing, and wine. It was a joyous occasion. When the wedding reception in Cana ran out of wine, Jesus helped out and turned the water used to wash the feet of the guests into the best wine in the country. A pretty good miracle, don’t you think?
Wine was a part of almost every meal in Jesus’ day. There were no water treatment plants to remove the pollutants and the Jordan, if you’ve never seen it, is a pretty dirty river. Most people used the rivers to bath, wash their clothes, water the cattle, or do whatever needed done with water. Drinking water came from wells, but even the ground water from wells was not that great. So people drank wine.
But at the last meal Jesus has with His disciples, He announces that He will not drink wine again until He drinks it with them in the new kingdom of God. Have you ever thought about that?
If you look through the rest of the New Testament at all the appearances of Jesus after His resurrection, you’ll find that He eats with some of those to whom He appears, but scripture never mentions that He drinks. He eats bread, He eats fish, but it never mentions that He drinks. I think He’s waiting. He said He would not drink wine again until the day He drinks it new in the kingdom of God.
So what picture does that conjure up for you?
John writes in Revelation about Jesus coming to retrieve His bride, the church. And when He does He takes His bride home to the new kingdom of God. He describes the great wedding feast at which the believers join in the great wedding reception. There is no marrying in heaven, but we will all be wed to Jesus, that intimate relationship most like a marriage than anything else that could describe it here on earth.
And at that feast Jesus will lift His goblet or glass or cup or whatever container holds the best wine that has ever existed and raise a toast welcoming His bride to His home. Then for the first time since the supper which announced the new covenant with those who followed His teachings He will drink from the fruit of the vine. He is waiting for us to join Him before He drinks again. He is waiting for His bride and the wedding feast so He can fulfill the vow He made to His disciples that night. Can you imagine what a glorious feast that will be when we join Him in enjoying a draught from creation’s fruit once again.
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