Final Passover - First Communion
My family can tell you that I take meals very seriously. I don’t eat… I dine. And I have never complained about paying a premium for a fine meal as long as it accomplishes its mission. But there are some meals that come at too great a price for my pallet or my wallet.
Almas caviar - comes from an albino beluga sturgeon that lives in the Caspian Sea. A kilogram of this caviar can cost nearly $40,000… for fish eggs…
White truffles - also known as Alba truffles and are found in Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia. They can cost up to $3,600 per pound.
Kobe beef - comes from Wagyu cattle raised in Japan's Hyogo Prefecture. In the United States, Kobe beef can cost $25 to $50 per ounce.
But these pale in comparison to a meal Cleopatra prepared for Marc Antony in an attempt to prepare him the most expensive dinner in human history. Cleopatra sat with an empty plate and a goblet of vinegar in front of her. She crushed one large pearl from a pair of pearl earrings, dissolved it in the liquid, then drank it down.
Pliny, the world’s first gemologist, writes in his famous Natural History that the two pearls were worth 1,875,000 ounces of fine silver. That would be 45 Million Dollars in our day.
Well, as expensive as those meals were. The most expensive meal in all of human history is the one in our text today.
CONTEXT: Last week, we saw the wheels of fate begin to turn as Satan entered into the heart of Judas Iscariot, prompting him to collude with the chief priests to put an end to Jesus of Nazareth.
There are 4 meals that serve as chapter divisions of human history.
The First - was that meal in Eden, in which humanity fell committed cosmic treason against the Creator.
The Final - the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, through which we celebrate with Christ His marvelous triumph.
The two in the middle are very similar - Passover (which we will say more about in a moment) and the one before us today, which history has referred to as the Last Supper, or the Lord’s Supper.
In fact, this meal was the FINAL Passover and the FIRST Communion.
LUKE itself can be divided into a series of 8 meals.
The first is the banquet Jesus shares at Levi’s house.
The second is the dinner he has at Simon the Pharisee’s house, during which a woman interrupts to wash is feet.
The third is a meal in the wilderness with over five thousand.
The fourth is another meal with a Pharisee where Jesus doesn’t wash his hands.
And the fifth is yet another dinner with another Pharisee, a prominent one we’re told where Jesus heals a man with dropsy.
The sixth is when Jesus has tea with Zacchaeus.
The seventh meal, the climatic meal, is the one before us today…
There will be one more meal following the encounter on the road to Emmaus.
Luke 22:7–23 (ESV)