Opening

• Throughout His life, Jesus shared meaningful messages and ministry around mealtime. 

• There’s something so special, sacred, and intimate about meals.

• Meals are the means by which humans find their physical sustenance.

• Meals are a vulnerable moment.

• When you’re eating, your guard is down.

• When you’re eating, your body is likely hungry and weak -- yearning for some nourishment.

• Because eating is often a vulnerable moment, it is therefore the reason we are not inclined to eat with people we do not want to fellowship with.

• Bad company can ruin a good meal. Bad company can make your appetite go away.

• You only invite people you love, respect and trust to eat with you at mealtime.

Jesus is intentional to share meaningful messages that illustrate His heart, describe His mission and teach us about the nature of God.

Sermon Key Points

• Matthew holds a party with his tax collector friends and invites Jesus. The Pharisees asked Jesus why he ate with tax collectors and sinners. 

• Jesus responded by saying that it is not the well that need a seat at the table but the broken. 

• The message from Jesus’ response to Matthew’s party is that God does not run away from broken people. Instead God embraces the broken, embraces the sinner and gets them out of their brokenness.

• God is really able to do the unthinkable: He is the ultimate provider and He cares about the needs/concerns of broken people.

• In Matthew 26, Jesus is with His disciples around a table at mealtime. 

• What is the meaningful message that Jesus communicates with His disciples at the Lord’s Supper? 

• In other words: What Good News is there for broken people to have a broken Savior? What difference does it make in the lives of broken people if we have a Savior who is broken too?

• Jesus with His disciples are at the supper table celebrating Passover. 

• The lamb was the central element of the Passover. 

• Jesus was trying to prepare His disciples for the crucifixion that He was to endure the next day. Jesus is the Lamb of God. 

• Jesus is letting them know that the brokenness He is about to endure is going to take their celebration to a whole nother level. 

• In this meal, Jesus assures them that He is about to change their eternity. 

• Jesus is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. 

• The backdrop of Jesus’ brokenness is in light of the celebration and remembering of God’s deliverance. 

• In other words: Jesus is trying to teach us that He is intentionally dying around Passover to show the people that the brokenness He is about to endure is on the backdrop of a celebration of deliverance.

• We ought to resolve in our spirit that I may be broken but God is still at work in my life even in my brokenness. 

• A remedy for trouble and brokenness is simply to remember the goodness of God and His faithful track record in your life!

• Christianity is the only faith where you can face trouble and not be overcome by it! 

• The fact that God is faithful and will always come through does not make brokenness easy but it does make brokenness meaningful!

• Why did Judas - the one who betrayed Jesus - have a seat at the table, though Jesus knew exactly what he was about to do? Why didn’t Jesus just kick Judas out of the room? 

• Why did the betrayer have the privilege to have a seat at the table with the Savior?

• The Good News of Jesus’ broken body and shed blood is that God loves you and I so much that even though He knows we are about to betray Him, He still gives us a seat at the table. The Lord looks beyond your faults and keeps meeting your needs. 

• Aren’t you grateful that instead of God throwing you away, He gives you a seat at the table!

• You are not defined by what you’ve done. You are not the worst of what people say about you. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, you are invited to God’s table. 

• We don’t have a God who is aloof from creation. We have a great Savior who traveled down from Heaven onto Earth to dwell with us. 

• Whenever you feel like God doesn’t understand, remember that He understands more than we know. 

• Jesus knows what betrayal feels like.

• Jesus knows what it feels like doing something and to be overlooked. 

• There are things God tries to teach us in brokenness because He cannot teach us otherwise.

• We have to be broken to learn some things because when we are broken, we are dependent on somebody else for something. 

• God reserves the right to break us in order to shape, reform and make us more into the image of His Son. 

• There is Good News for broken people because we have a broken Savior who did not have to be broken but decided to be broken for you and me! 

• God could’ve chosen a different way in eternity past to redeem humankind from their sin. But He decided to die and lay down His life for us. 

• Early Sunday Morning, God got Him up with all power in His Hands! Jesus rose from the dead! 

• Brokenness may travail but brokenness has no power over God’s people!