Passover Preparations
Palm Sunday • Sermon • Submitted
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· 4 viewsWhat we can glean for our lives from the preparation of the last supper
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This morning we celebrate Palm Sunday when Jesus entered into the Holy City of Jerusalem riding on a donkey, which is also known as the triumphant entry
It’s a beautiful story of the fulfillment of prophecy which actually takes place over several days and not just one day as we often picture it
Each day for several days in a row Jesus would enter into Jerusalem take care of His business for that day and then head back out to Bethany probably to stay with Lazarus and his sisters for the night
But then came the Thursday which started off a little bit different
Instead of the normal walk to Jerusalem with His disciples this time Jesus sent 2 of them ahead with a task to do
Luke 22
Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”
The time had come for the passover meal, the reason why Jerusalem was so swollen with travelers, for it was incumbent upon the Jewish people to try and get to Jerusalem for the feasts of God if they could
Passover was the biggest and most important event on the Jewish calendar and played a central roll in the spiritual and physical lives of the Hebrew nation
In God commands His people,
Observe the month of Aviv and celebrate the Passover of the Lord your God, because in the month of Aviv he brought you out of Egypt by night. Sacrifice as the Passover to the Lord your God an animal from your flock or herd at the place the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his Name.
You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the Lord your God gives you except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name. There you must sacrifice the Passover in the evening, when the sun goes down, on the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.
Deuteronomy 16:5
So often a small village where not everyone could afford to make the journey would take up a collection and designate someone to go and make the passover on behalf of the whole town
Passover was the biggest and most important event on the Jewish calendar and played a central roll in the spiritual and physical lives of the Hebrew nation
It was and is central to everything that Judaism is about but this morning as we make our own preparations for the passover meal this Friday I want to demonstrate for you how and why this feast of passover is also central to everything in Christianity as well so that we can make the necessary preparations in our own lives
The first thing I want you to see is the plan as we look at the first few verses of our text in beginning at verse 7
Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”
“Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.
He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”
They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
Luke 22:7
Now you may be wondering why Jesus was being so covert about where they would be partaking in the passover
I’m not trying to be sexist that’s just how it was so a) why wouldn’t Jesus just
It was probably because of what Luke records earlier in the chapter,
Luke 22:3-
Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. They were delighted and agreed to give him money. He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.
But God wasn’t going to allow the enemy to get in the way of His plans for the hour was not yet at hand and it was important that Jesus do this with His disciples
tells us that Christ is “…the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” so it was always God’s plan to have this happen but it was going to happen in His time and His way
When you go back to Matthew’s account
But what makes this really exciting is that not only was it God’s plan from the very beginning to offer His Son as the perfect atoning sacrifice, but His plan also included reaching out to you with salvation and everlasting life and as we can see nothing can thwart God’s plan
Ephesians 1:3-
You have to understand tha
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
That’s right, not only
And when talking about this same thing in Paul continues on to say,
Romans 8:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
But there’s one more thing that I want to point out about God’s plan, Peter and John were to look for a man carrying water
Now what you need to understand is that men didn’t do that, It was the woman’s job to carry the water for the household
So what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that God’s plan may already be in place but it is brought into being by you and me
Ephesians 2:10
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
This man had to do what would have been considered a demeaning and embarrassing job but I bet that the last thing on his mind was what roll this would play in God’s bigger plan
You may never understand what roll you are being asked to play in God’s plan and you may never see the result of it but I can assure you that you are playing a roll
It may seem small and insignificant, or it might even seem demeaning and embarrassing but God created that moment just for you, don’t pass on it or begrudge it
As Nike says, “Just do it!”
So if the first thing that we see in our text is The Plan, then the second thing that we see is the Precedent
Actually it is very hard to see this point in our text because all Luke says is,
When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table.
Luke 22
But if we skip over to John’s account of the meal John says,
so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
John 13:
John 13:
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Perhaps you have seen this meme on social medial before
It’s probably too small to read so I’ll read it for you, “The word ‘Leader’ is mentioned only 6 times in the Bible (KJV) ‘Servant’ is mentioned 900 times! So why do we have so many leadership conferences”
Well you can’t believe everything that you read on the internet and so I did my own study based on the NIV and my results were a little different but still just as stark
In all of the NIV the word “leader” is used 78 times but all of those are Old Testament, the word “servant” on the other hand is used 477 times of which 56 are in the New Testament
The actions of Christ in the upper room that evening set the precedent for what He expects of us His followers
Now the tradition of foot washing has long since gone away but what in what ways can you serve others in the body of Christ?
Jesus not only taught us that the last shall be first and the first shall be last but He lived it and He requires it of any person who would call himself/herself a follower of the Messiah
Philippians 2:5-
(The Message)
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
5–8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
Which brings me to the third and perhaps most important thing about this meal, The Purpose
Your probably thinking to yourself that we already covered that, the purpose of the meal was to fulfill Jewish passover rituals
But this was so much more than that
In verse 15 of the text Jesus told the disciples that He eagerly desired to eat “This Passover” with them
The word for this is a very specific word meaning not just any but this specific one
Why was Jesus so eager to celebrate this particular passover with His disciples, what made it more special than previous passovers that they had shared together?
Because of the purpose that this passover had, for this passover was to serve as a transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant
Why did God command Israel to observe the passover all those years?
Yes it was so that they would remember where God had brought them up out of and His faithfulness to them.
But even more important than that was the passover served as a symbol and a reminder to the Hebrew nation of the blood covenant that they had with God
God brought them out of Egypt and He made a covenant with them that as long as they obeyed His covenant they would prosper
And to show that they were doing their part they were to follow through on the passover feast sealing the covenant in the blood shed by the lambs chosen just as it had been on that night in Egypt
And this covenant was s
But this passover with Jesus and His disciples because Jesus would use this opportunity to fulfill the words of the prophet Jeremiah
Jeremiah 31:31-
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
Back to our text and we see this very moment in history happen,
Luke 22:19-
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
I’m not sure if there are any more important or more powerful words in all of the Bible than those 9 words that Jesus spoke as a part of that passover meal, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”
No longer would the blood of animals have to be shed every year
No longer would our sins just be covered over but they would be forgiven
No longer would God be a mystery to His people for the curtain would be rent in 2 and all would be able to have an intimate relationship with Him
In that very moment as Jesus spoke those words the passover transitioned from being all about the old covenant to being all about the new covenant
That’s what Paul was really getting at when he wrote to the Corinthians and told them,
1 Corinthians 11:
For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
In the modern day we have shortened the passover down to what we know as communion which we celebrate once a month give or take but there is really so much more to it than that
And in that “last supper” that final passover Jesus celebrated with His disciples we can see some of the more
For in that passover we can see God’s plan, His plan for dealing with sin, His plan to save and redeem you and I and His plan to use us to accomplish His greater purpose
We also see the precedent set by Christ that we too should serve one another in humble obedience to the Lord
And we see the very purpose of that “last supper” when it transitions us from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant under Jesus
And in this way the passover, and especially THAT passover is central to everything in Christianity and as such should impact everything that we do as Christians
Let’s pray
Let’s pray