Matthew chapter 26, verses 17 to 25, describes the last Passover. We know this more commonly, perhaps, as the Last Supper. Leonardo da Vinci painted his famous painting called The Last Supper. It wasn't the Last Supper. It was the last Passover. It was the first Lord's Supper, not the last. The passage falls into two pieces. Verses 17, 18, and 19 are the preparations for the Passover. And then verses 20 to 25, as they celebrate the Passover and partake of the meal, then Jesus makes an announcement about his betrayer. So the overview of the message this morning is to talk about Passover in general. We hear a lot about it, but perhaps we need a reminder on what it is and how it functioned. We're going to consider then how this Passover was the final Passover because of the fulfillment of Jesus. And we're going to look at Jesus, reveal the fact of his betrayer or the betrayal and the identity of his betrayer. And then we'll bring it home and consider a couple of points. Let me pray and we'll read the passage and begin. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth of it and for the authority of it. We thank you that that never changes. No matter how much society changes or culture changes, no matter how much academia changes, the views of politicians, and frankly, Lord, the views of church leaders and religious people, none of that make any difference. Your word doesn't change. And so we can keep coming back to it and make sure that our feeder is on solid ground and make sure that we're knowing you as you are and trusting you as you have promised. We only get into trouble when we set your word aside. So help us this morning to hear and to see and to believe. We thank you in your precious name. Amen. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover? He said, go into the city to a certain man and say to him, the teacher says, my time is near. I am keeping the Passover at your house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover. So let's talk about Passover. Toward the end of the book of Genesis, the 11th son of Jacob named Joseph. See, nobody was listening. Nobody responded to that. My wife was listening. The 11th son of Jacob named Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt. By the providence of God, he rises in position and authority in Israel. And he ends up in a position to be able to save his family when a famine strikes the large region that included Canaan where they lived. And so at the very end of Genesis, we see the family of Jacob, his 11 sons. Joseph was already there, but his 11 sons moving to Egypt with their families, 70 people total. And they are settled in the land of Goshen. If you look at a modern map of Egypt, you'll see the Nile Delta, which is a big green V at the top coming into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile flows north. And that area is the land of Goshen. They settled there in relative comfort and abundance. Over a period of about four centuries, things changed slowly until that family, which had now grown very large, perhaps as many as a million or more, that family was enslaved under really horrible conditions. Yahweh raised up Moses from the tribe of Levi to deliver the Hebrews from slavery. This deliverance involved a number of conversations with Pharaoh. Pharaoh is not a name. It's a title, like king or emperor. It also involved 10 plagues of judgment, which are found in Exodus 7 to 12. And so just to kind of summarize those, first, water was turned to blood. Then, number two, frogs swarmed over the earth. Then three gnats came, and four flies came. Then five, there was a pestilence, an epidemic of disease among the livestock of Egypt. Number six was an epidemic of boils, some skin disease among the Egyptian people, followed by hail. Number seven, locusts. Number eight, and darkness over the land. Number nine, the people of Israel were spared these plagues where they were. God protected them. But when it came to the 10th plague, which was the death of the firstborn of all human beings and all livestock, the Hebrews were not automatically spared. And I think that's because this is not simply a plague now against the Egyptians and against the gods of Egypt, but against sin and sinners. And that applied as much to the Hebrews as it did to the Egyptians. They were to take a lamb into their home for two weeks by means of protection. They were to take a lamb into their home for two weeks, slaughter the lamb, and then place its blood on the sides and the top or lentil of the door of their homes. Exodus 12, 13, the Lord says, the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. a sign of the promise of God to them. And I will see the blood and I will pass over you and there shall be no plague among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So again, the Hebrews would not be spared just because they were Hebrew. This time they were under the same judgment. But God gave them a refuge. He gave them a lamb. And if they took refuge behind the blood of that lamb, he would pass over them. And we begin to have a picture there of what the Lord Jesus would do, although the scope of it is very, very different. The Lord also instructed them to eat a unique meal. The meat of this slain lamb was to be roasted and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Nothing could be left over till morning. They had to eat it all or burn it. They couldn't leave anything until morning. They were to eat as though they were ready to travel any moment. dressed for travel, sandals on their feet, and their walking sticks in their hands. And then Yahweh said in Exodus 12, 14, this day will be a memorial to you and you will celebrate it as a feast to Yahweh throughout your generations. You are to celebrate it as a perpetual statute. The people of Israel were never to forget how Yahweh had delivered them from slavery and passed his judgment over them. instead of fulfilling his judgment on them. For centuries, this Passover meal continued to be celebrated. It was somewhat basic and largely unregulated. And then about 100 years before the ministry of Christ, the Jews began to give it more and more structure. A rabbi began to create more of a ritual. We have a document that dates to the second century that lays out the Passover Seder, the Passover ritual, in very close terms to what is practiced today. And so we have every reason to think that Jesus and his disciples would have followed a similar order, at least, if not the exact order of what is historically known for what's called the Passover Seder, the celebration. That Seder, that Passover meal, begins with setting a table with three stacked pieces of unleavened bread called matzah. bitter herbs, a mixture of fruit and nuts called caroset, which is representative of the mortar, the mud that they used to make the bricks, a roasted egg. I couldn't find an explanation for why they have a roasted egg. A lamb's shank bone, as a reminder that this meat came from a sacrifice. Some vegetable, like watercress, parsley, celery leaves. that was called Karpus. And then during the middle of this Passover Seder, a full meal would be eaten, not involving the foods laid out on the table at this point. It would begin with a blessing, and then a cup of wine would be drunk, the first of four cups of wine. Those who were present would ceremonially wash their hands. They would take the carpus, the watercress or parsley or celery tops, dip it in salt water, and eat it as a reminder of the tears of their ancestors in Egypt. The middle piece of matzah, which is called the efikamen, is removed and broken in two. The larger of the two pieces is wrapped in a piece of cloth and hidden until after the meal. Then the exodus story is told, and it's told in conjunction with four questions that are traditionally asked by the youngest child present. Why is this night different from all other nights? Why do we eat leavened bread or matzah on all other nights during the year, but only matzah, unleavened bread, on this night? Why do we eat all kinds of vegetables on all other nights, but bitter herbs on this night? And why is it that on all other nights we eat meat either roasted, marinated, or cooked, but on this night it is entirely roasted? In the process of answering those questions, the story of Exodus is told. Then they drink the second cup of wine, and then they eat a full meal. Linda and I over the years have partaken of two or three, I can't remember exactly, two or three Passover meals, and when you reach that point, then you eat, and it's a feast, and it could take an hour, hour and a half, and then you return to the ritual. After you're done with the meal, that hidden piece of matzah, the afikoman, is brought out and then distributed in olive-sized pieces to each person there, and they eat it. And by the way, Jewish scholars differ on where the word afikomen comes from. There's two primary Talmuds. There's the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. I believe it's the Babylonian Talmud that says it's a word that means dessert. And the Jerusalem Talmud takes it from a word that means after-dinner celebration. Then the third cup of wine is drunk. A blessing is pronounced. The fourth cup of wine is drunk. And Passover is complete. So this meal is rich in symbolism. And some of you might have caught some of those as I was moving through. But just to talk about a couple of them, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. They took the second, the middle piece of matzah, and they broke it as Jesus was given for us. They took the larger of the two pieces and wrapped it in a shroud, in a cloth, and hid it until after the meal. And when that's brought forth, it's distributed in small pieces, which sounds like Lord's Table to me. And at least according to the Jerusalem Talmud, that small piece is a celebration, which is what the Lord's Supper should always be for us. So as these men come to Passover, they're coming with a rich tradition that is being fulfilled before their eyes in the Lord Jesus. He is the second person of the Trinity. He is the one who is being broken. Well, the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover. So when evening came, then verse 20, Jesus was reclining at the table with the disciples, and as they were eating, which tells us this is during the meal portion, Jesus said, truly I say to you that one of you will betray me. One of you will betray me. God can accomplish anything he likes any way that he likes. There's a point in the history of Israel when they were fighting against an enemy and the sun began setting and God simply stopped it where it was so that they had daylight to win. There's a story told around the time of Elijah or Elisha when a man had borrowed an axe and was cutting and the axe head flew off and flew into the river and he told the prophet and Elisha, and the prophet, Elisha, I can't read your lips, one of the two, the E brothers, and he sprinkled something on the surface of the water and the iron axe had floated. God can do anything that he likes, any way that he likes. He had Moses hold out his staff over the Red Sea and the waters of the Red Sea parted, not because the staff or Moses had anything to do with it, That was more of a confirmation that Moses is his spokesman. And so the son of God is going to come and die in the place of sinners. And he could have simply done that. But God chose to work through some specific means. He would die on a Roman cross, which means the Romans had to be involved. He would be rejected and despised. Isaiah 53 says rejected and despised by his own people. And Psalm 41.9 says that he would be betrayed by a friend. Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. And so the Lord could have brought about the death of his son any way that he wanted, but as soon as he said he's going to be betrayed by a friend, then that betrayal had to take place. And Jesus announces it here. Verse 22 says, deeply grieved. They each one began to say to him, surely not I, not me. Now, later on, we're actually going to see, well, we would, well, yeah, no, we'll see in verse 35, Peter says to Jesus, even if I have to die with you, I will never betray you. There's some arrogance there. I don't think that there's any arrogance in verse 22. I think they're horrified at the idea that one of them could even just accidentally betray Jesus. Surely not I, Lord. What a horrifying thought. Jesus takes the 12 disciples and he narrows it down. He answered and said, he who dipped his hand with me in the bowl is the one who will betray me. So with 12 men reclining around either a low raised table or just a mat, I doubt they had large bowls of each item set out where they all had to kind of crawl over each other. I think that it's probably more common with that number of people to have four or five bowls, maybe three or four bowls that several would share but not all. And so now he takes it from the 12 and he says three or four perhaps. The Gospel of John, John himself at one point leans back against Jesus and asks him who it will be. Jesus says, it's the one that I dip this in the soup, the stew with, and I give it to him. And he dipped it and he gave it to Judas. It's the one who dipped his hand in the bowl with him as they were eating. So perhaps John is there reclining on the left arm and eating with their right. John is in front of Jesus and he leans back. Perhaps Judas is right behind him. The whole time. Then he says, the son of man is going or going away just as it is written of him. All of those prophecies about the suffering servant of God, about his crucifixion, about his death, about his burial, all of those things will be fulfilled. But woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had never been born. Woes are bad things. If you didn't hear the The series that I did in Matthew 23, go back and listen to the first of those. I talk about that word woe. A woe is a bad thing. It's a cry of anguish. It's the experience of suffering and torment and horror, either because judgment has been pronounced on earth or because they are suffering under the wrath of God in eternity. It is a bad thing. A Jesus betrayer would suffer anguish and horror as a result of his treachery. I imagine as Jesus said these words, he's not looking down at a book like I am to make sure I get it right. He's speaking to them and looking around this relatively small circle and making eye contact with them as he speaks. And we're not told, but perhaps when he says it would have been good for that man if he had not been born, he looked right into Judas's eyes. Because Judas then finally says in verse 25, surely not I, Rabbi. Surely not I, Rabbi. There's an interesting little twist here. What did the 11th say? Surely not I, Lord. And what does Judas say? Surely not I, teacher. I think as we see the Gospels unfold, as their understanding of who Jesus is deepens, the 11 find Jesus to be more precious every day. About six months, seven months before this, Jesus had said to his disciples, who do the people say that I am? And they said, oh, some think you're John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other prophets. And he said, but who do you say that I am? And Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus said, you're blessed, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, and you didn't work it out on your own. My father has revealed this to you. And that was when that understanding came to root in their hearts. It had been building. And then it bursts into flower at that moment. And Jesus finally says, you're so blessed to have this understanding, but you didn't figure it out. You didn't work it out. You didn't read about it. My father has revealed this to your heart. Over the years, Jesus had become more precious to the 11, but he was never anything to Judas, but the source of some money. Judas was a thief. John 13 says that Judas was a thief. He had charge of the money box he used to steal out of what was put in it. One of the motivations for Judas betraying Jesus was Mary, in the previous couple of passages, having anointed Jesus with 300 denarii worth of perfume, and Jesus defending her. And then Judas goes to the chief priests, says, what are you willing to give me to deliver him to you? They weigh out 30 pieces of silver. If that's 30 silver shekels, that's four months wages. If it's 30 silver denarii, it's a month's wages. But perhaps for Judas, he'd never been able to get 30 at one time. Perhaps it was the idea that 300 coins could have been put in there, and 30 would not have been missed. That's what Jesus is worth to Judas. He's just a teacher after all. For everything that he did, for everything that he said, Jesus is just a rabbi. And all he's worth to Judas is some money. All he's worth to Judas is whatever Judas can gain in that moment. What a dangerous thing, by the way, that the prosperity movement is selling Jesus What's Jesus worth? He's worth being wealthy. He's worth being healthy. He's worth having everything you want. What if you don't get healthy? What if you don't get wealthy? We know that there are people who are devastated and brokenhearted by the broken promises and false teaching of those people. How many other people turn around in disgust and say, God doesn't love me? Jesus let me down. That's partly because of a liar, but it's also partly because they were willing to sell him. I'll worship you if you give me what I want. And he never plays that game. What makes this Passover different? Remember the first question that the child would ask is why is this night different from all other nights? What makes this Passover different? It's the last Passover. It's more of a Passover than the first Passover was. You see, that first Passover, Yahweh passed over the houses of his people as long as they were marked with the blood of the Lamb. If a Hebrew man had said, that's stupid, that's nonsense, I'm not doing that, he or the firstborn in his house and in his flock would have died. They weren't protected just because they were children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But what did that first Passover do for those people? Nothing. It left them exactly as they were. It didn't take away any sins. It left them in their sins. It simply concealed them like God concealed Moses in the cleft of the rock when he showed him his glory. You can't look at my face and live. I'll hide you. You can only look at me after I've passed by. But Jesus Christ is going to die. If you remember a week or two ago I talked about the dating of the Jewish people. A day begins at sundown. Passover began at sundown, and that day of Passover would extend to the next sundown. So the sun goes down, and they begin the Passover meal. Jesus delivers the upper room discourse. He goes out. He prays in the garden. He's arrested. He's tried. He's condemned. He takes his cross to Calvary. He's crucified. He suffers on the cross. He yields up his spirit. His body is removed, and he's buried all on Passover. Not Thursday and Friday, as we think. All of it was on the 14th of Nisan. I think I said the 15th a couple weeks ago, and that was an error. The Passover's on the 14th. That's the day that Passover made any other further Passovers unnecessary. There was never a need for another Passover. Because the blood of that lamb, the lamb of God, didn't just cover sin, it took them away. And for his people, there's never a need to hide again from God. John 1.18 says, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. See, Moses said, let me see your glory, and God said, no one can see my face and live. And then Jesus came, the word of God was made flesh, and he dwelt among us, full of grace and truth and glory, as of the only begotten of the Father. And he revealed the Father to us. He gave his disciples what Moses had wanted. He gave them a glimpse of who God is. And in the same way, he eliminated the need for Passover. Jesus had said to his disciples, my time is near. In verse 18, what time? Well, the time when he would fulfill the purpose for which he was sent. He would redeem sinners by his blood. He would take our place on his cross, destroy the works of the devil, glorify the father, and purchase a people for his own possession. It all came to a head there on that Passover day. This is the last Passover. Let's bring this home. Three points I want to make. First of all, regarding Passover, again, the Hebrews were not saved because they were Hebrews. They weren't saved by their identity. They faced exactly the same judgment in that 10th plague as the Egyptians did. But the Lord provided them a means of shelter from his judgment. They could take refuge behind the blood of a lamb and he would pass over them. in exactly the same way no one is saved today because their parents are Christians, or their family are Christians, or their dad is a pastor, or because they go to church, or because they do Christian things. Every sinner faces the judgment of death, which is the wage of sin. Only those who take refuge inside the blood of Christ, behind the blood of Christ, inside the blood of Christ, are spared that judgment. And keep in mind, too, that Passover left those people exactly as they were. They were completely unchanged. But the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, transforms those who trust in him. He literally takes away any reason for Passover to be needed again. If you've put your faith in Christ, there's no need for God to pass over your sins. They have been satisfied in Jesus. The Passover meal, as I explained, kind of contains the, you dip the carpus in the salt water and eat it so that you can experience a little bit of the sorrow. You've got those pictures where you're supposed to have the memory of it, that sense memory of it, the haroset that's supposed to be the fruit and nuts, which represents the mortar of the bricks. We do this as a reminder. Let's feel the weight of the labor. Let's feel the Egyptian sun on our backs. Let's feel the lash on our backs just for a moment. And that's not what the Lord's table is meant to do. The Lord's table is never meant to say, take this moment when Jesus has died for you, but now you go back to being ashamed and afraid. That's one of the reasons within our service order, we have that statement about propitiation before confession. Nobody should think, I come to God in confession, hoping he will forgive me. We come to confess because he has forgiven. and there's no doubt, there's no question. So first of all, the Hebrews were not saved because of their identity. And second, we see that Judas was not a free agent. He was in bondage to his sin. Over the years that he was with Jesus, Judas heard everything the others heard, which was pretty much everything Jesus ever taught. Matthew gives us the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7. Luke gives us an abbreviated version of it at a different setting. And I think the reality people have said, see, the Bible contradicts itself. I think that was just Jesus' typical teaching through much of his ministry. There was no social media. There's no print media. There's no radio. There's no TV. So how were people in Capernaum to know what he said in Nazareth? He simply goes and he just continues to preach the kingdom. And these men heard it over and over and over and over and over again. I've heard people say, but the gospels were written for 30 or 40 years after the events. How could they remember? If you heard something 150 times, don't you think you'd remember? It's like the comedian who says, I did a car trip with a friend one time. It took us three months. We drove across country, and we only had one tape to listen to. I don't remember what it was, like no. Judas heard that, he saw all the miracles. He saw every healing, he saw all these resurrections, he saw the cleansing of the lepers, casting out of demons, the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, he heard it all. He ate of the bread and the fish that Jesus multiplied on at least two occasions, and maybe many occasions. Judas was in the boat when the storm arose. And they all cried out, Lord, save us, we're perishing. Judas was in the boat when Jesus got up and spoke to the storm and it stopped. Jesus spoke to the storm like the master of a well-trained dog, sit, and it obeyed. He was there. There's a view that says if we can give people enough evidence, they'll believe. That if we can answer their questions sufficiently well, they will believe. If anyone was going to believe on the basis of the evidence, Judas would have believed. Why didn't he? Because he was the son of perdition. Jesus says in John 670, did I not choose you and yet one of you is a devil? Judas' nature was never changed. He couldn't believe. He was only free to do what his sin nature permitted him to do. He could betray, he could steal, but he couldn't believe it wasn't his nature to do that. See, the heart of evangelism is not persuasion, it's declaration. We have to share the gospel as it is. But because of the common belief that evangelism is about persuasion, we edit the gospel. We say Jesus is the Savior. What does he save us from? Well, what does he save us from? He saves us from sin and judgment. He saves us from the judgment of God. But it's very rare to see an evangelistic approach that begins with, you are a sinner who has offended God and he is angry with you every day. And if you stay as you are, you will suffer eternal torment under his judgment. But he sent his son. And if you will humble yourself and call upon his name, he will save you. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. The gospel is not God has a wonderful plan for your life. The gospel is, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes would not perish but have everlasting life. We're worried that people won't listen if we talk about sin and righteousness and judgment. But here's the thing, that's the work of the Spirit. That's what Jesus says in John chapter 16 verse 8, when he comes, the spirit, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness of judgment. You don't need to convict somebody of sin or the righteousness of God or the judgment to come upon them. You just need to tell them it's true. And then tell them what God has done. It's the job of the spirit to convict them, to convince them, to persuade them that they are a sinner. that God is holy and righteous and that they are under his judgment, that God sent his son and if they will trust him, he will save them. That's the spirit's job. Now what I think is that if the spirit truly convicts somebody of sin and righteousness and judgment, he will go on to convince them of who Jesus is and grant them the faith to believe. But if he doesn't do that work, there's nothing they can do and there's nothing that we can do. Now of course we should try to persuade. I'm not saying that we shouldn't. But that persuasion is accomplished by declaring everything that God has said in his word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Sinners can't change their own nature. They have to have the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit. Our job is to open the scripture and point them to the truth and trust the spirit to do what he will do at the time that he will do it. So the first point is that the Hebrews were not saved because of their identity. They were saved because they took refuge behind the blood. Second, we see that Judas was not a free agent and nobody else is. Our job in evangelism is to open the scriptures and tell them the truth. And frankly, I believe that we must do it with such simplicity and clarity that other people would say, boy, that was harsh. My evangelism experience has largely been accomplished in the shifts I worked at the mission and at being at the jail. But if experience means anything, experience says sinners don't catch hints. We can't hint. And finally, I just want you to consider the greatness of your God in giving his people Passover. His judgment in Egypt, the Tenth Judgment, was not just a judgment against the Egyptians. It was a judgment against sinners, and that's why his people were at risk. Moses himself would have died under God's judgment had he not taken refuge in the house with the blood of the Lamb on a door. We all deserve God's eternal judgment. We don't deserve a delay in judgment, much less protection from judgment, and far less than that new birth so that we don't need judgment anymore, yet that's exactly what we receive in Christ. The blood of the lamb was spilled. It was shed for us. We take refuge in him. when we trust him. We take refuge in him by believing in him. Just as Jesus fulfilled all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament system, he fulfilled the Passover for us. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Father, we thank you for your love for us. We ask, Lord, that you would press these truths home to us, that we would understand the incredible value of you passing over our sins, not because of the blood of an animal on our doorposts, but because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross? Would you persuade us and convict us so much of your gift of grace to us that we give up all attempts to sell the gospel? or to modify it to make it acceptable to unbelievers, and instead tell the truth of the gospel to those we meet. And Lord, we lean upon you. We put all of the weight of the heavy lifting on you to do the work of convincing them and convicting them and persuading them that they are sinners, that judgment is truly coming, and that Jesus Christ saves those who trust him. We thank you for this in Jesus' precious name, amen.