Please open your Bibles to Luke chapter 22. If you're using the black Bibles in the pews, this should be found on page 881 or 882. We're going to be looking for the next several weeks at this passage. And this is one of the best known passages in the New Testament because this is the passage in which Jesus eats his last supper with his disciples before he goes to the cross. It's also well known and worth spending some time on because Jesus institutes, he establishes one of the basic practices of the Christian religion. This is what we do. This is our big ceremony, as it were, the Lord's Supper. This is something that we in this church celebrate week after week. And so what I want to do over the next couple of weeks is look at this passage from a different perspective each week. And this week is going to be like some sermons are, it's going to be very teaching-y. Because what we're basically going to do is try to get the best picture we can of what happened when Jesus ate this Last Supper with his disciples, and to a lesser extent, how they would have understood it since it was a Passover meal. And in coming weeks, we'll look at what happens when we partake of the Lord's Supper. What do the scriptures teach? It means for us to eat and drink the Lord's Supper as we do each week. But this week, let's look at Luke chapter 22. We're going to be looking at verses 7 through 23, but I want to start reading at verse 1 because it is pertinent to the rest of the passage. Hear God's word. Now the feast of unleavened bread drew near, which is called the Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people. Then Satan entered into Judas, called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. And they were glad and agreed to give him money. So he consented and saw an opportunity to betray to them in the absence of a crowd. Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. They said to him, Where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished. Prepare it there. And they went and found it just as he had told them and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined at table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. and he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.' And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this." Jesus is eating a meal, one of the most important celebrations in the Jewish religion. He's eating the Passover meal. And the Passover begins at the time of the Exodus. Exodus we know mainly as a word from the Bible. Exodus means the big exit. It means the big leaving. And the Exodus and the Passover meal are recorded in the book of, you guessed it, Exodus. The Exodus was the escape of the descendants of Israel, also known as Jacob, from slavery in Egypt after a period of about 400 years. This Exodus, this escape from slavery, was initiated by God. God decided He was going to do it. It was not a revolt or a revolution on their part. It was something that God brought about sovereignly. And it was in keeping with his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob many years before their descendants, and initiated also on the occasion of their prayer. In slavery in Egypt, they cried out to God. He heard them. On the basis of his covenant, he remembered them. And he decided to raise up a leader, Moses, who would bring them out. And the Exodus was preceded by ten terrible plagues. Moses continually, by the power of God, brought about plagues and problems for the people of Egypt. And the pharaoh, the king of Egypt, continually relented and then hardened his heart, wouldn't let them go. And the final plague was the worst. And before the final plague was brought about, God instructed Moses to tell the people to begin a celebration, to begin a ceremony and a celebration. And the Passover, the feast of the Passover, was to be an annual celebration, something that they would take part in every year forever. And it was in remembrance of the final plague that broke the Pharaoh's will and allowed the people of Israel to leave. It was promised to Moses. If we look at Exodus chapter 11, So Moses said, the people of Israel, thus says the Lord, excuse me, to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord about midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who was behind the hand mill and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, get out, You and all the people who follow you. And after that, I will go out." And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. God warned Pharaoh ahead of time. And He also warned the people ahead of time. And He instructed them how it was they were going to escape from the judgment that He was going to bring about on Egypt. And this is what they were to do. This is the procedure. This is the pattern for the Passover. The people of Israel were to find a lamb or a kid, that's a young goat, not a child. They were to find a lamb or a kid that is unblemished, that has absolutely nothing wrong with it. And they were to take it into their homes on the tenth day of the month Nisan. You don't need to worry about the month Nisan too much. But I do want you to notice this. They were to take this lamb or kid into their homes on the 10th, and they were to keep it for four days. What would happen in your homes if your children were allowed to keep a lamb in the house for four days? It becomes what? Adults. You can talk as well as kids. It becomes a pet. Exactly. There is to be a bonding, a relationship between the people, the household that is keeping this animal and the animal itself. It's not something simply that they would go out and purchase at the last minute or take from the herds. They were to dwell with it. It was to be dear to them. And then on the 14th of Nisan, After they've kept this little animal in their homes for four days, they were to slaughter it. And they were to keep its blood. And they were to take a branch of hyssop, which is a plant, and they were to smear its blood on the doorposts of their houses. And that night, they were to take this animal that had been their pet, and they were to roast the whole thing, And they were to eat it with their families, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. And Moses tells them further, they are to eat with their belts on. Now that doesn't mean that they weren't loosening them up because it's such a big meal like we do at Thanksgiving. It means that they're ready to leave. They're fully dressed. They're to have their sandals on. which you wouldn't ordinarily do in the house, they were to have their staffs in their hand because they're just about to leave Egypt. And it would be that night that God's angel would pass through the land and would destroy the firstborn of any house without the blood of the lamb marking its doorposts. And that would be followed in later years by a seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, symbolizing the time when the people of Israel left so quickly that they couldn't raise the bread. And it became also a symbol both of their freedom from Egypt's sinfulness, as well as the haste with which they left. These celebrations, the Feast of Passover and the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, were to be perpetual They were to go on forever and they were to be annual. They were to happen every year. And they were also to be occasions on which families taught their children about God's greatest work of redemption. We look a chapter later. In chapter 12, verse 24, you shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land, the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. You notice that. It doesn't go away in the promised land. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For He passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt when He struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses. And the people bowed their heads and worshipped. And let me just say, by the way, that our having the Lord's Supper each week is a wonderful opportunity for you to talk to each other and those of you who have children to talk to them about the cross of Christ. Don't miss it. Now, 1500 years roughly had elapsed between the ancient exodus from Egypt and AD 30. the year A.D. 30, when Jesus is eating the Passover with his disciples. And several things, several aspects of that celebration had changed over time, although the basics had stayed the same. First of all, they had gone from a family or home-centered celebration of the Passover to a temple-centered celebration of the Passover. In the time in between the exodus from Egypt and Jesus' day, the tabernacle had been built. And after that, the Temple of Solomon had been built, and then destroyed, and then rebuilt, and then rebuilt even bigger and fancier than that. And as we already know from these past several weeks of looking at Jesus, speaking in the temple and ministering in the temple, it was an incredibly important part of Jewish social and religious life. It was the focal point of Jewish life in the ancient world. At the time of Passover, tens of thousands of pilgrims came to the temple in Jerusalem. They usually stayed in private homes. The population of Jerusalem, we've already talked about this a little bit, but it would grow something like sixfold. So if you can imagine the city of Providence having six times the population it currently does, that's the kind of situation you have. People are packed in to the city to celebrate the Passover each year. Lambs and kids would be slaughtered in the temple rather than in homes or in the streets. And they would be slaughtered in Jesus' day in three shifts. There were so many animals that were to be killed. They had to do it in shifts of thousands of animals at a time. We're probably looking at something between 10,000 and 20,000 lambs and kids that would be slaughtered in the temple in one afternoon. And what happened was the priests would catch the blood of these animals. I know this is a little gruesome, but we have to think about this. The priests would catch the blood of the animals as each householder cut its throat and they would take bowls full of the blood and they would toss them on the altar of sacrifice in the temple. kind of think as a stand-in for the doorposts. It was the national doorposts, as it were, of Israel. It was a way of sacrificing. And then a portion of the fat from the animal would be given to the priest as well. They would sacrifice that. And each worshipper, each man who had come to have a kid or a lamb slaughtered, would take his slaughtered animal, wrapped in its own skin, which he would pay as rent to his hosts, and he would leave. And the next shift would begin, and thousands more animals would be put to death. And all of this took place on the afternoon of 14 Nisan. Thursday afternoon of the week Jesus was murdered. This had gone from a quick and simple meal to a more elaborate and slow ceremony. The meat was still roasted. It was to be entirely eaten by morning. And it was usually to be eaten by families or parties of 10 or more people. Remember, it's not like the turkey. You're not having sandwiches later. You have to eat the whole thing before morning. That's part of the celebration. They were still eating bitter herbs and unleavened bread. And there would be a ceremonial four cups of wine that would be drunk through the course of the meal. And they corresponded to four blessings that are given in the book of Exodus. The first blessing that is given, God says, I am the Lord and I will bring out, bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. The second blessing that is promised, and I will deliver you from slavery to them. The third blessing that is promised, which is called the cup of blessing commonly. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. Excuse me, the cup of redemption. And then the last, which was known as the cup of consummation, which looked forward beyond the exodus itself to the time when the people of Israel would enter the promised land. That last blessing, I will take you to be my people and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. So Jesus is to celebrate this meal along with these tens of thousands of other worshippers in Jerusalem with his disciples. First of all, I want you to notice the arrangements that Jesus makes. He tells Peter and John to go into the city and prepare the place for them to eat the Passover meal. And I want you to notice that it's a secret location. Verses 7-13 are not intended to demonstrate that Jesus is a prophet. Then came the day of unleavened bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. And then Jesus tells His disciples to make arrangements. They ask, where will we eat it? And He gives them a sign. This is not a prophetic sign on Jesus' part. This is a plan that Jesus had made beforehand. This is for security. Jesus has been spending His days teaching in Jerusalem and His nights just outside on the Mount of Olives. And there's a series of villages there, like the village Bethany, where His dear friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived. And this is for security. He's able to enter Jerusalem quietly each morning without the authorities knowing what gate He'll enter or what route He will use. And then He teaches publicly all day in the temple. The one thing He cannot do without risking arrest at this point in time is stay in a private location for any length of time. You catch that? Jesus, to avoid being arrested, is not staying in Jerusalem at night. He's staying outside so that the Jerusalem authorities can't arrest Him. And when he does enter, he enters to teach in public where the crowds and the number of people around him protect him. But now he will be entering Jerusalem at night to spend the night in a private location. And there's great risk at that. And Jesus knows that the time is coming near for his arrest. But he also knows that it's not to be quite yet. He's planned ahead where to eat the Passover meal, but he has not shared that information with the twelve because he knows that one of them is a traitor and would immediately notify the authorities if he knew where Jesus was going. And so he sends Peter and John ahead to prepare the Passover, which probably means to help cook, to buy provisions, to set the table. And this is the sign that he gives. You will see a man carrying a jug of water. We all go, so what? There's got to be lots of men. Actually, no. It was very odd in that day for a man to be carrying a jug of water. It was women's work. Men didn't carry water in that culture. And at that point of the day, we're looking at the afternoon again when the lambs were being slaughtered. At that point in the day, practically all work had ceased anyway. There to follow him and whatever house he enters there to talk to the owner of that house and say, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? This is their password. This is how they are to pick up the arrangements that have been made beforehand and then they are to finish the preparations. Everything is ready beforehand for this important meal. Now, when they sit down, when the hour came, it says in verse 14, he reclined at table and the apostles with him. And then Jesus says something kind of odd. He says, and he said to them, I have earnestly desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. By the way, the word for Passover and the word for suffer are practically identical. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. He could mean here two things. He could first of all be saying, I will not eat the Passover or drink wine again until I come again in glory and the Kingdom of God is blazingly evident to everyone. In other words, the big one, the second coming. Now there's information to back that up. Jesus ascended again before another year was out, some weeks later, before another Passover came. And He did not eat of the Passover again. And we also have the Biblical information that the Kingdom of God is often described as a great feast. And in a sense, it is the fulfillment of Passover. This simple, rugged meal on the way out of Exodus points forward to the Promised Land. In the same way, Jesus' meal with His disciples, this simple meal of bread and wine, points forward toward the great wedding feast of the Lamb in the Kingdom of God. He could also mean something much more simple. He could mean I will not eat Passover or drink wine again until I have won the kingdom of God on the cross. And that would simply mean that Jesus is telling them that the big moment is very soon. Well, regardless of what he means here, we get to the portion that we normally think of as the Lord's Supper or the Last Supper. Jesus gives thanks for and passes around some of the unleavened bread and one of the cups of wine. And he says, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And Jesus is, at a very simple level, giving them a new practice. They are to begin doing something they have not done before. He says, do this in remembrance of me. And what he's talking about is not something to jog your memory about Jesus. Hey, do you remember Jesus? Yeah, we just had the Lord's Supper and I remembered him. It was great. What he's using is biblical language of memorial, and in the Old Testament, a memorial was something that the worshipper set before God in a sense to remind God or to put before God the terms of his own covenant and the grace that he showed to his people. The memorial is something directed toward God, not toward the worshippers. In place of the old Passover, the slaughtered lamb, which was a memorial of God's grace toward Israel in Egypt, He puts Himself. This is My body which is for you. Do this as a memorial of Me. When God sees the offering of Jesus Christ on the cross, He passes over His people and does not judge them, does not judge us as our sins deserve. And this act of worship is bringing it up again and saying to God, do not judge me as my sins deserve and as the world will be judged, but judge me on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done for me on the cross. The remembrance is not mainly jogging our memories, although, of course, it does bring to mind the cross of Christ. It's like prayer A way of telling God something He already knows. That our plea before Him is the murdered Jesus Christ. And the second thing that He does in this simple, simple meal, is when they drink the cup, He says, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. And this is the same idea looked at from another perspective. A covenant in the Bible, we think of covenants, if you know your Reformed theology at all, we talk about covenants a lot. But very often we use the term slightly wrong. A covenant in the Bible was the ceremony. It wasn't the relationship between two people or a bunch of people. It was the ceremony, the act by which that relationship was sealed. So you could look at, for instance, wedding rings as themselves a covenant. They are a physical representation and seal of the relationship that they point to. Does that make sense? A covenant in the Bible seals a relationship. We do this with wedding rings. They did it with animals being slaughtered, with meals together, with ceremonies involving water, even with ceremonies like circumcision in the Old Testament was a covenant. God said to Abraham, this will be my covenant. You will circumcise every male eight days old. The cup they drank and the cup we drink speaks loud and clear of God's love for us. It is a seal, a promise that it is real, that God's love is so big that Jesus shed His blood for us. I'm going to finish up because I think you've got sort of the visual picture. Jesus and his disciples in this upper room having entered the city secretly so that he wouldn't be betrayed before he could have this last meal with his disciples. Although it's coming in a matter of hours. Back in chapter nine of Luke, I'll look at it really briefly. In chapter 9, verse 28, Now about eight days after these things, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. What I want you to notice is that word departure, because it's actually one way of translating the word exodus. Moses and Elijah appeared speaking with Jesus of his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The exodus. Jesus would soon accomplish would mean not taking a body of slaves out of a foreign land. It would be bigger. It would mean liberation from sin and death of countless millions of human beings. It would mean the overthrow of the rule of the evil one in this creation. And that's just so far in history. But remember that the original exodus started with an act of judgment in Egypt. Salvation stands on judgment. The angel of the Lord passed through the land killing Egyptians so that His people could depart to the promised land. And the lambs slaughtered by the Israelites took their place in judgment. The lambs died so that the people wouldn't have to. This exodus that Jesus is going to accomplish also starts with an act of judgment. But this judgment falls on God's Son. He died in our place and in the place of all who in faith eat this meal that we're going to eat in a few minutes so that we will not die, but that we may go to that kingdom which Jesus spoke of. Let's pray. Gracious Father, You brought Israel out of Egypt by Your mighty hand. And in sending Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who dwelt among us, became one of us, became dear to us, and then giving Him up to death on a cross, You did so much more. We thank You and we praise You for that. We thank You for the Passover as well as the exodus which Jesus accomplished in Jerusalem. And we thank you that his blessings remain with us. We thank you Lord for this meal which we have been given that we have set before us that we may remember but even more that we as worshipers of Almighty God can set before you as our plea that Jesus died for us. And therefore, your judgment will not fall on us. Thank you. We praise you. In Jesus' name.