Fulfilling Passover • Luke 22:7-20
1:04:48 Teaching begins
Notes
Jesus today prepares to eat the Passover, a dinner that has been commanded by God for over 1400 years.
He’s really longing to eat it. You think, really? It’s the same thing, year after year. What’s so important about this meal?
It’s an invitation to eat and take in and receive salvation. Jesus is about to make the meal more real than it has been over the centuries because the salvation is Jesus Himself.
And this is not the fulness, there’s more. In fulfilling Passover Jesus adds even more fulfilment to come.
I’m reading in Luke 22 from verse 7.
1. Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb must be killed, and for Jesus to fulfil Passover.
A. Notice there are two feasts here, and they go together because God put them together when He gave them in Exodus 12.
B. Passover comes first. This is the feast Israel was to eat on the night God set them free from slavery in Egypt. It was the tenth plague, that the destroyer would go through the land of Egypt at midnight, and all the firstborn would die. But God told Israel what to do so that the destroyer would pass over them and not destroy their firstborn.
1. Each household was to take a perfect, unblemished one year-old lamb on the 10th of the month. It was to stay with the family until the 14th when it was to be killed as a substitute for the firstborn in the house.
2. They were to take the blood of the lamb and paint it on the doorposts and lintel of the house and stay inside the house. When the destroying angel saw the blood it would pass over the house.
3. The household were to take that lamb and roast it whole in fire only and eat it with bitter herbs, dressed and ready to travel. They weren’t to break any of the lamb’s bones. Any lamb left over was to be burned up. No leftovers allowed. No stale food. It was to be fresh and hot.
C. Passover was also the first night of Unleavened Bread.
1. Israel had to burn all leaven in the house and clean it thoroughly. Then they only ate bread made without leaven for seven days, beginning with Passover.
2. Leaven is corruption. Its waste product gases puff up dough and make it bread-y. Leaven is a biblical metaphor for sin. The corruption of sin makes a person puffed up with pride.
3. Passover makes a person new, as he feeds on the sacrificial lamb and receives new life and energy. Passover propels a person out of slavery to sin into a new life where there is no sin or corruption.
D. Passover commemorates history, the things that actually happened.
1. On that first Passover, Israel did what God said to do. When the destroyer went through Egypt all the firstborn in Egypt died, from the house of Pharoah, down to the cattle in the stalls. Every house lost their first son.
2. Egypt forced Israel to leave them, lest all of them die. Passover propelled Israel out of Egypt. It separated them from Egypt and made them their own nation. Passover freed Israel from slavery. God used Passover to make Israel His people.
E. Passover also looks forward, because it’s prophetic. It draws an illustration, pointing to what Jesus would make reality.
1. All the sacrifices and the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant are like theatre props that look real but they’re not the real thing. They’re good for showing graphically what will happen in the future, but for now, they don’t have any effect.
2. Jesus is the fulfilment of Passover. He is the lamb who dies in the firstborn’s place. His blood is the sign that a life has been given. Judgment will pass over the one who stays in the house with the blood.
2. Jesus prepares for Passover in an unusual way.
A. He asks Peter and John to prepare the Passover meal. They ask where. He answers like it’s a spy movie. You walk in the city, you’ll see a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house. Ask the house owner, “The Teacher says to you, ‘Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?’”
B. Is this supposed to be a miracle, or did Jesus arrange this beforehand? What’s it all about? Some people believe it was a miracle, others say, well Jesus set this up beforehand.
C. What I notice is that Jesus doesn’t tell Peter and John where to go. Therefore nobody knows where it will be until it’s time to eat the Passover. I wonder if Jesus didn’t want Judas to know because that would have been a great place for Jesus to be privately ambushed and taken prisoner, without people knowing what was going on until it was too late to help Jesus.
D. Jesus has set a place to be ambushed, but it will be in the garden of Gethsemane later on this evening.
3. Jesus wants private time with His disciples, and He really wants to eat this Passover.
A. He says in verse 15 with fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. See, He’s going to become the Passover lamb. He’s going to die for the sins of the world. You have to eat His roasted flesh. You have to eat unleavened, uncorrupted pure bread.
B. Why is Jesus so enthusiastic about eating this Passover?
1. Because, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
2. He will fulfil Passover but there is even more fulfilment to come, even after He fulfils Passover. He’s already looking ahead to that fulness, that complete salvation that comes at His second coming.
4. As they eat this last Passover that Jesus will ever eat, He takes two elements from it and says, this is Me.
A. This bread that is broken, it’s My body, broken for you. Do this, eat this, in remembrance of Me.
B. This cup of wine, grape juice, it’s the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.
C. His body is important because of Isaiah 53:5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.
D. The new covenant is Jeremiah 31:31-34 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
E. The blood of a covenant confirms that covenant and seals it so that it can’t be annulled or altered. It’s like a last will and testament that only goes into effect after the testator dies. Jesus died, His blood seals the covenant and confirms it. The new covenant can’t be changed or annulled, which means God cleanses us of our sin, makes us new, and remembers our sin no more forever.
5. So what?
A. Jesus takes the unleavened bread and the grape juice and says, “Remember Me until I come.” He fulfilled the promise of a Passover lamb. He put into effect the new covenant.
B. There is more to come. He will completely fulfil all the implications of Passover.
C. We’re to look ahead to the future. When He comes again, we’ll receive the fulness of our salvation: freedom from sin, no more body of corruption, we’ll become immortal, perfect, glorious. No more dishonour, but only glory. If we forget the future we’ll live for the present and we’ll get sad.
D. Salvation is an invitation to a most important meal. If you turn it down you don’t go hungry, you get destroyed. The Egyptians had no Passover lamb, no blood to protect them. You want to eat and share in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray.