In the sermon titled 'Passover Preparations,' Peter Allison delves into the biblical account from Luke 22, focusing on the preparations for the Passover meal by Peter and John as instructed by Jesus. The sermon explores the significance of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, highlighting their fulfillment in Christ's crucifixion. Allison discusses the apparent contradictions between the synoptic gospels and John's gospel regarding the timing of the Passover meal. He acknowledges the difficulty in reconciling these accounts but emphasizes the certainty of biblical truth. The sermon underscores the importance of trusting God's word despite incomplete understanding, drawing parallels between the physical preparations for the feast and the spiritual journey of faith. Allison also reflects on the sovereignty of Christ in orchestrating the events leading to His crucifixion, asserting that Jesus was not a helpless victim but laid down His life willingly. The sermon concludes with reflections on the physical and spiritual dimensions of faith, particularly in the context of communal feasting and the anticipation of the heavenly banquet.

Please turn to Luke 22. I Let's read beginning at verse 7. Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. So they said to him, Where do you want us to prepare?

And he said, Behold, when you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house which he enters. Then you shall say to the master of the house, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? Then He will show you a large furnished room, upper room. There make ready.

So they went and found it just as He said to them. And they prepared the Passover. May we rejoice in the way of His testimony as much as in riches. Heavenly Father, please come now. Speak to us through your word.

May we hear your voice this morning with ears that you have opened, with hearts that you have prepared. May you sanctify my sinful lips that from a vessel of clay the riches of your grace may be proclaimed. We pray that this word that we have heard might be mixed with faith in our hearts. And may you, Lord, continue to feed us as we worship. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, there is a very well-known and sometimes not often talked about difficulty between the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke's account of this week that we are entering here in this passage, this Passion Week, this week of the Passover. There's a difference between their accounting of it and the Gospel of John's accounting of it. Around this Passover meal that is being prepared in this passage. Is this the Passover meal that these Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke would indicate that it is, that Jesus ate the Passover? In the Gospel of John it would seem that what the meal they ate was before the Passover itself.

And this is a difficulty, and I don't have an answer for you this morning. I wish I did. I wish I could explain how these two are true. We know that the Word of God is true, that it is without error, and that both of these passages are correct or true in what they say. There have been many proposed resolutions to this difficulty.

And I don't know which one of them is correct, if any of them are. I just don't know. And so I can't explain to you what the resolution is. But Calvin believed that when the Passover and the weekly Sabbath were right next to each other, then the Passover was celebrated on the Sabbath. That was His.

And so the last meal then was not the Passover meal, but a cedar, a meal without the Passover lamb. Others have proposed that the Passover was celebrated on two different days, or that the celebration extended over two different days because of the large number of animals that had to be sacrificed. There was probably, by some historic estimates, some historians estimate of the day that there were maybe as many as a couple million people based on the number of lambs that were sacrificed, several hundred thousand. And if it's at least ten people per lamb, that makes them a couple million people. And others have proposed that there were different reckonings of the days being used.

That some people were reckoning the day from sunrise to sunrise, and others followed the Jewish tradition and the biblical tradition, which was established a creation of days being from sunset to sunset. That's why Genesis 1 says, and the evening and the morning were the first day, because the evening preceded the morning in the biblical reckoning of the day. Some have proposed that there were slightly different calendars being used based on these different ways of reckoning a day. I don't know. I don't know.

And interestingly many commentators don't know either. Many don't even talk about it. Many just simply say, we're passing over this problem, which wasn't very helpful. But this is what we do know. This is what we do know.

We know that Jesus was crucified on Thursday. It is the only way for him to be in the grave for three days and three nights. Jesus said in Matthew 12 verse 40, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. In Sheol, which got translated into hell. But Jesus, his soul was not left in Hades, in Sheol.

So the only way for him to be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth is if he is crucified on Thursday afternoon. And Thursday afternoon, it's part of one day, Friday and Saturday, and then you have Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night, and He arose before dawn on Sunday. So before the breaking of that day, he arose. So that's the only way to get three days and three nights. And I think the Scriptures are very clear about that.

That it was three days and three nights. It is also Thursday, is also the 14th day of the month, which is when the Passover lamb was crucified, and Jesus is the Passover lamb. The Passover lamb number was selected on the 10th day, and then it was sacrificed at the end of the fourteenth day, in the evening. At the end of that, as it began to go toward twilight, that was sacrificed. We know that Because in Exodus, the children of Israel departed on the 15th day of that month.

They left while the Egyptians were burying their dead. And so this had to, that means the lamb had to have been sacrificed at the end of the fourteenth day toward evening and the feast was kept at night. They ate the first Passover at night. So under John's timing of the affair of this week all the days of the Passion Week are accounted for. There is no day that that isn't accounted for which is what would happen if he was crucified on Friday.

There's an extra day that isn't really accounted for. It also fits with a 30 AD crucifixion year, and that accords with other evidence we have in scripture that Jesus was born about 4 or 5 BC that he was 30 years of age when he began his ministry which would be around 26 AD and that his ministry on his earthly ministry lasted about three and a half years or so. And so all that would put the crucifixion on the 30 A.D. Which would put the 14th day of the month on Thursday. So I believe that we can say, we can be confident that in that timing, and that's how I will be understanding this week, but as to how to reconcile these two accounts of the synoptic gospel and John's, I simply don't know.

And I'm sorry about that, but it's the best that we can do this morning. So this feast, verse seven, it says, then came the day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed. So we see right away that there has been a change in terminology at least and a conflation of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In Exodus 12 these feasts were clearly distinguished. The lamb was selected on the tenth day and sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month at the end of the fourteenth day at twilight.

And the fifteenth day was the first day of the feast of unleavened bread. Now if they were eating the Passover at night and the days start at sunset, then they actually were eating the Passover lamb was sacrificed on the 14th day, the end of it, but they would have been eating on the 15th day at night. And then that would have been the first day of unleavened bread. You know, they ate unleavened bread. And so then during the day part of that 15th day, they departed Ramesses and Egypt.

But by the time, by Jesus' time, this feast of unleavened bread is conflated with Passover and they were both called Passover. Notice it says in verse 1, now the feast of unleavened bread drew near, which is called Passover. So these two, they're grouped together and they're both called Passover. So the Passover can refer to just the Passover or it can refer to the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the same.

Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread when the Passover must be killed. So there they're saying, Luke is calling this the Day of Unleavened Bread. And earlier in Matthew 26, we read, Now on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, where do you want us to prepare to eat the Passover? The first day of the feast of unleavened bread. So these two terms are used synonymously, but we can say that the feast of unleavened bread is never used to refer just to the Passover.

If it's used, it's used to refer to both together. So this Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb must be killed, is come. These two feasts are closely connected, both in their timing and celebration, but also in their significance. These feasts were both fulfilled now at 30 AD. Remember all the feasts, all pointed forward.

They pointed forward to Christ. The Feast of Dedication was fulfilled on December 25th when Christ came to the temple, when his incarnation. The feast of the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread are about to be fulfilled. The Passover, you remember, involved the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish, and the blood was then put on the doorposts of the house. And they were to gather together.

If a household was too small to eat a whole lamb, then they were to gather multiple households together to get enough people, to get ten people. Numbers in Exodus specify that This lamb that was sacrificed was then roasted whole so that no bones were broken. And that it was eaten with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. Exodus 12 says, they shall take some of the blood from this lamb put it on the doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it and they shall eat the flesh that night roasted in fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. You see when they did this God looked at that blood of the Passover lamb and his angel of death passed over the house that had the blood on the doorpost and on the lintel.

And so it's called passing over because God's judgment passed over. This Passover then represents the satisfaction of the wrath of God so that God's judgment passed over the home. You see, God is just. He doesn't just ignore the penalty of our sin. So the fact that God is passing over this means that His wrath has been satisfied, propitiated, and that we know was accomplished in Christ's crucifixion.

When by His blood, He paid the penalty of our sin. And unleavened bread, which followed closely on that, remembered their deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt. Unleavened bread was to be eaten seven days, so from the fifteenth day to the twenty-first day. And the fifteenth day there was a holy convocation. And no Unleavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters." They were to take all the leaven out of their homes even.

Not just eat bread without leaven, but remove every bit of leaven from their house. And you shall tell your son in that day saying this is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt This this feast of unleavened bread Represented the Lord delivering them from Egypt it represented the removal of sin And that of course can only follow by the sacrifice of Christ. And so these two are closely connected. Therefore, Paul said to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 5, Therefore, purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, Nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth See the leaven the feast of unleavened bread Represented in the removal of leaven even from everywhere in the house represented the removal of sin even as they were removed from Egypt. And so we keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and remove the leaven of malice and wickedness. So that's the significance of these two feasts. And they are about to be fulfilled here in the next few hours. What they have been doing for over 1, 500 years is now about to be fulfilled.

And so Jesus tells Peter and John to go and to prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. Prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. He picked just two, two disciples. Peter and John were part of those three close disciples that Jesus had, that inner circle of Peter, James, and John. These three disciples saw things that the other disciples didn't see.

It was only those three disciples that saw Jesus on the Mount when he was transfigured, and they saw that him clothed in his glory. They were the only ones that Jesus took when he rose raised up the ruler of the synagogue's daughter from the dead. He took the father and mother and Peter James and John in to see that resurrection. And in a few hours, Jesus would take just those three disciples with Him when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane. He told the twelve to stay and wait.

He took Peter, James, and John with him to a further place and said, watch, you stay here and watch. And then he went off and when he did that he said, he said my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death, Stay here and watch. He didn't say that to the other disciples. He said that to his three closest disciples. John was the disciple whom Jesus loved.

John calls himself by that, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Not that he didn't love the other disciples, But there was apparently a special love, a different love for John. And it is to John that Jesus committed the care of his mother at the cross. His mother Mary. Peter was a leader of the disciples.

He is the one who preached the, he is the one who is always putting his foot in his mouth speaking out. We have him more often than many of the other disciples, being the one who is doing the talking. He's almost like the spokesman. And he's the apostle that delivered the sermon at Pentecost, in which 3, 000 were saved. And so it's two of these disciples of this inner circle, this inner circle, Peter and John, that he says go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat.

So they have to prepare the Passover. It needs to be in the city of Jerusalem. Remember they were to eat the Passover where the Lord put His name And He put His name at the temple. That's where His glory was. And so Jesus told, when they say, where do you want us to prepare?

Jesus says, when you have entered the city, when you have entered Jerusalem, because they needed to eat this Passover in Jerusalem. In order to prepare, they would have needed to get the lamb sacrifice by the priests at the temple. They would have needed to remove all the leaven from the home. Jesus talks about being shown a large furnished upper room. Apparently it was the custom of the day for people to have rooms on their second floor, second story of their home that you could probably get to from the outside.

And they made these rooms available to the many people that would come from out of town in order to celebrate the Passover at Jerusalem. And apparently, if I understand correctly, they did this without charge to people. These rooms were made available without charge to people from out of town that needed to celebrate the Passover. And so they were directed to find, they would find this large furnished upper room. They would have had to get the lamb sacrificed, a lamb that would have been selected earlier.

They would have had to prepare the unleavened bread, roast the Passover lamb, it had to be roasted whole. They would have had to prepare the sop or the sauce in which the bread was dipped. Remember Christ dipped his bread there with the disciple that would betray him. And so all of these preparations had to be made. And Jesus makes provision for all this work to be done.

Presumably on the morning of that day. Now the disciples, when he said go and prepare the Passover for us so that we can eat it, the disciples said, the obvious question, where? Where should we prepare this Passover, right? Jesus didn't have a house, they didn't have a house. He said, the son of man, the foxes have homes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

So it's an obvious question. Where do you want us to prepare this? You don't have a home that we own. That is ours. And so Jesus then gives some very obtuse directions.

He says, when you've entered this, he didn't say go to a house on this street, and it's marked by these landmarks. He said, when you've entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Sounds like he's setting up a spy drop or something. And just follow him. They didn't have to say anything to him.

They just had to see this man. Carrying a pitcher of water and they were to follow him into the house, which he entered. Then they were to say to the master of the house, whatever house it was that this man took them to, that was carrying the water, the teacher says to you, where is the guest room that I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And Jesus says, well then he will show you a room. And that's the room where you're to prepare.

That's the room you're to remove all the leaven and set it up for our Passover meal. Now, why? What is the reason for this obscurity or this obtuseness in giving these directions? We don't, The text doesn't say why he did this, it just says that he did it. One possible explanation, and I think a very likely one, is that Saint, since it follows immediately this passage we looked at last week, where Saintin had entered the heart of Judas, and Judas had entered into a conspiracy with the chief priests and the scribes to betray Jesus at a place where there was no crowd.

That's the goal here. That they needed a place where they could capture Jesus where there was no crowd. And a room where they're celebrating the Passover might be a place that it could happen. And so Jesus is giving these directions probably in front of Judas, but He gives them in such a way that Judas doesn't know where they are going or where they will be. You see, if he had told them where they would be, it would be a perfect opportunity for Judas to go to the chief priests and scribes and tell them where Jesus would be alone with his twelve.

But Jesus does this in such a way that nobody listening to this would know. Go into the city and you're going to see a guy carrying a pitcher of water. Now you might think, well wouldn't there be a lot of people carrying pitchers of water? Well apparently, and I'm not an archaeologist to know this firsthand, but apparently what I read is that it wasn't usual for men to be carrying water, and if they were, they didn't do it in a pitcher, but they would have carried it in some kind of skin. So to see a man carrying a pitcher of water was apparently more unusual.

So that would be something that they would notice. Kind of like, well, something that would stick out, something that would be noticeable. So he said, go and you're going to see this unusual thing and just follow this man to the house. So he's able to convey to them where this Passover should be prepared without revealing to anyone who was listening where it would be. The only way they would know is if they followed them, followed Peter and John as they did this, and that would be obvious then.

So Judas wouldn't want to be obviously following them. Jesus only sent Peter and John. That might be another reason why He sent just Peter and John so that Judas would not have a chance to know where they were preparing. If he had had them all go and prepare, then Judas would have known and he could have slipped away. But In all of this, we see Christ's sovereign control and direction of everything that comes to pass.

Many times in these gospels, Jesus leaves or disappears because his hour had not yet come. Remember, Jesus was not a helpless victim. He laid down his own life and he said and as he said in John 10 I laid down my life. No one takes it from me. I lay it down and I raise it up and so even in this timing of when he is betrayed he is governing such that the betrayal happens at the exact right time.

Now what applications Can we make from this? I think first we see that the disciples are content to trust the Word of God. They are content to trust the Word of God when they don't know all the information, even that they need to know to do what they were called to do. They were called to prepare a feast in an upper room, and they go away, not knowing where that room is, but trusting Jesus' words to them that these things would work out. And in fact, He sent them and they found it just as He had said to them.

God doesn't always tell us everything that we might want to know. He doesn't always tell us the end of what He calls us to do. We often are sent out like the disciples here, Peter and John, given some directions, but not knowing what we're supposed to do. And many times we can set out in a path, the Lord lays upon our heart a duty through His Word. Remember, He directs us by His Word.

He may lay upon us a duty in His Word. And we might not understand why. We might not understand how it's going to work out. I know there have been some things in my life over the long haul, over the decades, that I've started down not understanding and not knowing, and knowing that I didn't know. It's like we're stepping into a fog, a fog covering the road.

And we know that's the road. We see the road in front of us. We see God's command, His duty, His scriptures, our calling. We know that we're to take that step, but we can't see any farther than that step. But see, just like this unfolds in this passage, as we begin to walk that road, By faith, the Lord will often reveal to us more of the path that He's called us to walk.

We begin to see then why He commanded us on that path. There are many, many things like that that I have said I wasn't smart enough to know when I started doing this why I was doing this. It just needed to be done. This is what was the scripture said to do. It's only much later that I begin to see the wisdom of that.

And so we need to trust the Word of God even when we don't have all the information and don't know everything that we need to know or might want to know. God's Word is true and it's trustworthy. We will find just like the disciples that everything, that things will happen exactly as He says they will. When He says that He will never leave us nor forsake us, we will find that He never does. When He says that He will provide for us, even as He provides for the flowers and the birds and the animals, we'll find that He does.

When He says that He blesses the house of the righteous, We'll find that He does, even if we don't see how. The other thing we see here is the preparation of feasts. That there is importance to the physicalness Of our lives There were three feasts that all the men of Israel were required to go to They were grouped in around this Passover around the summer, and then around the fall, and the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Boots in the fall. And these are physical things. You physically had to sacrifice a lamb and physically put the bloodsummer.

You physically had to prepare unleavened bread and remove all the leaven. You prepared a feast. You prepared, you roasted the lamb. And all these things had a meaning and a significance behind them. There was the physical attendance at Jerusalem to all these feasts.

In other words, our faith is not just a spiritual thing. It's not just all something that happens in our minds or something that we read about. It's something that we live. And feasts are important, even today. We don't celebrate the Passover.

Some people do it out of a sense of just understanding it. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not a feast that we're required to keep. But feasting is something That is important. Christ is now preparing the marriage supper, the feast, the banquet for us.

It's something that we are looking forward to, and it's something that we will eat in the flesh. You see, our salvation is not just spiritual, it is bodily. And Paul speaks in Romans 8 of a longing to see the redemption of our bodies, the deliverance from this body of sin. But the senses that he's given us are so that we can rightly enjoy the smells and the sounds and the sights and the taste that the Lord is preparing for us, that the Lord has made. We are called to taste and see that the Lord is good.

And we do that through good food that he has provided for us. There is, I think, an importance around a feast, around a meal that a family can gather together and sit, or multiple families can come and sit around a table and enjoy a feast. These are really liturgies. These are liturgies. These are things that we go through and the world has their liturgies too.

The world has their attractions to our senses, to our sight, to our eyes, to our ears, our hearing, our smell, our tastes. And I think we miss a part of the word of God, an important part of the word of God if we simply think our faith is purely spiritual and that there is no physicalness to it. We are looking forward to a marriage feast that will just be a wonderful sensation on our palates and our aromas, in our ears, in our eyes, such that we can't even imagine what it will be like. And there is a beauty to a feast before the Lord, with his people here on earth, even now. And that requires preparation.

There's hard, there's work that goes into that. And that's not a trivial labor. Those of you that prepare these feasts, that get consumed and leave a big pile of dishes behind, there is a beauty to that. And there is a wholesomeness to that. And so Jesus has His Disciples prepare this feast.

He set aside time and dedicated people to go and prepare this feast for them. And I think we do well to remember that in our families, in our homes, and to appreciate that we do not compete with the world by mere logic and reason and doctrine, but that we also show the beauty of holiness in the physical dimension. And I think that's what Paul is talking about when he says bodily exercise profits a little. The exercise of the body is not just talking about working out. He's talking about these bodily things that we do.

There is a low profit to them. That's why there is a physicalness to our worship. That there are upraised hands that are praising the Lord, offering blessing the Lord. There is the downward palms of the Lord blessing his people. There is the receiving palms of receiving the blessing of the Lord.

We're taught when we are to worship that we are to raise holy hands, that we are to kneel, that we are to bow. And all these things are the bodily exercise. And here they are exercising these bodily senses in a feast. And lastly, I think we see the sovereignty of Christ displayed in the arrangement of His death. We don't know whether He made prior arrangements for this feast and whether he talked to the master of the house ahead of time and said, Hey, I'm going to my I'm going to send some of my servants, my disciples.

We don't know or whether he simply ordained for this to happen without those preparations. But either way, the Lord sovereignly Christ sovereignly ordained the very moment of all that happened and the moment of his betrayal and the moment of his crucifixion so that he was crucified at exactly the right hour when his hour had come that he as the Passover lamb was sacrificed when the Passover lamb was sacrificed on the first day or on the 14th day of the first month So may God prepare us day by day. May we not lose sight or forget about the marriage feast that He is preparing for us and the home that He is preparing for us. That home that has many rooms in it. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the beauty that you have created in this world, a beauty that was marred by our sin in the fall, but a beauty that you are redeeming through your son Jesus Christ, who has satisfied your wrath and turned it away, propitiating it. And you Lord have promised to us that you are making a new heavens and a new earth where in righteousness dwells. A new Jerusalem, a heavenly Jerusalem that will come down to us. And we Lord eagerly wait, as Paul says, for the redemption of our bodies Something that is not yet seen But something that we eagerly wait for and hope for We thank you Lord for all the beauty that you give to us even now even with our fallen unredeemed Fully redeemed bodies That have that suffer from sin and loss of these senses and loss of abilities to taste and to see and to hear. Lord, You are one day restoring all that.

But even now we thank you for the foretaste that you give to us in good food, in a beautiful feast, in the beauty of your creation, the beauty of sunsets across oceans and lakes, and lakes, oceans and lakes, the majesty of mountains, the smells of fresh air after a thunderstorm, The senses of wine that you give to make our heart glad and of oil for our face to make it shine. Or these are your good gifts. We thank you for them and we bless your name. For indeed the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. And we love you because you have loved us and given yourself for us through Jesus Christ amen