Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: Ever felt overlooked by God? During his final hours, Jesus was spending Passover comforting and caring for his friends even while his death was looming. Today on Truth For Life weekend, Alistair Begg assures us this same Jesus longs to connect with you and me. Let's consider together the full extent of his love.

Alistair Begg: Well, we're returning to our studies in Luke's gospel. As you can see, we're at the seventh verse of chapter 22, and Jesus is approaching the final curtain. The devil has Judas firmly in his grasp, as verse 3 makes clear, and everything is now in place for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus.

As a result, Jesus and the disciples are living with a heightened sense of security. Jesus understands, Judas understands, that there is a cat and mouse game which is going on here. There is a price on the head of Jesus, and all concerned are looking for an opportunity finally to snatch him and silence this prophet from Nazareth.

Jesus is not phased by this. He understands that everything is going according to plan, that the Father has put him in charge of everything, and so he is moving inexorably towards the cross. Certainly, there's a plan in place which is a plan of destruction, as verses 1-6 make clear, but that plan of destruction is more than matched by the plan of salvation, which has been unfolding from the very beginning of the gospel, at least as we have it recorded for us here.

It's not simply that the plan of destruction is counterbalanced by the plan of salvation, but far more glorious than that. Satan's schemes are actually woven into God's plan and made to serve its ends. All of the darkness and all of the bitterness and the enmity towards the Lord Jesus Christ is being woven into the overarching plan and purpose of God. And although it may be the hour when darkness reigns, according to verse 53, nevertheless, the light that blazes out in the life of Christ is more than a match for the darkness. And as we saw in the prologue to John's gospel, the darkness doesn't comprehend it, or better still, the darkness cannot overcome it, or better again, the darkness isn't able to snuff it out.

Now the circumstances are clear. Jesus is hounded by the authorities, he's about to be betrayed by one of his own, he's on route to an excruciating death, the death of crucifixion, and yet here he is at this point concerned that the preparations for the Passover would go according to his plan.

It is a wonderful reminder to us of the extent of the love of Christ for his followers. If you imagine that our circumstances were even remotely akin to these, if we were within hours of our own death, especially such a cruel and a brutal death, I wonder how many of us would have any concern about our colleagues, whether we would be remotely concerned about what we were going to eat. Some of us, if we have a difficult day at all, are immediately off our food. Jesus is not off his food. He says, "Now I want you fellows to go and make sure that the Passover has been prepared for properly."

John summarizes this in chapter 13 of his gospel. He says, having loved his own who were in the world, he was now showing them the full extent of his love. "You want to see how much I love you?" says Jesus. "Then just listen carefully to what I'm saying and observe what I'm about to do."

Now, I've tried to summarize the verses before us under three headings. The first of these is the intensity of love's connection. I'm not sure I like that phrase, but it was the best I could do in the time that I had. Certainly, intensity is important. The intensity that comes out when he says to them in verse 15, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." We'll come back to that.

Two of the three who were involved in the transfiguration, namely Peter and John (James was the other one you will recall), are enlisted with and granted the responsibility, in verse 8, of making preparations so that Jesus and the disciples could eat the Passover.

They knew that they would need to go shopping. There would be a lamb that was necessary, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, wine, and so on. But their main concern was where was this going to happen? And so they ask in verse 9, "Where do you want us to prepare for it?"

After all, they didn't have a little condominium somewhere that they'd been operating from. Jesus had called them and said, "You know, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but if you hang with me, you better have a sleeping bag." And they routinely spent their nights out on the Mount of Olives, awakening in the morning looking down over the lights of the Jerusalem skyline, and oftentimes surely bleary-eyed and rather cold and looking for something to warm them at the start of the day. "Where are we going to do this? Where should we do this?"

Well, Jesus was actually ahead of them. As soon as they asked where, he was a man with a plan. And his plan for the Passover was more than matched by the plan of redemption which Luke is really preoccupied with. He says, "As you enter the city, you'll see a man carrying a jar of water. He'll meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters. Say to the owner of the house, 'The teacher asks, Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make the preparations there."

They must have looked to one another and said, "Wow, that's quite an answer. We said 'where do you want us to go?' and then we're to look for a man carrying a jar of water." Imagine if somebody asked you and you said, "Look for a man wearing a baseball hat." And when you see him, you'll know. You'd say, "Well, which baseball hat is it?" And surely if we went out into the community, there would be tons of people wearing baseball hats. That would be no help at all.

And we look at this and we say, so you look for a man carrying a jar of water. Surely that isn't very specific. That's going to take a long time. Until we read a little bit and we discover that routinely it was a lady, it was a woman that carried the jar of water, and men carried the wineskins of water, or the bottle, those hairy water bottles, you know, with the plastic tops that you get when you go to North Africa. That kind of thing.

Rather naughty, actually, that the woman should have to lug around these gigantic jars and the men could get off with the soft material close to their chest. Such is life, a rough deal, no question about it. But somehow or another this man was going to be doing the woman's work. He was going to be carrying a jar of water.

I thought about this man this week routinely. I don't know, I found my mind going back to him. I hope he's in heaven. I want to meet him. I'm sure in the course of conversation, we'll have a cup of coffee on the new earth together and he's going to say, "By the way," he says, "I was in the New Testament." And he won't be boastful, it'll just be an acknowledgment of a fact. I'll say to him, "Whereabouts were you? Tell me your name." He says, "Well, my name's unimportant, but I was in Luke 22 and I was the man carrying a jar of water."

Wow, quite a job, huh? You stood around with a water jar on your head. Yes. Well, you may feel, and just an aside, you may feel that your service for Christ amounts to little more than this. Nobody knows your name, nobody probably will know your name, and you say to yourself, "Really, is there much point in doing what I'm doing? I spent last week and this is what I did. I did it in obscurity."

Well, no service for the Lord Jesus is ever insignificant. No service for Jesus is ever irrelevant. And therefore as you think on your role and as you think upon your responsibilities, recognize that in the great scheme of things, God has plans and purposes for each of us.

For those of you whose minds go along the lines of, well, in verse 11, you're just to say to the owner of the house, "who's the owner of the house?" how does this work? I'm not going to delay on this, but I did find this week that there is quite a body of material that suggests that the owner of the house may well have been John Mark's mother and father.

And there's a wonderful investigation that you can do which ties in with, you remember, the man running away and his clothes getting pulled off and he's running naked from the tomb. And you say, "Well, who's this, and where was he, and where was he running from and to?" Go home and research it and you will find that a body of evidence points to the fact that that being, Mark, may well have been the to and fro from his house. It's really quite extraneous to our purpose, but it is interesting to consider.

Now Jesus says, "Go." They say, "Where?" and then in verse 13 they left and found things just as Jesus had told them. They left and found things just as Jesus had told them.

Now the need for security has led to a measure of secrecy. Surely that's the significance of this rather strange way of identifying the house. Why didn't he just say when they said, "Where would we make the preparations?" he said, "Mr. and Mrs. Mark's house, 43 Straight Street"? What's all the business about "you'll find a fellow, he's got a jug of water, you say to him, he'll take you there, you say this, he'll open the door, you go up the stairs and you'll be fine"? It's about secrecy.

Why? Well, what do we know from verse 6? Judas having consented to the plot, with a price on the head of Jesus, was watching for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present. Jesus understands this. Judas is in the wings waiting for a chance to say, "43 Straight Street. Go to that house, you'll find him there, he's upstairs."

So Jesus says to the two, "If you go here and do this and that," thereby depriving the other ten of the opportunity of knowing anything at all until finally they arrived in the location.

Was Jesus driven by fearfulness? No, he was moved by friendship. He was moved by friendship. He wanted privacy. And he wanted privacy so he could spend time with his dear friends. These were his companions. He'd been loving them from the beginning. He'd called them by name. He'd reached down into their lives and they had become his followers. And he liked them. More than that, he loved them. He enjoyed their company. And he desired with an eager desire. In fact, the literal translation of the Greek is, "with desire I have desired," epithumia epithumēsa.

The word which is used here for desire is the same word of the desire of the prodigal when he was starving in the pigsty and in the King James version, he fain would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine were eating. In other words, he would just about have eaten his shoes if he'd had them. That is how much he longed for it. It's the same word that is used in 1 Peter 1 that describes the angels longing to look into the issues of salvation. As it were on the parapets of heaven looking down and desiring with an earnest desire to be able to understand this dimension of salvation. That is the word which Jesus employs here. "I want you to know that I have been eagerly looking forward to spending this time with you."

The Lord of the universe who'd calmed the raging sea, turned water into wine, raised Lazarus, has an intense desire to spend the final hours of his life in the company of these people. Remarkable, isn't it? I find it remarkable.

And it's a reminder that this same Lord Jesus every day of our lives and every hour of the day has pledged himself with an intense longing to be our savior and our friend, our companion and our guide. And he is far more willing to grant to us the awareness of his intimate presence than any one of us are to take the time to seek it.

When he called the disciples, Mark says in 3:14 that he called them to be with him. And he called the twelve to be with him. In John 14, as he prays and declares his purposes, as John slows the action down in a way that the synoptics don't, he says, "You know, if a man loves me, he will keep my commandments and the Father will love him and we will come to him and we will make our home with him."

Does Jesus live with you? Have we this week known his company? Known his companionship? Have we awakened in the morning to the realization that Jesus loves me with an intense longing and that his love has a desire for connectedness? That in the reading of the Bible, he speaks to me and I discover his will? That in the fellowship of his people, he reminds me of the way in which he operates? That in the singing of his praise, I discover the wonder again of who he is and why he's constructed my life and all that he desires for me? That there is an intensity about this from the side of God, which is the remarkable thing. He wants to be with you.

When you think about someone of great significance, it's fine isn't it if we can create a context in which we might be with them? But isn't it fantastic when they indicate from their side that they are actually far more desirous of being with us than we are of ever seeing them? And it gives us a fillip to our pride and sometimes can make us downright obnoxious depending on who the person is. But with Jesus, it's wonderful. And today he stands at the door of our lives, the door of our church, and he knocks. And he says that if we hear his voice and open the door, he will come into us and he'll eat with us as an expression of fellowship and relationship and as an indication of his intense loving desire to be connected with his people.

I have to remind myself of that all the time. I can get into a routine as good as the next person. The reading of my Bible as if somehow or another I got points for it. The attendance at church just to keep up pretense, you know, just to keep a good face on it. "Come on now Alistair, you must get up. You've got to go to church." "I do?" "Yes." "Why?" "Well, you're the pastor for one thing."

And see, there's all the difference in the world between going through the motions and connecting with the intensity of his love. He conveys something of that here.

Secondly, well you'll notice the clarity of love's instruction. The context, of course, is the celebration of the Passover. We could delay a long time on this, but we won't. Suffice it to say that the Passover celebrated the deliverance of God's people from the slavery of Egypt. I think most of us know that. Moses went to Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go." You remember the plagues and finally the killing of the firstborn unless there was the sprinkling of blood on the lintels and the doorposts.

And then the angel of death coming and wreaking vengeance on the houses and circumstances of all who were not covered by the blood. And every year since then, the people of God would celebrate as per God's direction the fact that the angel of death had passed over the houses of those who were, if you like, under the blood.

And Jesus says, "I've actually been looking forward to sharing this particular Passover with you before I suffer." And the reason is clear from the instruction he provides. Indeed, verse 16 is important. "I tell you, I'm not going to eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."

All that was anticipated and portrayed in the Passover was about to be fulfilled. If you like, Moses' exodus from Egypt was about to be fulfilled in Jesus' exodus. Let me just point you to Luke 9 for one moment. You remember in the transfiguration that when Peter, James, and John went up onto the mountain to pray, this is about verse 28, as he was praying, his countenance changed and so on. And then we have the appearance of Moses and Elijah, appearing in glorious splendor, verse 31, and talking with Jesus.

And what did they speak about? Well, they spoke about his departure. Now the word there is exodus. They spoke about his exodus which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Now we read that then, and the James and Peter and John experienced it then, they must have made a mental note of it and said, "Well, I wonder what this is really all about."

And now says Jesus, "I've been eagerly longing to share this Passover with you because all that has been portrayed in it is about to be fulfilled in my death." And the deliverance that comes by Jesus' death is a deliverance from sin into eternal life. All the years of patient preparation had now passed and it was before them.

Now when you read Luke 22, when you read the account in Matthew and in Mark, when you read 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the words of institution, as we refer to them, where Paul says, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples and he said..." and so on. We're dealing in terminology that for any of us who have been around church buildings for any length of time, we're familiar with it. We have some kind of perception of it.

But we're also dealing with material that has been the basis of terrific misunderstanding and provides for some of us a basis for an unjustifiable security. Some of us have been led to believe that if somehow or another we can just hang our hats, as it were, on the Eucharist, on communion, on the Lord's supper, whatever else we do, whatever else we say will be more than rectified, more than clarified by our attendance at this simple feast.

And indeed some of us feel intensely guilty because we have come out of a background where that was everything to us and now it means largely nothing to us. And every so often we say to ourselves, "I wonder if I'm on the completely wrong track." So I want to pause for a moment and identify with you, first of all, the beauty and the structure of the Passover meal itself. This is my best attempt at this. Some of you are from a Jewish background, I'm sure will immediately be on your feet to help me out and to clarify things in a way that I'm unable to do.

But in my own reading, this is what I've discovered. The Passover meal, and incidentally I have attended at my Jewish friend's home the Seder as well, so I tried my best to follow it when I was going through it and some of you will have done the same. There were several cups of wine which were drunk and which are drunk during the celebration of what is a very moving ritual.

The first cup is brought in and drunk before the arrival of the traditional food. Incidentally, the reason when you realize that there are four distinct drinking of the cups, this will help you when you go to Luke's gospel and it says you're trying to work out, "Well, I thought he said the bread, then he said the cup, then he said the cup again, then I thought that was after supper, the cup..." what's going on?

Well, the Jewish people would understand it perfectly because they knew the nature of the Passover ritual. Gentiles, we haven't a clue really what's going on, so we need to go back and understand it. The first cup was drunk before the arrival of the food. When the traditional food arrived, the youngest member in the household was then given the privilege and responsibility of asking the traditional question: Why do we eat these foods on this night? The reply was then given by the father or the elder member of the household who would be conducting the Passover celebration.

And in reply, the father would recount the story of the exodus. That would then be followed by the singing or the chanting or the repeating of some of the Old Testament psalms. Not just any, but Psalm 113 to Psalm 115. Following that, the second cup would be passed around. And just before the meal was eaten, the plate of unleavened bread would be lifted up and the words would then be spoken: "This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let everyone who hungers come and eat. Let everyone who is needy come and eat the Passover meal."

Then the father would give thanks for the bread. He would break off a piece for each person who was present and then that in turn would be passed around the group until all had received. It was then customary for that bread to be eaten in silence. But on this particular occasion, Jesus inserts something into the proceedings. And he doesn't just say something, he says something of incredible significance.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth For Life weekend with Alistair Begg. And Alistair just left us with a bit of a cliffhanger today. Next weekend we'll hear about the significant change Jesus made to the Passover meal. In addition to teaching from the Bible, here at Truth For Life, we carefully select books to recommend to you to help you grow in your faith. If you've never studied about God's providence in the life of Joseph recorded in the book of Genesis, let me encourage you to get a copy of Alistair's book *The Hand of God: Finding His Care in All Circumstances*.

In the book *The Hand of God*, Alistair takes you through this captivating narrative. You'll read about how God shaped Joseph's circumstances. You'll be reminded that His sovereign hand is at work through the ups and downs of your own life as well. This is a true record of real-life events and it serves as a comforting reminder that we can trust God even when we can't fully understand His purposes. Find out more about the book *The Hand of God* when you visit our website, truthforlife.org.

I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for studying the Bible with us this weekend. Do you understand the significance of celebrating communion? Next weekend we'll find out what it is and what it isn't. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.