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Preparing Passover | David Fisher
Today, we’re going to be talking about preparing the Passover. Are you all ready to study the Scriptures today? Let’s turn to Luke, the chapter 22, the 22nd chapter of Luke. If you have your Bible with you, if you have a Bible app, we’re going to be bouncing between there and over in Exodus.
We’ll go to Exodus here in a few minutes. If you’ll turn to Luke 22, I’m going to be starting, I guess, in verse 7. Then we have some slides picking up in verse 11, if you don’t have your Bible with you. We’ll have some on the screen.
Luke 22:11, this is now the day before Jesus is going to be crucified. Of course, he knows it’s coming. He’s with his disciples.
They’re coming to Jerusalem. Before, we talked about how the whole procession came, and people proclaimed him as king. Now, he’s with his disciples.
Verse 7 says, Then came the day of unleavened bread, which was a seven-day feast. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. It became the day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed.
It means the lamb who was going to be slaughtered. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Jesus, of course, became our Passover.
He said, And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat. They said to him, because, see, they’re not at home. They’re traveling.
He says, Where do you want us to prepare? Passover was very different than all the other offerings and sacrifices. It wasn’t done at the synagogue, and it wasn’t done in the temple, and it wasn’t done in the tabernacle. It was done in the home.
Very first feast, and very first offering that God commanded his people to have. So where do you want us to prepare? And he said to them, Behold, when you’ve entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him.
Can you imagine this? He says, Go into the city, and by this time, according to Josephus, there are between two and a half to three million people in Jerusalem for Passover. And so he’s saying, Where do you want us to go? He says, Well, go find that guy who’s carrying a water pitcher. Well, that’s what he said.
He said, Go carry the man who’s carrying the water pitcher. I want you to meet him. Follow him into the house in which he enters.
I don’t know what the guy with the water pitcher was thinking, but he sees them, Peter and John, following him as he’s carrying the water pitcher to the house, where obviously he was a servant. He says, 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? And he will show you a large furnished upper room. There make ready.
So they went and found it, just as he said to them. And they prepared the Passover. A lot of folks were preparing for Passover.
A lot of folks. They all were preparing a little bit differently. See, Pontius Pilate was the Roman official, what we would think of as kind of a governor.
He was the one in charge by the Romans to keep the peace, and keep the prosperity and everything going Roman, flowing there in Jerusalem. He normally didn’t stay in Jerusalem. He stayed in Caesarea over by the coast.
So one thing he didn’t really like to do is have to go to Jerusalem. But he knew that because there was this big Passover feast, he had to get prepared by coming to Jerusalem. And he got prepared for Passover by bringing reinforcements, the soldiers, getting prepared for Passover.
He’s there to keep the peace, because it was going to be a powder keg anytime you get two and a half to three million religious people together. This wasn’t his first rodeo. So he’s preparing for the Passover.
You’ve got families. And all these families, of course, they had been commanded that they start preparing for Passover. What they would do is on the tenth day of the first month of the year, they would bring a lamb into their house.
And then on the fourteenth day, they would slaughter the lamb. They would prepare the meal, bitter herbs. And the mother particularly and all the kids, the whole family would go all through the house trying to find any crumbs of bread, any yeast, anything having to do with yeast or leaven, and they’d get it out of their house.
And for seven days, they did not eat bread that would rise, that would have any leaven in it. They’re preparing, I mean, preparing for the Passover, getting ready, got things to do. This wasn’t the first time Passover.
Their families had been doing it for 1,400 years. Y’all can’t get a kind of a context of how long this has been going on. I mean, our country’s been around for how long, 250 years? 1,400 years.
Mamas have been preparing. Daddies have been preparing. They’ve been slaughtering lambs for Passover.
1,400 years making preparation. You’ve got travelers. You’ve got folks who are coming from all over the known Roman world who are coming to Jerusalem.
They don’t have a home, but they’re coming and going to find a place to have Passover. Normally the population was 250,000, according to Josephus. 250,000 people.
It’s now 2.5 million people who were there at Passover. They didn’t have cars and congestion, but I imagine they had some congestion, don’t you? They’re preparing, all preparing. They’ve been coming for weeks, making preparations to come from Galatia, to come from Rome, to come from all over the Roman Empire to be in Jerusalem on this day for Passover, making preparations.
You’ve got the high priest. High priests are making preparations. Now normally you would think they were taking care of the religious preparations, but on this particular Passover, they were making other preparations.
Their preparations, it says up in a few verses earlier in 22, they were seeking ways to kill Jesus. That’s what the high priest was interested in doing. They were preparing and putting out the word that if this Jesus guy shows up, y’all let us know because we are going to kill him.
Judas Iscariot, y’all know that name. Y’all know that name. He was a disciple of Jesus.
He was preparing for the Passover too. The scriptures don’t really say why he did it, but in my heart, I believe he was just trying to jump start the revolution where Jesus was with all this. Can you imagine? They’ve got a built-in army now of two and a half, three million people to jump on Pontius Pilate to drive the Romans out.
He’s just trying to jump start a little revolution. He’s going to tell the priest, the high priest exactly where Jesus is. He’s going to profit a little bit of his own and puts 30 pieces of silver in his own pocket.
He’s preparing for the Passover. I want you to turn over to Exodus 12. Exodus 12 back in the Old Testament.
To give you a little history, if you don’t know a whole lot about Passover, they were eating Passover. The meal, the last supper was a Passover meal. When Jesus spoke about Passover, they understood the history.
A lot of us don’t understand the history. I just want to give you just a little brief history on it because I think it’s so important for us to know. The Israelites were in Egypt for over 400 years.
It had been prophesied to Abraham. They were under severe bondage, and they wanted out of that bondage. God finally sent a deliverer.
His name was Moses. He said, I want you to go. I want you to go and tell Pharaoh to let my people go that they may serve me.
Plague after plague after plague, they won’t do it. Finally, the last plague is the plague of the firstborn of the Egyptian. Both persons and beasts, man and animals, would all die on this day.
The destroyer would come in and perform that awful deed. Because of that deed, they were going to be released from the bondage of the Egyptians. God told Moses to go tell all the Israelites, this is what I want you to do.
He told them exactly about going and getting a lamb on the 10th day and bringing it into your home. On the 14th day, you’re going to slaughter it at twilight. I want you to go in and get rid of all the leaven in your homes and all the leaven in bread.
You’re not going to eat leaven bread for seven days. You’re going to have that night of a feast in your home. In that home, you’re going to roast that lamb.
You’re going to have bitter herbs. You’re going to wear your sandals. Because when I’m telling you, you need to get up and go, you need to get up and go.
That’s exactly what they happened. What we have here is, I’m going to just look here. I think I have some verses here on Exodus 12, starting at verse 23.
That’s kind of the history of it. He says here in verse 23, For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lentil, that’s the beam above the door.
When he sees the blood on the lentil, because that’s where they were supposed to take blood from the sacrifice of the lamb and put it up on the doors in the door post in the top. He says when he sees it, the blood on the lentil and on the two door post, the Lord will pass over the door. That’s where they get the word pass over.
Pass over the door. And not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you. And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever.
And it will come to pass. When you come to the land which the Lord will give you just as he promised that you shall keep this service. And that shall be when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? That you shall say, it is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord who passed over the houses of the children of Israel and Egypt when he struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.
So the people bowed their heads in worship. So that’s exactly what was going on. This is what they were commemorating.
This was an ordinance that God had put in place and for over a thousand years they’ve celebrated it. And Jesus is telling his disciples, he’s telling his disciples, we’ve got one more verse up there in the book of Luke. It’s in Luke 22:15.
It says, then Jesus says to this disciples, he says, with fervent desire. And God, Jesus really was looking forward to this day. With fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it’s fulfilled in the kingdom of God. So Jesus knew exactly the history. He had lived the history.
But on this night, the bread would be his body. That would be broken. And on this night, it would be his blood that would be shed for them.
Be the blood of the new covenant. That’s why we’re going to have communion here later this morning. Because we commemorate that, the body of Jesus and the blood of Jesus.
I don’t know where you are on your journey with God. Looking at this audience, there are going to be people who’ve never really started the journey with God. There are going to be some people who’ve been on the journey with God.
There’s some people who are way down the road with God. And it’s like they’re just getting closer and closer to God all the time. I don’t know where you are.
But God knows where you are. And the truth is, you know where you are. You know where you are.
The question is, are you preparing for his Passover? Are you preparing for his deliverance of you and your household? Are you preparing? Are you preparing to be delivered from the bondage of the enemy? I’m convinced there are some people who are in bondage. They’re in the bondage of sin. They’ve been in bondage to sin their whole life.
They say they want to get out, but they really don’t because they always keep coming right back to it. You know, some people complain about wanting to get out, but they get right back in and stay back in because it just seems to be uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable to change, isn’t it? It’s like the devil they know is more comfortable than what God’s trying to do in their lives.
But I’m going to tell you, God’s made a way for you to be delivered from the bondage of sin, and that’s through the blood of Jesus Christ. He made a way. He made a way for us to be released from that bondage and never have to go back.
I’m convinced that Jesus would say to you and he would say to the bondage that has been holding you back and to the bondage that has been restricting you, say, let my people go that they may serve me. And what he’s telling you is you get out of the bondage. It’s time for you to go and get out of it.
I don’t know what’s holding you back, whether it’s a lifestyle, whether you’ve grown accustomed to it, whether you’ve made excuses all of your life, oh, well, that’s just the way I am, or that’s just, you know, it’s just a little bit and grace is going to cover me. Jesus is going to say to you, get out and get out of bondage. I’m telling you, I’m speaking to you, I’m telling you, get up and go.
Get up and go. And you start coming back and you start becoming saved and things start going well for you. And then you come across into a hardship just like the children of Israel did when they came to the Red Sea and they started complaining and they started griping and they started saying, well, boy, it sure was good back when when I was in bondage.
Because, you know, I knew everything. Everything seemed to be steady. I mean, it might have been horrible, it might have been bad, but it was predictable.
And I don’t know if I want to be out in this journey where I’ve got to trust in a God that I can’t see with my own eyes, but he’s saying, I want you to get up and go. If you’re in bondage, Jesus is telling you today, if you’re going to prepare for Passover, start getting your mind right to say, I am ready to leave the bondage that I’ve been in. It’s time for us to prepare for the Passover.
There’s some of you who seem to be moving further along in their journey. Because you’ve not just listened to the part that said get up and go, you listened to the part where he said, I want you to get up and go, let my people go that they may serve me. And you’ve been serving.
You’ve started doing it, doing things. The road hadn’t been as smooth as you’d like to have seen it, but you’re at least moving forward. And I’m going to tell you, if we’re going to start preparing for Passover, we start doing that first by preparing our families for Passover.
And what they would do is they would take that, they would search all through the house looking for this unleavened bread for a whole week, and they would not eat leavened bread. I’m going to tell you, mamas, daddies, start preparing for the Passover in your home. And you look for the things that are unholy.
You look for the things that are not of God, and y’all start getting it out. Don’t just leave it in the closet and say, I may need it there someday. You say, this is not holy.
I don’t want it in my home. But you know, this is how it’s been all of our life. This is how my daddy did it.
This is how my mama did it. And that’s just how I was raised. And God’s going to say, mamas and daddies, you need to prepare for the Passover.
If you’re going to prepare your families to be released from bondage, we need to follow His commandments and start getting out the things that are unholy in our lives and in our families. That’s what we do. We start preparing for the Passover because God wants pure people.
He wants people who are serving Him with all of their heart, with all their soul, and all their minds, and all their strengths. Mamas and daddies, it’s important for us to prepare for the Passover. We’ve got to prepare for the deliverance of our families.
I know that a lot of y’all have family members who are not believers, and it hurts your heart. Do not give up. Keep preparing for the Passover.
Keep preparing for their deliverance. Pray for their deliverance. Speak holiness.
Speak life into their life. Claim the promises of God. I guess it’s been a couple of years now probably.
Cheryl and I would pray together at night, and she said, I want you to plead the blood of Jesus over our family. And she had heard that teaching. I think she had heard Sharon do it a lot.
She goes, you know, we need to do that. We need to plead the blood of Jesus. So every night when our prayers stop, just plead the blood of Jesus over my whole family.
Just to cover us. Just to cover us. Just to protect us.
Mama and daddy, start praying and pleading the blood of Jesus over your family. Start preparing for the Passover, and accept the deliverance that our Father has given to you. There’ll be times when I’m tired.
I’m just going to be honest with you. I don’t like to admit it, but sometimes I’m tired, and we’ll say our prayers together, and sometime I will forget to say, I may say, well, there’ll be a hedge of protection around my family, but I don’t say that phrase. I plead the blood of Jesus over my family.
You know what the first thing she says to me as soon as I say amen? You didn’t plead the blood of Jesus over us. She did it last night. I started saying, and I was tired, and my mouth got hung up on the word plead for some reason.
I just said, and I just skipped over it. I’m just being honest with you, and the first thing she said to me is, I didn’t hear you plead the blood of Jesus over us. I said, you were right.
My tongue got tied, and I just kind of skipped over it. Mama, sometime you need to tell Daddy, say, hey, we need some help here. Daddy, sometime you need to tell Mama, say, we need to do a little bit better here.
Let’s get out the things that are unholy in our families, in our lives, because we need to prepare for the deliverance that God wants to give you. There are some who now start preparing for, well, let me mention another one, because God brought it to my mind this morning, and I wrote it down, and I’m not going to leave it. When Paul was speaking in Ephesus, they came to the, an understanding of spiritual warfare when some people tried to deliver somebody from a demon, and they didn’t really, they just kind of used a script.
It was the sons of Siva. This demon just whipped them. He said, I know Paul, and I know Jesus, but I don’t know you.
Paul started explaining spiritual realities to them. You know what they did? The people who had been practicing magic, see, they had magic in their homes. They had sorcery in their homes.
So they went and took those things, and they burned them. Got it out of their house. Mamas and daddies, let’s get our house holy for Jesus.
Let’s get it holy for Jesus. Sometime as we prepare our journey, we’re not just preparing for our families, but we’re preparing for other people who may be travelers along the road. I have, I have puzzled about this scripture, the very first scripture, for the last two weeks.
Because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention it. About this man with a pitcher of water following him, and go make yourself a guest in their house. I’ve always thought that was kind of, I don’t know, some Bible verses just hit me, and man, I just understand the point.
But I mean, I’ve read that one over and over, and it says, why is it that Jesus would go tell them to go to somebody, a stranger, so that they have prepared the room for Passover? Why is that so significant? Why should it be so important to have that much mention in three of the gospel accounts? I’m gonna tell you what the Lord’s kind of shown me. The Lord’s expecting us to expect guests. You don’t just prepare for Passover for you.
You don’t prepare for deliverance for you. You prepare it for the guests that God is gonna send to your path. This man didn’t know the teacher.
This man didn’t know the disciples. But when he was given the opportunity, and was given the, just given the word, that hey, we’re gonna come stay in your house, and we’re gonna use your house, and we’re gonna have Passover in your home, in this upper room, he just says yes. And you know what? It’s already furnished, and it’s all ready for you.
I’m gonna tell you what I believe God’s saying, is he’s saying, I want you to be prepared for other people who are traveling on the road, just like these people are traveling from all over the world to Jerusalem, coming for Passover. You are meeting and spending time and seeing people who are not believers. There are travelers out there looking to be prepared.
And he wants people who are willing and prepared to bring guests into their lives. Bring people who are outside of your lives and say, the Father wants me to help you be prepared for Passover. I wanna help prepare you for your deliverance.
Because we worship a mighty God who is concerned about your deliverance, not just concerned about me and my family. I’ll tell you, this man, he was just asked, where’s the guest room that I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And there was a large room, it was already furnished, and it was ready for the Passover meal. My hope and our prayer is we start preparing for Passover.
We start preparing to see God’s deliverance in the lives of people. We do that for ourselves, for our own holiness. We do it for our families and for their holiness and for their deliverance.
But man, I tell you what, it doesn’t stop there. Jesus says, I want you to make disciples and you start being concerned about the needs of others who need deliverance. These guests and travelers who are going down the road who may not be your family and they may not even be your friends, but God wants you to be available to use, to be used by him for it.
There’s going to be a day. There’s going to be a day. I don’t know if any of y’all remember the song, but back in the 70’s, I’m a child of the groovy days, and so in the 70’s there was a Christian singer named Larry Norman and he had a song, he said, I wish we’d all been ready.
I wish we’d all been ready. But you know what, not everyone’s going to be ready for the deliverance. Jesus is coming back he’s coming back and today is the day of salvation, not tomorrow.
Today is the day of salvation, not tomorrow. Today is the day to start preparing. Today is the day and we don’t know when his day is going to be.
The scriptures don’t tell us. Anybody who tells you they figured it out exactly when Jesus is going to be coming back is making stuff up. But there’s going to be a day.
There’s going to be a day. There’s going to be a day. And we’re going to be prepared or we’re not going to be prepared.
And your family’s going to be prepared or they’re not going to be prepared. And the people that you’ve tried to reach out are going to be prepared or they’re not going to be prepared. That’s not for me to judge, it’s for almighty God to judge, but my hope and my prayer is that we have been faithful in helping others prepare for that day.
See Jesus wants to have communion with you. I believe He desires, He didn’t just desire earnestly to have this communion with His disciples. He wants to eat with you.
He wants to fellowship with you. Y’all may remember the story over in Revelations of the lukewarm church. One thing He says to them is, Behold, I do what? I stand at the door and knock.
Why? Because I want you to let me in so that I can come in and dine with you. I believe that’s the fellowship that Jesus wants to have with each and every one of you. It’s His body and it’s His blood.
And don’t let today go by without getting prepared. Amen.