The Book of Mark
The New Passover, Pt. 1
Mark 14:17-26
Mark 14:17-26
Ever since it was instituted by Moses, Passover has been celebrated by the Jews. It has been done basically the same time and in the same way for all those centuries. But what we read here in Mark is actually the last Passover that ever needed to be celebrated. In fact, I’ll go a step farther and say this is the last Passover that should have been celebrated because after this Passover, everything changed.
This marks the end of the Old and the beginning of the New. It is not only the last Passover, it is the first communion. And it is the Lord Himself that makes the transition by taking the components of the last Passover and redefining them as the elements of His table. The Old Testament is over and the New Testament has come.
Passover was a very simple memorial. It looked back to the Exodus in Egypt. The final plague, you remember, was the slaying of the firstborn in every family. The only way to avoid the angel of death coming by and killing the firstborn was to sacrifice a lamb and spread the blood of that lamb on the cross piece and the side pieces of the door of your home. And where the angel of death saw that, he would pass by and continue to the next house, hence, Passover.
The message was very clear. The protection from the judgment of God and deliverance from the wrath of God required the death of an innocent substitute. That’s what the sacrificial system communicated.
Unfortunately, no lamb ever completely satisfied God and because of that, over the course of the centuries millions of lambs were slaughtered.
But one day, about 3 and ½ years before this night, Jesus showed up at the Jordan River for a baptismal service and when John saw Him, he declared Him to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And now we come to the last legitimate Passover because tomorrow, Christ, our Passover lamb, will be slain.
And because of that, there is no more need for any symbols or shadows or types or pictures. And when
true Lamb dies, the veil in the temple will be ripped from top to bottom, and the Hebrew system of sacrifices will come to an end.
And as I’ve been trying to point out to you, it won’t be ended Judas and or Herod or Caiaphas or the Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin or the Romans, it will be ended by God who is now providing the Lamb of His choosing as the perfect sacrifice.
Now this final Passover has several major scenes that deserve our attention. There is the Passover meal itself, the exposure of Judas, the action of Satan, the confrontation of Peter about his denial, the discussion among the Apostles about who of them will be the greatest, Jesus washing their feet, the teaching of John 13 to 16 which includes the promise of the Holy Spirit and persecution, and all other resources that will be made available to them, the prayer of Jesus in John 17, and some other warnings to the Apostles. All of that occurs and is woven in and around the events that go on many hours at the Passover.
But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll break it into two parts and look at one of them tonight and one next time we gather.
First we have
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The Final Passover
verses 17-18a
I want to take just a quick, historic look at Passover before we see the events that unfold here. It began with a prayer of thanks, followed by the first cup of red wine which was doubly diluted with water. Then came a ceremonial washing of hands and then an actual washing of hands. They actually washed their hands because they ate with their hands and there was a ceremonial significance to it because it symbolized a need for cleansing and a need for holiness.
According to Luke 22, a fight broke out about who was the greatest in the kingdom. Maybe it was while they were talking about the need for cleansing and unholiness that this fight started. I can just hear Peter saying, “You better make sure you wash real good, knowing how sorry you are!” And the fight was on!
And you’ll remember that before speaking to them about it, Jesus washes their feet and gives them this profound lesson on humility.
Following the washing was the eating of bitter herbs. This is when the bread would be broken. It would be flat bread that was distributed and then dipped into a paste made from fruit and nuts.
And this first course, they would sing the Hallel. That’s where we get the word “hallelujah”. The Hallel was a series of hymns found from Psalm 113 to Psalm 118 that praise God and they sang them all at the Passover.
Traditionally they would sing Psalm 113 and 114, and then would come the second cup of wine and then after that cup would be the eating of the lamb.
And after the main course was completed would be the third cup of wine and after that they would sing the rest of the Hallel, Psalm 115, 116, 117 and 118. And then they would have a final sip of wine and one more Psalm and leave. That was the evening.
Now early in this celebration in this sequence, our Lord says something that I think is important for us to hear and it’s found in
Luke 22:15-16
Literally He says, “I desire with a desire,” that’s emphatic in the Greek. This is a very strong passion, “I must celebrate this Passover with you before I suffer. This has to happen for all the reasons that I told you.”
Not only because it’s right because it’s commanded by God, but because He must make this transition. He must end an era. He must bring to a completion an entire system and launch a new one and He must lay out all the promises upon which every believer through all of redemptive history draws and He must tell them of the coming of the Holy Spirit, and He must confront their sin, and He must give them a lesson on humility and all these things are so compelling.
He knows that He can’t die until all of this is clearly delineated to them and the Holy Spirit will bring it back to their memory in the future and they will write it down and it will be canonized and we will follow that instruction and cling to those promises. This has to happen before He dies.
He has, like everybody else, lived His whole life seeing animals sacrificed and all of them, He knew, pointed to Him. And now He was eating a meal at which the last legitimate Lamb was sacrificed and would be eaten and in a matter of hours it would be over. And He was the fulfillment of all those sacrifices. And in the view of His imminent suffering, He knows He will die, He knows He will not live to another Passover. He understands the urgency of this hour.
So he says, as we see in verse 16 of Luke 22, “I say to you, I’ll never again eat this meal with you until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.” And with that statement, we have the end of all legitimate Passovers. This was His last meal before the cross. He ate the lamb and then became the Lamb hours later.
So will there ever be another legitimate Passover? Jesus says there will be and it will occur in “the Kingdom of God”. So even Passover has not yet reached its final fulfillment. That’s going to happen in the Kingdom.
It is unmistakable what He means. He’s talking about His earthly, millennial reign for a thousand years in Jerusalem in the future when He returns and then He will celebrate the Passover meal with His own redeemed people again.
So that observance of Passover will be different from any other observance and the prophet Ezekiel gives us a little insight to its significance.
In Ezekiel 40 to 48, we are given a picture of millennial worship and how Christ will be worshipped in the coming kingdom. Right about the middle of that section, in chapter 45 we find a description of the Passover that will occur then.
verses 21 to 25
We understand this is prophetic. It is looking forward to a future time when Jesus is on the throne. There will be a temple built in the Millennium. There will be a Passover held at that time in the Millennial Kingdom, not as a memorial to the Exodus, but as a memorial to the cross, as a memorial to the real Lamb, the true Lamb. And Jesus says there in Luke 22, then He will officiate at that celebration just as He did with His disciples on this night, only it will be looking back to His death as the perfect Passover Lamb.
Now whether they realize it or not, this is good news for them because He’s talking about His death and yet He’s talkinga bout a future day when they’ll observe the Passover together. That means He’s not going to stay dead! And they need to know that not only will He die, but He will rise and He will establish His Kingdom, and they will be there and He will be with them there and they will celebrate a Passover again.
In reality this is about the only part of what He said to them that stuck. When He talked about His death, they didn’t allow that to register. When He talked about the Kingdom, they got that. They were on that channel all the time. That’s why in Acts 1 they said, “Will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?”
So He sees His suffering coming. He sees His resurrection. He also sees His Kingdom glory and He lets them know it’s a reality, everything in the plan of God. That’s from Luke. Now back to Mark.
As the supper progresses, Jesus accounces some very distressing news.
Verse 18b
It was unthinkable that one of their little group was the one prophesied of in Psalm 55. Surely not! Of course our Lord knew all along who it was. He knew it was Judas. He knew Judas’ heart. Jesus knew He was stealing money. He knew about eh betrayal and that the plan was already in place. He knew all about all of it.
But the disciples didn’t know it. So when Jesus said, “One of you will betray Me, one who is eating with Me,” that was outrageous. When you had a meal with someone, that was a safe place. That was friendship. You didn’t violate the person you were having a meal with. It was unthinkable in the Jewish culture. And when Jesus said “One of YOU who eats with Me will betray me”, those words must hanve hung like death in the air.
Verse 19
The word “grieved,” means to be distressed, sorrowful, profoundly pained. Matthew adds, “They were exceedingly, strongly, violently distressed, agitated. John 13:22 says they were perplexed bout whom He spoke. They had no clue.
For three years, Judas had been the most clever of hypocrites and he hid his steps and his heart well. When they preached, he preached. When they talked about the Kingdom, he talked about the Kingdom. When they prayed, he prayed. When they listened, he listened. Apparently when they healed, he was out there healing.
And in their shock and disbelief, they had no clue. So one by one, each of them says, “Surely not I?” They knew their hearts, but at the same time, they knew they were weak. And as they looked at each other, they also had to examine their own hearts. And as they are asking who it is,
Verse 20
And as we know from the other Gospels, Jesus dipped the bread and gave it to Judas, Satan entered him and he left as Jesus said, “What you must do, do quickly.’”
Verse 21
Notice the first phrase. Everything goes just as it is supposed to go. Every detail, the details of His crucifixion in Psalm 22, the meaning of His crucifixion in Isaiah 53, the detail of Him being pierced in Zechariah 12:10, the details of His resurrection in Psalm 16 and other features of Old Testament prophecy were all prewritten.
Everything was laid out in Scripture. Our Lord was not killed at the whim of Judas, or Pilate, or Caiaphas, or Herod, or the Sanhedrin, or the Romans, or even Satan, but by God on God’s timing and in God’s manner.
However, notice
Verse 21b
Just because God used Judas in His plan, does not exonerate Judas. In case you wondered, God will use every human being who rejects Him to accomplish His own purpose in His own plan and none of them will be exonerated because our sovereign God overrules for His own ends and His own glories their choices.
That’s nothing different with Judas than it is with anybody. If anybody thinks they can thwart the purposes of God by acting against Christ and against His church and against the gospel and against God Himself and not have to answer for it, that person is a fool.
Judas, like any rejecter, like any sinner, acts on his own motives, acts of his own choice and by his own will. He operates on his own greed and his own selfishness and his own materialism and he betrays Christ and He works it all out, yet everything He does is done precisely according to the timetable of God as a part of God’s plan so that Judas plays a crucial role in the death of Christ, just as God designs.
In fact, he was allowed to be an Apostle for that reason. Yet the Lord gave him opportunity even while he was there to believe the truth. The rejection was his choice and he’ll be punished for it. “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” Woe means cursed, damnation, hell.
And we know the end of Judas, don’t we? He hanged himself, the rope broke and his bowels were exploded on the rocks below and he was thrown into the dump, the trash heap, outside Jerusalem, and worse into the eternal Lake of Fire.
In fact, Jesus says, “It would have been good for that man to have never been born. “ There is no stronger statement in Scripture on human responsibility than that statement. It would be beter to never be born than to be damned forever.
As we saw last Sunday evening, the severest punishment of hell is for those who knew the most about Christ. That’s the message of Hebrews 10:29. If you know the most and you trample it underfoot, you will receive the severest punishment.
Add to what we’ve looked at tonight all the teaching in John 13-16, the High Priestly prayer of Jesus and other things the other gospel writers have told us, and you fill up that evening.
It all ends. The greatest single observance that the Jews were given, the remembrance of the Passover, is now over until Jesus comes in the Kingdom. Something brand new has come and we’ll look at that next time.
Let’s pray.
