Luke 22:14-18

THE PASSOVER

Matthew 26:20; Mark 14:17; Luke 22:14-18. It is now about 6 P. M. on Thursday preceding our Lord's crucifixion, when they proceed to eat the Passover meal. “And when the hour arrived, He and His twelve apostles along with Him sat down at the table. And He said to them, With desire I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffered; for I say unto you, that I no more eat of it until it may be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” This is really not only His last Passover meal, but the last of all that He ate before He laid down His life. I do not wonder that He intensely desired to enjoy this Passover with His disciples, an institution so significant to every faithful Jew, commemorative of their national birth, and of course pre-eminently significant to the Savior, because it emblematized His expiatory death, then looking Him in the face, as the swift hours rolled on and brought the bloody morrow. As the lamb died to provide that meal for the teeming thousands of Israel to feast upon, so the Lamb of God must die in order that the millions of earth may not starve through all eternity, but feast upon that Passover meal through the flight of eternal ages. The Passover “was fulfilled in the kingdom of God” when Jesus bled and died on the cross, the Great Antitype typified by the millions of bleeding lambs the last fifteen hundred years. O what rivers of blood quantity symbolizing quality!

“And receiving the cup, blessing it, He said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I say unto you, that I shall no more drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God may come.” There is a sense in which the kingdom of God has been in the world from the days of Eden, as the redemptive scheme was launched before the expulsion out of Paradise. The advent of Jesus into the world was a glorious epoch in the kingdom; but you must remember He came to die to redeem the lost. Hence His first advent culminates at Calvary, the grandest and most important epoch in the kingdom of God, and here denominated the coming of the kingdom.