All right, good morning. Let's
go over to Mark 14. Mark 14, verses 10 through 16. Mark 14, 10 through 16. Now the
Lord is showing us in the scriptures, constantly revealing to us and
showing us in the scriptures that He's prepared. He's prepared all things for
His people. Our God has provided and prepared
all things for His people. He knows our need of Him. He knows that we have a need,
a strong need. We need the Lord to do everything
for us in salvation. And, as Paul said in Romans 3.19,
now we know. Now we know. We know these things,
too, because He's revealed them to us. He's shown us that we
can't save ourselves. There's nothing we do in religion
that can justify us and earn a favor with God. Now we know
this, too, because He's revealed it by His Spirit. We didn't know
this by nature. We didn't know this in our flesh,
but now we know by the Spirit of God revealing this to us so
that our mouths, when we look at the law, the law of Moses,
for example, our mouth is shut. We're no longer boasting about
what we've done. Our mouth is shut and we have
a sense of guilt and shame when we look to the law for something
that we can do to earn a favor with God. And so this knowledge
of our need of Christ, the knowledge that the Lord gives us of our
need of Christ, it's a testimony, but not of our godliness, not
of our humility. It's a testimony of the grace
and mercy of God, which he freely bestows upon his people in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and that he has done all things well. He's done everything well and
good. as our brother just read in Romans 8, 28, and we know,
we know, all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose, his purpose. It's a matter of purpose because
God does all things according to his purpose. It's by purpose, on purpose,
what he does It's his purpose. And our God is not subject to
the weak, fickle will of man. He does what he will. Nor is
he bound by the works of the devil, frustrating him and tripping
him up and causing him not to be able to do what he wants to
do. Of him we read, even in the Old
Testament, in Daniel 4.35, all the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing. And God doeth according to his
will in the army of heaven, okay, many people accept that, and
among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his
hand or say unto him, what doest thou? What do you think you're
doing? You can't do that to me. Oh yes he can, he's the God who
created us, he does as it pleases him according to his will. That's the God that we're speaking
of, the God of this book, the God of the scriptures, the true
and living God, not the weak, I wish I could do this, I want
to do good for you, idle God of man's imagination. This is
the God of the scriptures that we're speaking of. And our Lord,
he said to his disciples, I go and prepare a place for you. He's prepared a place for us. And so this chapter here is our
entrance into that very preparation. We're seeing the preparation
that Christ has made for his people and himself. So our title
is The Preparation. the preparation, and we'll look
at a body prepared, we'll see the betrayal prepared, and then
the feast prepared, all right? Now last week, let me say. Introducing
this in a body prepared that we saw Mary's good work We saw
the work the good work that Mary did and Christ said she hath
wrought a good work on me Christ said that Christ said that and
what was this work? Well in Mark 14 verse 3 Mark
14 3 it says and being in Bethany In the house of Simon the leper,
as Christ sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster
box of ointment of spikenard very precious, and she broke
the box and poured it on his head. This work was done for
Christ. And we're told in Mark 14, verse
eight, that she did it to anoint my body for the burying. That's
why, it was for my burial. That's coming up. When I die,
she has anointed my body for the burying. And it was a work
of God in her, right? We know that this work doesn't
come from the flesh. This was the spirit of God moving
in her and bring forth this fruitful, precious good work upon Christ. She saw that Christ her Savior
was going to die soon, all revealed by the Spirit of God. Many of
the other disciples didn't even see it yet or understand when
he spoke of these things, but she saw it. God revealed it to
her. And so we read that she anointed
his head with oil. She anointed his head with oil
and it was a box full of ointment. That had to be an abundant amount,
an abundant amount. So it poured over his head, down
through his beard, went down over his body and down upon to
his feet. So that as John records it in
John 12, he tells us that Mary, had to stoop down, well she wanted
to, she stooped down and she wiped the oil off his feet with
the hairs of her head. The glory of the woman, her own
glory, she wiped his feet of that oil that was poured down
from his head all the way down to his feet. And that perfumed
scent of oil would have filled the room with its beautiful son,
it would have filled the house and been a blessing to all those
that were gathered together unto their Lord with him." And it's
a picture to us of that sweet savor of Christ, of what he is,
of the savor of Christ to his father in heaven, who is pleased
with his son, and he's a savor unto us, a sweet savor unto us
who believe and hope in his righteousness. And this is what David saw. When David wrote Psalm 23, that's
a well-loved psalm. A lot of people love Psalm 23.
It's a favorite of theirs. And man constantly sees what
the psalm is saying for them. They see themselves in it. But
they rarely see how it's of Christ. And every psalm, every psalm
is a messianic psalm. We're told by religionists that
there's 22 Messianic Psalms, but there's 150 Messianic Psalms. They're all first of Christ.
It's of Christ fulfilling them first, and then we draw blessings
in beholding Christ who has gone before us and prepared all things
and done everything for us, and then we see how it's a comfort
and a blessing to us. And David, when he wrote that
Psalm 23, he saw Christ. He saw Christ and spoke and prophesied
of Christ. And he saw the anointing of Christ,
the anointing by God, the Spirit who anointed Christ, and the
anointing here pictured for us with what Mary did when he said,
thou anointest my head with oil. David wrote that. He saw Christ.
Thou anointest my head with oil. That's Christ. And again, David
saw the peace and the unity of the brethren gathered together
there. He saw that of Christ gathering his people in the body
of himself, in his unity, just as all those people were in the
experience of that savory, sweet-smelling spikenard that filled the room
when it was poured upon Christ. And like manner, Christ gathers
his people into himself so that we're all covered with that perfume,
that sweet savor unto God. And David saw when he wrote Psalm
133, he saw the gathering together of the people from Jew and Gentile
as one in Christ before their Lord, their God, who made accepted
and righteous in Christ. It says in Psalm 133, behold,
how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity. It is like the precious ointment
upon the head that ran down upon the beard." Even Aaron's beard,
even pictured in the high priest Aaron, it was a picture of Christ. Not of Aaron first, but it pictured
Christ to us. It showed us Christ that went
down to the skirts of his garment. And so, It pictured Christ, our
high priest, a prepared sacrifice to offer himself as a sacrifice,
as our high priest, making sacrifice to put away our sins by the death
of himself. Christ did that for his people. As the dew of Hermim, and as
the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, for there
the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore. Isn't that the blessing that
God has blessed His people with in Christ? Life forevermore. We have the promise of God in
Christ, eternal life in Him. Not by anything we've done, but
by His grace and mercy. And so it's our blessed privilege,
each time the Lord gathers His people together, to break open
His Word, to break open the Gospel, like that alabaster box being
broken open. and that precious ointment coming
out, the smell of Christ, of Christ, His sweet savor in which
He sends forth that word to bless us, to cause us to hear and to
know what our Savior has freely done for us in spite of ourselves,
in spite of the fact that we've not earned or obtained this favor. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2,
verses 14 through 16, he spoke of this saying, Now thanks be
unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ. That's our triumph, is in Christ.
We never go outside of Christ. We don't ever want to stand before
a holy God outside of Christ. The blessings are in Christ. We never go beyond Christ. It's
in Christ. And he maketh manifest the savor
of his knowledge by us In every place, in the preaching of the
gospel, he makes known the saver of his knowledge of what he's
done. We celebrate, we rejoice in,
we worship Christ for what he has done. For we are unto God
a sweet saver of Christ. Not of us, not of our works,
but of Christ. We're a sweet saver of Christ
in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one
we are the saver of death unto death and to the other, the saver
of life unto life. And who's sufficient for these
things? Who's sufficient? Who of us can
say, yeah, I'm worthy of this? We're not sufficient for this.
This is all the grace and the mercy of God shown to us in Christ. And that brings us to now where
we are this morning, what we're about to see, this glaring example
of false faith in Judas. We see here a religious man,
but it's a false faith, a false hope that he has. To him Christ
was made a saver of death unto death. So let's move on to the
betrayal prepared. Our text here begins in verses
10 and 11 with Judas, with Judas betraying Christ. It says, in
Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 went unto the chief priests to
betray Christ unto them. And when they heard it, these
chief priests, they were glad and promised to give him money.
30 pieces of silver to be exact. And he sought how he might conveniently
betray him. And if you remember, as we saw
last week, Judas was rebuked by Christ. He was rebuked by
Christ because he spoke up, he thought, wait a minute, as an
apostle here, I think that what this woman just did was foolish.
It was a waste of what she just did. This could have been used
for a better thing. Why did she waste it on Christ?
He didn't need that. She shouldn't have done that.
but Christ rebuked him for his attack on Mary. Mary didn't defend
herself, Christ defended her, and he spoke up. And Judas, by
that, by that rebuke, he had heard enough. He had heard enough. He had been in service with Christ
for three years now, and it was a great sacrifice. It was very
trying, it was hard, he was picking up his cross, and he was making
a great personal sacrifice and what he could earn and what he
could do. It was a great sacrifice. And he didn't have a very comfortable
living all that time. And he had thought when Christ's
popularity was growing, he thought this is going in the right direction.
This is going good. And eventually, yeah, I'm going
to sacrifice, but eventually it'll get easier for me and I'll
have what I want. I'll have the money because he
had the money bag. And so he would have the money to buy things
that he needed or wanted. And the reality is that he was
a thief, and so he wanted to move on to greater riches. And so being taken of the devil
at his will, he agreed to betray Christ. He agreed to betray the
Lord of Glory. And we're told by Christ when
he was praying in the garden after Judas went out to turn
the Lord over, this is after his betrayal, It says, While
I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those
that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost. But
the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled."
And so Judas is preparing the way of betrayal, the betrayal
of Christ. And in so doing, in that betrayal,
he was fulfilling the determinant counsel of God. He was fulfilling
what God had determined beforehand to save his people. In Acts,
I'll just read Acts 4, 27 and 28, we're told, this is where
the brethren are praying, and they said, unto thy holy child
Jesus, whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate
with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together
for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before
to be done. So this was all according to
the will of God. God purposed it to be done this
way. He determined for it to be so
because he set forth Christ, a propitiation to put away the
sins of his people. Christ is the means of our forgiveness. This is how our God saves his
people, in Christ the propitiation. Christ was given to satisfy divine
justice for His people. Christ put away the sins of His
people by the death of Himself. And so our God provided His own
Son, spared Him not, spared Him not, gave His Son and spared
Him not that God might be just and the justifier of them which
believeth in Christ, in Christ Jesus. That's why God sent Him
and put him forth that he might be the salvation of his people.
And so to that end, Christ had to be betrayed to Pilate, to
the Gentiles, because the Gentiles were the ones that were hanging
people on a tree. And it speaks of Christ that
he was hung on a tree, and cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree. He became sin for his people. He was made to be the sin of
his people that we in him might be made the righteousness of
God. Christ did that for us. Our Lord did that for us. And
so Christ had to die according to the scriptures to put away
the sin of his people. But don't miss the glaring example
that we have of Judas, that unbelief that's being witnessed in him
so that he was moved to betray the Lord of glory. In the flesh, the horrible thing
is that in the flesh, we're no different from Judas. There's
nothing in us that we can boast in or glory in. And we're like
him in the flesh. We do wicked and evil things. And if God took his grace off
of us, where wouldn't we go? And what wouldn't we do in our
flesh? And so we owe everything that
we have to the Lord of Glory. And so, you know, you think,
well, I wouldn't do that. You know, there are some people
who would say, I would never do that. And you look, well, Judas was
religious. Aren't you religious? Aren't,
you know, don't we have religion? Don't we practice religion just
like Judas? And, well, no, I feel too much
for Christ. Didn't Judas feel for Christ
at some point in time? Wasn't he excited? and rejoicing
in what he was seeing and the miracles he saw. He saw and felt
and practiced the things that we see and practice and hear
of. He saw all those things. And
so outwardly, he appeared righteous, right? He was an apostle. There
were other disciples, but Christ chose and picked out 12 apostles
so that he had authority over evil spirits. He could cast them
out of people. He could heal. The sick he could
do miracles and he saw what he saw and yet he was still able
to do what he did. And, and it's, you know, just
to think of ourselves, we've got nothing to boast and we're
just as corrupt and evil if it's not for the grace of God that
delivers us from it. And so, what happened with Judas
is that he saw the grace of God toward Mary, which he did. He saw what she did, and he was
rebuked of Christ, and that angered him. That enraged him. He became
angry because he's thinking, I'm an apostle. I've given my
word on this thing. I don't think it was right what
she did, and now you're gonna rebuke me publicly in front of
all my peers, and you're gonna tell me that I'm wrong? and he
got angry and he was mad about what happened there. We see examples
of this throughout the scriptures. In fact, it says in Acts 7.54,
this is where Stephen Stephen, a disciple of Christ,
is preaching the gospel, going through all the scriptures and
showing them what God has revealed to the Jews, bringing them to
Christ, bringing them to see their need of Christ. And he's
preaching, he's doing a fabulous job. And it says in Acts 7, 54,
when they heard these things, this is all the Jews and all
their learning and all their pomp and glory who they are,
it says, they heard him speaking and they were cut to the heart.
They heard the grace of God that he was speaking. They heard this
man is blessed of God and he's speaking the truth. And they
were cut to the heart and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
And then shortly thereafter, when he saw Christ standing,
they rushed upon him and stoned him to death. And so the people
of this world, the inhabitants of the world that have not the
grace of God, they don't like to see the blessing of God upon
his people. It angers them. When they see
that grace of God worked in their heart and upon them, they get
angry. In fact, on Wednesdays, we go
through Isaiah, and in Isaiah 26, verse 11, we had read, but
you can see it in context here, but they shall see, speaking
of the wicked, they shall see and be ashamed for their envy
at the people. Yea, the fire of thine enemies
shall devour them. And so It's showing us that the
people of this world, inhabitants of this world, when they see
the grace of God displayed in the heart of his people and have
mercy upon his people, they get angry because they think, why
aren't I being blessed like that? How come I'm not being recognized
by God for my works and what I'm doing? How come he's recognizing
this puny little thing over here? And so they get angry about that. And that's exactly what happened
to Judas, right? He hung himself. His own fire
devoured him, and he hung himself, and he had no repentance. And
Judas was a thief. He was a thief. John 12, 6 tells
us Judas was a thief because he held a bag and would take
out a little at a time what he wanted for himself. And you think
about it, but in 1 Timothy 6, 10, if anyone is an example of
that verse, a testimony of what that verse really is, it would
be Judas, and it says, for the love of money is the root of
all evil, which while some coveted after, which Judas coveted after
money, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves
through with many sorrows. It's just a frightening example
to see that and knowing that's what we're saved from. That's
what we're being delivered from by Christ's grace and by his
mercy and grace because it's very easy to pursue the things
of this world. It's very easy to want and feel
that we should have more. And we always have needs and
so we can always see that and so it's very easy to get caught
up in that and pursue those weeds and thorny fields, pursuing a
little more comfortable ease of living. And money isn't the
one thing needful. That's not what we need above
all. Christ is the one thing needful. And so He ministers
that in the heart of His people and turns us away continually
from the love of this world to love and to seek and to desire
Him and to see our need of Him because it's very natural for
us. It's very easy in the flesh to pursue those things. All right,
let's move on to our final point, which is the feast prepared.
The feast prepared. Now, in these verses that we're
gonna look at here, we'll pick up in verse 12, but we see here
the Godhead of Christ. This is revealing to us again
and again that Christ is the Son of God, that He's as fully
God as if He were not man. as fully man, as if he were not
God. He is the God-man. And if he's
not God, because he said he is, he said, I am, he is the Son
of God. He revealed and showed his disciples
that he is the Son of God. And if he isn't the Son of God,
if he's not God, then he's a liar and a deceiver. And we are yet
in our sins, because we know that we can't work righteousness
before holy God. But he is the Son of God, sent
of God to obtain redemption for his people by the death of himself
to make atonement to cover with his blood the sins of the people
to put them away and to make us righteous to stand before
holy God our Savior our Lord paid the debt of righteousness
that we owe to God We owe God righteousness continually in
all things and we come up short so that the debt of righteousness
that we owe grows and grows and grows and we can't pay it off.
Christ was sent of God to pay that debt with his own life,
dying for the sins of the people to put them away. And that shows
us that only God, the one who is God and man, Only the God-man
can put away the sins of the people. You must be fully God
and fully man, all right? So Christ was prepared for this
very day. Christ was prepared of God for
the people to put away their sins. And we read of this throughout,
even Luke 9, 51 says, and it came to pass, when the time was
come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face
to go to Jerusalem. He knew that he was prepared,
sent of God for this very purpose, to put away the sins of the people. And so this one is God who could
raise the dead, He could heal the sick of their diseases, He
could silence and still the raging waves and wind with His voice,
with the touch of His hand, with the will of His heart. Only God
can do that. No man can do that. And so he
knows all things and can do all things. And so this is what he
shows us in this passage here. Look at Mark 14, verses 12 through
16. And the first day of unleavened
bread, when they killed the Passover, his disciples said unto him,
where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat
the Passover? And he sendeth forth two of his
disciples, and saith unto them, go ye into the city, and there
shall ye meet a man bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him. And wheresoever
he shall go in, say ye to the good man of the house, the master
saith, where is the guest chamber where I shall eat the Passover
with my disciples? And he will show you a large
upper room, furnished and prepared. There make ready for us. And
that word, those words furnished and prepared, it means that it
was richly decked. It was richly arrayed. It was
a luxurious room. It was a beautiful room with
thick carpets and a nice table and good setting. And it was
just a beautiful room, furnished and prepared, a room well prepared. And that's a picture for us of
Christ. He's the Lamb of God. He's the
Passover Lamb of God. He's spotless. He's without blemish. There's no fault. There's nothing
in Him. He's perfect. He's a body, or
He said, a body has thou prepared me. That's Christ, prepared for
His people, sent of God for His people to offer up Himself to
the Father to put away their sins. In verse 16 says, And his
disciples went forth and came into the city, and found, as
he had said unto them, and they made ready the Passover." So,
if you consider the grace of God and His purpose of grace
toward sinners, you see this, what the Lord is showing us here,
that He has always thought, He foreknew His people, He knew
His people, that means He set His love on a people, He foreknew
them, and therefore predestinated them, and put them in Christ
for their self-safekeeping, to ensure their salvation, to ensure
that they should know the true and living God, and be brought
into this inheritance with God, into the family of God, by Christ
Himself. He prepared His Son for this
very day. He sent Him for this very purpose,
to put away the sins of His people, And we see that even in this
text, that in Christ, right? He provided Christ there to make
ready, there to prepare, there to prepare us to stand before
him and meet him in the day of judgment. And so you think about
this preparation and we see the pictures of Christ in it. These
disciples, they had to purchase a lamb, right? And so when they
got that lamb, they would go up to the temple and that lamb
had to be slaughtered according to the scriptures, that the fat
of that lamb had to be burned on the altar, that blood had
to be sprinkled upon the altar, they had to roast that lamb with
fire, and then they had to take that lamb and get the bitter
herbs and the bread and the wine, all to prepare this feast, all
to bring it there for the feast. And you see how the Lord has
prepared His people, what He's done for us in sending the Son
and Him being righteous for His people and Him fulfilling all
the law of God perfectly. When the wicked spoke out against
Him and challenged Him and provoked Him, He didn't sin. There was
no guile found in His mouth. He didn't turn around and destroy
them like He could have, but He was silent before before his
persecutors, as a lamb is silent before her shearers, and he went
quietly there to do that work to make his people righteous,
to prepare the way so that we might be able, by his grace,
by his glory, stand before God, accepted and prepared, faultless
before the throne of God. As we read in Revelation 14.5,
It speaks of those that were made righteous by Christ, and
it says in their mouth was found no guile. They're not there standing
before God talking about their righteousness and their works
and what they've done for God. There's no guile. That's deceit. That's a lie. We have nothing
to boast in save Christ. They're there speaking of Christ. Remember your son. For they are
without fault before the throne of God. And if you can just imagine
how holy and perfect and righteous God is, and to be able to stand
before Him, declare it as it says, faultless before His throne,
as He's sitting on the throne of judgment, to be faultless
before Him, that's the righteousness of Christ. That's not our righteousness
in our works. Lord, don't look at me in my
own works of righteousness, look upon the righteousness of Your
Son. We should remember that, you
know, as the Lord gathers us, as we're coming here, right,
as the Lord prepared that room, pray, you know, that the Lord
give us a heart, that when we come together, that there's a
heart to worship Him, a desire for Him, that we remember that.
And I know, you know, we get caught up in life and we get
caught up in the things that we get caught up in, but isn't
it a good thing when the Lord gives us a hunger and a thirst
to hear Him preached and to desire Him and to be fed by Him. Knowing what we are in our hearts,
what we are in our thoughts left to ourselves, we have nothing.
but we have everything in Christ. And it's a good thing to remember
that, you know, to pray that the Lord remind us as we're coming
here, of the night before we come here, you know, that the
Lord set our hearts on it and that there is a desire. I mean,
I know that you can prepare everything and still be dead and cold and
hard and vice versa, you could come here come here dead and holding hard
and cold, and the Lord still have mercy upon you and give
you an ear to hear the grace of God shown to us in the Son,
Jesus Christ. So, our God prepared for us His
own Son, a feast of fat things, as we saw in Isaiah 25, where
Christ is prepared for us, a feast of fat things, of wines on the
leaves, of that rich creamy deliciousness that is of Christ, of what He's
provided in His Son for His people. And it's as David, the psalmist,
noted, again, back in Psalm 23, when Christ, remember, Christ
has gone before us. Everything that you or I go through,
Christ has gone through before us. He endured all things for
His people. And if you remember what the
psalmist wrote, what David wrote, he said, prepared a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies." And Christ knew what Judas did. He knew what Judas had done already.
And Judas was back in time to sit there. I always wondered,
well, why did he come there and eat with Christ and eat with
those people? And he took the bread broken
and the wine that Christ said, this is my blood and this is
my body. And Judas was there. And Judas was an enemy, and he
was there. And that's a picture, again,
thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
And so that's a comfort to the children of God because we know,
we now know the enemies that we have of sin, of this flesh,
of this wickedness that's in this flesh. We see the enemies,
the devil and all the works of this world and the works of of
sin in this world, we're in the midst of enemies, but God, our
God, prepares for us that gospel of what Christ, His Son, has
done for us in dying for His people to put away their sin,
that feast. He's prepared that for us even
in the midst of our enemies, but we see how Christ did it
first. He ate in the midst of His enemies at that table God
had prepared for Him. The beauty is that we won't have
that bitter end that Judas had. Judas had a bitter end and he
died. He perished. He killed himself
and died in hatred of God and of his people. But we instead
have a glorious inheritance in Christ the Passover Lamb. So,
I pray the Lord would bless and comfort your hearts and turn
you to see and to behold that Christ is all things necessary
for His people. He's provided everything. I pray
the Lord will bless us with His Spirit to see that He's provided
everything for us. He's prepared for us, Christ,
His Son, and blesses His people in Christ, His Son. So if you
don't know Him, beg the Lord. Beg the Lord for mercy that He
would give you an ear to hear what Christ has done and that
he would give you that rest that his people know in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And rather than be envious and
angry at the grace of God for his people, that he would give
us a heart warmed with love and content with the things that
God has given us in his son, Jesus Christ. So let's pray. Our gracious Lord, we thank you
for the preparation of sending your son, that you have prepared
the way that your Son is the way, the truth, and the life,
and that we can't come to the Father but by Him. And Lord,
we pray and ask that you would indeed put us in the way of Christ,
that you would deliver us from the love of self and the love
of this world, that you would deliver us into the hands of
Christ, and that we would see and know what He has done for
us in grace and in mercy. Lord, deliver us from The reign
of sin in the heart as Judas was. Lord, deliver us from that
and put us into the faith and the hope of Christ with your
people. Gather us together and settle us in your son. It's in
his name we pray and give thanks. Amen.