We're going to be looking this
morning at Luke chapter 22. We're going to begin reading
in verse 8. And he sent Peter and John saying,
Go and prepare us the Passover that we may eat. And they said unto him, Where
wilt thou that we prepare And he said unto them, Behold, when
ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you bearing
a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house where
ye entereth in. And ye shall say unto the good
man of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the
guest chamber where I shall eat Passover? with My disciples. And He shall show you a large
upper room furnished there. Make ready." And they went and
found as He had said unto them. And they made ready the Passover.
And when the hour was come, He sat down and the twelve apostles
with Him. And He said unto them with desire,
I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not
any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of
God." And he took the cup and gave thanks and said, take this
and divide it among yourselves. For I say unto you, I will not
drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall
come. And he took bread and he gave thanks and he break it.
And he gave unto them, saying, This is my body, which is given
for you, this due in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup
after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood,
which is shed for you. But behold, the hand of him that
betrayeth me is with me on the table. And truly the Son of Man
goeth as it was determined, but woe unto that man by whom he
is betrayed." The Lord said that we are to take this supper that He has
given us in remembrance of Him. And as we read this passage, I believe we see that which He
would have us to remember. And I'm struck as I read this of the fact that all things are
in the hand of the Lord to do as He sees fit. No stone is left
unturned. He told these disciples to go
get this place ready. And they said, what do we do? I mean, where do we go? What can we do? How do we do
it? He said, you just go. He says, I've got it ready. He
says, I've prepared it. Even though he told them to go
prepare it. What did they know how to do? They didn't know how
to do anything. He said, go prepare it. And they said, well, where
do you want us to prepare it? We don't have any place to do
this thing. He said, when you're entered
into the city, there shall a man meet you. Now, of course, you
know, the natural thinking of man is, well, you know the Lord,
and I've heard preachers so-called, say, well, you know, this was
a man that the Lord knew and He had already made these arrangements
with this guy ahead of time, you know, and set this all up. And the truth is that the Lord
had set this up, but not in the way in which they would say it. Because, you know, just like
the Lord directs all things, He directed his disciples to
the man that he had already directed in some fashion that he was to
do this. Why didn't the man of Baal say,
well, wait a minute, who are you guys? Because the Lord had prepared
these things. He said, there is a man going
to meet you bearing a pitcher of water. Now that is exactly,
I am reminded of Remember the case, and of course people, you
know, they would make all this out. Well, you know, you've got
this man. Somebody had to go ahead and
make these arrangements with this man. This couldn't have
just happened. But yet the Lord sent Peter when the tax men of
the city came and said, you've got to pay this tax. And they
didn't have any money. And the Lord said, well, go down
there to the to the shore, you're going to find a fish and he's
got some money in his mouth. Now let me ask you a question,
which is any harder for the Lord to do? To cause a man bearing
a pitcher of water to meet these fellows in the road or to go
get a fish that's got a piece of money in his mouth? Now at
some point in time the fish got the piece of money in his mouth,
didn't it? Now fish don't know what money
is, do they? And he just scooped up that piece
of money and was floating around, swimming around in the thing. And it just so happened, it was
a real coincidence, wasn't it? That just at the right time when
Peter went to catch fish, that this fish came up to the shore. And Peter
caught him somehow. I don't know how it all went
down, but nonetheless, The piece of money was in the fish's mouth,
the exact piece of money that they needed. Now isn't that amazing?
Now how does things like that happen? I'll tell you how they
happen because there is a God who sits on the throne of heaven,
who directs all things to come to pass according to the good
pleasure of His will. And this was no different. There
shall a man meet you bearing a pitcher of water. Follow him
to the house that he enters in. And ye shall say to the good
man of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the
guest chamber, that I shall eat the Passover with my disciples?"
The Master said it. Now if the Master says something,
who can say anything against it? It wouldn't do any good,
would it, if he's the Master? Because he is the Master. And
so this chamber was already Preparing at some point in time, there
had been some carpenters and some stonemasons or whatever
that had put all these things together. Somebody drew the plans
out, didn't he? For this guest chamber. But that
guest chamber, at the time when the Lord had need of it, it was
prepared and ready, was it not? It was built at the exact same
place. Just think about it. Think about the tree that Zacchaeus
climbed. Now, remember that trees come
from acorns, or this is a sycamore tree I think it was, so it came
from a sycamore fruit, and at some point in time, probably
some bird or something was carrying this seed of this sycamore tree
and dropped the thing where it fell. I don't know exactly how
it happened or where, but at some point in time, that sycamore
tree, the particular one, now think about it, that Zacchaeus,
Climbed up. Now there was probably a million,
or maybe not a million, but a thousand sycamore trees around there. But there was one sycamore tree
by the roadside in the right place at the right time for a
little old sawed-off short man who couldn't see over the crowd
to climb up in so that the Lord would see him. Now he climbed
up three to see the Lord, but guess what? The Lord saw him. Now how did the Lord see him?
Did He see him because he was looking up in the trees? No.
When he got to the place where the sycamore tree was, He directed
the bird to drop the seed and caused over time, and at that
time, the branches were in the exact right place for Zacchaeus
to climb and get in that tree, and the Lord stopped right there. And He said, Zacchaeus, come
down from there. Now, you know, people say, oh,
well, that just happened. Well, did it? Yes, it did just
happen, but it just happened because the Lord directed it
to occur according to the good pleasure of His will. So that's
a glorious thing, dear brethren. That's a wondrous thing. It's beyond comprehension. But in this we see the reality
of that which Peter preached when he said that by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken this man
and crucified him and slew him on a tree. Now these wicked men
did that task, did they not? But they did not do it on a haphazard
thing. and some whim, but they did it
according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God. And at the appointed time, just as surely as the Lord appointed
this place for them to eat this Passover, just as surely as that,
the Lord determined the time and the place when wicked men
would take Him and crucify Him. And he says all of that, you
see, all of these things that they are doing now are dependent
on that, is it not? I mean, why would they? He said
to them, I with desire. He said, I want to do this. He
said, it's a thing that burns within my bosom. I desire. Have I desired to eat this Passover
with you before I suffer? He already determined that, did
He not? Is He not the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world? Did all of this come to pass
just as an unfolding of events? Or did it come to pass because
God ordained it to come to pass before He ever created the first
human being? Before the foundation of the
world. The Lord Jesus Christ is ordained as the Savior of
sinners. The Savior of all who come to
Him. The Savior of those whom He loves.
The Savior of those whom He desires to eat this Passover with. Now
surely, there was only twelve of those men there. And one of
them, the Scripture says, was a devil. And the Lord desired
to eat this Passover that he might rejoice with those whom he loved,
and that he might display his sovereign purpose in using the
hand of the wicked to his own end. And he said, it is better for this
man if he had never been born. But he said, it is the thing
that I have ordained to come to pass. And nothing was going
to alter that. Because he had a greater purpose. You see, all of the things in
the world come together for a greater purpose. Now we see all of these
things. Have you ever looked at an ant
bed? I'm sure you have. As a kid, I used to take great
delight in killing ants. I thought that was the grandest
thing, you know. And I devised many methods of destroying ants,
because they weren't worth anything, and they just hurt you when they
got the opportunity. So, you know, I figured it was
up to me to do as much damage to them as I could. And so, but
I observed these ants. I mean, they're just going everywhere,
you know. And that's really how men are
in the world, is it not? I mean, we're just like ants
on an ant bed. I mean, every ant had a place he was going. I don't know where he was going
or what he was going to, but they seemed to know where they
were going. You know, they were going by some plan that they
had. And so they were all going just
like it is with men in this world. It's just like a bunch of ants
on an ant hill. But yet, just as surely, As the
path of every one of those ants was directed by the hand of the
Lord, so too is the path of all of humanity in the earth. And
everybody is going about different things, but I am going to tell
you one thing. All of it is serving the purpose of God to bring glory
to the name of Jesus Christ as He would send Him forth into
the world to redeem His people. And he said, this is the culmination
of it. He said, we are coming now to
the end of this unfolding of my redemption in the earth. And
he said, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before
I suffer. Because he knew that he would.
And so this morning, we are going to remember the Lord's death. And you know, to remember the Lord's death,
first we must remember who it is that came into the world to
die. He said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man cometh to the Father but
by Me. This One who is the Giver of
life, this One who was The Scripture says that the Father gave Him
life in Himself. Now, we've been given life, but
we don't have life in ourselves, do we? Because we have life in
Him. You see, our life emanates from
Him. The life of Jesus Christ emanates
from Himself. He is the life. And so He came
as the One who is the life, and it is He who said that He would
come and die. Now I can't comprehend that exactly,
and I don't think it's possible for a man to comprehend that.
How He who is life itself could actually die on Calvary's cross
and become as dead as any man has ever been. Now if you have the explanation
for that, you tell me about it. Because it is a thing beyond
our comprehension, but we do know this, that He did die, and
that He was buried, and the third day He rose again. And so when
we remember His death, we first remember who it is that died. This wasn't just some great prophet
who came into the world, as some tell us. just like any of these
other religious leaders. It ought to make you mad as fire
when somebody would even begin to compare anyone to Jesus Christ. It causes my skin to crawl when
I see these people on these panels of all these different religions
and what not, and they are all talking about this one and that
one and this prophet and this great thing. Look, all of that
stuff is dumb. There is no comparison to this
One whom we are talking about here. We are not talking about
just one of the great religions of the world. We are talking
about the Son of the Living God. We are talking about the One
who created the world with His own hands. We are talking about
Him who is life itself, to whom there is no comparison of anyone
else. God, who at sundry times in divers
manners spake in times past by the prophets, hath in these last
days spoken unto us by His Son. Hear ye Him. And all of the other
so-called prophets and supposed great religions of the earth
are nothing. They are less than nothing compared
to Him. So we think of who it is at night. We remember his death. Now when
we think of death, we think of death in the clinical sense that
his heart stopped beating, and surely it did. And his breath
ceased, and surely it did. The death that the Lord Jesus
Christ underwent was more than just that. But you see, He suffered
the pain of death. He suffered the agony of death. That is, not simply in His body,
though the bodily sufferings of Christ, the Scripture says
His face was marred more than any man. He was beaten. In the flesh. And he suffered
greatly. But I tell you, the soul sufferings
of Christ far exceeded anything that the body could ever be subjected
to. Because the sin of God's people
was laid upon him in such fashion that the Scripture says that
as this thing came upon him that he sweat as it were great drops
of blood. The blood was forced out of his
pores because of the agony that he was in, in the soul sufferings
that he had. Not for his own sake. Not as
some have said because he was, you know, dreading this physical
death that was to come. No, it was because the sin of
God's people came upon him and he was put, as it were, in a
vice and he was squeezed as the weight of that sin of his children
was laid upon him, and his sufferings were more than any mortal could
ever stand. You see, no mortal could ever
have undertaken what the Lord Jesus Christ did. Every one of
us would be destroyed by our own sin. Only he who is of infinite
glory an infinite humanity to take upon himself the sin of
all of his elect, and bear it, and be able to pour out his soul
as an offering for sin before the Lord. But that's exactly
what he did. And you know greater consternation
has never gripped the heart of a man than that which gripped
the heart of the Lord Jesus as He prayed, Father, take this
cup from me. But nevertheless, Thy will be
done. Now some have said, well, the
Lord was wanting to get out of this thing. No, that's not what
it was. Dear brethren, consider this. That the only way, the
one thing that the Lord Jesus desired as a perfect man was
to be found pleasing in His Father's sight. One thing that He lived
for was to bring glory to His Father. But the only way that
He was sent to do, the only way that He could please the Father
was to become unpleasing. in the Father's sight. Can you
imagine that? The only way that he could please
his Father was to be forsaken by his Father, the One whom he
loved with a pure heart, perfectly. And this was the thing that weighed
upon him, like he was between the proverbial rock and the hard
place. There was no escape. And indeed, the weakness of human
flesh is demonstrated. The Scripture says that the angels
came and supported him in the Garden of Eden because humanly
speaking, he would have expired right there. The weight of sin was so great.
And yet the Lord Jesus Christ, He undertook this. He said, Father,
nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done. And He went to
Calvary's cross. And He bore those sins. And we come today to remember
the One who died. Not simply the fact that He did
die, though we do remember that. We remember His death. But dear
brethren, a lot of people have died. I mean, the cemetery is
full of memorials to people that died. This isn't just a memorial
to somebody that died. This is a memorial to the One
who gave us life in the beginning and the One who gave us life unto death by His own death. That is the One who gave us eternal
life, who has set us free from the law of sin and death. You
see, the law of sin and death was that which all men are under
by nature. And that law demands death, does
it not? But we have been set free from
it. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made
me free from the law of sin and death. And so as we come to this
table, He said, this is my body which is given for you, this
do in remembrance of me. And likewise also the cup, saying
this cup is the New Testament in my blood which is shed for
you. What a glorious thing. What a
privilege it is for the sons of God to come to this table. of remembrance, a memorial that
set forth that we might be reminded of who He is and what He did. May the Lord give us grace that
we might give Him thanks this day.