[0:00] And Luke has begun his account of the gospel with John the Baptist's appearing.
[0:11] And he has now reached the last week of Jesus' life in the world. And particularly focusing on the last Passover that Jesus attended.
[0:26] Of course, if you go back to Luke chapter 2, you'll find there an account of Jesus' attending the Passover when he was only 12 years old.
[0:42] And he was an observer of all of these according to the law's requirements. And we see in this particular chapter that all is not rosy.
[0:56] Because Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, is awaiting his opportunity to betray the Lord Jesus Christ. You see that from chapter 22 at verse 3 onwards.
[1:10] But despite Judas' planning, Jesus is deeply desirous of observing this Passover before he suffers.
[1:24] Obviously, he himself was the fulfillment of the Passover lamb. And with his death, the symbolism of what the Passover meant was coming to an end.
[1:41] Every Passover lamb since the night the first lamb was slain in Egypt in the days of Moses pointed to Christ, the Passover lamb.
[1:52] Now Christ is desirous to observe this Passover in that he himself now is the reality to which the Passover lambs have been pointing down through the centuries.
[2:07] And then he asks the question. Or he says, go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. And the disciples, in verse 9, ask, where would you have us prepare it?
[2:24] And he directs them, verse 10, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters. And tell the master of the house.
[2:36] 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 upper room furnished, prepared there.
[2:51] I just want to focus on two things. Particularly thinking of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper that you're going to observe two weeks, I think, from today.
[3:04] And the Lord Jesus says, where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?
[3:17] It is as if Jesus is saying, is there a guest room with you in your heart, in your life? Is there a guest room willing to accommodate the Savior and enjoy fellowship with him?
[3:37] I'd like to say one or two words on that. Where is the guest room? And the second thing is the kind of guest room that was prepared.
[3:48] He will show you a large upper room furnished. Prepare it there. I'd like to expand on that, focusing particularly on our own heart, our own soul, our own life.
[4:06] As a guest room that is large and elevated and furnished. And thirdly, the command he gives, make preparation there.
[4:24] In advance of the Lord's Supper, make preparation in the guest room of your heart, of your life. Make preparation.
[4:35] Firstly then, where is the guest room? And this morning when I was thinking of this, I realized that the same root word is used for guest room here, as is used for the word inn.
[5:01] When Jesus was born, there was no room for them in the inn. The same root word.
[5:13] There was no room for Jesus in the inn. He came to his own people. They did not receive him. They just turned away from him.
[5:24] There was no room for him. There was no room for him in their heart, in their life, in their thinking. Now he is asking, where is an inn for me?
[5:40] Where is the guest room? That I may come into it and observe the Passover with my disciples.
[5:50] And it says here, he will show you a large upper room furnished. I want to say three things about the kind of room it was.
[6:06] First of all, it was a large room. Some people say that it was possibly like the entrance in a hotel.
[6:18] When you come in and there's a large room and maybe there are seats here and there, but really the room is very much larger than an ordinary living room or sitting room.
[6:33] That's the kind of picture we have here. A room where a lot of people could gather. And the man who points them to this room, he points them to a large room.
[6:48] By nature, the room that is our heart and our soul doesn't accommodate the Lord Jesus at all.
[7:02] We in our thinking are earthbound. We in our longings are earthbound and carnal.
[7:13] We really have no space for the Lord Jesus Christ at all. The room that we have as our soul and as our life is a very small, pokey, worldly, sinful, corrupt room.
[7:30] But here, the man shows them a large room. What makes the difference between the small, pokey room that we are by nature and the large room that accommodates Christ, the Christ of glory?
[7:56] Well, it says in the scripture in various places that when the Lord enlarges our heart, things are changed.
[8:14] Things are changed. I will run, the psalmist says, in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart.
[8:28] When the Lord Jesus comes in, in a day of his grace, in a day of salvation, he makes room for himself in our thinking, in our aspirations, in our will, in our affections.
[8:47] He fills us in such a way that he enlarges our heart with his presence. We're talking in the morning in the vestity before coming in here of the two on the road to Emmaus and how dark and dismal their situation was as they left Jerusalem on the way to Emmaus.
[9:15] Things seemingly had gone completely against their expectations. Christ had been crucified. He was already buried. And it's as if there was a gloom hanging over them.
[9:29] But Jesus drew near. And he started speaking to them. And what did they say? Did not our heart burn within us?
[9:40] As he spoke to us by the way and opened to us the scriptures. You see, the Lord enlarged their heart. And this is a picture of the heart that grace has touched.
[9:55] He will show you, it says, a guest room that is a large room. The other thing it says about it is that it is an upper room.
[10:12] not only has the Lord come in and as it were expanded by his grace and blessing our heart and life to accommodate himself.
[10:25] But he has elevated us above our worldly thinking. Elevated us above the carnal longings of our soul.
[10:37] Elevated us out of the gutter of sin in which we delighted to live and move and have our being. He has elevated us.
[10:52] You know, the holy calling of Christ, it's a heavenward calling. It's a calling upwards. A calling upwards.
[11:06] I very often come back to this text in Song of Solomon chapter 8, I think it's verse 5. When the question is asked regarding the church of Christ, who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved?
[11:23] How is it that she's coming up? because she's the subject of an upward calling. He is lifting her by his effectual calling, by his blessing of her.
[11:37] She no longer delights in the things of the world as she did. No longer lives for sin as she did. She is above street level, shall we say. Her affections are now set on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth.
[11:52] She's a citizen of heaven and that is where her affections rise to and these are the things she longs for. Is that a picture of your heart?
[12:05] Of your room for Christ? A large room, an upper room and it says here it's furnished.
[12:18] It's a furnished room. Well, when you think of your own heart and life as you are by nature, the furnishings are pretty pathetic, aren't they?
[12:34] Sin has entered every faculty of our being. Our thinking is all wrong. Our will is all wrong.
[12:46] every aspect of our outlook is all wrong so far as the absolute standard of God's law is concerned.
[12:59] Certainly there could be things in a limited sense that are good enough in our lives but the bigger picture is that things are out of joint and need to be corrected.
[13:15] But it says here that this room is furnished. What furnishings do we find here?
[13:25] Well, surely they're the furnishings of God's grace. We find there the grace of faith whereby we receive and rest upon Jesus Christ alone freely offered to us in the gospel.
[13:42] We find there the furnishing of God's love, God. We love holiness rather than sin. We love the word of God, something that we never really loved before.
[13:58] We love the people of God. We love the house of God. We love the worship of God. We love the word of God as it is written, as a rule of faith and life.
[14:12] we say something like the psalmist said when he spoke of God's word and he said, I rejoice at your word as one that findeth great spoil. We reckon the word of God to be sublime in its essence and in its beauty and in all its content and we rejoice in it and we rejoice in the God of the word, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[14:41] We love him. What furnishings? There is also the grace of hope, looking beyond what is present to the fulfillment of the promises that God gives in his word and we are convinced that he will perform all that he says.
[15:10] It is a large room, an upper room, a room furnished with the graces of the Spirit. And what does it say then?
[15:27] Prepare the Passover there. Prepare the Passover, he said to the disciples. Now you know that the Passover lamb had to be slain on the evening of the 14th of Nisan.
[15:45] The lamb had to be examined from the 10th onwards to make sure that there was no defect in the lamb of Passover. And on the evening of that 14th, they had to slay the lamb.
[16:01] The disciples had to acquire a lamb when they went to this particular place. They had to slay it according to the commandment of God.
[16:12] They had to find unleavened bread to observe the Passover. They had to find bitter herbs and wine and haroset sauce.
[16:26] Each of these elements spoke of the experiences of the children of Israel at the first Passover coming out of Egypt.
[16:39] And in every succeeding year that exodus from Egypt was remembered with great thankfulness at the Passover feast.
[16:53] When we look forward to the Lord's Supper, we don't have to go and find a lamb and slay it.
[17:08] But in a spiritual sense, we need to have a lamb. In fact, we need to be trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, the lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.
[17:28] And as we seek to prepare ourselves for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, this is an aspect of our preparation that we need to be trusting in Jesus Christ and him alone, only him, as our hope for eternity.
[17:51] God will be to be what about the unleavened bread that these disciples had to find? What does it mean?
[18:03] Well, besides trusting in Jesus Christ, which is a basic requirement for all who would observe the Lord's Supper correctly, there must be no old leaven allowed to remain in your heart and in your life, in your large upper room.
[18:30] You know, the scripture reminds us we must celebrate the feast not with the old leaven of bitterness and sinful life, malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and in truth.
[19:00] The Israelites had to make every effort to make sure that there wasn't one grain of leaven left within their homes in advance of that particular feast of Passover.
[19:16] And the same is true of us. We must seek by God's grace to cast out every remnant of malice and evil from our life.
[19:32] In Psalm 139, the psalmist asks the Lord to search him. Search me and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
[19:48] He doesn't, as it were, rely upon his own thoroughness to cleanse every element of malice or evil or worldliness out from his life.
[20:01] He says, Lord, you do it. You search it out and cleanse me that I might not harbor anything that will be detrimental to my own growth and grace or your own glory.
[20:16] And what about the bitter herbs that the Jews used reminding them of the bitterness of their experiences in times past?
[20:35] Well, we need to have the grace of repentance that we might mourn over our own sin. When you look at Zechariah chapter 12, it says there, they shall look upon me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for him.
[20:59] Looking unto the crucified one and remembering that it is because of my sin that he suffers. It is because of my breaking of God's law that he is having to suffer the way he does.
[21:19] He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed.
[21:33] My friends, how hard our heart is when we can think of a crucified savior and not be moved to tears weeping over our sin.
[21:47] Well, it says here that they had to have these bitter herbs and we would seek God's grace to give us that grace of repentance that we might truly mourn over our own sins.
[22:05] The sins for which Jesus Christ has died. where is the guest room? Are we going to be like the people in Bethlehem who refused Jesus a guest room when he was born?
[22:30] Would we not be more like those people who provided the large upper room furnished and our heart be enlarged by his grace and elevated by his blessing and furnished by the blessings of the covenant of God and he says prepared there.
[23:00] One or two questions. Do I have, do I know the Passover lamb? Jesus Christ.
[23:11] Do I know him? Remember in John's Gospel chapter one, John the Baptist preached these marvelous words two days in succession.
[23:25] Behold the lamb of God. And on the first day we don't read that anybody followed Jesus as a result. of the preaching.
[23:38] But the next day after same words behold the lamb of God and two of John's disciples followed Jesus and he turned around and he said what are you seeking?
[23:55] Master where do you dwell? where are you staying? We want to be with you. We want to spend time with you.
[24:09] We want to be in your presence enjoying your fellowship. And he said come and see where do you dwell? Come and see.
[24:22] Of course for us Jesus dwells in the scriptures yes Jesus dwells in the means of grace yes he dwells at the right hand of glory yes of course he does but this is the invitation come and see him come and see him in a preaching come and see him with the eyes of faith in the sacrament come and see him with the eye of faith as your Lord and Redeemer looking unto Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith do I have the Passover lamb do I have room for him am I willing to receive him into my own life do I look forward to fellowship with him in the gospel preaching and in the sacrament well we read here that he showed them a large upper room furnished prepared there and they went and found it just as he had told them and they prepared the
[25:41] Passover well the Lord Jesus Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us let us look to him and rely and trust upon him alone for salvation as he is freely offered to us in the gospel amen let us pray