Preparations

“On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrifice the Passover lamb, His disciples asked Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare the Passover so You may eat it?” So He sent two of His disciples and told them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a water jug will meet you. Follow him. Wherever he enters, tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room for Me to eat the Passover with My disciples?” He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.” So the disciples went out, entered the city, and found it just as He had told them, and they prepared the Passover.” (Mark 14:12-16 HCSB)

Preparations must be made. Everything must be ready. As I sat down to begin to write these words, my wife and I were having this very discussion. Our kids are coming over tomorrow and we are planning a big meal. My birthday is next week, and my wife has invited our children and grandchildren over for dinner tomorrow evening. So, food must be bought and prepared and the house cleaned and made ready. An extra table and chairs need to be brought in to have enough seating for everyone.

It is time to get things prepared and she has a plan. Me? I’m just the guy who follows her instructions… go get the table, put it there. We need four more chairs out of the garage, go get them and set them up over there. We have a grocery order to pick up this evening, don’t forget. She’s the planner and I’m just the worker. We all have our roles and assignments and now we just step through her plan. While the meal might be the focus of her planning, the celebration and family time is the highlight of the event.

It would be easy to just read through this paragraph and move on to the next without stopping to consider Mark’s words. After all, these are just the preparations. Just details, nothing important. But, if you pay close attention to the details you will notice that he puts a lot of emphasis on the Passover meal preparations. The word “prepare” is used over and over in these few verses and Jesus tells these two disciples, whom Luke identifies them as Simon Peter and John (see Lk. 22:7-13), to go into the city and make preparations. But is all of this preparation just about a meal? Is there anything else, something bigger being planned?

As most of you know, Passover is one of the main holidays in Jewish life and a time of important national celebration and remembrance. It was then and still is to this day. It is the commemoration of the final plague, the “passing over” as the death angel bypassed their homes. The lamb’s blood over and around their doors caused the death plague to “Passover” them and only strike the Egyptian homes and their livestock. Pharaoh relented and let the Israelites leave to go worship God at the holy mountain. This is THE defining moment in the life of the Israelites in the same way Independence Day is for Americans.

The preparations necessary for a proper observance of the Passover include a location inside the city walls of Jerusalem. So, the disciples ask Jesus about where they should go and prepare for Him to observe and eat the Passover meal. He then sends Peter and John into the city with specific instructions. They are to go into the city where they will meet a man carrying a water jar. They are to follow the man and then ask the owner of the home he enters about the “guest room” the Teacher has arranged to use for the meal.

Don’t miss this… this isn’t just about preparations for a celebratory meal. This is about the preparations God made for Israel’s salvation. Just as God prepared for their deliverance, they were to prepare, celebrate and remember His deliverance. They would sacrifice the lamb and place the blood on their homes, but God would honor their faith and pass over them and spare them from judgment and death. They were to remain in their homes and under the protection of the lamb’s blood even as they heard the cries and wailing from their Egyptian neighbors. Each year, they would gather as families and repeat these steps as a means of remembering what God had done.

As they made preparations for their commemorative meal, God was also preparing a lamb for sacrifice. It was crucial that the disciples pay attention, listen and learn the lessons the Teacher would teach them this night. While God was preparing His Lamb for sacrifice, the Lamb was preparing His disciples for the same. The idea of preparation is that a plan has been made, details have been identified and prepared and the plan is now being carried out according to the planner’s will and purpose.

I don’t know about you, but my ideas and planning rarely work out exactly as I planned. There always seems to be a few wrenches thrown into the works that wreak havoc on any plan. Fortunately for us, God knows about the wrenches being thrown into His plan. We will look at one of those, next week. For now, I want you to focus on the fact that God’s plan is not happenstance but is carefully and meticulously crafted and executed. What happens to Jesus in the next 24 hours of Mark’s story is not a surprise to Jesus or to God but is an integral part of God’s plan of redemption. The Lamb of God is being prepared for sacrifice and His blood is about to be poured out for the sins of the world.

If Peter and John listen to and follow Jesus’ guidance, they will find things are “furnished and ready” for their use. I’m horrible when it comes to planning for the details of events like this, but God isn’t. Jesus had apparently arranged these details many days before, but He left it to the owner of the home to carry out the plan. One of the questions that pops up surrounding this story is whether the servant carrying the jar of water was “foreseen” by Jesus or arranged by Him? Does it matter? Both possibilities are indicative of His planning and preparation. Is there a difference between His divine foreknowledge of the event or His preparation and arrangement of the event? The only difference in them is the servant’s obedience, isn’t it?

Ah, there’s the issue… or is it?

Divine providence. God’s preparations. God’s foreknowledge, purpose and His immutable or unchangeable will. Why is it that these ideas cause so many struggles, so many issues in our hearts and endless questions in our minds? Since this idea will surface again, next week, I want to introduce the idea now and we will expand on it next week. For now, let’s consider the implications of obedience and disobedience in these preparations. I suggested above that the presence of the servant with the water jar is indicative of either Jesus’ divine foreknowledge or His meticulous preparations. If it is indicative of His foreknowledge, then the question of divine authority and will comes into play. We begin to wonder if the servant was acting of his own accord or will or God’s, correct? Is He there with a water jar because he chose to be there or because God “caused” him to be there. Was it his choice or God’s?

Our questions and concerns really aren’t about this servant with the water jar, they are about ourselves. Red pill or blue pill? If you’re unfamiliar with this reference, it comes from the movie “The Matrix.” Do you want to know the truth, or do you want to just continue down the path you’re on? Are we willing to sacrifice our “perception” for the truth? What if the truth is that God’s will and man’s will are completely compatible and can co-exist? Simply because God knows what we will choose and do doesn’t mean that He causes us to do so. His foreknowledge of events is not cause of those events. We always live in the moment and everything else is either future or past. God exists outside of time and space and, thus, is capable of seeing and knowing beyond the moment in which we exist and live.

So, does Jesus arrange for the male servant to be carrying a water jar through the market at that moment or does He just know that it will happen. Does it matter? Either way, the servant is obedient to one master (the homeowner) or another (Jesus) and God is at work preparing His Lamb. That brings us to the crux of the matter, obedience to someone’s command or will. We either follow our own plan or someone else’s, right? We are either doing things according to our own will or we are submitting our will to someone else’s. We do this all the time. So, the question is not whether we do it or not but who we are willing to submit our will to. In this instance, the servant was submissive to either his master’s commands or to God’s.

We like to live under the perception of freedom, but we aren’t really free. We are submissive to our own desires or to someone else’s. I can tell you honestly, what I want is often not what is best for me. I am often a slave to my own desires, fears and shortsightedness. But freedom comes in the ability to choose the best path, the right way. I love ice cream and if I ate ice cream as often as I desired it, I’d be in big, BIG trouble. Fortunately, I generally have the ability and the fortitude to overpower my own desires and to place myself in obedience to better desires. Freedom doesn’t come in giving myself wholly over to my own desires but in bringing them under control and discovering real freedom is found by binding my desires to good and proper limitations.

The same is true of our relationship with God. We live in a culture that says, “be true to yourself and you’ll find your way and enjoy life.” But God says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Culture says, “follow your heart” but God says, “follow Me.” You’ll either be submissive to your own desires or to God’s. The real question is, whose will and whose way is best for you? You can choose, but your choice has consequences. Choose wisely…

I want to end by highlighting the outcome the disciples discovered through obedience. Listen, “So the disciples went out, entered the city, and found it just as He had told them, and they prepared the Passover.” They found it just as He had told them. What Jesus said they would find, they found just as He said. Our problem is that we often have a false perception of what Jesus told us we would find by following Him. As we’ve studied Mark’s gospel, we’ve heard Jesus tell these same disciples over and over about where this path was leading Him and, thus, where it would lead them. It would NOT lead them into a path of comfort and ease. It would NOT lead them onto a path of cultural and political triumph and success. It would NOT lead them to victory over their political oppressors. However, it WOULD lead them onto a path of sacrifice and service to God and one another.

It might not get them what they wanted, but it would get them what they needed… God’s love and His redemption. How? He was preparing the Lamb for the Passover. Even now, He was making preparations. Take it, eat it… this is My body. Take it, drink it… this is My blood. Everything is prepared. I’m doing this for YOU!