Today we are reading from Mark 14: 12-21:

12 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” 13 So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.” 16 So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

17 When it was evening, he came with the twelve. 18 And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” 19 They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?” 20 He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. 21 For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”

This section deals with a lot of preparation and things that are in motion.  Jesus tells the disciples to go and follow a man with water. He will take you to the room.  It will all happen as Jesus said it would. 

Then as they are getting ready for the meal, Jesus says that it is going to go for Him as it was written about for Him. It is going according to plan.  Everything is playing according to plan.  We see it all in motion.  

But this plan for redemption has been going on for hundreds of years, over a thousand years.  What do we see in verse 12, this is the first day of the feast. What happens on the first day?  The Passover lamb is sacrificed.  If you remember the story of the Passover, the lamb was sacrificed, and when the blood of the lamb was placed upon the doorpost of the home, the blood of the lamb would cause death to pass by. 

The blood of the lamb would save those who were marked by the sacrifice.  

Am I talking about Passover?  Or am I talking about Jesus?  

Yes.  

This plan and method of salvation was prepared long before Good Friday.  The Passover lamb, for us as a Christian is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice that Jesus was offered to save us and redeem the world.  

Before Adam and Eve, or as Scripture tells us, before the foundations of the world, Jesus was the perfect lamb sacrificed to save us from our sins.  God’s plan of redemption was in motion.  God was going to save His people through the sacrifice of the Lamb. Everything was prepared for them to celebrate the Passover. 

Everything was prepared for us to receive the gift of salvation.  May we be thankful for all that our Jesus has done for us. 

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