The Jewish Feast of the Passover drew near, and our dear Lord sent two
of His disciples to prepare for it. He told them they were to go to a
certain house in Jerusalem and they would find an upper room furnished;
and there they were to make ready to eat the Passover, as all other
Jewish men did at this season.
It will help us very much to understand this last supper of our Lord
and Saviour if we go back and recall the circumstances of the first
Passover supper fourteen hundred years before.
We read in the 12th of Exodus: "It is a night to be much observed unto
the Lord, for bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is that
night of the Lord to be observed of all the Children of Israel in their
generations."
You may remember that the children of Jacob had gone from Canaan into
Egypt to buy food in a time of famine.
There they found their brother Joseph, whom they had sold as a slave,
who now was the greatest lord in Pharaoh's kingdom.
Joseph was very kind to his brothers, and Pharaoh welcomed them and
their father Jacob to stay in the land, and be nourished there.
But by and by there arose a king who did not remember Joseph, and he
began to put burdens on these Children of Israel the Pharaohs, one
after another, making them into slaves, till at last their bondage was
so cruel that they turned to the Lord their God, and cried to Him to
deliver them.
He raised up Moses; and at length there came a night—that wonderful
night—when the whole multitude of the Children of Israel were delivered
right out of Egypt!
God told Moses that on this night He was going to send a destroying
angel through the land of Egypt, and that the firstborn of all the
Egyptians and of every living thing was to be destroyed, as a great
judgment.
But God had provided "a way of escape" for the Children of Israel.
He told them to take a lamb for each of their households, and to kill
it and roast it and eat it that night in all their houses.
God told them that when they killed that lamb they were to save its
blood in a basin, and take a bunch of hyssop and sprinkle that blood
upon the lintel and on the side-posts of their doors; and He promised
that if they did this, He would not allow the destroying angel to come
near that house, and they would be perfectly safe. God said, "When I
see the blood I will pass over you."