Day 184: Luke 22:7–8

Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us, so we can eat it” (v. 8).

Christ’s appointments are never haphazard. He can accomplish anything He desires by merely thinking it into existence. That He assigns men and women to certain tasks implies that the experience of the servant or beneficiary is often as important as the accomplishment. Sometimes more so. God can do anything He wants. He sovereignly chooses to employ mortals to flesh out an invisible work in the visible realm . . . even Jesus the perfect Word made flesh.

I believe that Peter and John were not only chosen for the job of preparing the Passover but that the job was chosen for them. When I considered this scene in Jesus the One and Only, I shared what I believe is far more than a coincidence: Peter and John’s repetitive references in their letters to Christ as the Lamb. They seemed to have understood the concept of the Paschal Lamb like none of the other writers of the New Testament. I believe a tremendous part of their understanding came in retrospect after their preparation for the last Passover with Christ.

But God added another fresh insight to this as I became more deeply aware of the early influence John the Baptist had upon Peter and John. We know that each was either directly discipled by the Baptizer or indirectly influenced through their brothers. John 1:29 tells us that these disciples first encountered Jesus through the words of the Baptizer: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jesus would not rest until He taught Peter and John exactly what that title meant. The pair didn’t run by the Old City market and grab a saran-wrapped package of trimmed lamb for a buck fifty a pound. No, they picked out a live lamb and then had the sweet thing slaughtered. Very likely they held it still for the knife. Most of us can hardly imagine all that was involved in preparing for a Passover, but you can be sure that none of it was wasted.

That’s one of the things I love about Christ. He’s not into waste management. If He gives us a task or assigns us to a difficult season, every ounce of our experience is meant for our instruction and completion if only we’ll let Him finish the work.

The other day I came across a verse that causes me to stop, meditate, and ask big things from God every time I see it. Psalm 25:14 says, “The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.” I desperately want God to be able to confide in me, don’t you? The King James Version puts it this way: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” I want God to tell me His secrets! I believe these hidden treasures are not secret because He tells them only to a chosen few, but because not many seek to know Him and tarry with Him long enough to find out.

I believe as Peter and John prepared the Passover meal that day, they were privy to many secrets that became clearer and clearer to them as time passed. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God makes everything beautiful in its time. I truly believe that if we’re willing to see, God uses every difficulty and every assignment to confide deep things to us, and that the lessons are not complete until their beauty has been revealed. I fear, however, that we have such an attention deficit that we settle for bearable when beauty was just around the corner.

Surely many years and Passover celebrations passed before Peter and John fully assimilated the profound significance of the one in which Jesus became the Lamb. John never could get over it. From the pen of an elderly, shaking hand, we find over twenty references to the Lamb in the Book of Revelation. And it was Peter, his sidekick, who wrote:

For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things, like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish (1 Pet. 1:18–19 hcsb).

Look at that opening expression of 1 Peter 1:18 again: “from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers.” When I think of a Jewish heritage, I imagine it to be anything but empty! We Americans are such a hodgepodge of cultures that many of us lack the rich traditions of other less alloyed cultures. And who could have enjoyed richer ways of life and more tradition than those handed down by Jewish forefathers to their sons and daughters? Yet Peter called them empty. Why?

I think because once He saw their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, he knew that these “inheritances” were empty without Him. Once he knew the true Passover Lamb, an Old Testament Passover meant nothing without its fulfillment in Jesus. Christ became everything, and all former things were empty without Him.