The Feast of Unleavened Bread

Saturday April 9, 2022

Created by Wesley Hammond

Luke 22:1–13

22 Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, 2 and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. 3 Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. 4 And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. 5 They were delighted and agreed to give him money. 6 He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

9 “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

10 He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, 11 and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

13 They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

Devotion

Luke twenty two is one of the sadder parts of the Bible and for people who study and read the Bible, it’s easy to understand why. It’s here that we first learn of Judas’ plan to betray Jesus and his agreement to the payment of thirty pieces of silver in exchange, the price of a slave. We also see Jesus speaking to the disciples about arranging the setup of what we now know as the last supper. The events we read about in this passage of the Bible takes place just days before Jesus is arrested, and it teaches us a sobering lesson about people who claim to be from God.

Few things hurt worse than the betrayal of someone very close to you, someone you could consider to be a brother or sister even. Sometimes there is something or someone that gets into your friend’s head and slowly turns them against you and that is what happened to Judas. Satan wormed his way into him and began to twist him from the inside out and it led to the imprisonment and death of Jesus shortly after. Satan is a powerful force that acts on the world and the people that live in it. He is very intelligent and has been around for a very, very long time so he has had a long time to watch humanity grow. He knows what we are afraid of, he knows what makes us happy and he knows what makes us sad. He tries to manipulate you with guile to turn you into someone and something you’re not. Luke twenty two serves to remind us of who our enemy is and the severity of his threat.

One of the best religion quotes I’ve ever heard is that the best lie the devil ever told was convincing the world he doesn’t exist because it makes his job so much easier, since it makes people think that they are in control. It makes us blind to what is actually happening around us because we lose the ability to distinguish between what is actually coming from us and what is coming from those around us. If the devil convinces people he doesn’t exist, then it makes people more susceptible to turning away from God and even basic human morality and ethics which is the devil’s primary goal. The devil wants to separate you from God and he is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal and so Luke twenty two serves as a grim reminder to always be aware of evil because evil tries its best to disguise itself.

The last supper was a necessary step by Jesus to show just how important His mission truly was. He needed to gather His disciples and prepare them for the events that were soon to follow because His task on earth was quickly coming to an end. Jesus needed to prepare the disciples to be the missionaries of God’s Word that He needed them to be because once Jesus departs the earth, Satan will have plenty of time uninterrupted by the Son of God to go back to trying to corrupt people. Evil hides itself and the disciples needed to learn all they could from Jesus before He left so they could be better prepared to fight the darkness that lives on the earth with us. We must always be aware of evil and its tricks lest we end up like Judas, servants of Christ who find ourselves deep in the trap of the devil and quickly turning from God’s path. A sobering and grim reminder of the sort of broken world in which we currently live yet through Christ we have the living hope of the world to come, a world free of the wiles of darkness.

Prayer

God of the Journey, deliver us from evil and save us from the times of trial. Amen.