Luke 22:7-13--The Passover with the Disciples

Luke 22:7-13
English Standard Version
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The Passover with the Disciples
7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” 9 They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” 10 He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters 11 and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” 13 And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

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Luke has been pointing forward to the fact that The Feast of Unleavened Bread that kicked off the celebration of Passover was coming and almost here.  He says that it is finally upon time.  I'm going to throw a chart in here now and explain some of the significance of Jesus fulfilling the Passover (this is more clear in John's gospel).

Most likely Jesus knows he's going to be unable to celebrate with His disciples at the regularly appointed time, because John's gospel tells us that Jesus is going to be sacrificed on the cross at the very time when the Passover lambs were to be killed on the evening of the 14th (that would mean that the 14th was what we call Good Friday and the Last Supper Jesus held with His disciples before the evening of His arrest would have been on the night of Thursday the 13th of Abib).  Again, there's some debate as to the progression that I'm going with, but Luke like John seems to be pointing us toward the fact that Jesus, our Passover Lamb, had to be sacrificed on the evening of Abib 14th, so He could not eat the Seder with His disciples that evening, so they ate the Lord's Supper the evening before.

Jesus tells them that there will be a place ready to accept them for them to prepare the meal even though typically at this time of year there would be no vacancies.  There were to go into town and look for a man carrying a water jug that would be servant in the house where they were to make preparations.  They were to follow this servant to the house of his master and speak to the master to say that the Teacher asked where is his guest room that He might prepare the the Passover to be eaten with His disciples.  This seems odd to us, but since all Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem for this feast and a few other pilgrimages fests, it was common for people that lived in the city and the surrounding area to have guest rooms for the visitors to use both for eating this meal and sometimes for lodging.  While nothing is mentioned about this man's identity, him opening his house to the disciples is not a one-time event as this room gets known as The Upper Room and is the place where the disciples come back for safety during the time Jesus was dead and is also the place where they wait for the Holy Spirit to come.

Everything was found by the disciples just as Jesus said it would be--fully furnished and ready for them to prepare the meal.  They worked quickly to do so.  It must have taken some time to prepare the meal (probably most of the day), but we aren't given any indication of what Jesus did during that time.  The next thing Luke talks about is Jesus actually eating the Lord's Supper with His disciples and His institution of this ordinance to show and tell the gospel (and the new covenant).  We'll talk about that a bit more next time.