This is God's word. from the people, read that far in God's word. We enjoyed and finished a study of Mark 13 recently, what a vivid teaching Jesus gave about his second coming, that we can imagine the Son of Man coming on the clouds with power and great glory. While we studied that, we even imagined ourselves being in the small group with Jesus, the disciples, learning from him and looking across at the magnificent temple about which he had been speaking in chapter 13, hearing him talk then about the great vision he had for the future coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. We ended the chapter with Jesus' repetitive statement, stay awake, stay spiritually awake. So now turning to chapter 14, I mention all that because it's just such a sharp contrast to the very next verse. Chapter 14, verse one, Mark rather suddenly brings us from our more recent thoughts about the glorious future of Jesus returning to now the present for Jesus, the present day of Jesus' life himself, focusing on Jesus himself, who would soon face harsh realities. Like what? Like violence. Yes, there were literally people trying to kill Jesus, we're told in our passage. And to make matters worse, those people were the religious leaders. They were committed to having Jesus arrested and then bringing his life to an end. The only thing was, they wanted to avoid killing Jesus during the Passover. But they ended up doing it anyway. Keep that thought, we'll return to that at the end of our message. This was quite a jolting transition, you have to admit, from chapter 13 to chapter 14. We had focused on the great power of Jesus, and now these verses tonight introduce Mark's full report on the death and resurrection of Jesus in the coming chapters. And to kick it all off, Mark's extensive report here, he writes that it all started two days before the Passover. Now, Mark's readers all knew, but let's pause and make sure we all fully appreciate what this means. What was the context and surrounding scene for the Passover and why is Mark showing us that? So we have to go back all the way to the start. Give me a few minutes to talk about the scene. We have to go back to the very start of Passover to see what it meant to the people in this city. You have to go back 1,000 years before Jesus, and the Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt, trapped in miserable bondage, and God began sending what you know are the famous various plagues in Egypt, plagues of frogs, gnats, flies, locusts, hail, darkness. And in sending these plagues, God was instructing Egypt with the famous words, let my people go. and they weren't getting the message that Egypt wasn't listening. So the next plague and a stronger plague, and one night God sent the final plague. That night the firstborn of each house would be killed by God's own death angel. Even the firstborn of cattle and farm animals would die. The angel would not even pass over the homes of Israelites simply because they were God's nation, Israel. No, the only way for a Jewish family to escape the death in their home, the death of their firstborn, represented their future, represented their hope and their strength, was for that family to put their trust in God's sacrificial provision in the future and demonstrate that trust in a particular way. That night, before they went to bed, they would need to slaughter a lamb and put that lamb's blood on the doorposts of their home in order to show their faith in God who would provide a lamb in the future. And by morning, every single home would either have a dead child or a dead lamb. It's God's provision. It's God's command. When His justice came down, it either fell on their family or on the substitute lamb to which their family looked. the blood of the lamb. The substitute lamb, of course, would point ahead to God's one solution for slavery to sin, pictured by that slavery in Egypt. One day a savior would save his people from their sins. So that night, if a family accepted by faith this shelter, then the angel of death would pass over that home and not destroy or kill the firstborn in that family. That family's firstborn would be spared. That's why it's called Passover. It's literally the action of the angel of death not destroying a child in that home, but instead passing over. The only way for death to pass over that home was that death did not pass over that lamb. And so that points ahead to the Lamb of God. Death did not pass over him. It's how God delivered the Israelites and led them then in freedom to the promised land. So every year after that, since then, every year on the same day, the Passover meal commemorates that deliverance, the story I just told. And so it's called then Passover, which leads to the great exodus, the exodus where God led his people up out of Egypt, became the classic and most important moment in the life of Israel as a nation and as a people, and the Passover is intricately tied to it. So, Mark wanted his readers to know in the first verse of chapter 14, it's now two days before the Passover, so that we remember all these things in our mind. Immediately, Mark's readers would. It's like if I said it was Christmastime and you know everything about what we do at Christmastime, And he's saying it's the Passover, so now you're freshly reminded that what would happen next to Jesus takes place as the Passover's coming. The Jewish festival that commemorates that angel of death passing over the homes of the Hebrews on that night when the firstborn of each Egyptian home was killed. You have to pause and think for a moment about the Passover. Why would the sacrifice of this wooly little four-legged animal exempt them from God's justice for their own sins? And the answer for this Old Testament truth that's carried over into the new is that each lamb for each home pointed ahead to the one Lamb of God. Jesus would be arriving in the future to be the Lamb of God who would be killed for all to complete God's justice for our sins. It's all told in Exodus 12, I'll quote a couple verses. Exodus 12, 13. You have to see right on the surface of the study passage tonight in Mark 14, how appropriate it was that Mark would mention the Passover. And then Hebrews 9, 26, Christ Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Once for all by Himself. And again Hebrews 9, 28, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin. but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. So that's our introduction. Now our main point tonight, if you're looking at the bulletin outline, says they, and I'll talk about who the they are, they had the plot to kill Jesus, but God had the plot to have Jesus executed in order to pass over us. Number one, who would seek to kill Jesus? Number two, how would they kill Jesus? Number three, when would they kill Jesus? So, the first dozen chapters of Mark we were reading, if you've been with me in the study, you're familiar with the Gospel of Mark. For a long time, the religious leaders had already been looking for a way to get rid of Jesus. And now here in chapter 14, they renew and intensify their efforts. So let me just put some verses in front of us that show this murderous intent of the priests and the scribes. Since the beginning of Mark's gospel, there was a developing confrontation between Jesus and these religious authorities in Jerusalem. There was a decisive break in this relationship. The authorities ceased to initiate any further dialogue with Jesus. Jesus, you remember from chapter 13 at the beginning, had come out of the temple after having taught in the temple for a while. We covered that in chapters 11 and 12. He had been dealing with them, debating with them, answering some of their questions. They had been watching him. You could see the tension and the heat building for the relationship between Jesus and these religious leaders. But once Jesus exited the temple, Jesus then pronounced the coming devastation of what? The entire stone temple. If that's not a decisive break between Jesus and the religious leaders, I don't know how you could get more of a confrontation than that. So during chapter 13, the implications of that began to be considered. Jesus is saying that this whole stone temple will be destroyed in such a manner, so thoroughly, that not one stone will be left on another. Implications from the breakdown of the relationship between Jesus and the authorities begin to be expounded in chapter 13. The coming destruction of that stone temple symbolized the end of that old set of leadership. All those chief priests would no longer have a place in which to conduct their priestly work. And the loss of Jerusalem's temple as a focus of God's presence and activity on earth is a huge change. Not just for the priests, but for all of the Jewish nation. Jesus is saying incredible things in chapter 13. So in place of Jerusalem's stone temple would be As we discovered, the new temple of Jesus himself, whose authority would be vindicated when he became enthroned as the son of man. And when Jesus would return to earth a second time, he would gather the true people of God. Where would they be gathered? Not to the stone temple, not to the earthly city of Jerusalem, not even to the promised land of Israel, but rather Jesus would gather his people around himself, the new temple. Jesus would send his angels to gather the people of God from all the corners of the earth, we studied, chapter 13, to a new community of the grace of God that's now inevitable and unstoppable because Jesus said it. And we studied again in chapter 13 about how Jesus' indestructible words were more stable than the stability of the heavens and the earth. Verse 30, Jesus stated that within the generation, the replacing of the stone temple, which was temporary, with Jesus as the temple, which would now become permanent, would all have taken place before the end of that generation. So as we now turn the chapter to chapter 14, the time for talking is over. No more teaching from Jesus in the temple. No more debating with the religious authorities. The time for teaching is finished. Rather than more talking about the big temple swap, it's time for the events to start to unfold. So it's time for Jesus to become the temple, for him to become the priest, to offer himself as the lamb, as the sacrifice, and truly cleanse his people once for all, which then happens around the year A.D. 30, his cross and resurrection, and 40 years later, A.D. 70, the stone temple is destroyed so thoroughly one stone doesn't remain on Jesus had been predicting these events. As I said, I would give you a couple verses out of Mark. Mark 8, 31, when he said that, quote, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. So Mark 8, 31 told us this. We're not really surprised when we find it here in Mark 14, 1. It's been building since then. But the time for predicting is over, the vivid sketch of chapter 13 about what will happen is now being set into motion. Namely, that confrontation between the authorities is now to reach its climax in the scenes of Mark's coming descriptions. The rejected and later to be executed King of the Jews will be undone in the coming chapters in disturbing ways for those of us who love him dearly. And Mark is writing this so that anyone in coming centuries like ourselves, it's written for us. Mark is writing so that anyone in the coming centuries such as ourselves could know with deadly earnestness, exactly. what took place. So we're slowing down to look at these first two verses to catch all that he means for the setup of the coming chapters. It's symbolically appropriate that it took place at the start of Passover, the festival which marks the original establishment of Israel as the covenant people of God rescued from slavery in Egypt. Key in, rescued from slavery to sin for us. And along with a new temple, Jesus to replace the stone temple, there will be a new Passover, paired with a new covenant, wonderfully fitted for the new people of God. It's all just so beautiful and poetic. What we discover as we begin our study of chapter 14, then, is that while Jesus announced a plan to remove the stone temple, the chief priests announced a plan to remove Jesus. As chapter 14 begins, we notice a sharp contrast between, on the one hand, the hostility evident in verse one of the religious leaders and the coming treachery of one of Jesus' leading disciples, a little further down, as I mentioned, in chapter 14, starting verse 10 or so, on the one hand. But on the other hand, we notice the actions of Jesus. and his own extravagant love and loyalty to one of the least of his followers. The leaders who knew better were now determined to stop at nothing to get rid of a troublesome rival rabbi. Meanwhile, an unnamed woman in the next section of chapter 14, next time we study that, Lord willing, will be highlighted as an example of such true devotion a level of heart devotion that even the closest of Jesus' disciples were not yet able to emulate. So often in the Gospel of Mark, the first become last and the last become first. The values of the kingdom are the inverse of the way the world works. So the beginning of verse one reads significantly, it's now two days before the Passover. Which Passover? The old one. But there's coming a new one with a new temple and the new lamb. Right, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Unleavened bread because they had to depart Egypt in such a hurry, per God's instructions, that they couldn't wait for the bread dough to rise. And so they just went ahead without yeast, without leavened bread, unleavened bread. So the Passover covers the events of roughly a 12 hour time period, which spanned over two Jewish days. The Jewish days began at sunset. not midnight, sunset. So on the 14th of April, a month which they call Nithan, during the afternoon, the lambs for the Passover meal were slaughtered inside the temple. That happened on one day, or day one you could say, and then the sunset happens, we're into day two. So you see how it spans two days, and brought them into the second day, according to the Jewish way of counting them. So the animal slaughtered on the 14th, and the Passover meal was held on the 15th of the month. So closely tied to the Passover is the other thing he mentions in verse one, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, originally a separate festival following the Passover, and it lasted seven days, so a total of an eight-day celebration. And from the 15th of the month to about the 21st of that month, Let me quickly read Numbers 28, 16. So in practice, the two festivals, Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, were treated together. as a single period of time where there's a celebration. Sort of like we lump together, if you allow me to say it this way, Christmas and New Year's, it's kind of like our whole big deal at the end of the year, and you could lump them together in a way, vacation from school, time of travel, family gatherings. For example, if you say you're visiting grandma for Christmas, you might actually mean you're going to be staying through New Year's also, and just lump together Christmas, New Year's, Both. If you say the last time you saw a grandma was New Year's, it's probably understood that you went for Christmas and stayed through New Year's, and when you left it was New Year's, so that's the last time you saw a grandma. And in the same way, if they said the Passover, they might include the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Alternatively, if they said the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they might also mean the Passover. But look how clear Mark is. He doesn't allow any confusion. Because what he does is he's very precise, and he lists them both. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Mark wants us to know when it happened, because it has significance. It's an eight-day period of special gatherings, special foods, special religious ceremonies, and special holiday customs. And he writes two days before the Passover, by which he's probably referring to the 13th day of the month. Mark is simply signaling here the end of the whole discussion about Jesus' second coming, The start of him reporting on events that will take place during this upcoming feast Mark is simply informing us as readers He's gearing up to a time very soon when Jesus and many other travelers from Galilee and from all over the Jewish world would be arriving, they're probably traveling now, arriving already in Jerusalem to prepare for and then to celebrate the next eight days. Passover is the remembrance of that awful cost of someone's death to secure their freedom from slavery where the angel of death came as we've talked about. This Feast of Unleavened Bread Also mentioned here is at the start of the story of the suffering and death of Jesus for us. Leaven or yeast would cause the bread loaf to rise, of course, and it's usually taken from a piece of dough from the prior day that wasn't baked. You just keep a little bit of the dough and you use that as a starter then for your fresh lump of dough. One baking event always joined to the next baking event in that way. But as the festival of unleavened bread celebrated for a week, The festival stands for a clean break from the past. You're not using the past yeast anymore inside that dough. It's long been used up. You have no leaven anywhere. It's a clean break and it's a commitment to a fresh start, a new start. It's what kicks off the story of the suffering and death of Jesus for us. Again, another mini significant element. And for the chief priests and the scribes, instead of starting fresh and getting rid of the old leaven, They're instead trying to get rid of the troublesome young rabbi who had gone too far in their opinion. You know, clearing the temple, overturning tables, stuff we read in chapter 11. But it seems to them the time was not yet right. Which brings us to our second question. First question was who would seek to kill Jesus? It's the religious leaders. Second question, how would they kill Jesus? Short answer, by stealth. You'll see this in verse 1b. I'll read that. Chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him. by stealth, you know, secret, behind the scenes. Passover was a time of intense nationalistic feeling among the people. It's like our Independence Day, when patriotism runs high. They thought a lot about being Jewish all the time, but especially on a day like that, for the people of the nation of Israel, the Passover called them to remember their deliverance and their identity as a nation coming out of slavery from Egypt by action of God, Besides that, there are a lot of Galileans in town, you know, Galileans known for capability for disruptions and violence. Not a good day, not a good week for them to try to arrest this particular rabbi. In order for the religious leaders to kill Jesus, they would have to be by stealth. Now you understand a bit more of the significance of that statement. How would they kill Jesus? Quietly or by stealth? Brings us to our third question then from verse two, when? Estimates of the number of people in and around Jerusalem at the Passover time, those years are rough estimates. since they didn't have an established system for how to count that many people coming into a city like that. But the historian named Josephus estimates around three million, but most historians and Bible scholars generally agree that's an exaggeration that runs a little too high, probably not as high as three million. However, the rabbis did count the lambs, and there were 1.2 million lambs. If you think that a lamb would feed approximately 10, 12 people, say 12, that would indicate 12 million participants in the Passover. Again, many think that number is too high. Many have included the same people eating a second lamb during the eight-day festival, which would explain for half as many. Somewhere in there, right, it's rough estimates, but you're getting the idea of the main point. My main point is that Jerusalem swelled in numbers, which is the main point of the concern for stealth in verse one and the statement of the leaders in verse two, not during the feast. Why not? Lest there be an uproar. When you have that many added people, however many it was, the point is clear that there could easily be an uproar from the people. So the calculations of another historian is based on the number of lambs and the space available in the temple for the slaughtering of the lambs, and he has produced a more reasonable figure of 180,000 people to attend this Passover week-long celebration. And if we could agree to that number, perhaps, if you could agree with me to that number, Pick whatever number you want, it's still the main point is the main point. That Jerusalem had about 30,000 residents, so if you like the number of 180,000, Jerusalem has swelled by six times its size in this week. Probably not the best week to pick if you're going to arrest a very popular young rabbi. Many travelers would have to stay outside of the city of Jerusalem. That would be accomplished through temporary camps on hillsides just outside Jerusalem, or else staying in nearby villages. Consider Jesus himself, who back in Mark 11, verse 11, was leaving Jerusalem at night in order to stay in Bethany with the 12 disciples. It was only on Passover night itself that worshipers and travelers were obliged to sleep within the boundaries Hence the move of Jesus in Mark 14, 32, which we'll get to, to a closer place called Gethsemane. Gethsemane much closer to the city wall of Jerusalem and within the bounds. Why am I taking time to tell you all that? Because Mark's original readers understood it. And it's best for us to interpret it, understand it, and apply it if we understand the same things that Mark's original readers would have automatically known and understood. So therefore it's important that we interpret the upcoming chapter having understood its context, its scene. For example, what you're now starting to realize is that the week of the feast was potentially a volatile week. If our village, the village of Menominee Falls here, which has approximately 35,000 people in it, suddenly had six times that number visiting us for a week, some of them in your homes, some of them in the local hotels, it would be 210,000 people here. Do we have that many hotel rooms and parks for camping, RVs, or however they're supposed to be housed? No. People would have to stay in the surrounding communities and in homes and hotels all across the area. Again, why is it important that this information come across to us as we study Mark's writing tonight? because the concern of the chief priests and scribes was a legitimate concern, they were aware of the scene, and the report of the tumultuous arrival of Jesus outside the city of Jerusalem was still on their minds. Remember, Jesus cleared the temple of money changers, we read in Mark 11, 18, the chief priests and the scribes heard it, the fact that he had cleared the temple and overturned the tables. and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. Mark 11, 18. Here's Mark 11, 32. The chief priests and the scribes and the elders were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. Here's Mark 12, 12. And they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told a parable against them. So they left him and went away. He had told the parable about them, by the way, they were correct on that. And Mark 12, 25, as Jesus taught in the temple, Mark 12, 37 says, the great throng heard him gladly. Oh yes, there could be an uproar if you decide to arrest him during this week. It's a good plan to stall and not arrest him this week. If the leaders took action openly against Jesus, an uproar is entirely likely. What have we seen tonight? That they had a plot to kill Jesus, but God had the plot to have Jesus executed in order to pass over us. Who would seek to kill Jesus? These religious leaders. How would they kill Jesus? Stealthily. When would they kill Jesus? Not during Passover. So that brings me to my conclusion. Be comforted that God's plan to have Jesus executed at the time and in the way that God planned in order for us to have death pass over us instead of us being killed. The original plan of the chief priests and scribes was to do nothing during the feast. Why did they end up arresting Jesus then? Because our God. and His perfect providence and power completely defeated their original plan of these priests and scribes, the death of Jesus took place on the very day when Jerusalem was most full of people and when the Passover feast was at its height. They thought that they were putting an end to Christ, and in reality, they were being used by God and His providence to establish Christ's kingdom through His death, followed by His resurrection. They were attempting to make Jesus contemptible by seeing to it that he's crucified on a cross. But in reality, their actions showed Christ to be filled with glory because the cross was dealing with our sin and he conquered it by rising again. They're attempting to put Christ to death in stealth and quietly, somewhere without much observation. Instead, they were compelled to crucify him publicly at the height of the most visitors to the city before the whole nation. They thought they had a plan to silence the disciples, too. But instead, they supplied the disciples with, down to today, the main, central event that we always talk about, the cross of Jesus, the Passover lamb, which is being announced to this day. This very day, around the world, we celebrate the fact that it's being announced by the disciples and followers of Jesus. I would say our takeaway from this short passage in our troubled world is that we find great comfort in the sovereignty of God, the providence of God, the ability of our God to direct every single minor aspect of life in order to accomplish his will, which is what? To overturn the plans of his opponents, to work all things together for good for us as people who love him, chiefly because he had this plan, this plot, you could say, to have Jesus executed in order that death might pass over us. Let's pray. Father, comfort us in the middle of a violent and hostile world.