1. "Sin is not merely a bad choice we make. Sin is a disease of the heart. It's what makes you glad at the wrong things. It turns your spiritual vision into blindness."

2. "Hanging around the religious place all the time, even having it pay your salary, does not assure good spiritual vision. Here are the people who literally taught God's truth to others while they themselves were blind."

3. "Friend, it matters what you love. It matters how you love. It matters what we're told in God's Word. How much we love. What will we sell for this or that love? Gladness merely and simply by itself is insufficient to guide our hearts to the truth."

4. "You should as well be led by your gladness as you are by the winds the next time you get on an airplane. Just go whatever direction they take you. And that's not how we're meant to live."

5. "Settling into loving money is like giving Satan the car keys to your life. You think money love is natural, even good? The real gasoline of our economy? Think again, it's not so mere and plain and neutral a matter."

6. "Satan can have lots of particular knowledge, but no idea how to use it. And in fact, even in Satan's case, be turned to use it against wisdom, against God, in a way that is fundamentally foolish and vain."

7. "Where Satan accuses the believer in Christ, Christ pleads his own blood. Where Satan afflicts, Christ teaches his followers how to use even their afflictions for God's glory. When Satan would conquer, Christ will protect and even liberate and redeem his own. When Satan deceives, Christ reveals the truth. Where Satan would hinder, Christ will help you."

8. "Satan cultivates preferences and choices and loves and gladnesses in us that would separate us from God, that he condemns, and that would enslave us and become our masters."

9. "Are there circumstances in your life which you've been assuming are beyond the good providence of God? If so, friends, look to the cross. Look to the cross to see how God has worked His provision for His people."

10. "God wanted Jesus dead for us, so that our sins' penalty having been paid, our lives purchased, we might live to Him and with Him and for Him forever."

Observation Questions

1. According to Luke 22:1-2, what feast was drawing near, and what were the chief priests and scribes seeking to do to Jesus?

2. In Luke 22:2, what reason does Luke give for why the religious leaders were cautious about how they would put Jesus to death?

3. What does Luke 22:3 tell us happened to Judas Iscariot before he went to confer with the chief priests?

4. According to Luke 22:4-5, what did Judas discuss with the chief priests and officers, and how did they respond to his offer?

5. In Luke 22:6, what specific kind of opportunity was Judas seeking to betray Jesus?

6. Looking back at Luke 21:27, what did Jesus say about how He would return after being rejected and killed?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it deeply ironic that the chief priests and scribes—those who administered the sacrificial system—were the ones seeking to kill Jesus? What does this reveal about the nature of sin?

2. How does the timing of these events during Passover week connect to the meaning of Jesus' death? Why would God ordain that Jesus be killed during this particular feast?

3. The sermon noted that Satan "entered into" Judas (Luke 22:3), yet Judas remained fully responsible for his actions. How can both of these truths be true simultaneously, and what does this teach us about temptation and personal responsibility?

4. The religious leaders feared the people (v. 2), Judas loved money, and Satan opposed God's purposes—yet according to Acts 4:27-28, all of this accomplished what God's hand had predestined. What does this reveal about God's sovereignty over even the most wicked human actions?

5. How does the sermon's explanation of the Passover lamb help us understand what Jesus meant when He spoke of drinking "the cup that the Father has given Me" (John 18:11)?

Application Questions

1. The sermon warned that "hanging around the religious place all the time, even having it pay your salary, does not assure good spiritual vision." What practices or relationships in your life might you be trusting in for spiritual health instead of genuinely examining your own heart before God?

2. The preacher asked what made you glad this past week, and whether any of those things would make you reluctant to share with the person next to you. What does your pattern of gladness reveal about what you truly love, and how might you need to recalibrate your desires?

3. The love of money was described as "giving Satan the car keys to your life." In what specific ways—your spending, saving, career decisions, or generosity—might the love of money be exercising more control over you than you have admitted?

4. Jesus experienced the deep pain of betrayal by a close friend. How does knowing that Jesus understands betrayal from personal experience change how you might bring your own experiences of being betrayed to Him in prayer?

5. The sermon concluded that if God worked good through the murder of His own Son, He can work good in your trials. What difficult circumstance in your life right now do you struggle to believe God is sovereignly using for good, and how might the cross reshape your perspective on it?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 12:1-14 — This passage describes the original Passover institution, showing how the lamb's blood protected Israel from judgment and foreshadowed Christ as the true Passover Lamb.

2. Isaiah 53:1-12 — This prophecy describes the Suffering Servant who would be crushed for our iniquities, showing that God's plan for the Messiah's death was revealed centuries before Jesus.

3. Psalm 41:1-13 — This psalm, quoted in the sermon, contains David's lament about betrayal by a close friend and prefigures Judas's betrayal of Jesus.

4. Acts 4:23-31 — This passage records the early church's prayer acknowledging that Herod, Pilate, Gentiles, and Israel did what God's hand had predestined, demonstrating God's sovereignty over Christ's death.

5. 1 Timothy 6:6-12 — Paul's warning about the love of money and its spiritual dangers reinforces the sermon's application about Judas's covetousness and the need to flee from greed.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: The Question of Who Wanted Jesus Dead

II. The Religious Leaders Wanted Jesus Dead (Luke 22:1-6)

III. Judas Wanted Jesus Dead (Luke 22:3-6)

IV. Satan Wanted Jesus Dead (Luke 22:3)

V. God Wanted Jesus Dead for Our Salvation

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Man proposes and God disposes. There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

Those lines penned on July 1, 1885 in Mount McGregor, New York were the first lines of former President U.S. Grant. In his personal memoirs.

At the time, the American sense of nationhood was strong and still being forged and still expanding. If the nation's creator, George Washington, was the most admired American of the time, U.S. Grant was a close second. Washington was seen as the creator of the nation and Grant its savior.

In the shared American history, the opposite position was held by the arch-traitor of the revolution, Benedict Arnold. Arnold famously betrayed the American Revolutionary cause, becoming himself the leader of British forces in Virginia and Connecticut before moving permanently to England. Ever since then, to American school children at least, Arnold's name has become synonymous with treachery and betrayal. To call someone a Benedict Arnold is to say that they have been shamefully and perhaps suddenly disloyal.

We've been following Luke's account of the ministry of Jesus. And in the passage we come to today, the story of Jesus and his ministry takes a sudden turn.

Those of you who have listened and read about Jesus for years now will know this, will not be surprised by it. But for those of you who are new to looking at Jesus, this may come as something of a shock. In recent weeks we've followed Jesus into Jerusalem and the temple precincts with him teaching regularly, disputing with the religious leaders of the day. He left them at the end of one day's dispute at the end of Luke chapter 20. With a question about the Messiah's identity.

Do you remember that? We looked at it a couple of weeks ago. He was reasoning from Psalm 110. And Jesus socratically placed the question, How could the Messiah, David's son, be addressed by David as my Lord? That's the question he left them with.

What did that mean about his identity? That question was pushing the Jews of his day to see parts of what had been prophesied about the promised coming king about the Messiah, but that had been ignored. This Messiah was not to be merely a great human, but something more. In chapter 21, at the end of that day with the disciples, Jesus reflected on how things weren't always as they first appeared. The grand temple that looked so imposing and permanent would soon be destroyed, but He, after being rejected and killed, would be raised to life and would ascend to heaven and then return with power and great glory, as He put it in Luke 21:27, to redeem His people and to judge the world.

Now the day had drawn to a close, and so Jesus and His disciples had gone out and were lodging on the mountain called Olivet opposite the temple. We're at the beginning of Luke chapter 22. You'll find it on page 881 in the Bibles provided. Let me encourage you to turn in your Bible to Luke chapter 22. If you're not used to looking at a copy of the Bible, the large numbers are the chapter numbers, and the small numbers are the verse numbers.

Luke chapter 22, beginning at verse 1.

If you're looking at Luke 22, you'll see a heading there that may be surprising, the plot to kill Jesus. Kill Him. Wasn't Jesus popular? I mean, hadn't we just had the triumphal entry a few days before where all these crowds cheer Him when He comes into Jerusalem? Who wanted Jesus dead?

That's the question we want to pursue today. Who wanted Jesus dead? That's what we want to understand. And depending on how much you've considered this before, the answer may surprise you and it may inform you in ways that are crucial to your own spiritual life. Who wanted Jesus dead?

The religious leaders wanted him dead. Look at that, chapter 22, beginning at verse 1. Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put Him to death, for they feared the people. Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Him to them.

And they were glad and agreed to give him money. Now we've met these chief priests and scribes before. They were the religious leaders of the temple and therefore effectively of the Jewish nation. The scribes were their lawyers. They were the people who regulated the use of the temple throughout the year, and especially at busy seasons with religious pilgrims swelling the number of worshipers.

Luke is blunt here about the desire of these religious leaders. We read in verse two, they were seeking how to put him, that is put Jesus to death. Two basic points here about these religious leaders and their desire for Jesus' death. Why they desire Jesus' death and why it was so ironic. That they did.

First, why they desired Jesus' death. These religious leaders had for long years been the inheritors of Moses' laws of purification and sacrifice. They were the keepers of these signs of God's holiness and our sinfulness. The entire layout of the tabernacle and the temple then that succeeded it was to show the separation between a completely good God and sinful people, including even those sinful people who came to worship Him. Indeed, His worship itself was picture after picture, visually acted out of their own moral uncleanness and God's call and provision to make them pure, to make them appropriate people to worship Him and to represent Him.

The sacrificial system that they taught and literally carried out and administered in the temple showed this truth that Sin brings death. And as Hebrews 9:22 says, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. That very week they or their employees were dealing with tens of thousands of animals to be slaughtered and offered and prepared and consumed and distributed to pilgrims. Countless times these chief priests themselves sacrificed or oversaw the sacrifices of animals brought by faithful Israelites in obedience to what God's Word required, the very Word that they had learned learned themselves from priests and teachers of the Law. Now all of this they could continue to do, though for decades now they were no longer an independent nation.

Israel had become a vassal state, Judea, a vassal state of Rome, ruled by a pagan Gentile emperor far away who even thought of himself as divine. These leaders had learned to operate in this state profitably.

Viewing the pagan emperor as their protector, even as a kind of patron, a person that assured them that the current advantages they had, they would continue to have. So they were concerned about anything that would upset this order. They were concerned about little local nationalisms that seemed so petty. That would grow up around charismatic teachers who would come and go. So these chief priests were leaders of the establishment.

They were maintainers. They didn't want their position to be imperiled. And they were concerned that Jesus' popularity would come out strong in this Passover season and might cause an uprising, an uprising so great that their own temple guards couldn't deal with it. In fact, the Romans would have to use their own troops to deal with. And that would make it look like the governing of this people was a larger matter than these chief priests could really handle.

They would look bad, like they couldn't handle their own business. So the simplest way would be then to take care of this rabbi, the kind of equivalent of a sniper shot. Taking the disruptive one out, removing him without causing social upheaval. Do you remember how their leader, Caiaphas, put it? Recorded in John's Gospel, it is better for you that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should perish.

So that was why these religious leaders wanted Jesus dead.

But notice also the irony of this desire, that they of all people should desire the death of all people, of this one man. Every sacrifice they had ever offered had been instituted as a pointer toward the one true sacrifice that everyone needed, all of us, including those priests. Every sacrifice was like a bell tolling, all of which would find its completion in the only sacrifice that ever really finally would matter, the sacrifice of the true Passover Lamb. All the people in the land, those who studied and taught this law, who supervised its operation, these were the very people who were most involved in, as it were, holding the signs up that pointed to Jesus, that these people should desire to get rid of Jesus, that they so entirely missed Him, shows something of the deeply stupefying and blinding nature of sin. Sin is not merely a bad choice we make.

Sin is a disease of the heart. It's what makes you glad at the wrong things. It turns your spiritual vision into blindness. That they should have missed something like this should cause us to pause. The crowds they should have had compassion on as Jesus did, instead they simply feared.

The rewards of the next life that they should have lived by faded in their eyes compared to keeping what they already had in this life. While they appeared in public as teachers of virtue, they plotted in private to kill. And to kill the only person on the entire planet who did not in any sense deserve himself to die.

They were led by a terrible gladness. Did you notice that phrase in verse 5? They were glad and they were glad. They were glad to live in such a way that they thought was best for now, but that would prove terrible forever. The fear of what they might lose because of the cowards that were around them, the people who would grasp on this world's wealth and hold only it, it hid from them the fear of the Lord, seeking what they could gain forever by following Him.

So many lessons we could draw out of this. One that I'm struck by is, Hanging around the religious place all the time, even having it pay your salary, does not assure good spiritual vision. Here are the people who literally taught God's truth to others while they themselves were blind. Friends, we pray for each other here. We pray that we have wisdom to see the truth about God's Word, about our own hearts, our own lives, about what makes us glad.

If you think back at the last week, was there any moment you were glad? Was there more than one? What were those moments filled with? What was making you glad? I'm sure some of those things were great.

Some of those things you would happily share with the person next to you. At this moment, I'm not interested in those things. What else made you glad? Is there anything that made you glad that you would be reluctant to tell the person sitting next to you? Friends, those are the dangers even in the religious person's life where we have to guard our own hearts and look carefully.

We don't want to be like these religious teachers that wanted Jesus dead.

But when we look at our story, it's clear that they were not the only ones that wanted Jesus dead. The second answer may also surprise you. Judas wanted Jesus dead, one of his own disciples. Look there in chapter 22, beginning at verse 3. Then Satan entered into Judas, called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve.

He went away and conferred with the chief priests and the officers how he might betray Him to them. And they were glad and agreed to give him money. So he consented and sought an opportunity to betray Him to them in the absence of a crowd.

One of the inner ring wanted Jesus dead. You understand what the situation was. The Romans had a monopoly on physical force.

The Romans could have easily killed Jesus. But the religious leaders were very concerned about how that would be done. They weren't sure how they could provoke Rome to use capital force without themselves looking irresponsible or unable.

Because surely the only thing that would force Rome to that would be a public uprising big enough to threaten themselves or Rome's perception of their own ability. So they were in a pickle. They needed help. They needed to find out how to do this quickly and quietly and secretly. But to do that, there's one thing they would need.

Especially to know how to find Jesus apart from the crowds. They would need access to his schedule, to his plans. And to do that, they would need insider knowledge, and that's where Judas comes in. Judas was the key the religious leaders needed to bring their plans to pass.

Judas was the way these religious leaders would find out where Jesus was. Judas was the one who would give them a guided tour basically to where he was staying. And later we find out where he was praying. Maybe you're here today as someone who's been betrayed by somebody else. Jesus knows that pain from the inside.

He knows that experience. He had been with Judas for years now. He had walked miles with him, shared meals. He had sent him out with the disciples to work miracles, to heal the sick. And for such a man to betray Jesus was cold.

Jesus' experience of that was part of his entering into the depths of the humiliation that he experienced. In the incarnation for us. There had been some words of David that seemed to preview that the Messiah would be killed by a friend. We heard them read earlier today in Psalm 41 when Hannah read that for us. Psalm 41 verse 9, Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.

Or there's another Psalm, Psalm 55, where we read, For it is not an enemy who taunts me, that I could bear. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house we walked in the throng.

Friend's betrayal by a friend had been foreshadowed, and now it was coming to life and being fulfilled. So here in these verses we see the disciple Judas joining in the priests' plot against Jesus. They had been plotting for a long time. We read as early as Luke 6 verse 11, Jesus restoring a man's hand on the Sabbath, and the scribes and the Pharisees then who saw it being filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. Or as Mark's Gospel put it there, they held council on how they might destroy him.

That was two years earlier. But finding a way to actually do this had eluded them.

Now though, those discussions are being freshly invigorated and brought to life by this unprecedented offer of help from one of Jesus' own disciples. For the last few days, the popularity of Jesus seemed never higher. You had the crowds who greeted him at the gates when he entered Jerusalem. The people seemed to be on Jesus' side. We see in verse 2 here it says, the priests and teachers feared the people.

And that's why down in verse 6 they wanted to find him, find Jesus apart from the crowds. So that last phrase is Judas' work in all this. Judas sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of a crowd. Just last week, you know, we were thinking about opportunity up in chapter 21, verse 13, how our persecution that Jesus prophesied would actually be a time of opportunity. For us to bear witness?

Well, here's a different kind of opportunity they were looking for. Judas was looking for an opportunity that would be most advantageous to take Jesus. So Judas conspired with the religious leaders, the Sadducees and the Temple Guard. Jesus had predicted that the Son of Man was about to be delivered over into the hands of men. Back in chapter 9, this is how it would happen.

And therefore the religious leaders agreed to pay Judas. What is Judas's motivation? Oh, writers have speculated endlessly. We don't know.

Perhaps greed. We know that he was the treasurer. We know in John 12, John tells us that Judas was a thief and having charge of the money bag he used to help himself to what was put in it. Greed seems to have been at least part of Judas' motivation.

So if you're here today and you're not a Christian, do notice that songs that we sing today about all love being the same is an absolute and utter lie. Friend, it matters what you love.

It matters how you love. It matters what we're told in God's Word. How much we love. What will we sell for this or that love? Gladness merely and simply by itself is insufficient to guide our hearts to the truth.

We can be glad in the wrong things in a fallen world like ours. They had a joy there in verse 5, but it was an evil joy.

You should as well be led by your gladness as you are by the winds the next time you get on an airplane. Just go whatever direction they take you. And that's not how we're meant to live.

Imagine how valuable that money promised must have looked to Judas if he valued it more than his friend's life.

It seems that Judas had forgotten what Jesus had taught back in Luke 12, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. Friends, no wonder Paul warned about the love of money in 1 Timothy 6. Friends, the love of money is this dangerous. Settling into loving money is like giving Satan the car keys to your life. I mean, have you thought money love is natural, even good?

You know, the real gasoline of our economy? Think again, it's not so mere and plain and neutral a matter. God's word says specifically, Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Friends, you think about it yourself, how would your life change tomorrow If you decided to love money above God, would it change at all?

It's a good thing for you to think about.

Judas clearly loved some things more than Jesus. So whatever reason, a reason that included at least 30 pieces of silver, Judas wanted Jesus dead.

But our passage has a third, stranger answer to this question. Who wanted Jesus dead? Satan wanted Jesus dead. Did you notice that in verse 3? Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve.

Judas was not alone in desiring Jesus' death or in acting for it. By whatever means, Satan, we read here in verse 3, had entered into Judas. He had, as we put it, got into his mind by suggesting thoughts, drawing to Judas' attention things.

That may have escaped them before, Judas was able to fulfill his agreement with the chief priests. The Bible is clear that this world is not spiritually neutral. As Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:8, Be sober-minded, be watchful, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to destroy. Did you know that the Bible presented Satan like that? Did you know he was presented as a real, sentient, thinking, observing, acting, being, a real accuser, someone who acts as the enemy, especially of Christians, who promotes evil and actively opposes all who would do good.

Jesus in John 8 calls him a liar and a murderer. Well, here in Judas, Satan would fulfill that exact role, the role he really played with the first Adam, and that he tried again with the second when he attempted Jesus at the beginning of His public ministry. He's at work, we read in those who are disobedient, like Judas here. He is one who is constantly tempting, maybe even you right now. That's his work.

Here we read that Satan entered into Judas. He entered into his thoughts. He tempted by suggestion or ideas or urges. Now some people have wondered if Satan's activity somehow replaced Judas's. That is if this somehow lessened Judas' own responsibility for his actions.

I mean they think of earlier examples in Jesus' own ministry when he healed people who were demon possessed and how their own behavior would be so entirely different once they were delivered of that. But nothing here would suggest Satan had such control of Judas. Look at what Judas does in the passage.

Now some sins are easy, aren't they? Others take work. Judas here had to work for this sin. He had to go and find the chief priests and confer with them. He had to plot and scheme and negotiate and agree.

And then he was sent out with the task of seeking just the right time and place, the opportunity for this to take place. We read of Judas doing all of this. Nothing in the verb there in verse 3 about entering in suggests that Judas was somehow relieved of his own responsibility for his actions. Indeed, Mark and Matthew record Judas doing all these same things and don't even mention Satan. They just tell us that Judas did these things.

We know that Judas felt so responsible for his actions so responsible that he finally took his own life. You can read in Matthew 27. Friends, Judas was responsible for his actions to kill Jesus, but he was not alone in wanting Jesus dead. Satan also wanted Jesus dead. This desire on Satan's part shows that for all of Satan's particular knowledge he may have, he he seems to have about as much wisdom as the Internet.

He can have lots of particular knowledge, but no idea how to use it. And in fact, even in Satan's case, be turned to use it against wisdom, against God, in a way that is fundamentally foolish and vain. Satan spurring Judas to this act was only moving Jesus to make the very sacrifice that would finally and forever ruin Satan. Satan seemed to imagine that having Jesus physically put to death would stop him, as if that were all there was to Jesus, and as if that death would be the last act. But had he heard and understood nothing that Jesus had taught?

Jesus himself had specifically, repeatedly, said that he would be rejected by the religious leaders and killed, and that he would rise again, that after he was killed he would be raised. We'll see later in this very chapter how Christ protected Simon Peter specifically from Satan's power. Friends, where Satan accuses the believer in Christ, Christ pleads his own blood, where Satan afflicts Christ teaches his followers, like Job, how to use even their afflictions for God's glory. When Satan would conquer, Christ will protect and even liberate and redeem his own. When Satan deceives, Christ reveals the truth.

Where Satan would hinder, Christ will help you.

Now, if you're here as a non-Christian, you may not have realized that there was a being like Satan. But I'm here to tell you today, there is a being like Satan.

And that you, my non-Christian friend, have absolutely no protection against him. None. You will be subject to his wiles in this life and forever. The only hope you have is in Jesus Christ. He is the only protection from Satan's wicked ways, from his evil gladness.

Christ Himself was opposed by Satan at every turn. Satan recognized in Christ the Holy One of God who has come to defeat him. According to the Bible, Satan wants pointless human suffering. If you look back through the gospels, he's the one who caused a woman Jesus met to be unable to straighten up for 18 years.

What good did that do Satan? Nothing. But that poor woman for 18 years could not stand up straight. He's the one who wanted to oppose Peter in his trust in Christ, just like he had led Peter to rebuke Jesus when Jesus first predicted his coming death. You remember that was Satan that Jesus identifies there.

Get behind me, Satan. Satan is the one who would lead Ananias to fatally lie to the apostles in Acts 5. In fact, Jesus referred to the Gentiles generally as living in darkness and under the power of Satan. So, non-Christian friend, I know it's awkward to be told this when you freely decided to come to a pleasant religious gathering with singing on a Sunday morning, the beginning of a week. But the truth is the Bible presents you as living under the power of Satan.

You would do well to reflect on how you've seen that truth in your own life. And to see what Jesus Christ could do about that.

This was and is a cosmic war in which there are no neutral parties and in which Satan's troops are unaware of who it is they're really working for. They all think they're working for themselves. They think Satan's deal is a franchise. When really he owns you all. That's the way he likes it, for you to think you're working for yourself.

Friends, Satan is real. The Bible teaches that reality is more complex than merely this material universe, that there are real spiritual beings, and that Satan is such a being who leads in opposing God and God's people. His malice is no excuse for ours, but it's part of the explanation. So here with Judas, if you want to know how Satan entered Judas' soul, so to speak, The answer would seem to be from Judas' covetousness, from his love of money. That's why that's mentioned, I take it here.

So Satan cultivates preferences and choices and loves and gladnesses in us that would separate us from God, that he condemns, and that would enslave us and become our masters. And we find this cosmic war falls across then our own days, our own weeks. Prince Judas' betrayal is part of a much larger story. The religious leaders wanted Jesus dead. He was a threat to them.

And then Judas wanted Jesus dead, but also Satan wanted Jesus dead. Perhaps the most surprising answer to our question though, who wanted Jesus dead, is this: God. God wanted Jesus dead. Look again at verse 1.

Now the feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.

It's no accident that this all happened Passover week.

In fact, this was the Passover. That all of the others had happened for.

For over a thousand years, these Passovers had been acted out, all completely pointless, apart from this one. Even the deliverance from Egypt was but a temporary deliverance. If not for the deliverance Christ would bring.

Passover was the national combination of July 4th and Thanksgiving that Israel celebrated annually in a Friday night meal followed by a week-long feast of unleavened bread. Jesus was received into Jerusalem with spontaneous celebration and His teaching on Monday and Tuesday in the crowded temple courts had been electrifying. The corrupt religious establishment that had for so long fleeced The nation of Israel, in self-serving spiritual darkness, opposed Jesus. They hated him. They had been trying to defeat him for a few years now.

But as his popularity increased, so too did their sense of being threatened. And so did their resolve for action. The religious leaders were more and more fully, it seems, against Jesus. And now, of course, this one from Jesus' own inner circle had turned. He had come to them.

Even one of the 12, it seems, could be tempted and could fall to Satan's temptations. And yet all of this together would not be enough to kill Jesus were it not a part of God's ancient plan.

Joel Beeke has written that the most striking instance of God's sovereignty over Satan is Christ's death.

Satan instigated Christ's betrayal. Arrest, and murder. However, Satan's actions to destroy Christ resulted in his own decisive defeat and the release of many sinners from his captivity. As William Gurnall put it, God sets the devil to catch the devil. Just as David cut off Goliath's head with Goliath's sword, so God defeated the devil by the devil's own machinations.

So great is God's wisdom. Surely we can trust God to use Satan's crimes against us to accomplish the Lord's good will for us.

So Judas and these religious leaders had a plot afoot. They were seeking an opportunity, as Luke puts it here in verse 6. But there was another plot afoot, one that they didn't seem to understand, strangely enough. This was a plan aimed at the eternal life of many. At the removal of eternal judgment for sins committed.

Both plans involved the sacrifice of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. One as a political expediency and assassination for the preservation of the existing order. The incitement may be of a popular lynching. The other, the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish or defect as at Passover. All friends marvel here at the wisdom of God.

God had instituted all this perfectly hundreds of years earlier in teaching and setting up this sacrificial system all for the display and the interpretation of Christ's death. He had catechized them in the rudiments of the very ideas they would need to understand the significance of Christ's death.

Centuries before. God had ordained the very practices of Passover to prepare His people to understand what Jesus was now doing.

Jesus was careful about these preparations, as we'll see in coming weeks, because He intended His death to be understood as the covenant establishing sacrifice that the first Passover was. Only that covenant was not the grand central act of God in history after all. It was only the precursor.

To God's most extensive, extraordinary act of deliverance, the deliverance of all those who would ever turn from their sin and trust in God. That's the great act of deliverance. Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, you can know that as your act of deliverance today. Repent of your sins, trust in Christ. Talk to those around you to try to understand more about what that would mean.

Talk to any of us at the doors on the way out in a few minutes. Listen to these baptismal testimonies. That we're just about to hear and see how God has done that in their lives. The Lamb to be slain at Passover was to foreshadow the fate of the Lamb of God, the Messiah, which fate was even now being worked out in Jesus' life. The whole sacrificial system was set up as a kind of elementary primer teaching about God's holiness, our sinfulness, our need for an atoning sacrifice.

And that God would provide it all.

It was in his gift for his people. Remember what Peter would later pray, For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. At the very middle of God's ancient plan was the sacrificial death of a lamb without spot or blemish as a substitute.

But, friend, what if no such lamb could be found?

What if there were none who were completely unblemished, unstained by sin, not in all the land, not on all the earth, then God Himself would provide the lamb. God Himself would provide the sacrifice. This was the plan of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God. You see something of how even the very worst of things can have God behind them orchestrating all things to our good, even the murder of His dear Son. Are there circumstances in your life which you've been assuming are beyond the good providence of God?

It's your way of thinking that strain His claims to be both sovereign and trustworthy.

If so, friends, look to the cross. Look to the cross to see how God has worked His provision for His people. That Passover lamb that had to be sacrificed was prefiguring the Lamb of God who really would take away the sins of the world, as John the Baptist had put it. This was God's plan for them and for today. So Isaiah could prophesy, It was the will of the Lord to crush him.

I love how John put it in John 13. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God.

When Peter later that night drew a sword to prevent Jesus' arrest, Jesus said, Put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me? Jesus knew from whom this cup ultimately came. This was the cup of God's wrath. He would drink it fully for us.

By His death on the cross, This was God's ancient plan.

So God wanted Jesus dead for us, so that our sins penalty having been paid, our lives purchased, we might live to Him and with Him and for Him forever.

Amen. Let's pray.

Lord God, we pray that yout would teach us by youy Spirit what it means to love youe, to love the Lamb of God, the sacrifice that yout've made for us. And so to give ourselves for your entirely. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.