WE have now to trace the sad, sorrowful path, which this blessed servant traversed from the close of His mission to Israel to the right hand of the Father, where there are pleasures for evermore. The path to the glory is through the cross. It is a holy path. It commences with the feast of unleavened bread. “Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh.” The chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him, but still the people are opposed. “They feared the people.” But now a confederacy is formed against the Lamb of God. Satan and Judas, “the chief priests and captains,” (ecclesiastical and worldly power,) are leagued in one. “The passover must be killed.” Jesus is ready to spend all for the blessing of His people. He sends two of His disciples to prepare the Passover. He will take His place as a Jew at that feast, which in His own person He was about to furnish with divine solemnities and everlasting cheer. “A man bearing a pitcher of water “in this dry and barren land, where no water is, is the guide now and then to the guest chamber. “He sat down and the twelve apostles with Him.” They who had seen all His service to Israel and were to be by and bye witnesses of it, are partakers with Him in all the fruits of it. The sorrow is His own.
It is necessary to distinguish here between the Passover and the breaking of bread, which is properly subsequent to the Passover. The Lord says: “With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” From this it is plain that He observed this feast as a Jew in the company of Jews, and that in doing so He was anticipating the time when it would be fulfilled, for He adds: “I will not any more cat of it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God;” and also, that “the cup” which follows is the fruit of the vine, the moral condition of Israel, of which He will not drink (or, in other words, have no communion with) till the kingdom of God is come. I think, it very important to notice how the Spirit in this book is so careful to describe Israel’s share in the blessings, in order that the Church may distinctly, and without confusion, understand its own. And so here. Israel’s blessing from the Passover is first secured, and then that to the Church. Our feast is the feast of unleavened bread, and hence it is the bread which He breaks for us, for His body is broken for us, and we are His body, built up into it by strength and sustenance flowing to us from His broken body and shed blood. We are to keep the feast, not with old (Jewish) leaven, nor with the leaven of nature, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Popery inculcates a grievous error in asserting that “the mass is a repetition of the sacrifice of Christ.” The argument of the apostle is, (1 Cor. 5.) that the Passover is sacrificed in the person of Christ, and, therefore, it only remains for us to keep the feast consequent on it. Popery has gone back to the “old leaven,” and probably was confirmed in this fatal error by construing what is here observed during the solemnization of the Passover for that feast which followed it.
The remainder of this chapter mainly discloses the elements and causes of the various disorders in the absence of Christ.
The first is, betrayal by a professed friend, from love of gain.
The second is, a strife for pre-eminence.
The remedy for this is, that the Gentiles now are the channels of power and dominion; so, to assume either now is a Gentile standing. But they are to have a kingdom, and “to sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel,” though not in a moment. Grievous trials await them here. The most forward and zealous of them shall be sifted of Satan, and shall so quail before a woman, that ere the night is passed he shall three times deny his Lord; and this is the third form in which failure will appear.
In Christ’s presence “nothing” was lacked; in Christ’s absence, we must part with everything, to stand in the same power. It is not the question of swords, but of standing in the blessing which Christ’s presence bestowed: swords cannot accomplish this. “The mount of Olives “ is the place to prepare for trial. There a heavenly messenger comforts our Lord. If we sleep on the eve of trial, we cannot meet it as Christ did when it comes. We sacrifice the ear of our antagonist when we encounter him with carnal weapons. Jesus nevertheless repairs our injuries.
Jesus—in the hands of enemies, His own who would not receive Him, through “the power of darkness,” —Jesus—buffeted and slandered before the “council,” which assumed to be gods, His own disciple within His hearing having denied Him—proclaims what is His own joy and the glory of the nation, though they now condemn Him for it: “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.” Alas! the more fully He revealed Himself, the more fully was He rejected. “His own mouth” is the fullest witness against Him!