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Luke 18:31-34  Read it first! Here’s a link if you need one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2018%3A31-34&version=NLT

Jesus and his disciples are headed to Jerusalem.  They are on their way to celebrate the Passover feast.  It was one of a handful of annual festivals for which Jewish men were expected to travel to Jerusalem to make sacrifices at the Temple.  For any of you who don’t know the story of the Passover, grab a hot chocolate and a cosy blanket because I have a story for you!  You’re going to need this little bit of history for the next few chapters of Luke’s story to have their full impact.  So let’s rewind history two to three centuries before Jesus was born. 

Israel wasn’t a country yet.  A man named Abraham had been promised by God that he would become a great nation.  Eventually he had a son whom he named Isaac.  Isaac had a son named Jacob.  God gave Jacob a new name: Israel.  Israel had twelve sons, and through a long and convoluted series of events, Israel and his whole family moved to Egypt to escape a famine in their homeland.  At some point you have got to read Genesis and Exodus.  Rushing through it like this is soul-crushing.This is such a great story! Sadly, the details will have to wait for another Bible study.  For now you need to know that the future nation of Israel was living in Egypt, far from the land in which they had settled.  At first they were welcome and honoured guests in Egypt.  But over time they prospered and the family grew.  There were so many of them and they were so prosperous that they started to make their Egyptian neighbours worry.  If Egypt went to war and the family of Israel decided to side with their enemies, they’d be toast.  Over time the Egyptian king enslaved the people of Israel.  Their lives became increasingly bitter and arduous.  They were horribly mistreated.  At one point the Pharaoh actually ordered that all their baby boys be killed at birth.  Their lives were horrific.  They started to pray to the God that their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, worshipped.  God sent a man named Moses to lead them.  Moses’ back story is also tragic and beautiful and undeniably flooded with the intervention of God.  I wish I had more time, but it’s in Exodus.  It’s a great read.  Right now we are focused on the book of Luke but I would LOVE to do Exodus with you some time soon.  Anyways, Moses goes to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and tells him to let the people of Israel go free.  Pharaoh says, “Absolutely not.  They are a great labour force and they are going nowhere.” Through Moses, God sends 10 plagues as a warning to Pharaoh.  In the midst of each of the first nine plagues, Pharaoh promises to release the people of Israel and each time the plague ends, he changes his mind.  Insects, bad weather and disease ravage Egypt, but Pharaoh remains stubborn.  Finally, through Moses, God tells the family of Israel to pack up.  He is sending one more plague that will finally convince Pharaoh to send them away.  Pharaoh has ignored all the warnings.  This time God will cause the death of the first born of every living creature in Egypt, human and animal.  It’s a horrifying prospect, but Pharaoh had horribly mistreated Israel and would not relent.  

Now remember, the family of Israel was also living in Egypt.  Their children and animals were under the same threat.  So God gave them clear instructions.  Again, the details are in Exodus.  Chapters eleven and twelve specifically walk through this.  Through a series of instructions which included packing and being ready to walk out the door on a moment’s notice, the Israelites were to sacrifice a lamb to serve as a special meal.  The bread they ate with it wasn’t to have any yeast – no time for raising the dough. Cook it. Eat it. Be ready to leave.  The lamb that they ate had to be in perfect condition, they couldn’t break its bones in the process of slaughtering it.  And they had to take some of its blood and paint their door frames with it, top and sides.  The purpose of the blood on the doorframe was to serve as a sign to the angel that God sent to destroy the firstborn of Egypt, that a death had already occurred in that house.   The penalty had already been served.  The family living in that house were covered by the blood of the passover lamb.  It’s a gritty, visceral image.  It wasn’t meant to be pretty.  The blood of the lamb was accepted in lieu of the blood of the firstborn of the household.  

That same night Pharaoh, finally humbled by the loss of his firstborn, agreed to release the slaves he had so long tortured and crushed under his fist. That began a long, miraculous and often frustrating journey that would eventually culminate in the people of Israel moving into the land God promised Abraham centuries earlier. 

That is the context for the Passover feast for which Jesus and his disciples began their journey toward Jerusalem.  Following their miraculous rescue from slavery, God commanded the people of Israel to commemorate what had happened with an annual feast of exactly the same meal they ate the night they left Egypt.  The men of Israel were to gather in Jerusalem to celebrate this meal, and Jesus and his disciples were on their way to follow that command. 

So Jesus tells his disciples what is going to happen to him in Jerusalem.  He really couldn’t be more clear.  We know that in hindsight they remembered what he said because they wrote it down for us, but in the moment they still didn’t grasp that Jesus wasn’t being metaphorical.  Jesus had called himself the Son of Man. They were familiar with that reference by now.  Jesus had referenced prophecies of what was going to happen to him.  This is the third time Luke tells us about Jesus warning his disciples.  Again we are told the meaning was unclear to them because it was hidden.  Just like the parables enable people to hear the truth but not grasp their meaning, Jesus told his disciples the truth, but prevented them from understanding what was coming.  I think maybe he was preserving them from the truth.  We will find out in the coming chapters, they weren’t strong enough to handle it.  But Jesus wanted them to be there as witnesses of it because he also wanted them to have a victorious testimony to give when, as predicted, he rose again on the third day.  

There is a lot of prophecy in the Bible.  Some of it came true, some of it is still in the future.  What we usually see is that God warns us, but it isn’t till it happens that we look back and go, “Oh! What just happened is exactly what he said was going to happen.”  I don’t think prophecy is meant so much to prepare us for the future.  I think its most powerful role is to help us recognize that God really does know the future and that he really is in control.  When we look through time and see him do what he said he would do over and over, we start to realise he is going to keep doing what he says.  It gives us confidence when life feels completely out of control to look back and realise, it looked out of control in the past too, but it never was.  God has always been in control.  After all these years it seems safe to assume that’s not going to change now.