The Lord’s Last Desire for Us - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
Luke 22:15

The Lord's Last Desire for Us
The storm was gathering outside, preparations for His arrest and condemnation and crucifixion were being rapidly completed, and Judas, who knew all about it, sat there at the table with Him, with the price of his treachery in his bag. And Jesus knew all this. Never before had the powers of darkness been so stirred; this was the supreme hour; men were but the puppets on the stage, guilty puppets, playing their part with willing hearts; but behind them were the forces of evil determined to crush that one lowly Man, and to finish forever at one blow their long fight with God—and Jesus knew this.

But His disciples, and we, were His one thought. They loved Him, but He loved them more; and it was His desire, not theirs, that had brought them together for that sacred occasion. The Passover Feast commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egypt; the lamb roasted with fire upon which they fed year by year turned the eye of faith forward to His coming. And now He had come, and there He sat to share with them that meal which spoke so eloquently of what He would do.

It was at the Passover Feast that He instituted the supper, which we know and love as the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11); and this He did entirely in view of His absence from them. He was to be no more with them, and they would miss His blessed company; and the measure in which they would miss Him would show the measure of their love to Him. And so it is now: the Lord is not here; He has no place in the world; its politics, social circles, pleasures, and schemes have no room for Him. Are we conscious of His absence, and of this? If we love Him we shall miss Him and shall long for the time when He shall come to take us to His Father's house, that where He is we may be also.

J. T. Mawson