He is within yards of where David set up his altar, within yards of where Abram offered a ram as a substitute instead of Isaac.

Where, for a thousand years, sacrifices had been offered for the atonement of the people of God's sins. Jesus is somewhere within yards of the temple. Do you know where the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite was? It was on Mount Moriah. But that verse also tells us something else. We are told, check me out on this, in 2 Chronicles 3 verse 1, that Solomon, when he built the temple, built the temple on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David went to the man and said, “I want to buy your land from you.” And the man said, “You can have my property, great king.” And you remember David utters the great words, “I will not offer a sacrifice that does not cost me.” And so he, for an exorbitant price, buys the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite and an altar is set up to give thanks for the sparing of God's people for David's sin. It just so happened that the land below where the death angel had stopped was owned by a Jebusite, the former occupants of Jerusalem, the City of David. As the death angel approached Jerusalem, the City of David, God called from heaven and said, “Stop.” Thousands of lives were spared, and David determined to set up an altar and offer thanksgiving to God for His sparing the people of Jerusalem for his sin. Seventy thousand people died in three days. And in punishment for David's sin of pride and presumption and distrust in the Lord, a death angel was sent to Israel. This was explicitly disallowed and it was explicitly sanctioned and prohibited in the law of God because the king was not to trust in the numbers of his fighting men or his chariots or his horses, he was to trust in the Lord his God. And little Isaac looks to his father and says, “Father I see the knife and I see the fire and I see the wood” because he was carrying it, “but where is the sacrifice?” Fathers, what would you say to your son if he had to ask that question to you? But at the top of that mountain as Abraham raised his hand and prepared to take the life of his son, the Lord called out from heaven and told him, “Do not touch the boy.” And a ram caught in the thicket bush was substituted for Isaac and he was spared.Ī thousand years later, David had numbered the people of God. And you remember the poignant passage as the father and the son trudged their way up the slope of Moriah alone with a knife and a fire and wood.

Two thousand years before Jesus stood with His disciples gathering in the upper room and preparing to recline at the table to take the Passover, four thousand years from our time today, God had told Abraham to take his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, and go to the land of Moriah and to a mountain that He would show him and offer his son as a sacrifice. You understand the importance of that in the history of God's purposes of redemption with His people, don't you? Jesus and His disciples are in an upper room somewhere inside the city walls of Jerusalem, and you understand the theological significance of that. Let me remind you of where this is happening. When we looked at the first part of this chapter last week, we said that it was the last Passover, and it is. We’ll be looking at verses 14 to 19 today. If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 22.

Do this in remembrance of me table