In the midst of this last week—­this passion week—­one of the interesting things that Jesus did was to keep the Jewish Passover for the last time with his disciples.  This Passover feast had been kept by the Jews every year for nearly fifteen hundred years.  It was the most solemn religious service they had.  It was first observed by them in the night on which their nation was delivered from the bondage of Egypt and began their march towards the promised land of Canaan.  We read about the establishment of this solemn service in Exodus, twelfth chapter.  The first Passover took place on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan.  This had been the seventh month of the year with the Jews.  But God directed them to take it for their first month ever afterwards.  They were to begin their year with that month.  Every family was to choose out a lamb for themselves, on the tenth day of the month.  They were to keep it to the fourteenth day of the month.  On the evening of that day, they were to kill the lamb.  The blood of the lamb was to be sprinkled on the two side-posts and upper lintels of every door.  They were to roast the lamb and eat it, with solemn religious services.  And, while they were doing this, the angel of the Lord was to pass over all the land of Egypt, and, with his unseen sword, to smite and kill the first-born, or eldest child, in every family, from Pharaoh on his throne to the poorest beggar in the land.  But the blood, sprinkled on the door-posts of the houses in which the Israelites dwelt, was to save them from the stroke of the angel of death as he passed over the land.  And so it came to pass.  The solemn hour of midnight arrived.  The angel went on his way.  He gave one stroke with his dreadful sword—­and there was a death in every Egyptian family.  But in the blood-sprinkled dwellings of the Israelites, there was no one dead.  What a wonderful night that was!  Nothing like it was ever known in the history of our world.  It is not surprising that the children of Israel, through all their generations, should have kept that Passover feast with great interest—­an interest that never died out, from age to age.  Nor do we wonder that our blessed Saviour looked forward longingly to the occasion when, for the last time, he was to celebrate this Passover with his disciples.  As they began the feast he said to them, “With desire I have desired” that is, I have earnestly, or heartily desired “to eat this passover with you before I suffer,” St. Luke xxii:  15.  It is easy to think of many reasons why Jesus should have felt this strong desire.  Without attempting to tell what all those reasons were, we can readily think of some things which would lead him, very naturally, to have this feeling.  It was the last time he was to eat this Passover with them on earth.  This showed that his public work, for which he came into the world, was done.  He had only now to suffer and die; to rise from the dead, and then go home to his Father in heaven.