He showed them “a large upper room.”  It was probably reached, as in many oriental houses, by outside stairs.  It was the choicest and most retired room.  The goodman led the disciples into it.  They found it “furnished” with a table, and couches around it on which Jesus and His company could recline.  But this probably was not all.  The table was “prepared” with some of the provisions required for the feast.  These included the cakes of unleavened bread, the five kinds of bitter herbs, and the wine mixed with water for the four cups which it was the custom to use.

But there was something more which Peter and John must do to “make ready” for the feast.  It was the most important thing of all.  It was to prepare the “Paschal Lamb.”  With such a lamb they had been familiar from childhood.  As their fathers brought it into their homes, and their mothers roasted it, and parents and children gathered about it in solemn worship, the Bethsaidan boys had no thought of the day when the Messiah would bid them prepare for the feast of which He Himself would be the host, at the only time apparently when He acted as such.

When John was pointed by the Baptist to Jesus, he had no thought that He would prepare the last Lamb for Him whom He was to see sacrificed as “the Lamb of God.”  No wonder that Jesus sent Peter and John to make ready, instead of Judas the usual provider, who in the same hour “sought opportunity to betray Him.”

We follow them from the house of the goodman toward the Temple.  Nearing it they listen with mournful solemnity to the chanting of the eighty-first Psalm, with its exhortation to praise,—­“Sing aloud unto God our strength.  Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on the solemn feast day.”  Then they listen for the threefold blast of the silver trumpets.  By this they know that the hour has come for the slaying of the lambs.  Peter and John enter the court of the priests, and slay their lamb whose blood is caught by a priest in a golden bowl, and carried to the Great Altar.

Of this they must have been reminded a few hours later when Christ spoke of His own blood shed for the remission of sins.  John must have remembered it when he saw and wrote of the “blood and water” that flowed from the pierced side of his Lord.  While the lamb is being slain the priests are chanting, and the people responding, “Hallelujah:  Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.”

The lamb of sacrifice, slain and cleansed and roasted, is carried by the two disciples on staves to the upper room.  After lighting the festive lamps, they have obeyed their Lord’s command, “Make ready the Passover.”

Meanwhile He and the remaining ten, as the sun is setting, descend the Mount of Olives, from which He takes His last view of the holy but fated city.  The disciples follow Him, still awed by what He had told them of its fate, and with forebodings of what awaited Him and them.  Among them was the traitor carrying his terrible secret, bent on its awful purpose which is unknown to the nine, but well known to the Master.  Thus they go to the upper room where Peter and John are ready to receive them.