Passover

Dustin and I have been leading Sunday School at Theophilus Bible Church for the last 8 weeks.  This past Sunday was our last lesson for this session, The Old and New Testament Connection.  And we saved the best for last!  This lesson is all about the intricate details that connect the Jewish Passover to the death of Jesus.  We compiled information from several sources including Pastor Mark Biltz and GotQuestions.org.  I hope you will read it, and spend time looking up the verses.  Really reflect on our God's perfect timing.  It will amaze you!  This lesson was meant to be discussed, so feel free to write with any questions or comments.

Easter is such a precious time.  It should renew our awe of what our Savior did for us.  It is a time to reflect on God’s unspeakable plan to reconcile us to himself, so we can have a relationship with him and be grafted into his family.  Many of us understand the basic connection between Passover and Jesus’s death on the cross.  In the last year or so, we have learned that our God is a God of details, and he did not leave a detail out as he planned our redemptive story.  We hope this lesson strengthens your faith, and thrills your heart, the way it does ours.  We find this amazing!!!  It is the ultimate Old Testament / New Testament connection.  We truly saved the best connection for last!

Let’s start with the basics…Let’s read Exodus 12.

Question: "What is the Passover Lamb? How is Jesus our Passover Lamb?"

Answer: The Passover lamb was the animal God directed the Israelites to use as a sacrifice in Egypt on the night God struck down the firstborn sons of every household (Exodus 12:29). This was the final plague God issued against Pharaoh, and it led to Pharaoh releasing the Israelites from slavery (Exodus 11:1). After that fateful night, God instructed the Israelites to observe the Passover Feast as a lasting memorial (Exodus 12:14).

God instructed every household of the Israelite people to select a year-old male lamb without defect (Exodus 12:5; cf. Leviticus 22:20-21). The head of the household was to slaughter the lamb at twilight, taking care that none of its bones were broken, and apply some of its blood to the tops and sides of the doorframe of the house. The lamb was to be roasted and eaten (Exodus 12:7-8). God also gave specific instructions as to how the Israelites were to eat the lamb, “with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand (Exodus 12:11; cf. Ephesians 6:14). In other words, they had to be ready to travel.

God said that when He saw the lamb’s blood on the doorframe of a house, He would “pass over” that home and not permit “the destroyer” (Exodus 12:23) to enter. Any home without the blood of the lamb would have their firstborn son struck down that night (Exodus 12: 12-13).

The New Testament establishes a relationship between this prototypical Passover lamb and the consummate Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 5:7). The prophet John the Baptist recognized Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), and the apostle Peter links the lamb without defect (Exodus 12:5) with Christ, whom he calls a “lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19). Jesus is qualified to be called One “without blemish” because His life was completely free from sin (Hebrews 4:15). In Revelation, John the apostle sees Jesus as “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). Jesus was crucified during the time that the Passover was observed (Mark 14:12).

The Bible says believers have symbolically applied the sacrificial blood of Christ to their hearts and thus have escaped eternal death (Hebrews 9:12, 14). Just as the Passover lamb’s applied blood caused the “destroyer” to pass over each household, Christ’s applied blood causes God’s judgment to pass over sinners and gives life to believers (Romans 6:23).

As the first Passover marked the Hebrews’ release from Egyptian slavery, so the death of Christ marks our release from the slavery of sin (Romans 8:2). As the first Passover was to be held in remembrance as an annual feast, so Christians are to memorialize the Lord’s death in communion until He returns (1 Corinthians 11:26).

The Old Testament Passover lamb, although a reality in that time, was a mere foreshadowing of the better and final Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ. Through His sinless life and sacrificial death, Jesus became the only One capable of giving people a way to escape death and a sure hope of eternal life (1 Peter 1:20-21).

- From www.gotquestions.org

Now let’s look even deeper into the “final Passover Lamb” and God’s intricate details…

The Hebrew word for feast is moed, which means “divine appointment”.  God planned some very specific days that he would choose to intersect human history.  God told Moses in Leviticus 23 that there were several feasts that he wanted the Jewish people to celebrate each year.  He told Moses exactly how each feast was to be celebrated.  We see the words “holy convocation” to describe what God wanted on those days, but the Hebrew word is Mikra, which can be translated, “dress rehearsal”.

God has a master plan…a clock…a calendar.  We know some of his very special days, because he set them apart as Jewish feast days.  There are spring feasts, which were fulfilled with Jesus’s first coming, and fall feasts which have yet to be fulfilled.  A strong case can be made that these feast days will be fulfilled with his second coming, but that is another lesson. 

Spring Feasts

Passover – Jesus was crucified

Feast of Unleavened Bread – Jesus was buried

Feast of First Fruits – Jesus rose from the dead

Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) - The Holy Spirt came to believers

Fall Feasts

Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) - ??? 

Israel’s National Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) - ???

Feast of Tabernacles - ???

Just think:  every year for 1500 years Jews went through the “dress rehearsal” of killing the Passover lamb at 3:00 in the afternoon on Passover.  And our Lord died on Passover, not in July or December, but on Passover at 3:00 in the afternoon!  The Jews had been rehearsing for 1500 years by going through the motions God wanted for the day his son died on the cross.  In Revelation 13:8 it says Jesus had been slain since the foundation of the world.  This was all planned ahead of time.  God didn’t say, “Oh no, my son was killed…Plan B is to resurrect him.”  God planned this from the foundation of the world. 

God even had his son’s funeral songs prepared ahead of time.  God inspired David to write the songs he wanted.  We find them in Psalms.  The Jews sing many Psalms to celebrate feast days.  Matthew 23:30 tells us that at the end of the Last Supper Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn and then went to the Mount of Olives.  We can know what hymn they sang, because it was the same one all Jews sang at that point of Passover.  They would have sung the Hallel which is David’s Psalms 113-118.  That night they would have sang the words from Psalm 118:22-24, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.  The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.”  How amazing is that?! 

At 9 AM the following day is the time of the morning sacrifice.  That is the hour the Priests would have bound the Passover lamb to the horns of the alter in the Temple.  At that very hour, 9 AM, according to Mark 15:25, Jesus was being bound to the cross.  At the very moment the Passover lamb was bound to the alter, they crucified our Lord.  Unbelievable!  And Jews all throughout Jerusalem would have been singing Psalm 118:27 at that moment, “God is the LORD, which has showed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.”

According to Matthew 27:45, from noon until 3:00 PM, darkness came over all the land.  At this same time the Jews would have still been signing the Hallel.  Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived at that time.  He said there were 2 million Jews in Jerusalem that day to celebrate Passover.  That means there was a 2 million-man choir singing songs aloud as Jesus was dying on the cross.  They would have been singing Psalm 118:16 “The Lord’s right hand is lifted high; the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things.” What a picture!

Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record that Jesus died about "the ninth hour" (Matthew 27:45-50, Mark 15:34-37, Luke 23:44-46).  The ninth hour is 3:00 PM.  That is the precise time the Jewish priests would have killed the Passover lamb for the evening sacrifice.…God’s perfect timing is unbelievable!

- Much of this information comes form Pastor Mark Biltz

Question:  Was the Passover lamb slaughtered at the Temple before the crucifixion of the Messiah took place?

Answer: The answer to this question is both yes and no. It should be kept in mind that there is a distinction between the first night of Passover and the first day of Passover. It is on the first night of Passover that all of the Jewish families eat the Passover meal, and Yeshua (Jesus) ate His last Passover meal on the first night of Passover. That is when He inaugurated the communion service. The next morning was the first day of Passover and at nine o'clock in the morning there was a special Passover sacrifice of which only the priesthood could eat. Yeshua was nailed to the cross on the first day of Passover at nine o'clock in the morning, which was the same time that the special Passover sacrifice was being offered up.

In the biblical practice, the lamb that was to be killed for the Passover was set aside on the tenth of the month of Nisan. It was then tested from the tenth day until the fourteenth day of that month to make sure that it was without spot and without blemish. On the fourteenth day the lamb was killed for the Passover meal. The next morning there was another lamb that was used as the Passover sacrifice for the nation of Israel. According to Exodus 12:46, the offering was slaughtered in a way that no bone of this lamb was to be broken.

Yeshua set Himself aside as the Passover Lamb. It occurred on the tenth day of the month, the same day that the physical animal was set aside. From the tenth day until the fourteenth day of the month, Yeshua was tested by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees, by the Scribes, and by the Herodians. By answering all of their objections and questions, He showed that He was without spot and without blemish. Yeshua ate the Seder meal on the first night of the Passover, the same night that all the Jewish people ate it, the fourteenth of Nisan. Yeshua died on the first day of Passover. He was crucified at nine o'clock in the morning and it was at nine o'clock in the morning that the special Passover sacrifice was offered in the Temple compound. Just as the Jews were very careful to make sure that not a single bone of the Passover lamb was broken, John 19:36 points out that not a single bone of Yeshua was broken either — not during the course of the crucifixion itself, nor by the Roman soldiers at the end of it all.

- From www.ariel.org

On the road to Emmaus we saw the two followers of Christ amazed when Jesus showed them that he was all through the Old Testament.  We have had discussions during Sunday School about Messianic Jews who have had their eyes opened to HaMashiach Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, they suddenly see all of the clues pointing to him through the Tanakh, Jewish Scriptures. 

We hope these last 8 lessons have served as your own Road to Emmaus.  We hope they have helped you see that the Old and New Testaments are very much one book, and Jesus is present from the very beginning.  God bless your continued journey, and may he give you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mind to understand more and more of His precious Word!  Amen!