Jesus Our Passover

The Passover was one on the most important festivals of the Jewish calendar, commemorating the Israeli deliverance from Egyptian bondage.  This feast and sacrifice was strictly observed (Exodus 12:43-49, Leviticus 23:4-8).  It had important ramifications in regard to the ministry of Christ.  In the origin of the Passover, the foundational element was illustrated in the applying of the blood, which is what is necessary in order to except the gift of God, through Jesus Christ.  The prefigurement of Christ can be seen in the Passover sacrifice and its call to remembrance of the gift of God.  

 

In What ways did the Passover prefigure Christ’s ministry? 

The Passover prefigured Christ ministry in three ways: 1) The Death of the Lamb-Crucifixion; 2) Prophecies of Messiah’s Redemption; and 3) the Passover-Lord Supper.  These elements presented in the Passover can also be seen in the prefigurement of the ministry of Christ. 

 

1) The Death of the Lamb-Crucifixion: The death of Jesus is linked historically with the Passover and took place around the 14^th day of Abhibh or Nisan. The crucifixion was around this season, and the comparison is focused upon the similarities between the Paschal Lamb and the anointed one of
Israel who gave his life for the sinners of the world.  The deaths of the Paschal Lamb laid upon the Jews a divine obligation to put away their old food and begin to eat new bread, so the death of Christ lays us under obligation to put away sin and begin to lead a new life.

 

The references in the Gospels refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God, giving a comparison between the Paschal Lamb and the Christ who gave His life for the lost.  John the Baptist proclaimed Christ to be “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).  John the Baptist also said in this passage “look the Lamb of God,” which is the implication that Christ through his death was to the people of this day to what the lamb was to Israel before Christ became the perfect sacrifice that would take away the sins of the world.  The name of the Passover through the crucifixion of Christ and His resurrection was changed by the Christians to be known as Good Friday, which calls into remembrance of the substitution death of Christ.  The Messiah by His life, work, death and resurrection has accomplished eternal salvation (Hebrews 5:9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him).

 

2) Prophecies of Messiah’s Redemption:  The blood of the Lamb that was slain and sprinkled upon the door posts and lintels that protected them from the Angel of Death.  Just as God looked at Israel with compassion when they were in bondage in
Egypt, the Messiah looked upon all of mankind with that same compassion as they were held in the bondage of sin (Psalm 102:18-20), (Broadhurst, 55).  The redemption and atoning death that Jesus gave fulfilled every sacrifice of the law.  In the Passover He became the sin bearer.  The Paschal Lamb was to act as the substitute for
Israel, so that there firstborns could be saved.  The word Passover means “passing over” or “sparing.”.  This substitutional sacrifice with the unblemished Lamb was symbolic of the sacrifice that Christ gave on the cross (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

 

The symbolic sprinkling of the blood upon the people in the later celebration of the Passover and this act of sprinkling of the blood was an act of sealing the covenant.  In the original Passover the blood was sprinkled upon the door, so Christ’s blood needs to be applied to the hearts of those who believe, which will save them from sins and death (Romans 6:23, I Corinthians 6:11, Ephesians 1:7).  The blood on the door also meant safety from judgment, so the blood of Christ means we can escape an inevitable and eternal judgment (Acts 4:12).    There is a great necessity just as it was at the time of the first Passover to apply the blood to our hearts, so that we can have confidence to enter the holy place through the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19-25).  He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for us only, but also for the entire world (1 John 2:2).

 

3) the Passover-Lord Supper:  The Passover was a memorial meal for the Children of Israel to call to remembrance all that God had done for them in delivering them from their captivity in
Egypt.  In the book of Exodus 12:14 it says Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.  This is referring to the remembrance of the Passover and what God had done for them in
Egypt.  In 1 Corinthians 11:24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”     

Jesus said to His disciples in reference to the Passover that they leave out the Paschal Lamb, the unleavened bread, and the bitter herbs.  Jesus said to take communion (the Lord’s Supper) in remembrance of Him, for the blood he shed for mankind (1 Corinthians 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. ²⁵ After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. ²⁶ For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.)  The Passover is symbolic of a past deliverance, just as the Last Supper is the remembrance and Thanksgiving for the body of Christ that was broken for us. 

What does 1 Corinthians 5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.  For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” mean?In 1 Corinthians 5:7 the Apostle Paul gives nine words in reference to the Messiah’s fulfilling the Passover sacrifice.  This verse of scripture is the great doctrine of the gospel. The Jews, after they had killed the Passover, kept the feast of unleavened bread. We also keep this feast but not for seven days only, but for all of our days. “We should die with our Saviour to sin, be planted into the likeness of his death by mortifying sin, and into the likeness of his resurrection by rising again to newness of life, and that internal and external. We must have new hearts and new lives.”    The entire life of a Christian must be a feast of unleavened bread. The Christian’s most common communications and religious performances must be holy.

Jesus’ Messianic activities reached a climax in the events of the Passover.  The crucifixion took place around the first day of the Passover.  The Lamb of God, which took the sins of the world upon Him, sacrificed His life for us and became that offering of liberation for all those who will choose to accept it.  Just as the sins of Israel were atoned for and they were no longer slaves of the Egyptians, so all that choose to have fellowship with God can be part of the redeemed people of God, for Christ was sacrificed for us.  The Passover redemption in the Old Testament represented the old covenant and the Gospel account of Christ sacrificial death represents the birth of the new covenant.  Christ sacrificial death is call to become pure and holy, to throw out the old leaven. Jesus became that lamb (John 1:29) and gave His life for mankind so that we could be saved from sin (Romans 6:6-11) (Beet, 88).

Conclusion:The elements in the Passover in reference to the blood sacrifice and to the Paschal Lamb that was slain easily apply to Christ’s sinless sacrifice on the cross.  The Apostle Paul developed this comparison by referring to Christ as our Passover.  This is the foundational illustrating factor of connection between the Passover and the Christian message.The Passover theme can be seen in Christ’s sacrificial death, which allowed the provision to be established for the forgiveness of sins to those who except the sacrifice.  The call to “do this in remembrance of me” can be seen in then necessity to keep the Lord’s Supper, just as the Jewish Orthodox keeps the Passover.  It is the Lord’s Passover!

The Sabbath and the Christian

    The emphasis one places on the Word of God and the principles that it maintains is focused on whether an individual truly loves God.  To love God is to self-sacrificially commit oneself: to delight in Him, to rejoice in serving Him, to desire to continually to please Him, to seek one’s happiness in Him and to thirst for a fuller enjoyment of Him.  One’s regard to this definition of what it means to love God, all comes down to one’s commit to serve Him. The Bible contains a clear emphasis that to serve God, believers must worship Him, i.e. Isaiah 66:23 “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.”

    The one significant factor of truly loving God is delighting in what He delights in.  One of these elements that is emphasized 174 times (BBW 6.0) in the scripture is that God considers the Sabbath to be essential for a relationship with Him.  The concentration of the Sabbath in the Christian life is imperative to truly love and honour God with our entire being.  Some questions that believers ask today in regards to Sabbath observance are: “Is the Sabbath Saturday or Sunday” and “Is the Sabbath binding upon the 21^st century Christian?”

“Is the Sabbath Saturday or Sunday?”

    This is a question that has plagued the Christian world over which day of the week are we to worship God.  In determining this factor one must take into account why we worship at all.  Why did God make the Sabbath?  God said in the book of Ezekiel 20:20 “and keep my Sabbath days holy, for they are a sign to remind you that I am the LORD your God” (NLT).  The Sabbath day was originally meant for a sign between God and man.  It is up to mankind to keep the Sabbath day holy, so that it may act as a day of remembrance to the God who has delivered us and kept us (just as He did for the Children of Israel).  Another key element to concentrate upon is found in the words of Jesus, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (KJV, Mark 2:27).  The Sabbath was created by God for the chief of His creation, mankind, to act as a sign and a symbol of remembrance.

     In the scriptures the recognition that God made the Sabbath is quite clear as it was seen in Mark 2:27.  The Sabbath was made for man by God for a specific purpose.  In order to love God it requires us to delight in what He delights in, as it says in Isaiah 58:13-14,  “Keep the Sabbath day holy. Don’t pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the    Sabbath and speak of it with delight as the LORD’s holy day. Honor the LORD in   everything you do, and don’t follow your own desires or talk idly. If you do this, ¹⁴ the  LORD will be your delight. I will give you great honor and give you your full share of  the inheritance I promised to Jacob, your ancestor. I, the LORD, have spoken!” (NLT).  This reference emphasizes the truth that God wants us to keep His Sabbath, and He will delight in us.  He made it for us. 

     The issue of is the Sabbath, Saturday or Sunday is decided in the focus of what we are celebrating.  In the Old Testament the Jewish people were required by God to worship one day week.  It comes from the Hebrew word shabbath and means to desist, cease or rest.  This day God called the Sabbath, has a two-fold definition.  It refers to either a Jewish sacred day of worship and rest (the seventh day – OT) or the first day of the week (celebrating Jesus’ resurrection – NT).

      In the Old Testament God command His people to worship Him and picked a day that calls to remembrance the six days that God worked and then rested the seventh day (Genesis 2:2-3; Exodus 20:10-13; Leviticus 19:30).  This word Sabbath was not just focused upon the seventh day of the week, as some church groups emphasizes, but scripturally the Sabbath refers to a special time reserved to worship God, to rest and to remember His work in ones life.  One of these occurrences in found in Leviticus 23.  This passage is referring to the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, and is a call to remembrance of what happened in the Egyptian captivity.  Other special Sabbaths included the Day of Atonement and the seventh year release to let the ground lie fallow.

      Leviticus 25:7 “And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the          increase thereof be meat. ⁸ And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee,  seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee  forty and nine years. ⁹ Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the  tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound  throughout all your land. ¹⁰ And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty  throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and  ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his    family.” (KJV).  Therefore the Sabbath was not just a once a week observance by the Children of Israel on Saturday, but also a means of celebrating their love to God at different occasions.  This means that the word Sabbath does not just mean the Jewish Sabbath, but a day set aside to worship and glorify God, (Byer, The Sabbath). 

      There was a distinct historical shift that took place in the middle to late part of the 1^st century A.D.  This was a time where the Apostles and other believers focused on worshiping God both on the Jewish day of worship and on the day in which Jesus rose from the dead.  The historical shift is depicted in Revelations 1:10 where John said “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day…” (KJV).  Another scripture reference in which this is revealed to is in Acts 20:7 where it says “And upon the first day of the week the Disciples came together…” (KJV).  The Apostle Paul also stated this first day of the week as a time of worship in his letter to the Corinthians.  In 1 Corinthians 16:2 it says “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store…” (KJV). 

     Through examining these references we can confer that the day of worship for the Christian has migrated from the seventh day of the week to the first day.  At one time in the earlier church, both were observed but as time progressed the seventh day was dropped as a day of worship and only the first day of the week, Sunday was celebrated as the Christian Sabbath.  The focus of God’s command in Exodus 20:8 is to “Remember the Sabbath day, and to keep it holy.”(KJV).  “Christians are free from the Sabbath in that they can gather on the first day, and at the same time stand under the sign of the Sabbath in that they gather every seventh day” (Byer, The Sabbath).

“Is the Sabbath binding upon the 21^st century Christian?”

     Sabbath observance is binding upon all Christians.  The day that we worship may have changed but the universal principle, which states we are to delight in what God delights in, is still a factor.  God made the Sabbath day for man (Mark 2:27) before the commandments that Moses wrote were even codified. 

     The evidence is revealed in Genesis 2:2-3 “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. ³ And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (KJV).  God had sanctified or set apart, one day out of seven in a week.  This was done approximately 3500 years before the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11), so this can signify that God considers this observance important in serving and delighting ourselves in Him.  If God, the creator of all things instituted this day of rest and worship in the beginning it is obvious to assume that He would require it not just for a short time span of a few thousand years, but for eternity (Isaiah 66:22-23). 

     The necessity of Sabbath observance was also codified in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15).  God specified in His law that we are to keep the Sabbath.  In various passages throughout the Old Testament a clear emphasizes is placed upon maintaining the Sabbath and keeping it holy.  In Numbers 15:32 “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.”  The scripture reveals more detail about this case in the next several verses.  The man is brought before Moses and the congregation of Israel and tried and taken out of the camp and stoned for violating the Sabbath, this is a specific application, as people are not stoned today for breaking the Sabbath, but the same element of God’s wrath has not changed, it does not please God for people to violate the Sabbath (Exodus 34:21 “Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: even during plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.”). 

     In the book of Nehemiah it gives more references to the importance of keeping the Sabbath Holy.  In Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-21 it refers to the occasion when merchants tried to entice the God’s people to buy on the Sabbath day.  Nehemiah corrected this problem by ordering the merchants out of the city, locking the gates and then finally threatening to kill the merchants if they were to continue to violate the Sabbath. 

     The scripture specified in Leviticus 23:24 that the seventh day is an holy convocation of remembrance of what God did for them (Numbers 28:25 “And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work.”)

      In this holy convocation to the Lord there is an emphasis placed upon three reasons why a day was reserved by God for man.  The first reason is that God reserved the Sabbath day for man (Genesis 2:2-3).  The second is that God made Sabbath for us to rest (Exodus 20:8).  Thirdly God made the Sabbath for a day of remembrance (Deuteronomy 5:12-15):

      Deut. 5:12-15 “Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath  commanded thee. ¹³ Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁴ But the seventh  day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy  son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine  ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant   and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. ¹⁵ And remember that thou wast a servant  in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a   mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee  to keep the sabbath day.” (KJV).

      The Lord Jesus Christ is our example of how we need to keep and reverence the Sabbath day.  There were three main exceptions that Jesus reveals in His observance of the Sabbath that do not violate the universal principle of keeping the Sabbath holy. 

       The exceptions are 1) Deeds of Mercy, such as healing, or feeding animals (Matthew 12:10-12, Mark 3:2-5, Luke 6:6-10, 13:10-17); 2) Deeds of Necessity, such as the proper care of animals (Matthew 12:1-12, Mark 2:23-28, Luke 6:2-5); and 3) Deeds of Worship, such as priests in the Old Testaments preparing the burnt offering on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:5).

       The reasons we observe the Sabbath to day as Christians is routed firmly in the question of whether we truly love God.  The universal principle of this matter is focused on the fact that we are to delight in what He delights in.  The 21^st century believer is to keep the Sabbath holy as it was specified in God’s eternal law (Exodus 20:8-10).

     The Sabbath day is a day of rest and remembrance made by God for man.  We are to observe it and keep it in concordance with His divine will for the believer.  The Lord’s Day in which we choose to worship should be a day we set apart to focus on Him (Genesis 2:2-3), A day of celebration that Jesus is risen from the dead, A Day of assembly (Acts 13:42; Hebrews 10:25), and a day of rest from our normal work schedule (Exodus 20:8-10). Leviticus makes it quite clear that we are to obey God and keep His commandments of worshiping on the Sabbath.  “Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary, I am the LORD.”  (Leviticus 26:2).