THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked Him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?’ So He sent two of His disciples, telling them, ‘Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: ‘Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations there.’

The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. (Mark 14: 10-16)

Passover and Unleavened Bread were the first of annual feasts God appointed for His people to celebrate in preparation for the coming of Messiah. During their exodus from Egypt and their sojourn in the desert, God commanded that they celebrate seven feasts during each year, three spring feasts in the month of Nisan, one summer feast fifty days later and three autumn feasts in the month of Tishri.

These feasts had three purposes: They were to celebrate their ancestors’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their journey through the wilderness; they were to give thanks for their harvests and they were to anticipate the coming of their Messiah. The ancient rabbis believed that Messiah would fulfil each feast in order and that He would come twice. The spring feasts would fulfil His first coming and the autumn feasts His second coming.

Jesus had celebrated the feasts from childhood as a faithful Jew and as a rabbi, but there was a significance about this Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread which would be far more than a remembrance of His people’s deliverance from Egypt. Mark gave one third of his gospel to the record of the last week of Jesus’ life. He would fulfil the three feasts clustered together in the eight days from Passover to the end of Unleavened Bread; Passover followed by Unleavened Bread, with Firstfruits on the first day after the first Sabbath after Passover.

His disciples would not understand the fulfilment of these feasts at the time, but the Holy Spirit, who would come on them on the day of the fourth feast, Pentecost, would be the key to interpreting the Messianic significance of each feast.

When God betrothed His people to Himself at Sinai where He gave them His marriage contract – the Ten Commandments – as His ketubah, He instructed them to celebrate these annual feasts to practise for the coming of Messiah – their bridegroom, just as we in the western world practise for a wedding ceremony. Their obedience would be an expression of their expectation that God would fulfil His promise.

The events surrounding the preparation for this Passover are quite mysterious. Jesus gave His disciples directions for the venue as though He had prearranged with a homeowner who would open his home to them. Did this man set up the signal, or did Jesus direct them to him through divine revelation. We don’t know and Mark does not tell us. Why was a man carrying a water jar to be the secret sign? Men did not usually fetch water from the well. Fetching water was women’s work, for example, Rachel and Rebekah in Genesis and the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel.

The disciples would easily recognise the cue and follow the man to his house. Why the secrecy? Was it because Jesus was aware of the plot against Him and He did not want the authorities to know where He and His disciples were so that they would not arrest Him prematurely. Everything had to be fulfilled according to the Scriptures.

The religious leaders had decided not to arrest Him during the Passover season for fear of a riot, but it was God’s purpose for Him to die as the Passover lamb, at the exact moment when the high priest killed the first lamb at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Amazing how God’s purpose and man’s action were perfectly synchronised to fulfil God’s plan!

Mark zeroed in on this significant event to put his Roman readers in the picture that Jesus was God’s Passover lamb as the death of the lambs symbolised on the day when God delivered His people from Egypt.

Why is it that the death of Jesus has been ripped from its roots in Jewish history and placed in the centre of pagan mythology? Since when did He have anything to do with Easter? How sad that anti-Semitic sentiment is so strong that Jesus’ Jewishness is offensive, and that the church of Jesus has never taken the trouble to extricate Him from all the pagan traditions that surround His birth and His death and put Him back where He belongs, in the truth of the ancient Scriptures and the culture of His own people.

It is even more tragic that so-called “believers” will fight for the right to celebrate their pagan traditions in the name of Jesus instead of living as His faithful disciples as a witness to who He was and why He came.

Come on, church. Let’s forsake the traditions which we hold to so dearly, just as the Pharisees did in His day – and nullify the Word of God, and let’s put Jesus back where He belongs – not the Christ of Christmas and Easter but the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed to save us, the firstborn in Adam, from death.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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