Tag Archives: Passover

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – TRAITOR OR WORSHIPPER?

Bible Study, ,

CHAPTER 14

TRAITOR OR WORSHIPPER?

​1 Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. 2 “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
3 While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4 Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Mark 14:1-11

It is amazing how God’s timetable overrides man’s plans. Passover was only two days away, God’s time for His Son to be sacrificed as the Passover lamb. Yet the religious leaders did not want to kill Jesus during Passover because Jerusalem was crowded with visitors from all over Israel and they were afraid of an uprising which their action might trigger.

But something happened that set the ball rolling. Jesus was the dinner guest of Simon the Leper. (Was he someone Jesus had healed, since leprosy made a person unclean and an outcast?) A woman gate-crashed the party, unnamed by Mark, but the other gospels seem to indicate that it was either Mary Magdalene, or an unsavoury woman who had responded to Jesus.

As an act of love and appreciation, she doused Him with her most costly perfume – valued at more than a year’s income. This enraged some of the dinner guests – Judas Iscariot, maybe. Why did he react by deciding to sell Jesus to His enemies? Was Jesus’ comment directed at him, showing up his yetzer harah and tipping him over the edge?

What Jesus recognised and valued was the devotion that prompted this woman to sacrifice her most costly possession as a gift to Him. He interpreted what she had done, for her. She may not have recognised her action as preparation for His burial but He did. Not only that, but her act of generosity would immortalise her forever right alongside her Master’s death and burial.

How would Judas be remembered? By his betrayal of Jesus? How would she be remembered? By her lavish gift of love? What an epitaph – engraved on a page of every copy of the Bible in every language and read by every generation throughout history. Traitor or worshipper? And, as always, it was about money, generosity or greed. The story would be told and written, down the ages!

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – FOR THE LAST TIME

Bible Study, ,

FOR THE LAST TIME

“When it was time, He sat down, all the apostles with Him, and said, ‘You’ve no idea how much I have looked forward to eating this Passover meal with you before I enter my time of suffering. It’s the last one I’ll eat until we all eat it together in the kingdom of God.'” Luke 22:14-16.

Was Jesus crazy? It almost sounds as though He was looking forward to His coming crucifixion. He had shared Passover meals with them in the past. He knew this was the last one He would eat with them in this life. He referred to other Passover celebrations in the future but they would take place “in the kingdom of God”.

In spite of the glimpses He gives us into the significance of His suffering, both to Him and to the Father, we will never fully understand what the cross meant – neither the experience nor the outcome.

The cross of Jesus – the pinnacle of history and the dividing line for all people for all eternity! For every person, the cross determines our eternal destiny, depending on our choice.

It was because of the cross that God’s plan to build a family of people just like His Son was put back on track. Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden derailed it for a season, but Jesus paid the debt of man’s sin, reconciled His alienated human race and reinstated every son and daughter into His family through faith in Him.

It was through the cross that Jesus exposed the devil for the liar he is. In spite of the injustice of His trial and death sentence for who He was – the Son of God and the king of the Jews, He submitted Himself to their cruelty and to the Father’s will without a murmur. His death spelled the end for Satan. His judgment was coming and he knew it!

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”  1 Peter 2:23-25 (NIV).

Jesus looked forward to the cross because it would be the completion of His mission on earth, the culmination of His revelation of the Father and the cue for His return to His place in glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit. So great was His love for the Father that He even relished His suffering because it was the Father’s will to rescue mankind from death and bring them back home to Himself.

‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.” Hebrews 12:3 (NIV).

For Jesus, this Passover meal would be the opportunity to reveal the full significance of the historical event they were celebrating. Passover was a picture of the greater redemption from slavery to sin and Satan that He was about to accomplish as the sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood on the lives of those who believe in Him would protect them from death and open the door to everlasting life.

No, Jesus was not crazy! Once again, in His self-forgetful love for human beings, He relished the outcome of His suffering – redemption, rescue and reconciliation and the door to eternal life flung open to anyone who will receive His forgiveness and His invitation to return to the Father’s house and the Father’s arms to be a beloved member of His forever family.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – CONSPIRACY!

Bible Study, ,

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CONSPIRACY!

“He spent His days in the Temple teaching but His nights out on the mountain called Olives. All the people were up at the crack of dawn to come to the Temple and listen to Him.

“The Feast of Unleavened Bread, also called Passover, drew near. The high priests and religion scholars were looking for a way to do away with Jesus but, fearful of the people, they were also looking for a way of covering their tracks.

“That’s when Satan entered Judas, the one called Iscariot. He was one of the Twelve. Leaving the others, he conferred with the high priests and temple guards about how he might betray Jesus to them. They couldn’t believe their good luck and agreed to pay him well. He gave them his word and started looking for a way to betray Jesus, but out of sight of the crowd.” Luke 21:37-38; 22:1-6.

The plot thickens, as they say!

How amazing that, in all of history, never had God and the devil worked so closely together to accomplish so daring a plan! Two opposing agendas meet and synchronise in the greatest drama the world has ever witnessed. God turns Satan’s hand to be His unwitting accomplice in signing his own doom.

None of this would make sense had it not been for Isaiah’s prophetic insight in predicting this event hundreds of years before it happened. “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” Isaiah 53:10 (NIV).

Judas, one of Jesus’ closest associates, conspired with His enemies to sell Him out. Why? We will never really know. His greed for money was in the plot, but there had to be something more sinister than that. Was Judas disillusioned with Jesus because He had not met his expectations?

In this mix of ordinary men there were different ambitions and aspirations. They had agreed that Jesus was the Messiah but what did that mean to them? Their many squabbles over their pecking order suggest that their concept of Messiah was political. They were hoping for the overthrow of Roman occupation and the re-establishment of David’s glorious reign, free in a land that was their own. They were looking to Jesus to do something miraculous. Hadn’t He proved His power over nature, demons, sickness and even the people who were trying to destroy Him? Surely Rome would be a pushover for someone as powerful as He had proved to be!

But, to Judas’ frustration, Jesus gave no sign of making a move. He would have to orchestrate a showdown with Rome, and Passover was the most opportune time to do it. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, masterfully brings these agendas together and lays the responsibility for Jesus’ death on the shoulders of the Jews, but under the direction of God Himself. No novelist could have imagined a plot like that for a good story! It had to be God.

“‘This man was handed over by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him…Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Acts 2:23-24; 36 (NIV).

It had to be Passover time because Jerusalem would be full of Jews from all over Israel, enough people to join Jesus in a successful uprising. If Jesus was cornered, would He strike out against His captors?

For the Jewish leaders, it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of Him. For God it was the perfect opportunity to set Jesus up as the sacrificial Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. For Satan it was the perfect opportunity to bring his arch enemy down and hold him in his power forever through death.

On December 11th, 1845, James Lowell published these words as the last verse of an anti-slavery hymn.

“Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ’tis truth alone is strong;                                                  Though her portion be the scaffold and upon the throne be wrong;                                            Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown                                                 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”

At the end of his magnificent presentation of the meaning of the cross, the Apostle Paul penned these words:

O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out!                               

Who has known the mind of the Lord?                                                                                           

Or who has been His counsellor? 

Who has ever given to God that God should ever repay him?                                                     

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.   Romans 8:33-36                                                  

The Power Of The Cross – Redemption Through His Blood

Gospel, , , ,

THE POWER OF THE CROSS – REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. (Eph. 1: 7)

I think this is the best place to start, don’t you? Everything that God has done for us flows from His grace but through the cross. I said yesterday that Jesus foretold the fact but did not give the reasons for His death. It was Paul who received the revelation from the Holy Spirit to explain the depth of meaning that the cross has for us.

Before we go any further, let’s sever, once and for all, the connection between Jesus’ death and Easter with all its pagan trappings. No self-respecting believer in Jesus should ever celebrate Easter (or Christmas, for that matter) because everything Easter and Christmas stand for are an intrusion into the truth.

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.’ (2 Cor. 6: 16)

The death of Jesus is rooted in the Passover feast. God gave His people seven annual feasts to celebrate, in anticipation, the work of Messiah. Each feast foretold, in picture form, an aspect of what Jesus would do for His people. The first of the annual feasts was Passover which told the story of their redemption from Egypt.

Just as the Israelites were slaves to their cruel taskmasters in Egypt, so the human race was enslaved by the devil when Adam chose to believe his lies over the truth of God. God created the first pair to be one with Him. He made them in His image and filled them with His Spirit (breath) so that they would enjoy fellowship with Him and live in perfect harmony with Him as their Father and with the world in which they lived.

God gave man one gift which put both Him and man at great risk – the gift of choice. Without the freedom to choose, people would be robots, programmed and controlled by their Creator. True freedom involves the right and power to make choices without the control of anyone else, including both God and the devil.

Satan lured Adam and Eve into believing that God had short-changed them; that He had withheld from them something that would be to their benefit, independence. God never intended that freedom to choose would involve freedom to make the rules. The moment they capitulated to the devil, they were hooked. They did not understand that the depth of true freedom lay in their oneness with God, doing His will and living in perfect harmony with Him because only He is truly free – from everything imperfect that enslaves the heart.

They were enslaved to a nature that was corrupted and could no longer serve its purpose – to have fellowship with the Father in the perfection of His untainted nature. They had a new nature, corrupted and evil, and a new master – a cruel taskmaster who drove them through shame, guilt and fear to hate God and to run from Him. They no longer recognised or experienced God as their Father, but they hid from Him because they were afraid of His wrath.

Their imperfection became an impenetrable barrier between God and them. They could not reach Him and He could not reach them. They were enslaved, body, soul and spirit to the devil, and no amount of self-effort could remove the barrier.  Even if they tried to be perfect, their past disqualified them from access to Him.

God built into His instructions for living – His Torah – a sacrificial system which would teach His people how serious the problem of sin was, and that the death of a perfect lamb was demanded to pay the debt of sin and free the sinner from his enslavement to the devil. Animal blood was only a picture of redemption. It could never pay the debt God required, but it spoke of one who would come – a perfect Lamb who would be qualified to pay the debt and free the human race from the penalty of death.

Every year, the Israelites celebrated their redemption from slavery in Egypt in anticipation of the one God would send to redeem them from even greater slavery – slavery to the devil.

When Jesus came, they refused to recognise Him or to acknowledge that He was God’s Messiah. He lived the life of a perfect Son before them, but they crucified Him. They did not realise that the very suffering they put Him through, in His life and in His death, qualified Him to be the perfect Lamb that would remove the barrier of sin between them and God and rescue them from slavery to the devil so that they could be restored to fellowship with the Father.

It was Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist, who recognised Him to be that perfect Lamb.

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ (John 1: 29)

Through His death, Jesus took sin away and broke its hold over the sinner. Satan can no longer hold us to ransom because the debt has been paid. He no longer has a claim on us. Jesus provides forgiveness for the whole world and for all time. Even the sins that lie in the future are taken care of by His blood.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2: 2)

This is the power of the cross!

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.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

 

Our Buddy, Pilate

Bible Study, , ,

OUR BUDDY, PILATE

“Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning and, to avoid ceremonial uncleanness, they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, ‘What charges are you bringing against this man?

“‘If He were not a criminal,’ they replied, ‘we would not have handed Him over to you.’ Pilate said, ‘Take Him yourselves and judge Him by your own law.’ ‘But we have no right to execute anyone,’ they objected. This took place to fulfil what Jesus had said about the kind of death He was going to die.” John 18:28-32 NIV.

John said nothing about Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas. According to the other three gospels, it was this trial that revealed the Sanhedrin’s true colours. Caiaphas allowed false witnesses to testify without suffering the penalty for lying. The men of the Sanhedrin behaved in a disgraceful way, using verbal and physical abuse against the prisoner and allowing the soldiers to mock Jesus by ramming a crown on His head woven out of twigs covered in vicious thorns.

Having satisfied themselves of Jesus’ guilt, the Jewish leaders marched Jesus to Pilate to have their verdict ratified. They had decided that He was guilty of blasphemy because they refused to accept His claim to be the Son of God. They did not bother the test His claim by listening to the testimony of reliable witnesses. As far as they were concerned He was guilty and that was that.

Although it was illegal to condemn a man on his own testimony, Caiaphas put the question to Jesus, ‘Are you the Christ?’ to which Jesus replied, ‘You have said it.’ Triumphantly proclaiming Him ‘Guilty!’ they bundled Him off to Pilate to ratify their verdict and sentence, only Pilate would not buy the charge of blasphemy. That was an internal, religious matter. Pilate didn’t give a hoot about their religious squabbles. It was His job to protect Rome’s interests and nothing else.

They thought that they had Jesus in the bag. Charge Him with treason because He claimed to be the king of the Jews and Pilate would be a pushover. After all, they were buddies, and he would go along with them as long as they did their job to keep the peace. Since they insisted that Jesus was a rabble-rouser, Pilate would surely rubber-stamp their verdict and condemn Him to death.

They did not bargain on Pilate’s resistance to their straightforward scheme. Pilate had to be sure that this man’s so called “treason” was in fact a threat to Rome. He couldn’t just go crucifying people left, right and centre just because the Jewish high court insisted they were guilty. It may have been true that Jesus claimed kingship over the Jews but what evidence was there that He was planning to overthrow Roman rule and drive them out of Israel? What sort of king was He?

Friend though he might have been, Pilate was not ignorant of the nature of these Jewish leaders. They could be conniving and unscrupulous to get their own way. Most of them were drawn from the wealthy political party of the Sadducees who did not have much interest in religion. They did not believe in the supernatural and rejected the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection.

In spite of the coalition in the Sanhedrin, there was a deep divide between the two groups. Many years later, Paul would exploit this divide to turn the heat of their hatred off him.

Pilate had a responsibility to exercise Roman justice, even towards Jewish prisoners. Therefore he questioned Jesus’ accusers. ‘What’s the charge against Him?’ he demanded. The Jewish leaders shrewdly turned his question back on him. They dodged the question by trying to make Pilate look foolish. ‘Don’t be silly, Pilate! Do you think we would have brought Him to you if we hadn’t already found him guilty?’

‘Guilty of what?’ No answer! Pilate was also shrewd. ‘You take Him and try Him,’ he replied. He knew that they had no power to execute anyone. Only he could do that. This would turn into a running battle between Jewish and Roman authorities with Jesus as the prize. Who would come out tops?