SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/19/2024 12:38 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Setting the Time”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
26:17-19
Message of the verses: “17 Now on the
first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and asked,
"Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?" 18 And
He said, "Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher
says, "My time is near; I am to keep the Passover at your house
with My disciples."’" 19 The disciples did as Jesus had directed
them; and they prepared the Passover.”
In
the last SD I quoted from MacArthur’s commentary so that we can better
understand the perplexities of the Passover during the time of Christ, and
today we want to continue looking of that.
The feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover both commemorated the
deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread was named after the type of bread that the
Israelites were to take with them as they left Egypt. This kind of bread had no yeast in it and so
what was going on was that because they were leaving Egypt in a hurry they did
not have time to allow the bread to rise.
Another thing was that in order to make bread they would save a little
starter piece with yeast in it and then add to it in order to make more
bread. The Lord did not want them to
take any starter bread from Egypt which was to say that they were to begin a
new way of living and this was a symbol of a new life outside of the slavery
they were in while living in Egypt.
MacArthur
writes “As already noted, the Passover celebration began the day before the
feast of Unleavened Bread, although traditionally it was considered to be the
first day of the combined festival. The Mosaic
law required that sacrificial lambs for Passover be slected on the tenth day of
the first month (originally called Abib and later Nisan) and that the lamb be
kept in the household until it was sacrificed on the fourteenth (Ex.
12:2-6). In the year Jesus was crucified
(whether taken as A. D. 30 or 33), the tenth of Nisan was the Monday of
Passover week. Therefore, although the
incident is not mentioned in the gospels, the disciples would have selected a
lamb on that day, perhaps keeping it at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus
in Bethany, where they were staying.”
While
looking at the last section I stated that during the time of Jesus’s
crucifixion that there were over 250,000 sacrificial lambs that were slain
during a typical Passover in His day.
And because tradition required no fewer than ten people or more than
twenty were to eat of one lamb, the number of celebrants easily would have exceeded
two million people there in Jerusalem.
Because the lambs had to be slaughtered within a two-hour period, and
enormous amount of blood poured from the altar site in a very short period of
time. So eventually it would drain into
the Kidron Valley which was just East of the Temple, and for several days after
Passover it would make that brook run bright crimson. So the Brook Kidron thereby became still
another symbol to Jews, reminding them of the necessity of the sacrificial
shedding of blood for the atoning of sin.
It is hard to imagine how much blood
over the years had been shed by those sacrificial lambs, but even though it
must have been in the millions of gallons there was never enough to pay for
sin, just as it was “impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away
sin” (Heb. 10:4). Those thousands of
lambs were but pictures of the one perfect sacrifice that the Son of God
Himself was about to make on Cavalry, as the sinless, unblemished Lamb of God,
offering “one sacrifice for sins for all time” (Heb. 10:12).
4/19/2024 1:21 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment