Passover is less than two weeks away and is just the first of several ‘special’ days over a two-week period. This is the first of several blogs that are intended to help provide information about these days; how to celebrate them; and what they mean to us today.
This first one is taken from my book GRAFTED: Embracing Torah. The book is undergoing revisions with the publisher, so if you have a desire to read it (and I think you really, really, really should), please be a little patient.
5In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover. 6And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. 7In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. 8But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
Leviticus 23:5-8
Passover is such a big deal that Yahweh changed His original calendar so that the month with Passover in it would be the new first month (Exodus 12:1-–2).
After Joseph saved Egypt (and the world?) from a seven-year famine and making its kingdom the mightiest and richest at the time, the Egyptian people became envious of the power and wealth held by these Hebrew interlopers. They and turned against Joseph’s descendants, overwhelmed them and made them slaves.
After suffering in captivity in Egypt for hundreds of years, Israel yearned for a redeemer and witnessed the power of Yahweh in the form of devastating plagues that seemed to strike their Egyptian oppressors, but left them untouched.
After numerous plagues had proven that the Egyptian gods were all impotent, but had not secured the release of Israel, one last plague melted Pharaoh’s resolve and Israel was allowed to leave Egypt. Yahweh struck down the first-born of every family and every animal, unless the people inside the home placed the blood of a sacrifice on the door-frame of their homes. If the blood was present, the Angel of Death “passed-over” the home and struck elsewhere (Exodus 11 and 12).
After Passover, not just the Jews, but a “mixed multitude” of peoples (Gentiles) left with them after determining that Yahweh was a far superior god than the ones they had been worshiping in Egypt.
A great and detailed explanation of the plagues and the Egyptian gods they were meant to humiliate can be found at the Berean Breadcrumbs website: Blood in the Water and Fracturing the Faith Vol.5.
Passover is not an actual holy “day” (meaning that it is not a twenty-four hour period of time), even though many refer to the entire day as “Passover”. Notice that it gives a time (“even” – evening, the end of the day) for Passover rather than saying, “The fourteenth day”.
Israel is also commanded, “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning” (Exodus 34:25). Passover is the meal that ushers in the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to place his name there”.
Deuteronomy 16:2
5 Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee: 6 But at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 16:5-6
These verses seem to imply that we need a Temple (and, therefore, a Levitical tribe) in order to sacrifice a Passover lamb. Still, we are commanded to “remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life” (Deuteronomy 16:3).
As with all of Yahweh’s prescribed days, Passover was celebrated for what He had accomplished and the day was also a precursor for what He would accomplish.
In the year of Yeshua’s death, Passover was on Thursday (since the Jewish calendar is lunar based, it is on a different day of the week each year).
The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. (emphasis added)
John 19:31
“For that sabbath day was an high day”. This was not the normal, end-of-the-week Sabbath, but a special, supplemental one – like the one prescribed by Yahweh in Leviticus 23:5-8 for Passover.
Yeshua died on the cross on Wednesday, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed in the Temple. Joseph of Arimathea hurriedly placed the dead body of Yeshua in a sepulcher so Joseph could celebrate the Passover at sunset (John 19:38-42)
This is important, because Christians teach that Christ died on Friday (Good Friday?) evening which makes the prophecy of Yeshua void.
39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matthew 12:40
Friday night to Sunday morning is not three days and three nights (seventy-two hours) making Yeshua either a liar or a bad mathematician. It also doesn’t reach the threshold for what was considered ‘officially’ dead. If Yeshua was not in the grave 72 hours, the Jewish leaders could have claimed that he had not actually been dead . . . only very close to death.
Wednesday night to Saturday night (“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.” – John 20:1) IS three days and three nights.
If the Jews had a reason to celebrate the Passover that saved them from a temporal death, we have an even greater reason to celebrate Passover because the Lamb of God (Yeshua) died for our sins and saved us from everlasting death. His resurrection is the proof that those that have faith will also share in everlasting life.
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: 8 There-fore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8
18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
1 Peter 1:18-19
2 replies on “Passover (Pesach) – Then & Now”
[…] is in one week’s time. If you did not read my last blog (Passover (Pesach) – Then & Now), take a few minutes and read why Passover was so important to Yahweh . . . and still […]
[…] is in one week’s time. If you did not read my last blog (Passover (Pesach) – Then & Now), take a few minutes and read why Passover was so important to Yahweh . . . and still […]