The Last Passover
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2015 · 29 March 2015
The purpose and the climax of the life of Jesus Christ was His sacrificial death. Mark 10:45 says, “He came to give His life as a ransom for many.” The death of Jesus Christ is not the end of the story, it is the theme of the story, beginning to end. And if you go back into the Old Testament, you will find that things are beginning to be laid down there to help us understand the meaning of the death of Christ, which is yet to come.
In the story of Adam and Eve, we first learn that sacrifice is necessary to cover sin. Then in the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, we learn that it is a sacrifice of death. And from Abraham, we learn that God Himself will provide that sacrifice, as God provided an animal in the place of Isaac. And at the Passover in the Old Testament, we are reminded that the one who is sacrificed has to be without blemish. And all of this is preparing us for Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice, the gift of God, the unblemished lamb.
So as we come to Matthew 26, 27 and 28, we come to the great apex of the plan of God. Now Matthew wants to present Jesus as king, as majestic, as glorious. And Matthew faces now something that is humanly impossible; how to maintain the majesty, dignity, glory of Jesus Christ in the midst of His betrayal and His death.
Last week we saw the elements of preparation by God. How God had set the time table and that everything was moving from Wednesday till Friday. And on Friday, the plan of God comes to its culmination. We saw the preparation of the leaders of Israel who were plotting His death. They felt they should wait eight days until the feast was over. But they were already preparing to execute Jesus Christ.
Then, in Matthew 26:6-13, we saw the preparation of Mary, who as a loving friend, anointed Jesus with a costly perfume, pouring out on Him her love and wanting, in a sense, to prepare Him for the death that was coming. And then, in verses 14-16, the preparation of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, who for money covenanted with the leaders to betray Jesus Christ at a clandestine moment in a secret place when the crowd wasn’t around.
Now, those four elements of preparation involved others, not Christ. As you come to verse 17, there is the section where Christ Himself prepares for His death. And we see Him in different ways preparing for His death. First, in the final Passover through verse 25; then in establishing the Lord’s Supper; then in helping the unprepared disciples; and finally in praying to the Father. All four of those are His own preparation.
So, we have four elements of preparation by others, and four elements of preparation by the Lord Himself. Now, this evening we begin by looking at verses 17 and following to see the initial element of preparation, the Passover, as He prepares to enjoy that meal with His disciples. That is definitely part of the preparation for His death, and you will see that as we move along. In fact we are also doing the Lord’s Supper tonight.
The text begins with what we can call “setting the time” It might not seem like much but it is absolutely essential. Matthew 26:17-19, “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 18 He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’” 19 And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover.”
Now, inherent in that text is a richness that really has escaped me for many years until recently. Jesus wanted to have the Passover and His disciples were ready to prepare it and God had made plans so that it could be prepared. Matthew 3:15 says that He came to fulfill all righteousness having to do with the law of God. And one element of the law of God was to keep the Passover. And in verse 21 it says, “As they were eating.” So, here is the final Passover that our Lord has with His disciples.
Now, the Jews had a year filled with special commemorative celebrations, their festivals, their times of remembering the work of God in the past. But the greatest of all their celebrations is the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread; both are mentioned in verse 17. The Feast of Unleavened Bread lasted one week, from the 15th of Nisan until the 21st, as prescribed by the Old Testament. And the day before that was the Passover. So, the combination was an eight-day festival.
The Passover celebrated God’s delivering Israel out of bondage in Egypt where they had been for 400 years. The last plague from God was the death of all the firstborn in every family in Egypt. So God said to Israel, “kill a spotless lamb and put the blood of that lamb on the doorposts, so when the angel of death comes to slay all the firstborn of Egypt, seeing the blood on your door, he will pass over.” That is the Passover.
And as a result of that, Pharaoh said, “Get out, I have had it, that is all I can take.” And he sent the Jews out and so God delivered them. So, the Passover was commemorating the sacrificial lamb whose blood caused them to escape the judgment of God. And it was a symbol of God’s ultimate Passover Lamb, Jesus, whose blood would cause them eternally to escape the judgment of God.
God instituted in Exodus 12 the continual feast of the Passover. It was a meal, and it was held the night before the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The lamb, according to Exodus 12, was to be selected on the 10th of Nisan. And we know that Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem on Monday, the 10th of Nisan in the year 33 AD in which our Lord died. That was the day in which everyone in the city of Jerusalem was selecting their Passover lamb.
So Jesus entered the city on that Monday, and He entered into the hearts of those people as their Passover lamb on the proper day. And He fulfills the symbolism of the Passover lamb in every respect, arriving in Jerusalem on the tenth of Nisan to offer Himself as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world, and dying on the 14th of Nisan, as the Passover sacrifice for the sins of the world.
They sacrificed the lamb on Passover to commemorate the lamb to remind them of the price of their sin. So, it was a time of sacrifice to depict the necessity of sacrifice of the innocent for the atoning of sin for the guilty. But we know that none of those lambs could take away sin, right? And what a profound example God gave, there were thousands of lambs, goats and bulls that could never do year in year out, what Jesus Christ in sacrificing Himself once and forever.
Now, unleavened bread is bread that does not rise because there is no yeast in it. When they came out of Egypt, God said, “You take no leavened bread,” because leavened represented influence. And God said in effect, do not take anything of your Egyptian life and plant it into your new life. You are delivered from that, and start as new people in a new land. That became a symbol for cutting themselves off from worldly things.
So, in verse 17 the disciples come to Jesus and say, “Where are we going to prepare to eat the Passover?” It is the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And Mark adds in Mark 14:12, “When they sacrificed the Passover.” So, he tells us explicitly that it was on this first of eight days that the Passover was sacrificed. And the Feast of Unleavened bread began the next day, which was the 15th of Nisan as it should be in Leviticus 23:6.
Now, in the year our Lord died, Passover came on a Friday. From year to year, it would fall on a different day. We know that from Mark 15:42, “It was the day of preparation, the day before the Sabbath.” Since they could not work on the Sabbath, they had to prepare everything the day before. In John 19:14, Jesus is before Pilate, and He is being tried, and what day is it? It is the preparation day of the Passover; it means it is the time during the Passover that is called preparation which means Friday.
Now, let’s go back to our text, verse 17, it’s now Thursday morning and it’s time to prepare the Passover meal. They already have their lamb on Monday when they arrived in the city. But there are many things to prepare for Passover. They had to prepare the slaying of the lamb which could only be done in the temple court. And it could only be done from three in the afternoon to five, no other time. And then it had to be roasted.
They also had to prepare their unleavened bread. And they had a paste made out of apples, dates, pomegranates and nuts all mixed together and it was into that thick sauce that they dipped their bread as a part of the meal. And then there were four cups of wine to remind them of the covenant in Exodus 6:6 where God said, “One, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. Two, I will deliver you from slavery to them. Three, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. And four, I will be your God.”
Then, later in the evening, they had to eat the Passover meal, Exodus 12:8. They had to have ten men at least to eat it because they had to eat all of the lamb and leave none for morning. So, they say to Jesus, “Where we going to hold it? The law said it had to be in the city of Jerusalem so everybody had to find a place where they could have at least ten men and as high as 20. They do not have a building, what are they going to do?
And the answer is absolutely fascinating. Verse 18, “Jesus said, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’” Now, among two million people the disciples are told to find a certain someone they do not know. Fortunately, Mark says that they were to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water.
Who usually carried the water? The women did. So, it was rare to see a man carrying water. According to Mark 14:13-14, Jesus said, “Follow that man to the house he goes to, follow him right in and that is the man.” We also know from the other accounts that the Lord asked only two disciples to do this: Peter and John. The ten other disciples stayed with Him, and there are reasons for that. One of the reasons was that only two people were allowed to accompany a lamb to sacrifice. And Peter and John are chosen because they are closest to Christ.
Why all the secrecy? Why doesn’t Jesus just say, you remember so-and-so, our friend, you know where his house is, that is where we are going to do it. No, He doesn’t say that because of Judas Iscariot. Remember verse 16, “From that time he sought opportunity to deliver Him over.” Judas was looking for a quiet, secluded place away from the mob where he could turn Jesus over to the religious authorities to be executed. And Jesus knew that and so He would not say.
And Peter and John did not come back. They went early in the day, prepared all of that, and the rest of the disciples never met them again till that night when they came with Jesus to the place. Why? Because it was essential that Jesus celebrate the Passover with His disciples. Because Jesus wanted to transform that into the Last Supper and the table of Communion as the memorial to His death. He wanted to give them the promise of His Holy Spirit, and it wasn’t God’s time yet for Him to die.
And Mark tells us the man had a large second floor, a large room, spacious, furnished and ready to be used. So, Jesus was obligated to keep the Passover. Verse 19 says, “And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover.” And notice verse 21, “And as they were eating.” So there is no doubt it was the Passover. But there is a problem, why Bible scholars through the years have fussed with this.
Turn to John 18:28, “Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early Friday morning.” Thursday night, they ate the meal which means Thursday afternoon that lamb was killed. That evening Jesus came with the other ten, they ate the meal. Then Judas went out into the night. Jesus left the meal in the middle of the night and went to the garden. The soldiers came to the garden, captured Him in late Thursday night.
So on Friday morning they bring Jesus to trial. They lead him to the Hall of Judgment to meet with Pilate, the Gentile part of His trial. And the Jews didn’t go into the Judgment Hall. Why? Verse 28 says further, “They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover.” How is it that Jesus already has a Passover meal, and yet the Jews don’t want to get defiled because they haven’t eaten the Passover?
Well, Christ came to die as a Passover lamb, right? Matthew 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus died on Friday after the ninth hour which would be 3:00 PM. At that precise moment the screams of those sheep would be heard from the temple as the slaughter began. The Jewish leaders, mostly Sadducees, would be slaughtering those lambs at the moment Jesus died. 1 Corinthians 5:7 says, as Christ our Passover who was sacrificed for us.
Jesus fulfilled every prophecy to the very letter. Then, what is Jesus doing with the Passover on Thursday night? It all depends on how we count the hours of that festival day. The normal Jewish day went from sunrise to sunrise. But festivals and special days and the Sabbath day went from sunset to sunset. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, according to Exodus 12:18, had to be celebrated from sunset to sunset. The Day of Atonement also was from sunset to sunset.
This Passover day, since it was not prescribed specifically in Exodus 12, could be calculated from sunset to sunset or sunrise to sunrise. Josephus said the lamb has to be eaten during the night and nothing left for morning. The Mishnah says it must be eaten by midnight. Now, the Galileans and the Pharisees, counted the Passover from sunrise to sunrise, whereas the Judeans and Sadducees counted it from sunset to sunset.
So, the Galileans and the Pharisees begin to calculate the beginning of Passover in the morning to the next morning which is Friday morning. The Judeans and the Sadducees begin Thursday evening till Friday evening at sunset. So, the Galileans and the Pharisees have to eat it that night. For the others it begins in the evening, and so they prepare their lamb Friday afternoon, and then eat their meal as Sabbath comes on Friday night.
What does all this mean? Jesus had to be crucified on Friday because that’s when the traditional Judean Passover lambs would be killed, from 3:00 to 5:00 on Friday. That’s why it says, “In the ninth hour.” He also had to keep the Passover because He had to transform it into the Lord’s Table. So, how could Jesus keep the Passover and still be the Passover lamb? In that very year, there was no problem having a Galilean Passover on Thursday night and dying in the Judean Passover on Friday afternoon perfectly on schedule, and violating no Jewish law at all.
God rules history and tradition, and every detail of human existence to bring about the fulfillment of His own perfect plan. And Jesus had to keep the Passover to fulfill all righteousness, to instruct His disciples, to teach them the new memorial feast that would come out of the Passover. And yet He had to die as the Passover. And He did both because God had so moved in history that both would be possible by His sovereign providence. Let’s bow in prayer.