Category Archives: Passover

Eternal Life, Eternal Son of God, Heaven, Jesus, Passover

Celebrating Passover with Jesus

Posted by admin on March 7, 2010 at 9:07 pm.

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” Luke 22:14-16

Some might dispute my statement that the central celebration in the Jewish calendar was intended to be Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. By this statement I am not trying to diminish God’s many deliverances of the Jewish people that are celebrated throughout their calendar year. But I am suggesting that the Passover is central to them all. Before He suffered and died, Jesus celebrated it with His disciples.

There was a sense among the ancient Jewish and Hebrew commentators that somehow Messiah would deliver the nation on the anniversary of their deliverance from Egypt which happened the day after Passover. This sense was correct for Jesus died the day after the Passover. Messiah did indeed deliver His people on this day.

Christian theology teaches that the inaugural event of heaven will be the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb.” I can’t quite figure out how it can be an inaugural event in a world without time, but I will leave that dilemma to God. But that event would appear to be comparable, if not identical, to the Passover feast on this side of eternity, and Jesus says in the passage above that He will “eat it again.”

Over the years, as our church has celebrated Passover by pointing to its fulfillment in Christ, we have recognized how completely this event melds the Old and New Testaments together into a single unit. The Exodus was central to the deliverance of the nation of Israel from the taskmasters of Egypt; Christ’s death was central to the deliverance of all mankind from the harsher taskmaster of sin. It is wonderful to celebrate not only with music and message, but to see how even the traditional food and ceremony point to the truth of Jesus’ deliverance of men.

It is even more thrilling to know that what we do each year is just a rehearsal for heaven where Jesus Himself will be physically present!

Christ's afflictions, Jesus' Teachings, Passover, Seder

Christ, our Passover

Posted by admin on February 18, 2010 at 10:03 pm.

1 Cor 5:7-8

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival…

                Having been raised in the strictest sect of Judaism and having spent his lifetime studying the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apostle Paul understood the connection between the Passover Lamb and the death of Christ. In I Corinthians 5, he called Christ our Passover lamb and encouraged us to “keep the [Passover] feast” in sincerity and truth. A few years back we learned how so much of the Passover Seder points to Y’Shua ha-Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah), so we began to celebrate this with our Christian congregation. Each year we invite other believers in Y’Shua to join with us. Most of us are not ethnically Jewish, so our celebration has a distinctively Christian flavor, but the imagery is clear.

                The Passover was the meal that Jesus ate with His disciples just before the betrayal and crucifixion. Christians call it “the Last Supper.” It was here that He instituted the Lord’s Supper and offered some of the most important teaching of His ministry. To see these things in the context of the Passover Seder adds greatly to our understanding of His words and example.

                Our Seder is intended to follow the events that Jesus would have followed that night before His crucifixion, right through to the institution of the Lord’s Supper. When the Disciples (later, Apostles) would have recalled the events of that evening, they would have seen how clearly the Passover pictured the death of Jesus that would happen on the following day, and it would have helped them understand why He had to allow Himself to be crucified. It will do the same for us. This order of events is largely followed by Jewish families to this day on their celebration of this feast.