THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 87, Chapter 25 and 26
Last week the ending portion of our study was essentially a word picture of the
final judgment that also goes by the name Judgment Day. This is one of those
things that isn’t particularly pleasant for a Pastor or Bible teacher to talk about
because it concerns billions of people being permanently separated from God
and sent off to an eternal state of torment, destruction, or both. What is also
challenging is to wrestle with Yeshua’s words that many who thought they were
safe, will not be deemed so by God. An individual’s eternal safety (or lack of it)
will be judged not solely on what he or she claims to believe (that Jesus Christ is
Savior), but it will also include the requirement of obedience to do the will of the
Father. Yeshua has used a couple of parables to make this point that much too
often is played down within our Churches. That is, doing, producing, working as
one of the duties of a redeemed person is in some denominations said to be a
bad thing; it means we’re trying to “work our way to Heaven”. So, the concept is
that we say the sinner’s prayer, show up for Church and go on living as we had
before, until we die. Perhaps the most memorable of Yeshua’s illustrations and
parables concerning this matter uses the metaphor of a fruit tree. A good tree
cannot produce bad fruit; a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. And in the case of
the fig tree example, He cursed it was because it produced no fruit at all. Bottom
line, a person’s claim of being a good fruit tree (a saved follower of Christ) must
be outwardly validated by exposing their inward state through producing fruit…
good fruit. No fruit or bad fruit exposes that person’s inward state as not what
they claim it to be. But more importantly, God doesn’t accept their claim of
salvation because He doesn’t see it as sincere.
Verses 31 – 34 of Matthew chapter 25 employ new metaphors of sheep and
goats to illustrate the Judgment Day process. Essentially the Great Judge, who is
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the Son of Man, assembles all the people of the world to stand before Him as He
issues His verdict upon each individual. He divides people up into two groups.
Those He judges as righteous are called the sheep, and those He judges as the
wicked are called the goats. The sheep are told to stand at His right hand
whereby He formally tells them that the moment has come when they receive
their inheritance, which is to be permanent members of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In verse 41 the goats are told to stand at His left hand whereby He formally tells
them that the moment has come when they lose their inheritance, and instead
are cursed to go into the same fire prepared for Satan and his demons.
Especially in the West, when we go on trial we are used to a judicial process that
has many nuances, exceptions to the rule, and suspended sentences… that is,
our civil justice system operates within many shades of gray. Yeshua has told us
unequivocally that when Judgment Day comes, there will be no shades of gray;
only black or white. Eternal life or eternal damnation. What I’ve just told you to
this point ought to be sobering. What comes next from Jesus also must be taken
seriously and as more than merely nice thoughts or warm wishes for others.
Starting in verse 35, Yeshua speaks about the visible, tangible characteristics
(the good fruit) that define a sheep… a righteous person… in His eyes. What He
describes is not exhaustive, and is more poetic than a detailed list of tasks. Let’s
re-read this section to refresh our memories.
RE-READ MATTHEW 25:31 – end
For the sake of keeping continuity, we’ll do a lot of Bible reading in this slightly
longer than usual lesson; so please do your best to stay focused. Interestingly,
the first of the characteristics of the sheep, those deemed as righteous, are
something that every Middle Easterner… Jew or Arab… would recognize. They are
the characteristics of the highest virtue there is in Middle Eastern cultures:
hospitality. Hospitality trumps nearly everything else for these folks. Hospitality is
not an issue of legality; it’s an issue of social obligation and status… a status of
shame or honor. Social status matters so much that hosts will put their lives on
the line for guests… even strangers… that show up at their homes. They will give
respite, food, and drink at times even to enemies who ask for hospitality. For a
person to turn down offered hospitality brings shame on both guest and host. To
not offer hospitality to the person needing it brings shame to the entire
household. This can be hard for Westerners to understand because these values
aren’t super high on our to-do list; but the Jews hearing Yeshua and later the
ones reading Matthew’s Gospel would have immediately grasped that verse 35
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is all about the traits of proper hospitality that He expects of His disciples as a
demonstration of their allegiance to Him. The requirement to provide safe and
secure shelter, food and water even to strangers isn’t being used as a metaphor;
it is meant literally. Now, how such elements of hospitality as it was done in that
era versus how we might accomplish this in the 21
st
century… and it will be
dependent upon which of the many of the world’s cultures one lives in… is
something we must think through and deal with. But it can’t simply be swept
under the carpet by allegorizing Jesus’s message away.
Verse 36 heads in a little different direction and deals with mercy. Both hospitality
and mercy were traits that expressed not only good, but also wise, behavior of
the righteous. Clothing the naked isn’t fully literal; it meant to give clothing to
someone that didn’t have sufficient clothing. Maybe a person had no sandals, or
no cloak to protect from the cold or to use as a blanket. Visiting the sick or those
in prison is a little odd in that this doesn’t really fit the customary list of Jewish
virtuous conduct. Might Yeshua have been remembering His martyred cousin,
John the Baptist, as he languished in Herod’s prison awaiting his fate?
Nonetheless, it helps us to better understand Christ’s view of what loving your
neighbor as yourself can entail… it entails showing mercy to strangers that need
our help. In the 1
st
century, jailed people were visited by their family members not
merely for the sake of conversation but mainly to bring food. Typically, the jailers
provided no food; so, if someone didn’t bring a prisoner his meals, either he
suffered horribly from malnutrition or he eventually died of starvation as he
awaited trial. It’s a bit different story today. Those who do visit the ill in their
homes or in hospitals or institutions, and also those involved in prison ministries
(a special calling indeed), bring mainly compassion and caring; and hopefully
Believers also bring a message of God’s love and the availability of divine
forgiveness and peace.
It is truly breathtaking how Yeshua uses the term “I” each time He calls out one
of the virtues and mercies; placing Himself in the role of the needy person... a
stranger. Perhaps it might help us when we deal especially with the unlovely, the
unkept, the anti-social, the illiterate and the outcasts if we use this mental image
Jesus just created as it being He we are comforting and caring for when we tend
to them.
Yeshua goes on to create a sort of straw man that responds to His instruction to
provide hospitality to everyone as though it were He, with the straw man asking
when did he ever provide hospitality to Christ? And Christ responds with:
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CJB
Matthew 25:40
40
The King will say to them, 'Yes! I tell you that
whenever you did these things for one of the least important of these
brothers of mine, you did them for me!'
It’s a little startling the way that Jesus suddenly inserts the word King into the
mix. Without doubt He is referring to Himself, and the disciples would have taken
it that way. But what would that have meant to them? Those of us who study His
words so many centuries later and have the benefit of time and the written record
of many of His words at our fingertips, also have the luxury of seeing in it all in a
deeper meaning; but I very much doubt that His disciples did as they were
hearing it directly from His mouth. When Christ said “king”, they knew He was
applying it to Himself… but no doubt as the hoped-for Jewish king that would sit
on a throne, in a Holy Land that was rid of the Romans. However just as if
someone in our day says President or Prime Minister or some such thing in a
conversation, we all sub-consciously know the characteristics of those office
holders. It was the same with the mention of the word “king” in 1st century
Jewish conversation. A that time a king was usually thought of as somewhat of a
tyrant. Even a good king had nearly unlimited power over his subjects. A king
was above all others in the kingdom; he only associated with his top officials and
aristocrats, and lived a life of luxury. Yeshua redefines the office of king as it
pertains to Himself. As a king He identifies Himself with the downtrodden and the
under privileged, not with the elite. He doesn’t see people as His loyal subjects
only there to serve Him; but rather as brothers. In fact, He identifies with common
folks so strongly that He can say that whatever hospitality and care given to even
the poorest and most afflicted of them is the same as giving it to Him, the king.
So how are we take the term “brothers” in this context? Who are Christ’s
brothers?
In Christendom, calling fellow Believers brothers or sisters is common. We see all
Believers in Yeshua has having a common spiritual family bond with us. So is
Yeshua speaking only about brothers meaning Believers… His followers… and
only in a spiritual sense? Or does it include others as well? Is He meaning the
Jewish people in general, or does this include gentiles? There continues to be
some healthy debates about this, but here is my conclusion. We must remember
that this part of the narrative wherein Yeshua is defining the notable
characteristics of the sheep… the righteous who are standing at His right hand on
Judgment Day… is using those valued characteristics of Middle Eastern hospitality
plus adding the instruction to visit the sick and those in prison. I think there are at
least 2 levels of interpretation to His words present here; maybe 3 or even 4. At
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the most literal level, the P’shat, “brothers” means His fellow Jewish
countrymen. And more specifically, the common and the afflicted Jews that make
up the bulk of the Holy Land Jewish population of that era. There’s not a doubt in
my mind that this is how the listening disciples would have taken it. Therefore,
Yeshua is not only validating and encouraging the continuation of the social
custom of hospitality, but also, He is adding in an instruction to visit the ill and
those in prison. By doing so He is changing the motive for doing those things
from societal obligation to avoid shame, to compassion to please God. It is such
a similar message that He offered on the Sermon on the Mount. There He told
people that it was their motive and intent for obeying the Law of Moses that
mattered more than merely doing any particular law in some rigid or mechanical
way. And yet He reminded them that by this He didn’t mean that any person’s
spirit-driven internal motive and intent was a replacement of the Torah and the
Prophets (the Law of Moses and the Prophets).
On the hint level, the Remez, the term “brothers” narrows the group from all
Jewish people to only those Jews who put their eternal trust in Christ. On the
other hand, it expands the group by including people of all nations… gentiles… who
have made themselves part of ideal Israel on a spiritual level by putting their trust
in Israel’s Messiah; the Jewish Son of Man. Therefore,
in the Remez interpretation the sheep mean all those who trust in Yeshua. And,
yet, there has also always been this mysterious thread in the Scriptures of those
who haven’t heard of The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; nonetheless they
do what the Father wants. I believe we can view this from the Sod level… the
mysterious level. That is, the ancients before Noah and even for a long time after,
lived a righteous life based on what some call the Natural Law or the Noachide
Law. Natural Law doesn’t mean natural as in the term “nature” as we think of it
today… as Mother Nature or environmentalism. It means natural in the sense that
from the Garden of Eden onward, in various ways God made His fundamental
commandments known to humanity although it would be a very long time before
those commands were codified and written down in more concrete ways at Mt.
Sinai. In a sense we can legitimately say that God’s most fundamental laws are
built-in to our human essence… our invisible human nature. They are also written
into the cosmos, as well as into the many eco-systems of the earth that operate
in harmony and usually to the benefit of mankind. Everything… all… near, far,
known, unknown, energy and matter, physical and spiritual… are made by the
same Creator, cut from the same cloth. There was a natural Torah from the
beginning long before there was a written Torah; however, the fundamental
principles are the same, have always remained the same, and will be the same
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until there is a new heavens and earth.
It is for this reason that the Lord created Abraham’s Bosom; to house those
souls of the righteous dead before the Son of Man was born and then crucified to
atone for their sins and to make them pure enough to enter Heaven. That
population consisted of those who lived long before there was a written Torah,
yet obeyed God’s Natural Law (His fundamental principles), and later it included
those who obeyed the written Torah (once it was given) in spirit and truth; all of
these over the ages deemed righteous by God. Every one of these ancient
residents of the now empty Abraham’s Bosom are part of the sheep who will be
directed to stand at Jesus’s right hand at Judgment Day so that they will receive
their inheritance.
So; verses 35 – 40 pertain to the sheep… the righteous. Now verses 41 – 46
pertain to the goats… the wicked. Using the same code of hospitality, Jesus
reverses the situation. The righteous obeyed the hospitality code; the wicked did
not. The wicked didn’t offer respite, food and water to the needy or to strangers.
They didn’t offer shelter and clothing. And so, using the same logic that these
needy and strangers are representative of Him (not in a literal sense but rather as
Christ identifying with this group), since the goats didn’t offer care for these
people it amounts to them not offering care for Him. Not caring for that group,
and therefore not caring for Him, is willful disobedience in that their actions are
without compassion and mercy; and therefore, it reveals a hidden wicked
nature. It disobeys the most fundamental principle of loving your neighbor. As it
pertains to Jesus, it amounts to a form of rejection. Rejecting the King and Son of
Man brings with it an eternal death sentence. We can use the same structure of
interpreting these verses on 3 or 4 levels as we did in understanding the verses
about the righteous, the sheep, so we don’t need to go through all the levels
again… just reverse what we discussed a couple of minutes ago. Here’s the
terrifying point; you can’t get away with claiming you’re a Believer, and that
you’re saved and therefore safe, but then turn your back on the needy, or bear
bad fruit or no fruit. At various points in our lives, we all have to pause and take a
long, pragmatic look in the mirror, with some deep and honest introspection. Do
we really know what we believe and why we believe it? Do we live out what we
claim to others, and to ourselves, that we believe? If we don’t, then according to
Jesus’s reckoning, we are deceiving ourselves into thinking we are saved. We
are not saved in His eyes; only in our own. Salvation has always and will always
be directly linked with good works (good works as defined by God, not by our
own sensibilities). It is not doing good works to attain salvation; but rather good
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works ought to flow naturally from our salvation. Let’s move on to chapter 26.
READ MATTHEW CHAPTER 26:1 - 25
This begins what is widely called the Passion Narrative; that is, everything now
focuses on Yeshua’s march to the cross and his final 48 hours before He is
executed. As I am fond of reminding you, just sort of mentally scratch out those
chapter numbers in your Bibles because they give us the sense of one thing
ending and another thing starting. The first words of chapter 26 are still Jesus
talking with His disciples on the Mount of Olives; that is, this is a continuing
conversation from chapter 25.
Christ delivers a bomb shell: he’s going to be crucified almost immediately. One
can only imagine what raced through His disciples’ minds. Was He serious?
Was He being literal? How could He predict such a thing that depended on the
actions and decisions of several others, all happening in a sequence, unless He
fully intended to try to cause it to happen? As intriguing as these questions are,
there’s another issue hiding in plain sight that we must deal with as it is another
one of those matters that is deeply controversial (and rightly so). The controversy
is when we read that Jesus said: “As you know, Pesach (Passover) is 2 days
away…” Other Bible versions phrase it slightly differently but all with the identical
meaning. We need to explore a couple of other things to begin to set the stage
not only for the controversy itself, but to understand the nuances that cause it to
exist.
This same thought is spoken in Mark, Luke, and John. Let’s look at them all.
CJB
Mark 14:1 It was now two days before Pesach (that is, the festival of
Matzah), and the head cohanim and the Torah-teachers were trying to find
some way to arrest Yeshua surreptitiously and have him put to death;
CJB
Luke 22:1 But the festival of Matzah, known as Pesach, was
approaching;
CJB
John 13:1 It was just before the festival of Pesach, and Yeshua knew
that the time had come for him to pass from this world to the Father.
Having loved his own people in the world, he loved them to the end.
So; according to Matthew and Mark this scene on the Mount of Olives was taking
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place 2 days before Passover. But there is no mention of a specified time-
frame from either Luke or John other than that Jesus was speaking shortly before
Passover or Matzah was to begin. We have the additional twist in that Mark says
Passover is the Festival of Matzah, and so does Luke. Matthew and John only
refer to it as Passover, with no mention of the Festival of Matzah (the Feast of
Unleavened Bread). Any student of the Torah knows that Passover and the
Festival of Matzah are not synonyms; they are two different God appointed
times… two different Festivals… each to be celebrated differently. These details
ought to eventually lead us to exactly what day it was that Yeshua was executed
on the cross: but was it Nisan 14
th
(Passover day), or Nisan 15
th
(on the Feast of
Matzah) ? These are not trivial points as they have much to do with whether or
not Jesus fulfilled the sign of Jonah of being in the grave for 3 days and 3 nights.
So, we have a great deal to unpack here, and I’ll tell you at the outset that the
answer will not be straightforward. In fact, we’re going to address it several times
in upcoming lessons. Here we go.
In the modern era of the Western world, we speak of occasions like Christmas,
the Christmas season, Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas vacation, and
then New Year’s Day and eve. Sometimes we just roll all these things together
and call them the Holiday Season. No Westerner has much trouble
understanding what someone is speaking about when they use any of these
terms because the context of the conversation will establish it. For sure, these
days all happen in the last half of December plus maybe the first 2 or 3 of days of
January. And, depending on what Western nation (or even some Eastern
nations) you’re in, how this period of time is spoken of is about the same
although how this is all observed varies substantially. We all understand this and
don’t stress over it. There are specifics and there are generalities, and we’re
quite capable of sorting them out. It worked exactly that way about the time of
year, and the celebration of the festivals, which is being narrated to begin
Matthew chapter 26. The principle is this: when speaking of holidays and festivals
in the Bible (especially in the New Testament), sometimes they are spoken of in
their most technical sense, and at other times within common conversation (as
we reading in Matthew) they are spoken of in their more casual, general sense;
sort of a street language as opposed to a scholar’s language.
There were three biblical feast celebrations that Yeshua and thousands of other
Jews had come to Jerusalem to celebrate. These holidays not only happened in
rapid succession but in some ways they overlapped. They always occurred in the
springtime, and the series of festivals always began on Nisan 14
th
. The first was
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Passover (Pesach in Hebrew). The second was the Feast of Unleavened Bread
(Matza in Hebrew). The final was Firstfruits (Bikkurim in Hebrew). About 50 days
later is another Festival, known in Christendom as Pentecost (which is actually a
Greek loan word meaning 50). In Hebrew it is Shavuot (which means weeks). I
think the best way to get a handle on how this works is to go to the source:
Leviticus chapter 23. I want you all you open your Bibles to that chapter along
with me.
READ LEVITICUS CHAPTER 23:1 – 21
For now, the salient points are these: Passover starts on the 14
th
of Nisan, and is
a 1-day event. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins the instant Passover
ends, which means it starts on Nisan 15
th
and goes for 7 days. The next festival
is Firstfruits and exactly when it is to be celebrated is a little more complicated.
The biblical instruction in Leviticus 23 is that Firstfruits is to be observed on the
first day AFTER the next Sabbath day that happens after the Feast of Matzah.
So, just like in the Julian Calendar we all use, the particular name of a day
(Monday, Tuesday, etc.) doesn’t stay the same as the date. That is, August the
25th for example, can be a Monday one year, a Tuesday another year, etc. So,
while Passover and the first day of the Festival of Matzah starts on different
named days of the week, they always start on the same monthly calendar dates:
Nisan 14
th
and 15
th
. Firstfruits is observed differently. It is instructed to be
observed on the day after the Sabbath (the Sabbath in modern terms is a
Saturday), which means Firstfruits always falls on a Sunday, but the monthly
calendar date will differ year to year.
The Book of Deuteronomy has a bit different take on this. Go to Deuteronomy
chapter 16.
READ DEUTERONOMY CHAPTER 16:1 – 12
Instructions get a little more specific about Passover in that the Passover meal is
to be eaten after the sunset. Biblical days are always counted as beginning and
ending at sunset, totally unlike the world today that uses a clock to determine the
beginning and ending of days. We count 12 midnight as the ending of one day
and beginning of the next. Thus, according to Deuteronomy, the Passover meal
is to be prepared and cooked on Passover, but it is not to be eaten until the sun
goes down… meaning that the day changes. It changes to Nisan 15
th
, the first
day of the Feast of Matza. So, the Passover meal (or seder) occurs just after
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dark, in the first hour or so of Nisan 15
th
… it is NOT eaten on the festival day of
Passover. On the festival day of Passover what happens is that the Passover
lamb is slaughtered, prepared and roasted in an oven. But, I say again; it is not
eaten until after sunset, which is the start of a new day.
Also notice that no mention is made in Deuteronomy of the feast of Firstfruits.
Why, I don’t know. Oh, but it gets even better. In Leviticus 23:11, it was not clear
to the ancient Torah scholars whether the verse that speaks of a Sabbath is
referring to the weekly Sabbath or to the special Sabbath that is ordained for the
first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Nisan 15
th
(there are two special or
great Sabbaths during the Feast of Unleavened Bread; one to begin it and one
on the final day of it). In Yeshua’s time, the meaning of this verse was hotly
debated between the Pharisees and the sect of the Sadducees. The Sadducees
interpreted Leviticus 23 concerning the "day after the Sabbath" as being Sunday
(the 1
st
day of the week), therefore never having a fixed “date” on the Hebrew
calendar. However, the Pharisees interpreted this verse to mean the Sabbath
refers to the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15
th
, a Great
Sabbath), therefore Firstfruits being the day after it would always fall on the 16th
of Nisan, not on a fixed day of the week. It seems likely that in Joshua 5:10-12
that the Israelites celebrated Firstfruits on the 16th of Nisan. Let’s take a moment
to read that.
CJB
Joshua 5:10-12
10
The people of Isra'el camped at Gilgal, and they
observed Pesach on the fourteenth day of the month, there on the plains of
Yericho.
11
The day after Pesach they ate what the land produced, matzah
and roasted ears of grain that day.
12
The following day, after they had eaten
food produced in the land, the man ended. From then on the people of
Isra'el no longer had man; instead, that year, they ate the produce of the
land of Kena'an.
Flavius Josephus, who was at one time member of the priesthood, wrote
that "On the second day of Unleavened Bread, which is the sixteenth day of
the month, they first partake of the fruits of the earth." Another 1
st
century
Jewish eyewitness reported, "There is also a festival during Unleavened
Bread, which succeeds the first day, and this is named the sheaf." The
sheaf is another name for the day the sheaf is waved… which is Firstfruits. Both
witnesses agree that Firstfruits was observed in accordance with the reckoning of
the Pharisees in the 1
st
century. That is, the Pharisees seem to have prevailed in
this disagreement with the Sadducees and as a result most of modern Judaism
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celebrates Firstfruits on Nisan 16. So, in modern Jewish Tradition (and it seems it
was this way in Yeshua’s era), Passover was always Nisan 14
th
, the first day of
Unleavened Bread was always the 15
th
, and Firstfruits was always the 16
th
.
However; it seems that even though that is how the Jewish residents of Judea
observed it, it wasn’t the same for the Galileans. Getting pretty complicated,
isn’t it? Well, indeed it was complicated and like every other large religion,
Judaism had much earlier broken into different factions, each deciding on their
own doctrines, which even went so far as to involve different observances of
different holy day. About the only day that never seemed to be in dispute was the
weekly 7
th
day Shabbat that is our equivalent of sundown Friday to sundown on
Saturday. Although it is complex and confusing for us, it is nearly exactly that way
in Christianity with our religion fractured into literary thousands of factions, each
having their own doctrines and ways of celebrating holy days. So, such a
circumstance ought not be very hard for us to mentally picture, even though the
details of it can be challenging.
So, in the 1
st
century, just as it is today, various Jewish traditions from various
Jewish groups, ruled not only about how to do Passover, Unleavened Bread and
Firstfruits, but exactly when. Then we get into the matter of the Galileans (Jesus
and all of His disciples, and a large portion of the people who came to Jerusalem
for the festivals) who didn’t find it necessary to do much of anything that the
Judean Pharisees or the Sadducees decided upon. The reality was that the
Galileans and the Judeans didn’t much like one another, and so they celebrated
festivals and holy days a little differently at times.
While we’ll revisit this again because it is not just complicated it is important,
let’s fast forward and leap to the day after the Last Supper and then the
Crucifixion. Things get really dicey here. In the Book of John, we read the
following
CJB
John 19:31
31
It was Preparation Day, and the Judeans did not want the
bodies to remain on the stake on Shabbat, since it was an especially
important Shabbat. So, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the
bodies removed.
John calls the day that Christ died “Preparation Day”, and that the next day (that
would begin at sunset) was an especially important Sabbath. OK; time for a little
more understanding of the feast days. 3 of the biblical feasts are called chag, or
pilgrimage, feasts. These are feasts that the Law of Moses says all Israelites are
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to make a journey to the Temple to have a holy assembly and to make sacrifices.
Since in the New Testament we read that everyone seems to show up for
Passover then it is regularly assumed that Passover is 1 of those 3 pilgrimage
feasts of the year; not so. The first pilgrimage feast is actually the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. However, customarily, Jews who didn’t live in Judea (such
as Jews living in the Galilee) would travel to Jerusalem and they would arrive in
time to celebrate Passover there, since they needed to be there for the Feast of
Unleavened Bread that began the following day. Just as many Christians think
that it’s somehow better and more effective to go to a church to pray than to pray
at home, so it was that Jews felt it was better to kill and cook their lambs in the
Holy City of Jerusalem, slaughtered by Levite Priests at the Temple, than to do at
home. So, they would travel and arrive a day or two early (before the pilgrimage
Feast of Matza) to be able to do that. However; since the first day of Unleavened
Bread was a special Sabbath (not the weekly Sabbath, but a different one), then
whatever preparations (including meal preparations) had to be completed the day
before. And the day before was Passover. So, Passover was quite literally also
known as Preparation Day for the 1st day of Unleavened Bread. And that is what
John was talking about.
One more thing and we’ll end for today. Since the lambs were killed on Passover
day, and by most accounts Jesus was killed on Passover; and since the cooked
lamb was the centerpiece of the Passover meal, then what was the Lord’s
Supper that took place the night before the lambs were killed? Christ seems to
have died about the same time the lambs were being slaughtered. If this wasn’t
the case, then He died on the first day of Unleavened Bread (and not on
Passover); and the 1
st
day of Unleavened Bread was a Great Sabbath. The
problem is we read that the Jews were in a hurry to get his body down and buried
BEFORE the Great Sabbath began. So, He had to have died on Preparation
Day, also technically called Passover. And because that is the case, His famous
Last Supper could not possibly have been the Passover meal (or seder) as
Christianity traditionally says it is, because the lambs hadn’t even been killed
and cooked, yet.
We’ll re-open this can of worms when we meet again, after you’ve had a chance
to digest this information, and I’ll offer some solutions.
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