“He Was Afflicted”
In our previous article, we briefly noted the appropriateness of Isaiah 63:9 to the Passover symbology:
“In all their affliction He was afflicted.”
Few verses so beautifully and simply express the compassion of our Father for His children. When the family of Israel grieved in Egyptian bondage (Exod. 2:23)), Yahweh the Lord of heaven and earth grieved also! And in order that we fully appreciate how He grieved, He has sent His Son to demonstrate for us the epitome of divine compassion:
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows . . .” (Isa. 53:4)
His love, and the Father’s love, was given practical expression in an excruciating, drawn-out death on the cross. It was a death that culminated a life of total, compassionate, loving identity with us. Though frail creatures of dust, we are given confidence, through Jesus, to call Yahweh our “Father”. He reached His strong arm into “Egypt”, lifted us up from the brick-kilns and the mud, and carried us out.
“Then He remembered the days of old, Moses, and His people, saying, Where is He that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of His flock? Where is He that put His Holy Spirit within Him? That led them by the right hand of Moses with His glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make Himself an everlasting name?” (Isa. 63:11,12).
These verses are alluded to in Heb. 13:20- 21 :
“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do His will . . .”
Jesus shed for us “the blood of the everlasting covenant”; God redeemed us from “Egypt” to make for Himself “an everlasting name.” Let us, who bear that Name, remember always His covenant with us, the affliction He felt with us, and the transcending love that binds us to His bosom — the love shown through His Son the “Lamb.”
The Upper Room
A link is established between this study and our earlier ones by Luke 9:28-31:
“And it came to pass (that) he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. .. And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who spake of his decease (Greek ‘exodus’) which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.”
The transfiguration was a means of giving to some of the apostles a foretaste of “the kingdom of God” (v. 27). But it was also one means of preparing them for that which had first to be done before the kingdom could become a reality: the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of their master. All this was summarized under this one word “decease” (“departure” or “exodus”). All that Yahweh accomplished again, on a higher plane, in the “exodus” of Jesus at Jerusalem.
In a similar way, the fourth passover of Christ’s ministry was the hour “that he should depart out of the world unto the Father” (John 13:1). By his death Jesus departed forever from the “Egyptian” world of fleshly bondage to “Sin.” And by that same death he instituted a way of departure, or escape, from “Egypt” for all those who believed, or would come to believe, in Christ their “passover” (1 Cor. 5:7).
Finally, in one of those little ironic details found so often in the Gospels:
“Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover. And the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him” (Luke 22:1,2).
The time for the Passover and the time for the priests (empowered by God to offer sacrifice) to kill Jesus—these two times were the same! The true, antitypical, perfect “passover” could only be achieved by the sacrificial death of Jesus! And the wicked and blind successors of Aaron were the ones designated by God to carry it out.
“Go And Prepare The Passover”
“Then came the day . . . when the passover must be killed. And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover that we may eat” (Luke 22:7, 8).)
Was this actual (that is, the Mosaic) Passover meal? These verses appear to prove it was, as do vv. 13 and 15, wherein Jesus refers to the meal itself as “this passover.”
But, on the other hand, we should not fail to consider the passages which testify otherwise:
- John 13:1: “Before the feast . . . ” How long before?
- John 13:29: How could the others have thought that Judas was being sent to buy provisions for the feast, if in fact the feast was already over?
- John 8:28: Were the Jews who led Jesus to Pilate concerned only lest they contract defilement that would bar them from the remaining days of the feast of unleavened bread? Or (as seems more reasonable) were they afraid of defilement that would prohibit their eating of the real passover that very evening?
- John 19:14: The “preparation of the “preparation of the passover” was the day before the passover meal.
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So was Jesus’s supper the Passover, or not? How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction? One suggestion is this: The disciples made the preparations (Luke 22:7-13) for the Passover meal more than a full day before the Passover, including everything except the actual slaying of the Lamb (which could not be done until the afternoon of the day of preparation). But when Jesus came to the designated house, he gathered the twelve together and appropriated and used the Passover provisions in his own special memorial meal. (Under this assumption, there would have been no lamb — a fitting point, in that Jesus was the Lamb” !)
Therefore the memorial supper appears, by its description, to have been a “Passover”, as indeed it was: Christ’s “passover”. But it was not the regular Passover, which was kept 24 hours later. (Christ’s death, at 3 p.m. the next day, coincided with the sacrifice of the Passover lambs, slain “between the evenings” —Exod. 12:6, mg.)
* * * *
“And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover” (Luke 22:13).
In the evening Jesus left his loved ones in Bethany for the last time. The shadows of Gethsemane were gathering about him. The cross was already pressing down upon him. The sweat was forming on his brow. Mary watched him move slowly away over the hill. Her love would tell her much. Something of the terrible weight he bore would become hers as she smiled in answer to his farewell. When he had gone the smile would fade and her eyes would reveal something of the pain and loneliness that was in her heart. The cruelty and lust of man, which was so soon to be directed against the love of God revealed in His Son, pierced also the heart of the one who loved. And so it has been ever since. No true disciple can pass through those hours, even in retrospect, without the sword piercing his own soul also.
Peter and John had gone before. Now, as the sun was beginning to decline, Jesus and the other ten descended a final time from the mount of Olives into the Holy City. Jerusalem lay before them in her bridal garments, the shining tents of pilgrims on her hills and meadows, bright spring flowers dancing in the breeze, luxurious shadows lengthening in the olive groves.
From the gorgeous Temple complex, dazzling in purest marble and brightest gold, rose the smoke from the altar of burnt offering. These courts would soon be crowded with eager worshipers offering for the last time, in any meaningful sense, their passover lambs.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One