1419 - "The Passover Seder, Part 1" Exodus 12; John 12; Matthew 26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1419. Today and tomorrow I'm going to be going over the Passover Seder. I will do it in summary fashion because even the shortest of all the services is very long. And the reason was it was an evening meal. It was an event, a yearly event. The children were involved. The whole family was involved. Other families that lived nearby would be involved in many cases. And so this was a big deal. It was held on the fourteenth of Nisan, that's Passover Day. About three o'clock in the afternoon you would have the sacrificial lamb slain. And then there would be the preparation for the meal, and then all the family would get together and the meal would begin. It would begin with the lighting of lamps and the blessings, and we will go over those. What I want to do to begin with is to help you to understand why the Passover. As you'll recall, the children of Israel were in bondage, Egyptian bondage. They had been in the land of Egypt for over four hundred years. Now God had already told Abraham that his descendants would be in a land for over four hundred years, a strange land, and then he would bring them out by a mighty hand and bring them back to the land of Canaan where God was making this promise to Abraham. Now this is found in Genesis chapter fifteen, where the great Abrahamic covenant was cut. And you remember the great blood ditch ritual that took place at the end of that chapter and the great covenant with Abraham, the unconditional covenant was cut. And so when the children of Israel were led by Moses out of the land of bondage, God said, I never want you to forget this day, because I have spared your firstborn. Your firstborn belongs to me. Above all else, your firstborn is mine, because I spared their life by giving a lamb on their behalf. And so it was the plague of the firstborn, the death of the firstborn that really turned the tide, and Pharaoh relented after that and allowed the children of Israel to go free. But there had been ten plagues, and God did not ever want his people to forget that with a strong and mighty arm he was faithful to his promises to bring the sons of Abraham out of bondage, bring them back in from a foreign land, and give them the land of Canaan that he had promised to their father Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. And now it was generations past. And we are now forward in time to fourteen hundred and forty-six BC. Now remember, Abraham lived in twenty one sixty-six for a hundred and seventy-five years, counting down the years. And so we are at least five hundred plus years from the time of Abraham. And so God is fulfilling his promise. God is not slack concerning his promises. He will always do what he says he will do when he says he will do it. But it's in God's timing, not ours. His ways are not our ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are his ways above ours. And so when God told them in Exodus chapter twelve, and then in the book of Leviticus at Mount Sinai, about the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread and all that took place and transpired during that time that was called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it was for eight days. The first day of those eight days was the Passover sacrifice itself, commemorating deliverance from Egyptian bondage. And then there were sacrifices made every day. The day after Passover was the day of unleavened bread, when unleavened bread was offered up and a sacrifice was made every day at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, which began something called twilight. The Hebrew text says between the evenings, that is, from the time the sun begins to set and go over the horizon, that's about three o'clock in the afternoon. It's a period of about three hours, and then the sun sets. Between the time of three PM in the afternoon and the time the sun actually sets is the evening or the twilight, the time between the beginning of evening and the ending of evening when the sun sets. So that is called twilight. That is when Jesus would have been sacrificed, but remember they had the Passover Seder the night of the Passover. So the sacrificial animal would have been killed, they would have had this Passover Seder, just like they would have in Egypt. And this is when everything took place. And Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, wanted to eat with his disciples, and so he asked them to make ready a place, and the lamb was slain, the meal was prepared, everything was just like it was meant to be. Now, when you read the Gospels, the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and you read John, there seems to be a contradiction, but there's not. Because the same terminology is used when talking about Passover, whether it is Passover on the fourteenth or the beginning of unleavened bread, it all is in the same kind of language and it can be difficult to discern at times. And so don't get bum fuzzled by that and throw out the baby with the bathwater. What you need to understand is whenever Jesus ate that meal, he took the unleavened bread and he took the lamb and the sacrificial lamb. They were eating that. Then they were eating other things, and it was during that Seder meal, that order of service, that Jesus would have done what he always did. There were four cups that the entire Seder meal is built around. The four cups come from the four I wills of Exodus chapter six verses six and seven. God says there that he will do four things. The meal is built around the four cups that come out of Exodus six, verses six and seven, where God says, Therefore, say unto the children of Israel, I am Yahweh, I am Hashem, I am the Lord. I will bring you up out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. In other words, he's going to separate his people from the Egyptians and bring them out from among them. And that is why this cup is often called in English the cup of setting apart, the cup of sanctification. He says, I will rescue you from your bondage. And he did. How did he do that? He did that with ten plagues. So during this part of the meal, the ten plagues are recited by everyone as a drop of wine is taken from the cup, and it is placed upon a plate or whatever particular demonstration is used by the particular master of ceremonies or father of the house. There are ten plagues, and so every time that a drop goes on the plate from out of the cup, then the entire household shouts out one of the plagues, the blood, the frogs, and so on, all the way down to the death of the firstborn. And after the first two cups, then the meal is taken. Now there are many rituals and many questions all along the way, because remember, God said, I want you to remember this. This is a memorial meal. It's there every year so that the people will never forget throughout eternity that God rescued the people with a strong and mighty arm, that he is faithful to his promises. Even if it is hundreds of years, even if it is thousands of years, God always keeps his promises. And this is exactly what he wants the people to remember. So the youngest of the family would always ask questions. And the questions would be very simple. Why are we eating unleavened bread instead of bread that we usually eat at a celebration called Hala on the Shabbat meal? And why is this night and how is this night different than any other night? There were four questions that were asked so that the same answer could be given. Why? Because repetition is the mother of learning, and this is how it was done. And there were rituals at every level, and these were done the same every year with little variation. And all of these questions and all of these rituals had design and purpose. They didn't have an end in themselves. They could become that, but that was not what it was all about. It was to remember what God had done for his people. And so this is the meal that Jesus and his disciples were eating after the Passover. You say, no, wait just a minute. So the Passover lamb had already been slain, that's what they were eating. And you say, well, that means that Jesus would have been crucified according to that on the Passover, which is the first day of unleavened bread. Well, there's nothing that says that could not happen because at three o'clock every day those lambs were slain. Why? Because of the Passover. Because of the unleavened bread, God said, I want you to remember this eight days. This is a big deal. Because the body of Jesus is represented by unleavened bread. The blood that was shed represented the blood of Messiah, the blood that would one day set not only people free from Egyptian bondage, but would set them free from the bondage of sin. And this is what this meal was all about. And so then they would eat supper, and at supper they would eat certain things, and there would be certain rituals associated with that. Again, I have written an entire book on this, and I would be happy to send it to you. If you would just ask me to do that, you can write for a copy of the book. I'll give it to you free. I'll pay the postage because that's how important it is. It's a Haggatta. It is an order of service I have used on many occasions with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, even thousands of people that I've taken through this. And so I have modified over the years, and I think I've got it down to a great order of service, and I'll be happy to send that to you. Write me at TonyCrisp.org. Dr. Crisp. D-R-C-R-I-S-P is in Paul. Just like lettuce or bacon. Dr. Crisp. I shouldn't have used bacon at Passover time, but DRCrisp, Dr.Crisp at TonyCrisp.org. And I'll send this to you because I go over all of these things in great detail, give you all the questions, what are the rituals? I try to answer all the questions there for you that evangelicals would have. I'll be happy to do that. Now tomorrow we're going to talk about the supper because it was after supper that Jesus had the cup of redemption. That is the cup that Jesus changed forever the meaning of that cup for Jew and for Gentile, for his followers. Yes, they will always remember that that was the lamb that was slain to free them from Egyptian bondage, and it took the place. It was a substitutionary lamb for the firstborn, so that the firstborn of Israel would live, unlike the Egyptians, the firstborn of which died. This is a big, big time of year. And when you're listening to this, it's the beginning of Passover in the evening. And so my prayer for you is that you'll come back tomorrow, listen again as we go to the cup of redemption and then the Hillel cup, so that we can understand better what Jesus and his disciples were doing the night that he was betrayed, his agony, and kept in the house of Caiaphas. And then the next day was before Pontius Pilate, Harad Antipas, back to Pilate, and then outside the city walls of Jerusalem to Calvaria, Golgotha, the place of the skull where Jesus was crucified for our sins. May God bless you as you walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.