The Hours of Nisan 13

Picking up the narrative again – and it is still Wednesday evening, the 13^th of Nisan.

• • By the end of this day, God’s sacrifice for our sins will be complete as the final events begin to unfold very rapidly. I want to give them to you very succinctly.
  • After they finished singing the psalms, Jesus took His disciples to the Mount of Olives and to the Garden of Gethsemane.
  • On the way, He told them, “You will all fall away, because it is written, I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.”
  • Of course, Peter said even if all the others fell away, he wouldn’t, but Jesus told Peter that before the night was over, he would deny Him three times.
  • When they arrived at Gethsemane, the place where the olives were pressed to extract the oil, Jesus told His disciples to stay at the opening while He took Peter, James, and John with Him to pray.
  • These three men, who had been closer to Jesus than the others, became very distressed as Jesus told them to “keep watch” – but they didn’t know what they were watching for – only Jesus knew what was going to happen shortly.
  • Jesus went a little ahead of them, fell to the ground, and began to pray: “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”
  • Jesus wasn’t afraid of the physical suffering He would endure – He was willingly giving Himself – willingly laying down His life as a sacrifice for our sins.
  • Jesus was distressed over being “made sin” – as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We who have only lived in the reality of our own sin nature, and only tasted of the pure the righteousness of God might be a bit apprehensive over what life will be like when the curse of sin is broken, and we live every moment of every day in the newness of life and the pure righteousness of God.

• • Jesus had seen the effects of sin and was tempted in every way as we are with every kind of sin, but He had never known sin.
  • It was not the brutality of man that troubled Him, even including His death, but it was God’s wrath against man’s sin that was to be placed upon Him that filled His soul with horror, for He had never known a second of separation between Him and God the Father, but in a few hours, He would endure that separation for every man.
  • Jesus cried out “Abba, Father” not to remove the physical suffering, which we make so much of in our description of the cross, but to remove that painful separation He was about to feel from the Father; something He had never known before.
  • It was in that same area that Jesus prayed the prayer recorded in John 17, which you should stop and read because He was praying for us!

Around midnight, Judas came into the Garden of Gethsemane, along with a cohort of soldiers and the Religious leaders, and he gave Jesus a “kiss”!

• • Jesus was arrested and taken to Annas, the High Priest, where He was questioned about His disciples and what He had been teaching.
  • Frustrated that Jesus would not answer his questions, Annas sent Jesus to Caiaphas, who accused Him of blasphemy and asked the council for a verdict, and they shouted that Jesus was guilty and deserved to die.
  • While Jesus was being questioned, Peter warmed himself by a fire outside Caiaphas’ house, and a young girl asked him if he was one of Jesus’ disciples, and Peter said “no”! She accused him two more times, but Peter cursed and denied even knowing Jesus, and then the rooster crowed, just as Jesus had said, and Peter ran away, weeping.

   Between 5-6 AM Wednesday morning, Jesus was taken to the Sanhedrin for the “mock trial,” where He was found guilty a second time, bound and sent to Pontius Pilate for His punishment. When he saw what they were doing to Jesus, Judas regretted his betrayal and threw the 30 pieces of silver back in the temple, and went out and hanged himself.

   Around 7:00 AM, the Jewish leaders brought Jesus to Pilate for sentencing, but between the Sanhedrin and Pilate’s house, the charge against Jesus was changed from blasphemy to treason, for they knew that crime was punishable by death, and the Jews wanted the Romans to carry out their desires by killing Jesus “legally”!  After questioning Him, Pilate sent Jesus to Herod Antipas for judgment, but Herod couldn’t get any answers from Jesus, so he allowed the soldiers to beat Him and mock Him, and then He sent Him back to Pilate.

   About 8:00 AM, Pilate informed the Jewish religious leaders that both he and Herod had found Jesus to be innocent of their charges, and they wanted to release Him. But when the crowds objected, Pilate released Barabbas instead and sentenced Jesus to be beaten, scourged. and then crucified.

After being beaten within inches of His death, Jesus was marched through the city, carrying the top-beam of the cross, to the hill called Golgotha; Calvary – the place of the Skull.

• • Around noon, Jesus was nailed to the cross and lifted up beside two thieves. He refused vinegar mixed with gall to take the edge off the pain.
  • The Roman soldiers gambled for His clothes, but Jesus asked the Father to forgive them, for they didn’t understand what they were doing.
  • Pilate posted a sign on the cross that read in three languages: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
  • For three hours, the Roman soldiers, members of the Sanhedrin, Mary, the mother of Jesus, her sister Mary Magdalene, and the Apostle John watched Jesus suffer on the cross, and during those three hours, darkness covered the land around that area.

At 3:00 PM, Jesus was forsaken by God, and He cried out: “Eli Eli, lama sabachthani,” which meant, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me.” He breathed in again and cried out, “It is finished,” and with His last breath, He said:

                                                                            

Realizing the Holy Day of Passover would start at dusk when no work was to be performed until after sunset Thursday, the Jews asked Pilate to break the men’s legs so they could not push up and get air into their lungs, but when they came to Jesus, they discovered He was already dead.

Just before sunset, Pilate allowed Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to take Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrap it in fine linen, saturate it with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and bury it in a nearby tomb. Roman soldiers sealed it and they stood guard near it.

   Why is this specific date important?

• • If Jesus was, as the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5:7, “Our Passover Lamb,” He had to have fulfilled the pattern of the Law to the fullest, and He did.
  • For at the exact same time the Priests were sacrificing the Passover lambs for the people, commemorating God’s deliverance of their forefathers from Egypt, God was sacrificing His Lamb to deliver us from our sins – Jesus was our Passover Lamb.

We ought to praise God that even though His Word has become trampled on by those who either disregard it or disbelieve it, or it has become blurred by teaching, apostasy, superstition, or false doctrine, His truth is still the truth, and it is available to all who will take the time to prayerfully seek it out.

“The LORD’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month.”  Leviticus 23:5

Join us tomorrow as we continue our journey “From Gethsemane to Golgotha to Glory!”