Article: Jesus and the Passover Lamb: Why Good Friday Happened at Exactly the Right Hour
When my son was little, we read books together at bedtime. Carl loved the search and find books.
If you are not familiar, one page would be filled with drawings of all sorts of things. Next to it was a list of items to find. Sometimes it took a long time just to find one small item but Carl loved looking!
I feel the gospel of John is like that. Every time I read a portion of that gospel I discover something new. John wasn’t hiding anything, I have been looking at it wrong. I often read it with 21st century eyes and not 1st century eyes. When I do that, I miss those small items hiding on the page.
In the gospel of John, the details matter. He is pointing to a larger truth that he doesn’t want us to miss but we have to look with 1st century eyes.
When reading about Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion in John, he is clear about a number of things that seem like details, but John is pointing to something big.
Good Friday for us is the Day of Preparation for in 1st century Israel. That is the day you get everything ready for the Passover meal that would happen that evening. Remember the new day began at sundown and not sunup in ancient Israel. The new day began at dark.
Passover was the heart of the Old Covenant. The unbreakable promise that God delivered Israel from its oppressors in Egypt at the time of Moses. The Passover reminded the people that if God delivered the people from slavery back then, God would do it again when the people were oppressed by others.
On the Day of Preparation for Passover in Jerusalem, all the lambs that would be served at the Passover dinner would be sacrificed.
In other words, on the day Jesus became a sacrifice for sin on the cross, lambs were sacrificed for the Passover.
The Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the Day of Preparation in Israel. He records that the slaughter of the Passover lambs from the ninth to the eleventh hour — approximately 3–5 PM on Nisan 14.
John doesn’t want you to miss that Jesus is a sacrifice too on the day of preparation, not under the Old Covenant, but the New Covenant in Jesus’ name. Today we celebrate the New Covenant when we take Holy Communion.
The story deepens when we see in the other three gospel stories that Jesus dies at the ninth hour (3pm). This is the exact time the priests begin the sacrifices of the Passover lambs.
All of a sudden, John the Baptist’s declaration in John 1:29 makes complete sense! The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
John the Baptist’s announcement at the opening of the gospel is not metaphor waiting to be explained. It is a prediction waiting to be fulfilled — at a specific hour, on a specific day, while the lambs were dying at the Temple.
John wants us to know that Jesus’ death wasn’t a mistake or a random series of events. Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin to establish the New Covenant on the day that all of Israel prepared to remember the Old Covenant.
With 21st century eyes, we might miss the level of detail John writes with to establish what Jesus is doing and why. With 1st century eyes, we see the perfection and precision of God’s plan for humanity. Wow.
God bless,
Pr. Ben
