Message I shared at our Bible Study at work today …
Today is the Passover celebration. It is a day of rememberance for Israelites when they were delivered from the Egyptians and lambs are sacrified for atonement of sins.
Exodus 12:24-27 And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.
For us Christians, Passover is the day of rememberance of the lamb of God being sacrified for us.
Today, I want to talk about what Jesus went through during Passover.
1.Under great trevail during prayer during the first night of the Passover
Matthew 26:38 – Then saith he to them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even to death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
His trevail was so great that he sweated blood when He prayed.
Luke 22:44 – And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.
2.Betrayed by Judas
Luke 22:48 – But Jesus said to him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?
3.Abandoned by disciples
Matthew 26:56 – But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.
4.Denied by Peter, one of his closest disciples
Matthew 26:73 And after a while came to him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech betrayeth thee. 74 Then began he to curse and to swear, saying , I know not the man. And immediately the cock crowed. 75 And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, who said to him, Before the cock shall crow, thou shalt deny me three times. And he went out, and wept bitterly.
5.Falsely accused
If anyone was innocent, it’d be Jesus. He was the only totally innocent man that has ever lived. Yet he received the worst possible punishment ever in the history of mankind.
6.Didn’t get any sleep
7.Scourged
Matthew 27:26 Then he released Barabbas to them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
8.Crown of thorns, Scarlet robe, mocked, beaten and spit on
Matthew 27:27 – Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered to him the whole band of soldiers . 28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. 29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! 30 And they spat upon him, and took the reed, and struck him on the head. 31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him .
9.Carry cross
Matthew 27:32 – And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.
10.Crucified, Nail in wrists and feet
11.Shame
Hebrews 12:2 – Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
12.Suffocation
13.Dehydration
John 19:28 – After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
14.Forsaken by God
Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
15.Carried sins of the world
I John 2:2 – And He is the propitiation concerning our sins, and not concerning ours only, but also concerning the sins of all the world.
Verses:
Colossians 2:14 – And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. 15 Having stripped rulers and authorities, He made a show of them publicly, triumphing over them in it.
Matthew 16:24
Then said Jesus to his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
I Corinthians 1:17
For Christ hath not sent me to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. {words: or, speech}
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
Philippians 2:8
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.
Hebrews 12:2
Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Revelation 5:12
Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
Notes:
The date of The Crucifixion is generally believed to have been on Friday, April 7, A.D. 30 (15th of Nisan).
The procedure of crucifixion may be summarized as follows. The patibulum was put on the ground and the victim laid upon it. Nails, about 7 inches long and with a diameter of 1 cm ( roughly 3/8 of an inch) were driven in the wrists . The points would go into the vicinity of the median nerve, causing shocks of pain to radiate through the arms. It was possible to place the nails between the bones so that no fractures (or broken bones) occurred. Studies have shown that nails were probably driven through the small bones of the wrist, since nails in the palms of the hand would not support the weight of a body. In ancient terminology, the wrist was considered to be part of the hand. (Davis) Standing at the crucifixion sites would be upright posts, called stipes, standing about 7 feet high (Edwards). In the center of the stipes was a crude seat, called a sedile or sedulum, which served a support for the victim. The patibulum was then lifted on to the stipes. The feet were then nailed to the stipes. To allow for this, the knees had to be bent and rotated laterally, being left in a very uncomfortable position. The titulus was hung above the victim’s head.
There were several different types of crosses used during crucifixion. In Jesus’ time, it was most likely that the cross used was a T shaped (or tau cross,), not the popular Latin, or t shaped cross which is accepted today (Lumpkin).
When the cross was erected upright, there was tremendous strain put on the wrists, arms and shoulders, resulting in a dislocation of the shoulder and elbow joints (Metherall). The arms, being held up and outward, held the rib cage in a fixed end inspiratory position which made it extremely difficult to exhale, and impossible to take a full breath. The victim would only be able to take very shallow breaths. (This may explain why Jesus made very short statements while on the cross). As time passed, the muscles, from the loss of blood, last of oxygen and the fixed position of the body, would undergo severe cramps and spasmodic contractions.
According to Dr. Frederick Zugibe, piercing of the median nerve of the hands with a nail can cause pain so incredible that even morphine won’t help, “severe, excruciating, burning pain, like lightning bolts traversing the arm into the spinal cord.” Rupturing the foot’s plantar nerve with a nail would have a similarly horrible effect.
Frederick Farrar described the intended, torturous effect: “For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of horrible and ghastly–dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, shame, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds–all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the suffer the relief of unconsciousness.”
Links:
NewLife
Crucifixion
Vinton
ABCOG
TonyCooke
Barr
KHouse
LifeOfChrist
Shroud
ChristianAnswers
UNC