YAHSHUA’S Passover was a day before the Jew’s. On His pathway on earth before His trial and death, He arrived in Bethany six days before the Jew’s Passover when He laid down His life. It was there that Mary, the sister of Martha, anointed Him four days before He gave up His life as a sacrificial Lamb for the world. When Mary anointed Him that was a symbolical act of separating the sacrificial lamb for the sacrifice four days before the time they were to be sacrificed. “The death of our Lord YAHSHUA the Messiah was prefigured in all the sacrificial Offerings of the Levitical economy, such as the Paschal Offering, the Burnt Offering, the Meal Offering, the Sin Offering and the Trespass Offering, etc.” (A.E. Ware).
While the Jews were sacrificing their Passover lambs, YAHSHUA was being sacrificed at the same time. The noises from the hammer striking the nails on His body echoed through the entire nation, but none considered; oblivious and indifferent to the fact, they just continued with their activities as usual, because they had no esteem for Him and considered Him being struck by God, although none of the sacrifices they offered at any time had the power to forgive and save. Only YAHSHUA’S life could offer forgiveness, salvation, and freedom to a lost world. While going through His ordeal, He was purchasing men for God and liberating them from the power of sin and death. Everything He went through contributed to the salvation of men. The Bible says that the blood of bulls and goats are powerless to take sins away (Heb. 10:4). As a matter of fact, no other blood had the power to forgive and save men. In that last Passover Feast, YAHSHUA representing the Lamb of God annulled all animal sacrifices. God only received the sacrifice of His Son being offered bearing the sins of men and carrying their pain and sorrows, representing their high priest, offering forgiveness, salvation, and freedom to all who will accept Him. While being suspended on the cross, being humiliated, mocked, ridiculed and suffering the worst shame ever felt by men, YAHSHUA uttered these last seven sayings:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:24);
Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise (Luke 23:43);
Woman, this is your Son. This is your mother (John 19: 26-27);
My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34);
I thirst (John 19:28);
It is finished (John19:30);
Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit (Luke 23:46).
Let’s digest these words and their meanings in relationship to us. The first utterance was a prayer directed to those who were crucifying Him. This prayer was on behalf of the Romans who did not know Him; neither understood the Jewish traditions and religious customs. There on the cross He became their high priest and they believed in Him, Matthew registered: when the centurion and those who were with him keeping watch over YAHSHUA observed the earthquake and all that was happening, they were terribly frightened and filled with awe and said, Truly this was God’s Son! (Matt.27:54). Prayer answered!
The second utterance was a promise given to the thief who defended Him and confessed Him to be a righteous man, and had asked Him, Lord, remember me when You come in Your kingly glory; and He answered him, Truly I tell you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise (Luke 23:41-43). The thief’s experience proves that salvation is not a result of good works, but it is through the sacrifice of YAHSHUA. Only by His death can we obtain salvation. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 2:8-9 says: For it is by free grace that you are saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not because of works, lest any man should boast. The thieves were at the mercy of YAHSHUA to be saved. One believed Him but the other rejected Him; the latter died in his sins and suffered the condemnation not only from men, but also from God, while the one who believed in YAHSHUA, went to Paradise with YAHSHUA. It must have been a beautiful sight to see!
The third utterance was directed to John, one of His disciples. YAHSHUA, being the oldest Son of His mother, practiced what was the responsibility of an older son. Although, He had other brothers, because they were not at the site of His crucifixion, and they had not yet believed in Him, He saw fit to give His mother to His best friend, John to care for her. John reports: So YAHSHUA, seeing His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing near, said to His mother, woman, See, your son! Then He said to the disciple, See, your mother! And from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home.
The fourth utterance is one He shows the ultimate pain: the separation from His Father-the pain of hell. No pain He had suffered was greater than that. When His Father could no longer look at Him due to our sins being put on Him, He suffered His Father’s rejection, and hell was the only place for Him to go, because according to Isaiah’s prophetic words,… the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all… yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He was put Him to grief and made Him sick… (Isaiah 53:6b, 10a). He then uttered the words which were prophesied many years previously by David: My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? (Ps. 22:1). He went there, so we did not have to. Suffering hell was part of His payment for our deliverance from it. It was about the ninth hour (three o’clock) YAHSHUA cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? – That is, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:46).
After He had gone to hell, He felt thirsty. He uttered, I thirst. The thirst of hell could never be tamed with vinegar which they offered Him. He suffered dehydration beyond any one has ever suffered. In Psalm prophetic words we read: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax; it is softened and melted down within me; my strength is dried up like a fragment of clay pottery; my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and You have brought me in to the dust of death (Ps. 22:14-15). When He uttered these words, He had gone through the worst He was going to go. When He had completed all He had to come to do, He said, It is finished! It is paid in full. Then He commends His spirit to His Father by saying, Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit (Luke 23:46). He died, so we could have life through Him. Therefore, the spirit of every believer in Him is already commended to God when he takes his last breath and be transported from this earth to heaven- his eternal place because YAHSHUA paid the price of his redemption in full and confirmed by saying, It is finished. Nothing was left to be done. Salvation is a gift to be cherished until it will be completed in the day when YAHSHUA will be glorified in His people- the bride of Christ.
HALLELUIA!
Light from the Word 