How do these feast days relate to and point to our Messiah? Let us look into the first four spring feasts to find these answers. The first is Passover. Who is our Passover Lamb?
1 Corinthians 5:7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
All of the lambs that were sacrificed for Passover pointed to the only sacrifice for our sins.
Hebrewa 9:11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
All of the blood of all of the lambs only pointed to the only eternal sacrifice for sins. The second feast is directly intertwined with the first. Unleavened bread begins on what we would think of the evening of Passover.
But, the Passover lamb was eaten after sundown, which is in God’s calendar, the first day of unleavened bread. It begins with a high holy day or Sabbath. So during this week there could be two Sabbaths each of two weeks, depending on which day the feast started.
How many of heard of this before? Without this understanding of two Sabbaths and a preparation day before them, then the our Messiah’s last meal, death, and resurrection can not be understood in its Biblical context.
John 18:28 Then they *led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.
John 19:31 Then the Jews, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
Mak 15:42 When evening had already come, because it was the preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 15:43 Joseph of Arimathea came, a prominent member of the Council, who himself was waiting for the kingdom of God; and he gathered up courage and went in before Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.
As you can read from the verses above, the day Jesus appeared before Pilate was the day before the Passover, or the preparation day. Everyone had until sundown to get everything they needed to properly prepare the Passover meal.
Next time we will study the importance of these events.