April 8, 2001

Passover or Easter?

Next Sunday is probably the most important day in the Christian calendar. Next Sunday is Easter. Today is the day commonly referred to as Palm Sunday, traditionally the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem the Sunday before He was crucified, and then next Sunday is Easter.

I have three questions for you today. We all know that Jesus celebrated Passover, we have talked about it for several weeks, but how did He celebrate it? What were His emotions? I want us to think about that a bit today, because I think it would be great if we could celebrate Resurrection Sunday with the same attitude that He had when He celebrated Passover.

Another question: Could Jesus have celebrated Easter? You think I am being stupid, but it's actually a trick question, because He could have if He had wanted to. Easter was around before the crucifixion.

Third question: why does the Christian community celebrate Easter - or Resurrection Sunday - on the day that it does?

Let me answer the second question first. If you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope you do, turn to Acts 12 and verse 1. " Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.
Acts 12:2 And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.
Acts 12:3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.)
Acts 12:4 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people."

In the Hebrew calendar, what day does Passover always fall on? 14th Nisan, right? It doesn't matter what day of the week it is, it always falls on the same day of their month, Nisan 14. The next day, Nisan 15, is the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and it lasts for a week. If you want the details, it's in Leviticus 23, but the point is, the days of unleavened bread that are mentioned here in Acts 12, don't start until after Passover. The term "Passover" today is frequently used to refer to the whole week long holiday, Passover and Unleavened Bread together, but not back then. You had Passover, then the days of unleavened bread.

We have mentioned that Easter is not the most appropriate way to remember the Lord in His rising from the grave, because Easter is the festival of eggs and bunnies, the festival of the goddess Ishtar, always was, still is. Apparently Easter was a holiday back there in Jerusalem during the time of Christ just as it is today. Perhaps that is why Herod was going to wait before killing Peter, it would have been politically incorrect to kill him just before a popular holiday of new life. Maybe Herod fancied himself as sort of a nice "Easter Bunny" kind of guy, a real sweetheart, who knows? The point is, Easter was already around at the time when Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the grave, and it's a good example of a pagan tradition that the early church "baptized" into respectability. So I suggest to you that Easter was already celebrated during the time of Christ, but I believe that I can safely assure you that He had no use for it.

How about the other question that I asked, why is Easter celebrated on the day that it is? We all know that the early church was composed primarily of Jews, and then the Gentiles began to get saved, and gradually the majority began to shift. After a while, most Christians were non Jews, and the Gentiles made up the majority of the church.

Human nature being what it is, people tend to argue and badmouth people that think different from them, and after a time, unbelieving Jews began to persecute the Christians, then Christians began to persecute Jews. By the third century, there was bad blood on both sides. Meanwhile, there arose a controversy about when to observe the resurrection of Christ. Some churches would celebrate Christ's resurrection one week, and other churches would celebrate it another week. Some churches would get offended if they were having a week of fasting and praying the week before Resurrection Sunday, and meanwhile, their neighbors down the road had already done that the week before, and now this weekend they are celebrating and rejoicing that the Lord was risen from the grave. And to make it even worse, Christians from the middle east based their calendar on 14 Nisan and celebrated His resurrection 3 days later, 17th Nisan, no matter what day of the week it happened, Sunday or not!

The church of Rome, on the other hand, always celebrated the death of Jesus on a Friday, and His Resurrection on Sunday, the first Sunday after the first full moon in March, irrespective of when He actually died and rose again. Eventually they branded as heretics anyone that disagreed with them. By the late third century, the church had adopted Easter as a symbol of Christ's resurrection, and since by that time they had a through dislike for the Jews, they decreed that Easter Sunday would always fall on the first full moon after March 21st, & always after Passover, but never on the same day. (Wouldn't want to appear to be too "Jewish" now, would we?) (Heaven Forbid!)

Wednesday night at Bible study, I told everyone that could, to look and see what day Pentecost fell on this year, who did that? What day does Pentecost, or maybe your calendar says Shavuot, fall on? May 28th. The Hebrew feasts all point to the things of Christ, and all the events of Christ's death and resurrection happened on those feast days. He died on Passover, was raised on First Fruits, and the church was born on Pentecost. The church rearranged the calendar on Easter, but Pentecost is still what it is. How many days is it from First Fruits until Pentecost? 50 days. Now I need a math whiz: if Pentecost is on May 28, and Jesus rose from the dead 50 days earlier, on the Feast of First Fruits, what does that make today? Hint: today is 15 Nisan, First Fruits on the Hebrew calendar. So what does that make today? Resurrection Sunday.

Isn't God good? While the rest of the Christian world is calling this day "Palm Sunday" and planning to wait until next week to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, we can celebrate it today, we can rejoice all week, and then rejoice and celebrate it again next week too. And if that rows your boat pretty well, celebrate it the same way all year long! The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

And that brings me to the third question, how should we celebrate the Lord's death? How did He celebrate His own last Passover?
Turn to Exodus 12:13. We have spoken for several weeks about the Passover and what it means, today I want us to see - perhaps - how the Lord celebrated His own last Passover. Verse 13: " And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Exo 12:14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
Exo 12:15 Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
Exo 12:16 And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you."

Not too complicated, God is telling them who it's for, how He delivered them from bondage to the Egyptians, and how they need to behave when they keep it. Have you ever noticed that this feast is very similar to something that we Christians do here on a regular basis? Let me lay down a few distinguishing characteristics for you:

This is a feast that is only for a certain, particular group of people, those that God has redeemed by the blood of a lamb.

It is a memorial feast, a remembering that God saved His people by the shed blood of a lamb, and it was to be kept as a memorial forever.

The people that kept the feast were to have no leaven in their houses, not even for any part of the week. Leaven is a symbol of what? Sin. So the people that kept this feast were not to have anything around them that would even hint of sin, nothing at all. Anybody that ate anything with leaven in it during this time was to be put out of the camp, out of the community, out of fellowship, and not allowed access to the things of worship.

On the first day of the feast there was a holy convocation, a meeting of the people, a meeting set apart for service to God, and that was the priority. Not work, not business, the priority was to be occupied with the things of God. And then a week later, there was another holy convocation, another meeting set apart to the Lord, and once again, God was their priority.

Sounds a lot like the Lord's Supper, doesn't it? The Lord's Supper is only for a certain, particular group of people, those that have trusted in His blood to save them. The Lord's Supper is not for the unsaved, the man or woman who walks in off the street and knows nothing of Jesus Christ and His shed blood. They have no part or interest in participating in the Lord's Supper, and it is entirely inappropriate for them to do so. I know that sometimes unsaved people participate in the Lord's Supper, but that's stupid. Imagine an Egyptian in the days of Moses and Pharaoh who had no saving faith, no blood of the lamb to hide behind, and he's celebrating that God is sending judgement... Not likely. Isn't this the same principle? The memorial feasts of the Lord have always been strictly for the people of the Lord, God's redeemed. Nothing has changed in 3500 years.

How about leaven? Just as the people of Israel were to have no leaven in their homes or on their persons when they kept this feast, neither are we as Christians to have any sin in our homes or in our behavior as we come together to remember the Lord. Do you remember how Paul commanded the church at Corinth not to eat together with someone that was in open sin? And then if necessary, put them out of fellowship?
The first line of discipline in any church assembly is to forbid a misbehaving person from participating in the Lord's Supper. If there is no repentance and correction, then you ask them to leave the church. The principle of holy living that was laid down by God when the Israelites came out of Egypt is carried out on a smaller and more personal scale in the local church. And it is still the exact same principle.

The third feature that is brought out in this passage is the concept that we are to put God first on these days of remembrance. The world that we live in is absolutely carried away with the need to make more money, go for it, 24/7, but what does God say? God says "Make it your priority to remember me in a holy meeting with the congregation, and then take a break. Knock off and rejoice in me, because it's good for you, and because I said so."

Something else that we need to know about how Jesus kept that last Passover with His disciples, look again at verse 12 and notice the word "feast": "And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever." That word "feast" has an interesting meaning in the Hebrew, it means a festival, a celebration, it means music, dancing and singing.

When God ordained the Passover Feast for His people, it was to be a combination of seriousness and happiness, of solemnity and rejoicing. This is what was meant when Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and told him "Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness." (Ex 5:1) A Feast unto the Lord has the idea of holy behavior, being serious before the Lord, and at the same time it means happiness and rejoicing, because this word "feast" also means "dancing in a circle." Remember how David danced before the Lord when the ark of the tabernacle was brought back, and when Moses' sister Miriam and the women danced and played tambourines at the destruction of Pharaoh and his armies?

The feast of the Lord here was to be a serious thing, but also a happy thing, because it reminds us of our salvation. This is why the Lord Himself could say to His disciples: "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:" He knew that He was the Lamb that was to suffer, He was the Lamb that was to be slain, whose Blood was to be applied to the faithful, but He also rejoiced in God's salvation of His people from sin. He rejoiced in the deliverance God provided for His people.

It seems odd to be serious and happy at the same time, we aren't always real good at that are we? How do we make a good balance of being happy and serious, rejoicing and solemn, how do we have a feast, a festival, an occasion suitable for dance, without being frivolous? I'm not sure. But I know that's the balance that the Lord desires for us, and that helps me understand what the Lord was thinking and feeling on the night He had His last Passover with His disciples. It was a time for remembering what the Lord had done before and what He would do again. It was a time for personal holiness. It was a time for focusing on the Lord and putting everything else aside. It was a time to be serious and joyous at the same time.

I guess that's what I would hope for all of us today. That's why I took this message off on what seemed a rabbit trail of "when do we need to remember the Lord's death and resurrection?" Sometimes the rest of the Christian world might do things better than we do, and sometimes they do things for old traditional reasons that maybe we ought to rethink. Much of Christianity is good, much of our Christian faith was proven in the fire and has stood the test of time, there are a lot of traditions that have become traditions because they were good and because they were genuine. There are a few that are not. The important thing for us today is whether we are doing things just for traditions sake, or are we the real deal, are we genuinely followers of Jesus?

Are we walking from week to week as those that have gotten rid of our leaven? Are we living without sin, without offense before man and God?

Are we faithful to come to the holy convocations of the Lord at the appointed times? He has done everything for us, and all He asks of His people in return is that we would be faithful to love Him and remember Him.

Is He our priority in the things that we do? Do we esteem Him above our opportunities to make money, advance our own personal agendas, do our own things? That's the hardest one, isn't it? I know it is, because it's the hardest one for me too.

And finally; are we living as a people that have a wonderful sort of split personality? Sober, serious minded, because we have the Blood of the Lamb applied to the doorposts of our hearts and lives, and it's hard to be frivolous when you have that on you. And are we simultaneously joyful? People that have been called to a festival, a feast, a dance?

Jesus did all those things perfectly. That was how He lived, and those were the attitudes that He brought to that last Passover Feast with His disciples. May it characterize all of us today, as we remember the Lord in His death and resurrection, and may it also be true of us every day, all the time.