The greatest feast to the people of the old covenant was the Passover, which they celebrated one complete week together with the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, remembering God’s wrath, which passed over them because of the paschal lamb slain by every family of the nation. Each family met around the Passover sacrifice, and each member of the family had to eat of it until they finished it. If the sacrifice was too much for them, they invited their neighbors or friends to it.
They sprinkled the lintel and the two doorposts of their houses with the blood of the lamb that the angel of the wrath of God might pass over them. Thus, all the people were delivered through the lamb of God, living from its grace. Yet, all those who were not kept by the blood of the lamb were attacked by the wrath of God who killed the firstborn of their sons at that night. Then they sent those who were saved by the blood of the lamb out of the land of Egypt. So the fleeing people took their dough before it was leavened, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes on their shoulders, and baked it on stones in the sunshine during their walk in the desert.
The children of Jacob were not at all better than the people of Egypt, but they put themselves under the protection of the lamb of God. The mystery in this principle is great. No man is good and righteous before God. All deserve anger, death, and destruction. But he, who puts himself under the blood of the Lamb of God in the new covenant willfully and forever, will not enter into judgment. There is no salvation but through the unique Lamb of God. Man will not profit from his uprightness, his songs of praise, his contributions, or his human deeds. All these do not justify us before God, and all our efforts are not sufficient to glorify the Holy One. The chosen Lamb of God alone is the protection, justification, purification, and sanctification, to whoever believes in him.
Christ is the Lamb of God, which was slain for us. Having finished his ministry as preacher, teacher, and prophet, in his capacity as the embodied Word of God, teaching men the constitution of his kingdom, and guiding them to the mystery of the universe that is LOVE, and exemplifying it clearly before them; and having finished all his teaching, Jesus advanced willfully to the hour of his death, knowing that there was no other way to redeem men except through his death. From the cross, we obtain righteousness, power, and salvation.
Jesus did not flee from Jerusalem, though he was sure that the rulers of the people intended to kill him, but he fixed the time of his death willfully, for the time of his death was determined in the counsel of his Father. He did not die accidentally, or compellingly, but at the fixed hour, at the same moment when the Passover sacrifice was offered at the temple court that it might appear clearly that Christ is the chosen Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
It was, in principle, a few months ago that the rulers of the people had plotted to kill Jesus, because the Nazarene forgave the sins as God, healed the sick on the Sabbath by his word, and drew the multitudes outside the authority of the synagogue. So they feared they should have a division in the nation, a revolution of the zealots, or interference by the Roman occupying power.
The elders disliked the Nazarene carpenter, for he was cleverer, wiser, and more spiritual than all their delegations; and they could not entrap him. Therefore, they supposed they would render a service to God if they destroyed him so that their power might not be shaken, the rules of the temple might be established, and the generality of the Law might not be lessened.
Yet, the experts in the Law intended to kill Jesus, and then give the false impression that he was killed accidentally, without premediation. They looked for some sly way to arrest him that they might explore his mysteries through pressing questions, then entrap him by a confession against their law, and find a lawful reason to bring this young man out as a deceiver of the nation, and kill him officially that the wrath of God might pass over the nation.
In the past, they could not find an occasion to catch Jesus in the midst of his followers, and to arrest him during his miracles of healing, his sermons, and discussions that they might not cause disturbance among the people, and that he might not then appear as a celebrity, or chosen prophet in the mind of the nation. Thus, the evil one guided them to kill Jesus at the feast, and they sent spies all over the region to arrest him before or after the feast. However, Jesus fixed the day of the annual religious celebration as the date of his imminent death.