On the 10th day of the first month a male lamb, not more than one year old, was set aside for a family. If the family were too small to eat a lamb in one meal they would share with a neighbor. On the 14th day the lamb was killed, roasted over fire and eaten with unleavened bread. The meal was eaten at twilight and none was to remain until morning. Any of it that was left was to be burned with fire. This was to be kept as an everlasting ordinance. This was the Lord’s Passover.
On the 14th day of the first month (God proclaimed to Moses, in the month that He released the Children of Israel from their bondage to Egypt, that it was to be the first month.) at twilight is the Lord’s Passover. On the 15th day, beginning at sunset following the Lord’s Passover, is the first day of seven Days of Unleavened Bread. The first and the seventh are Sabbath days. In Exodus we read when you have interred into the land that the Lord will give to you, on the day after the Sabbath a wave offering of a sheaf of the first-fruit is made. No bread or parched grain, from the fields, was to be eaten until the offering had been made.
In Exodus we read how the children of Israel were released from their bondage to Egypt on the day following the Lord’s Passover. In Joshua we read how the Israelites crossed through a dry bed of the Jordan River and entered into Gilgal on the10th day of the first month. On the day that the lamb was to be set aside they crossed into the promise land. On the 14th day at twilight they observed the Lord’s Passover. On the next day, the 15th, they ate unleavened bread and parched grain. The word given to Moses was a prophecy of the events that were fulfilled in Joshua concerning the promised lands. It had another fulfillment.
In Gethsemane we find a man praying, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.” That man was Jesus and the cup he spoke of was His death and the way He would die. The Passover season was coming. It was the 14th day of the new year. Just hours before, Jesus had eaten a meal with twelve of His disciples and one of them had gone off to betray Him. The betrayer returned with a crowd of people that took Jesus so that His destiny would be fulfilled.
Throughout the remainder of the night and into the next day, Jesus was mocked, beaten and tried for being the Son of God and the King of Kings. He was placed upon a cross and His hand and feet nailed to it, so that all may return to God. As the day ended, He died and was placed into a tomb quickly because the first Sabbath of Unleavened Bread would begin at sunset. The law was such that proper time could not be taken to bury our Lord because it would interfere with the observance of a day. But those that observed the day did not know its meaning only the law that governed it.
Our Lord was in the tomb for three days and three nights and was resurrected just before sunset on the 17th, on the weekly Sabbath. On the morning of the first day of the week He was seen alive and said, “Do not cling to Me for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Later that same day He invited His disciples to, “handle Me and see.” In the time between He had presented Himself before the Father as a first-fruit offering, fulfilling the prophesy of the wave offering. As prophesied to Moses, on the day after the Sabbath following the anniversary of the day that Israel entered into the promise land the wave offering was fulfilled.