05/23/2023
I had breakfast this morning with a dear friend and former elder of our church. Part of our discussion led to my observation that after years of study, advanced degrees in theology, and preaching the Gospel for over thirty years, I still have much to learn. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Here is but one small example of my continuing education.
Having recently come through Holy Week and our remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection, I was studying the Jewish practice of Passover. I learned that in first-century Judaism, certain customs connected to Passover revealed an interesting, even eerie, foreshadowing of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Today Jews are no longer required to eat lambs at Passover, but while the Temple stood in Jerusalem, Jews had to abide by obligatory procedures for preparing and cooking the Passover lamb.
First, new, unfired clay ovens shaped in a dome were prepared to roast the lambs, and they were only to be used once. Second, a wooden skewer was inserted from the bottom of the lamb up to the head. Another wooden skewer was inserted along its back with its forelegs spread out and tied to the skewer along its back. Third, the lamb would be roasted upright in the oven, looking as though it had been crucified.
Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), one of the earliest church fathers, witnessed this practice and described it:
For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed right through, from the lower part up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb (Dialogue with Trypho in Constantinou, The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, 289).
The foreshadowing of the Passover lambs roasted upright, on wood skewers in the shape of a cross, in a dome oven only used for this one, single purpose cannot and should not be overlooked. This is but one example of how God revealed His plan of redemption through Judaism to point to the cross. How sad it is that many Jews have failed to notice. Let’s not miss it as well.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “For Christ our Passover (paschal) lamb has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The impaling of the Passover lamb on two intersecting wooden spits would prompt anyone to think of the cross. Early followers of Jesus would have “easily identified Him as the Passover Lamb, the perfect sacrifice, the only and beloved Son offered by His Father” (ibid., 290).
I love it when a plan comes together, and there is no greater plan than the one forged by our heavenly Father that we might be “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). Amen.
