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Yet the Jews, we find from the evangelical narrative, were not to observe that rite till the following evening; and hence, the early part of Friday being the preparation, they would not go into the judgment hall "lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the passover" after the going down of the sun.
They were to spend the festival in the city, and James had hired a room in which the Master and His twelve faithful friends could solemnly celebrate the Passover. His disciples again gathered round Him; but they looked anxious. For they had had unpleasant experiences in their walks through the town.
Neither was there a servant in a purple turban with the gold star to meet them and they were bewildered and lost. The rest of the visitors to the Passover hurried into the heart of the city; wave after wave of new-comers replaced them; but the young woman and her dumb old servant stood aside just within reach of the shadow of the immemorial portal and waited.
It was like what we mean by the passage in the Passover Haggodah: "Any one who is in need may come, and partake of the Passah-lamb. . . ." Till that moment we used to attack the air with our bayonets and pierce space right and left, "as if" the enemy had been before us, ready for our steel. We were accustomed to pierce and to vanquish the air and spirits, and that is all.
The Passover itself, though not at first an agricultural festival, became one by the waving of the Paschal sheaf, which gave permission to the people to begin their spring-harvest so thoroughly were they to be an agricultural and cattle-feeding people.
In this country, from the passover to the beginning of the succeeding year, the sun shines with such insufferable heat, that the people remain shut up in their houses from the third hour of the day until evening; and then lamps are lighted up in all the streets and markets, and the people labour at their respective callings all night.
It is the Passover story over again, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." Thus are our sins blotted out. It is with God's hand that the work is done; and for very many reasons this is a great comfort to us. First: Because it was God's hand that made the record, he it was who put down all your sins.
The leaven had been well mixed in the loaf of Jewish society and it was beginning to work. Once more the season of the Feast of the Passover arrived and found Jesus with His followers in Jerusalem and in the Temple. What memories the scene awakened in His mind. He could see the same scenes in which He had participated seventeen years before.
That Jesus submitted also to baptism himself, they allow. But he submitted to it, not because he intended to make it an ordinance under the new dispensation, but to use his own words, "that he might fulfil all righteousness." Hence, also he was circumcised. Hence he celebrated the Passover. And hence, he was enabled to use these remarkable words upon the cross: "It is fulfilled."
The Passover was the most sacred season of the entire year; and this very evening was the most sacred of the Passover week. It was as if a crime should in Scotland be committed by a member of the Church on the night of a Communion Sabbath, or in England on Christmas Day. He invaded the sanctuary of his Master's devotions.
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