Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

Imagine that you only had seven days left to live, how would you spend those last seven days of your life on earth? This was the situation Jesus was in as he prepared to celebrate the last Passover meal with his disciples. During the last week of his physical life, Jesus prepared himself for the ordeal of the cross, not by moping about and feeling sorry for himself but by doing the things that had characterised his ministry over the preceding three and a half years. Firstly he goes and visits a friend in his house (Simon the leper or previously a leper) where one of his followers, a woman, takes an alabaster box full of expensive perfume and pour’s it on his head and uses her hair to dry his feet (Matt 26:6-13).  After this instead of avoiding the attendance at the feat of Passover, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey to fulfil all that was prophesied about him by Zachariah (Zachariah 9:9).  He then drives out the merchandisers from the outer court of the temple, declaring that his house should be a house of prayer, but they by trading there, they were turning it into a den of thieves (Luke 19:45ff). Incidentally, by coming to the place of worship prior to the feast of Passover on the 10^th of the month, he was presenting himself as the lamb to the community, the one that would be slaughtered and whose blood would be used to avert the angel of death, or in his case conquer death (see Exodus 12 for reference). The slaughter would not take place until the 14^th of the month when the one year old male lambs would be sacrificed between noon and three pm, the exact time when Jesus was crucified.  With one week to go before the second cup of the Passover, the cup of deliverance was to be drunk, Jesus spends his time going between Bethany, the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem. And whilst on his travels he was still healing the sick, giving sight to the blind and inviting people into his kingdom (see Luke 18 & 19). What would you be doing if you only had one week left to live? During the last few days, Jesus would eat the Passover meal with his disciples in an upper room. Here he would wash their feet and dip his bitter herbs into the salt water at the same time as his chief guest, Judas. For as we will learn as we look into the protocol of the Passover meal, the head of the house dips his bitter herbs at the same time as his most honoured guest. And so a full two days before the day of Passover, on the 12^th of the month Jesus eats the meal with his friends and followers and tells them that it is body that will be broken for them and his blood that would be shed for them.  He drinks the first cup of sanctification before the meal and the third cup of redemption after supper. So the last week of Jesus’ life was spent fulfilling the various prophetic words spoken about him, See Daniel 9:20-27 and Isaiah 53 as example,  and making a way for you and I to go straight to the father without going through rites and ceremonies instituted by Priests and religion. As we get ready to celebrate the Passover, please join with me to say a ‘big thanks you’ to Jesus! Please read the scriptures highlighted in the text.