The Crucifixion and The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

“Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:  For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  (Matthew 12:38).   

Jesus told them that the only sign He would give was that of the prophet Jonah: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).  Jesus told them point blank that He was going to be in the tomb for three days and for three nights.

We now come to the week Jesus was crucified.  “And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety, and kill him.  But they said, not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.” (Matthew 26:1-5).

“Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?  And he said, go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master said, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.  And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.  Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.” (Matthew 26:17-20).

Since it was against Jewish law to do anything on a Sabbath Day, this preparation had to take place the day before and it did because the scripture said that they sat down to eat, “when the even was come”.  It was after sunset, night time now, Tuesday night into Wednesday morning when they are celebrating the Passover meal and then leave to go to Mount Olives.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.  And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, drink you all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”  (Matthew 26:26-28).

After the meal they left the room where they were and went to Mount Olives where Jesus prayed.  It would have been Tuesday night into Wednesday morning when this transpired.  It was during this time period that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to death.  The scriptures indicate this all happened during the night into the next morning when it was that day that they executed Him.  That would place the crucifixion on Wednesday, during the daylight hours of that week when Jesus dies on the cross. (Matthew 26:30 thru Matthew 27:55).

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?  That is to say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, this man calls for Elias.  And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.  The rest said, let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.  Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”  (Matthew 27:46-50)

“When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:  He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.  And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed. (Matthew 27:57-60)

Notice the next events outlined in Luke 23. Jesus’ moment of death, as well as His hasty burial because of the oncoming Sabbath that was going to begin at sundown.  This is also narrated in Luke 23:46-53.

John also writes, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was a high day,) sought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. (John 19:31)

Luke 23:54 also states, “That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.”  Could that day they are talking about here be the Saturday Sabbath?  If He was placed in the tomb at sunset of the day He was crucified, that means the first full day He was in the tomb would have been Saturday.  But the scriptures, thru Jonas told us that Jesus was going to be the tomb for three days.  That day could not possibly be the Saturday Sabbath.

Many assume that it is the weekly Sabbath mentioned here, and that Jesus was therefore crucified on a Friday. But John 19:31 shows that this approaching Sabbath “was a high day”—not the weekly Sabbath (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) but the first day of Unleavened Bread, which is one of God’s annual high, or Sabbath, days.   John wrote; “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was a high day,).” (John 19:31). 

These feasts are explained in the Old Testament.  “These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their seasons.  In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’s Passover.  And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the LORD: seven days you must eat unleavened bread.  In the first day you shall have a holy convocation: you shall do no servile work therein.  (Leviticus 23:4-7)

The weekly Sabbath is not a Jewish “High Day”, therefore the next day did not necessarily have to be Saturday, it could have been another day of the week.  Exodus 12:16-17 and Leviticus 23:6-7 describe Jewish High Days. These annual Holy Days could—and usually did—fall on days of the week other than the regular weekly Sabbath day.

If we use the sign from the prophet Jonah as a benchmark for identifying the day of the week Jesus was crucified, three days before a Sunday resurrection would place the crucifixion on Wednesday. This high-day Sabbath would have to have been Wednesday during the night and Thursday during the day.

Luke 23:56 says that the women, after seeing Christ’s body being laid in the tomb just before sunset, “returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils” for the final preparation of the body.  They could not have done this work on a Saturday Sabbath or a High Day Sabbath since it would have been considered a violation of the Sabbath. 

The day that they prepared the spices would have been the next day, making it now Friday, since they celebrated the High Day on Thursday. This is verified by Mark’s account, which states, “Now when the Sabbath was past (Thursday), Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, (Friday [which they would not have purchased on the high-day Sabbath {Thursday}, or a Saturday Sabbath]), that they might come and anoint Him” (Mark 16:1).  This they were planning to do on Sunday morning, the first day of the week.

The women waited until the annual “high day” Sabbath was over before they bought and prepared the spices to be used to anoint Jesus’ body. Then, after purchasing and preparing the spices and oils on Friday, “they rested on the Saturday Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). This second Sabbath mentioned in the Gospel accounts is the regular weekly Sabbath, observed from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

By comparing details in both Gospels—where Mark tells us the women bought spices after the Sabbath and Luke relates that they prepared the spices before resting on the Sabbath—we can clearly see that two different Sabbaths are mentioned. The first, as John 19:31 tells us, was a “high day”—the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread—which, in A.D. 31, fell on a Thursday. The second was the weekly seventh-day Sabbath.

After the women rested on the regular weekly Saturday Sabbath, they went to Jesus’ tomb early on the first day of the week, which would have been Sunday, “while it was still dark” (John 20:1), and found that He had already been resurrected (Matthew 28:1-6; Luke 24:1-3).  Jesus was actually resurrected before daylight which would mean that the resurrection occurred sometime during the night.

“And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came to the sepulcher at the rising of the sun.  And they said among themselves, who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher?  And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.  And entering into the sepulcher, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.  And he said to them, be not affrighted: You seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.  (Mark 16:2-6)

The details in all four Gospel accounts indicate that the picture is that Jesus was crucified and entombed late on Wednesday afternoon at dusk, just before a Sabbath began at sunset.  Because of the sign given by Jonah, that day could not have been Friday.  It had to be another day of the week, the scriptures indicate it was probably an annual High Day that fell that year on Thursday. It was a high-day Sabbath, lasting from Wednesday sunset to Thursday sunset that week, rather than the regular weekly Sabbath, lasting from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

He remained in the tomb from Wednesday at sunset until Saturday at sunset, when He rose from the dead. While no one witnessed His resurrection (which took place inside a sealed tomb), it had to have happened near sunset on Saturday, exactly three days and three nights after His body was entombed. It could not have happened on Sunday morning, because when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb that morning before sunrise, “while it was still dark,” she found the stone already had been rolled away and the tomb empty.

We can be assured that the length of His entombment that Jesus gave as proof He was the Messiah was exactly as long as He foretold, which is proof that He is the Son of God.  To ignore this would disprove His claim that He was the Messiah.  Jesus rose precisely three days and three nights after He was placed in the tomb.

Because most people do not understand the biblical high days Jesus Christ and His followers kept, they fail to understand the chronological details so accurately preserved for us in the Gospels.