“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.
