Israel’s Biblical New Year begins tomorrow, Mar 17, the first of Nisan.
Let’s look here at how Yeshua was fulfilling the Word of God, who gave a pattern for how the Jewish people were to keep the Passover. In Exodus, YHVH told Israel that their year would begin in the Spring/Aviv, on the first of the lunar month of Aviv/Nisan, marked by the New Moon. God told Israel that each family was to choose their lamb for the Passover, and it must be without any imperfections. They were to choose their lamb on the 10th of that first month. They were to examine it during the next four days, and, assuming that it was without blemish, to sacrifice it to YHVH on the 14th of the month, at the Full Moon.
Yeshua began His final ‘passion’ week in Jerusalem on Sonday. He was not the Jewish leaders’ choice of Deliverer and Redeemer, but He was GOD’s chosen Lamb of God – Messiah our Passover. Over each of the next four days, Yeshua was ‘examined’ by all the necessary authorities: by the scribes, the chief priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the High Priest; by the Roman governor Pilate, and by Herod. None of them could find any fault in Jesus; even Judas Iscariot confessed that he sinned by betraying an innocent man. The Jewish leaders had to bring in false witnesses to accuse Yeshua of some offense/sin in order to turn Him over to the Romans for a crime worthy of death. Yeshua was without spot or blemish – the perfectly innocent Lamb, suitable to be accepted by God on our behalf.
If we assume that the Sonday was the 10th of the Passover month, then the days till Thursday were the days of examining the Lamb, to be slaughtered on that Thursday, the 14th of Nisan. That would also agree with the only sign that Yeshua said that He would give to those who refused to acknowledge all the signs and wonders that He had already been doing to prove that He was indeed the promised Messiah, the Son of God: that, like Jonah the Prophet in the belly of the great fish, He would be in the heart of the Earth for three days and three nights — burying our sins with Him — the Son of God rising from among the dead early on Sonday before sunrise, the day after the Sabbath of that Passover week, to celebrate the First-Fruits of the harvest. The pre-existing uncreated Light who came into His creation as the light of the first day of creation brings this into our remembrance, as God brings born-again believers into His eternal light and rest to worship forever our Creator and Redeemer!
The Jewish New Year at the Feast of Trumpets in the Fall is really prophetically looking ahead to the salvation of ‘all Israel’ at the end of the age, when the Jewish Israeli people look upon Him (Yeshua/Jesus) whom we pierced, and have their sins forgiven based upon the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonements) sacrifice which the Messiah also accomplished in His Passover sacrifice. A really new beginning, and God will dwell in the midst of His people during the Millennial Kingdom: a real Jubilee!
