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II. Jesus, the Final and Perfect Sacrifice

A. Jesus and Isaac

The New Testament sees Jesus as the Lamb of a new Passover.

But more than that, the New Testament presents His sacrifice on the cross as the final and perfect sacrifice that all the sacrifices of the Bible point to and look forward to.

As we noted in our last lesson, in the story of the "binding" of Isaac, the New Testament writers saw a foreshadowing of God's offering of his only beloved Son on the Cross (seeGenesis 22:12,15; John 3:16).

And it's not hard to find parallels in the two events:

A father sacrifices his only beloved son. After Ishmael was banished to the wilderness (seeGenesis 21:9-14), Isaac was Abraham's only hope of posterity - "your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love" (see Genesis 22:2).

The Gospel of John uses the same language to describe the offering of Jesus. "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son" (see John 3:16).

The Book of Hebrews says that Abraham was ready "to offer his only son" and that he had faith that God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19).

And it is interesting, isn't it, that "on the third day," Isaac was resuced from death (seeGenesis 22:4,11-12).

In addition to the parallel of a father offering his only son in the hope of resurrection, there are other parallels to point out.

Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac's shoulders (Genesis 22:6).

Jesus also is depicted as "carrying the cross himself" (see John 19:17), although, weakened by brutal beatings, he was unable to bear the weight of it the whole way (seeMark 15:21).

The victim goes willingly to his own sacrifice. Although in artwork, Isaac is often portrayed as a young boy, Jewish and Christian commentators pointed out that Isaac could not have been an unwilling victim.

He was a strong young man who could carry enough wood for a large sacrifice, and Abraham was well over a hundred years old. If Isaac had resisted at all, Abraham would not have been able to overcome him.

Like Christ, they believed, Isaac made himself an offering to God, as Jesus freely laid down his own life (see John 10:18) in obedience to His Father's will (Mark 14:36).

The sacrifice is in the mountains of Moriah. God told Abraham to "go to the land of Moriah" and sacrifice Isaac "on a height that I will point out to you" (Genesis 22:2).

Ancient tradition held that Solomon built the Temple on the spot where Abraham sacrificed Isaac (see 2 Chronicles 3:1).

The place where Abraham was willing to offer his own son became the place where God's people made all their offerings.

Golgatha, outside of Jerusalem, is also associated with the mount of Moriah. And there God himself offered His own Son.

God himself provides the victim for the sacrifice. When Isaac asked his father, "where is the sheep for the holocaust?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust" (Genesis 22:7-8).

He turned out to be right: when God's angel had stopped him from sacrificing Isaac, Abraham found a ram ready to be sacrificed instead (see Genesis 22:10-13).

For the final sacrifice, God provided as the new Lamb His only Son. As Paul said: He "did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all" (see Romans 8:32).

As we saw in the previous lesson, the binding of Isaac was a kind of pattern for the later sacrifice of the Passover, where once again a lamb took the place of the beloved firstborn son.

And, as we'll see, the New Testament writers were also careful to point out how closely the death of Jesus paralleled the Passover sacrifice.

B. Jesus the Passover Lamb

"For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7).

From the very beginning, Christians have seen Christ's death on the cross as the final Passover sacrifice. In most of the languages Christians speak, the word for Easter comes from the root pasch-, which comes from the Hebrew word for Passover. (English is the rare exception: our word Easter comes from an old pagan spring festival.)

That's why we continue to call Jesus the "Lamb of God," and that's why Christ appears as a Lamb in the symbolic visions of Revelation.

The Gospel writers point out obvious parallels to show us that Christ is the definitive Passover sacrifice:

The trial and execution of Jesus took place during the Passover festival (see Luke 22:1-2). All four Gospel writers take care to note the setting.

John gives us the added detail that Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified at "about noon" on the day of preparation (see John 19:14-16).

John, the only one of the Gospel writers to note this detail, had priestly connections (seeJohn 18:16, where John is "the other disciple" who knew the high priest).

He knew very well that the priests began to slaughter the Passover lambs at the sixth hour (that is, at noon) on the day of preparation. Clearly he means to show us that Jesus is the Passover Lamb being led to the slaughter.

None of Jesus' bones were broken. The soldiers had intended to break the legs of all the crucified criminals to make them die faster. But Jesus was already dead when the soldiers came to Him (see John 19:31-36). One of the soldiers pushed a lance into His side to make sure. His bones were not broken.

The fact is so significant to John that he feels compelled to assure us that "an eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true: he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may [come to] believe" (John 19:35).

Just to make sure we get the point, John tells us that "this happened so that the scripture passage might be fulfilled: 'Not a bone of it will be broken' " (John 19:36).

The "scripture" he refers to is in the instructions for preparing the Passover lamb: "You shall not break any of its bones" (Exodus 12:46; see also Numbers 9:12 and Psalm 34:20).

A hyssop branch with a sponge soaked in sour wine was lifted up to Jesus on the cross(see John 19:29). Hyssop branches were used for sprinkling the blood of the Passover lamb (see Exodus 12:22).

But Jesus was not only the sacrificial victim. The sacrifice was not offered by the soldiers who beat and killed Jesus: they intended only to kill a man, not to offer a sacrifice.

No, it was Jesus Christ who offered himself as the sacrifice. As our High Priest (seeHebrews 3:1), Jesus "handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma" (Ephesians 5:2).

Paul's words remind us of Exodus 29:18, where the sacrifice is being offered to consecrate Aaron's sons as priests.

What Paul intends to convey is that Christ is at once the Lamb offered in sacrifice and the High Priest who offers that sacrifice.

C. Jesus and the Todah

As we noted in our last lesson, the sacrifice of thanksgiving, or todah, was one of the most important aspects of worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.

The todah was offered in thanksgiving for deliverance from some grave danger. A good example of a todah psalm is Psalm 22. We recognize the first verse instantly: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" - the words Jesus shouted from the cross (see Mark 15:34).

It sounds like a cry of despair. But if we know the whole psalm - and the Jews who stood at the foot of the cross certainly would have known the whole psalm - we know that it ends in triumph.

The psalmist praised God for his deliverance. In adopting this psalm as among His last words, Jesus was not voicing despair but triumph: In a loud voice, He declared the certainty of God's salvation.

The todah offering was a sacrificial meal shared with friends. It included an offering of bread and wine. In fact, it resembled the sacrifice the king-priest Melchizedek shared with Abraham in thanksgiving for the rescue of the people of Salem (see Genesis 14:18-20).

Ancient rabbis taught that, after the coming of the Messiah, all sacrifices would cease except the todah, which would never cease to be offered throughout all eternity.

Or, to use terms that would have been familiar to the millions of Greek-speaking Jews in New Testament times: After the coming of the Christ, all sacrifices would cease except the Eucharist. For the Greek word eucharistia, like todah¸means "thanksgiving," and in fact some Jewish writers used eucharistia to translate the Hebrew todah.

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