Walking With Christ

Exodus 12:2 (2)This month (Nisan) shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. (3)Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household.(ESV)
Exodus 12:5-6 (5)Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, (6)and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.(ESV)
Before Exodus, Nisan was the seventh month. After the Exodus, Nisan became the first month of the Hebrew religious calendar. This resetting of the Jewish calendar means that all post-Exodus references to a month by number do not align with the pre-Exodus references. The lambs that were chosen were to be inspected to be sure they were free from spot or blemish. They had four days to fully examine this lamb.
The 14th day of Nisan is the preparation day for the Passover. The is the day that the sacrificial lambs are to be slaughtered at twilight.

John 12:1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.(ESV)
Six days before Passover would be the 9th. This means that the triumphal entry took place on the 10th day of Nisan. Christ was crucified on the 14th, which means that He was resurrected on the 17th. Notice the pattern, yet? Let me add more layers.

Genesis 7:10-11 (10)And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. (11)In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.(ESV)
Note the day that the waters burst forth. Seven days before that would have been the 10th.

Genesis 8:4 and in the seventh month (Nisan), on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.(ESV)
Note the day that the ark came to rest on the mountain.

Further in Exodus 12 we see that at midnight on the Passover is when the Lord struck down all of the firstborn in Egypt. It was immediately that Pharaoh told Moses and Aaron to take their people and flocks and go. A collection of ancient Jewish commentaries called the Midrash and Jewish tradition teaches that the journey to the Red Sea took three days. This means that the Red Sea crossing would have taken place on the 17th of Nisan.

Noah waited inside the ark for forty days after touching down on the mountain before he sent out the raven. Jesus walked with His disciples and others for forty days before ascending into heaven.

There are a lot of mentions of olives in the bible but the first ever mention of olives, branches or otherwise, is when the dove came back to Noah on the second dove release. To this day, a dove carrying an olive branch is a sign of peace. Jesus spent His final free night in the garden of Gethsemane which is translated as ‘olive press’. This is the place where great pressure is applied to the olive to remove the oils that are highly sought after. This is the very place where Jesus sweated blood because of the immense pressure He was under. Jesus gave the sermon on the mount from and ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives. This is a literal olive grove where the King of Peace brought a message of peace. This is also very near to where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It’s also the believed location that Jesus will return to earth because the angels in Acts 1 told the disciples that Jesus would return in the same way they saw Him leave. Finally, and perhaps most frighteningly, in Zechariah 14 we see that the Lord will return to the Mount of Olives and the mountain will be split in two. This is a literal breaking of the olive branch. This is the moment that Jesus returns and brings judgement.

There is considerable amounts of overlap between the story of Noah’s ark and the crucifixion of Jesus. The repeated layers of each theme weave themselves through many of the stories that we read, sometimes without us ever realizing the thread is there.