Page 15 - TORCH Magazine - Issue #20

carpentry by Joseph, but He was also 12 when his parents found him in the temple, “about My Father’s business,” as Jesus Himself explained.
Later, Jesus began His earthly ministry at 30 years of age, which interestingly aligns with the ancient Jewish custom of “entering into one’s full strength” or life’s work at 30.
Jesus wasn’t just Jewish by birth – he referred to His Jewish brothers and sisters with affection. Matthew 25:40 says, “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
Jesus is referring to the Jewish people, and He has something to say about those who mistreat His brothers and sisters.
Jesus’s love for His own people couldn’t be better illustrated than in the second chapter of the book of Hebrews, where the author cites Psalm 22:22 to show how Jesus faithfully spoke of God the Father to the Jewish people. It says:
“I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.”
Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and was buried in the custom of a Jew. Those close followers who
supported Him in His
ministry – His disciples
– whom He called,
taught, entrusted
and commissioned were
also Jews.
Jesus spent time teaching in synagogues and in the Temple. Whilst He robustly challenged the narrative of the Pharisees at the time, Jesus never denied being Jewish.
Because He was Jewish,
Jesus observed the Biblical feasts. Christians believe
that not only did He
observe them, but His life’s purpose ultimately fulfilled them.
PASSOVER
We read in Matthew chapter 26 that Jesus ‘kept’ the Passover before His death. It mentions in the Gospels both the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover in verses 17-18. It says:
“Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?’
And He said, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, “The Teacher says, ‘My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.’”’”
The feast coinciding with Jesus’s crucifixion is not the only time Passover is mentioned in the Gospels. It was during the Passover that Jesus was found by
His parents in the Temple. They were in Jerusalem due to it being Passover.
During Jesus’s ministry, He cleansed the Temple just before the Passover
in John chapter 2. Later
in that chapter, we read that Jesus “went up” to Jerusalem for the Passover.
And in John chapter 6, it says the feeding of the five thousand was also just before Passover.
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