The first Feast in the year starts with Passover but you have to be careful because at the same time there is also the Feast of Unleavened Bread and First Fruits inside the Passover time period. We will also go through the different symbolisms within the Feast that Jesus fulfilled. Let us make one thing clear straight away here, the word fulfill, does not imply it is done and dusted and no longer relevant. It means that it has been filled up with the substance to show it as it was supposed to have been seen before all the religious leaders added their own ideas, doctrines, philosophy s, laws, Jesus came to live them as God had originally intended when they were given.

All three of the feasts mentioned are part of what is called the Spring Feasts of the Lord you also need to include Shavout (Pentecost) to have all the spring feasts. Jesus has fulfilled all of these feast including all the prophesies that go with them.

Passover is a pilgrimage feast, meaning everyone goes to Jerusalem to celebrate it, there are some consequences if you do not go.

4 days before Passover, the High Priest would leave the Temple and walk to Bethlehem to select and bring back the Lamb for the Passover sacrifice. As he returns along the road and gets to the gate of Jerusalem all the other priests would be lining the road and would shout, "Behold the Lamb" all the people in Jerusalem would rush out shouting and waving palm branches. The High Priest carries the sacrificial Lamb up to the Temple where it is inspected for the next 4 days for any blemish or fault.

4 days before Passover on this year, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. His disciples shout "Mark 11: 10 Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!." as they pass through the gates of Jerusalem and the people all rush out shouting and waving palm throngs. It cannot be changed the feast has always since it was given been done this way. The Christian gentile church call this Palm Sunday. This fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." This is the way that messianic King was to enter Jerusalem. One of the Psalms that is quoted is Psalm 118. It was customary for the Jews to sing Psalms 113-118, People would have sung these Psalms even if Jesus was not there. Even the call of Hosanna or save us was something Jewish people would call out aside from any faith in Jesus Hosanna is Hebrew for “Save, I pray” or “Help please.” It is the Hebrew for the what we read in Psalm 118:25, “Lord, save us!”. The Jews who were shouting Hosanna knew exactly what they wanted. They wanted salvation from the Romans. They want salvation from foreign occupation and taxes. They wanted salvation from all those who oppressed them and took advantage. of them. Every Jew would know Zechariah’s messianic prophecy. That’s why the crowds hailed Jesus as their king. In the ancient Middle Eastern world, leaders rode horses if they rode to war, but donkeys if they came in peace. First Kings 1:33 mentions Solomon riding a donkey on the day he was recognized as the new king of Israel. According to Jewish tradition, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) used to appear through the eastern Gate,also called the Golden Gate, and will appear again when the Anointed One (Messiah) comes (Ezekiel 44:1–3) The gate is believed to be the place from which Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, thus implying his own messianic status. Another reason Jesus rode the donkey was because Abraham carried Issac up to Mount Moriah as a sacrifice on a donkey, therefore according to the old covenant, what God asked Abraham to do, God himself must also do.

For the next 4 days Jesus is seen in the Temple teaching and answering questions. Matthew 21:28 to 23:39, Mark 12:1-44 and Luke 20:9-21:4 gives us the reason why the high priest and temple priests had no choice but to silence Jesus asap.

On that last day, the trial would have taken place in front of the 71 members of the Sanhedrin, they sit in a semi circle, there main vocation is for the defense of the accused. The head is the high priest and then we have 70 other highly qualified judges, they have presided over many trials, they know the Law inside out, they are the top legal minds in the whole country of Israel. The legal system they have is supposed to make it impossible to convict an innocent man. They broke every rule in the book, they broke every procedure to convict Jesus, the trial was an illegal trial from the very start and I am not saying that because I am a Christian, I am saying it because of the rules they had already set down since the time of Moses about how to conduct an assembly. At the start of the trial one of the members slaps Jesus because of the way He answers a question, that is most certainly not allowed. Any trial under the Jewish legal system is not allowed to start until after the morning sacrifice, witnesses who are called have to agree exactly in everything that they say, they are not allowed to give hear say evidence, it must be first hand, they are not allowed to meet or hear each others testimony, if any give a slightly different rendition then the accused is not guilty. The Sanhedrin are supposed to act as the convicted persons defense, they are looking for any small insignificant difference to stop the guilty verdict. Once the trial is concluded, they, all 71 of them are supposed to go home and deliberate the case overnight and it is their duty to try to find any reason to not proceed with the guilty verdict. But not just the 71, the court room would have been filled with all the young aspiring upcoming legal minds in the nation, if any one of them can come up with a reason, no matter how small that revokes the guilty verdict, their reward is instant promotion to be a life long member of the Sanhedrin. Although they can give a guilty verdict, they can only pass a death sentence by stoning, they cannot pass a crucifixion sentence, that is only allowed to be passed by the Romans. Caiaphas who is getting absolutely nowhere with this trial finally has to change the accusation to that of self confessed blasphemy so further on in chapter 14, verse 61 "the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" and in verse 62 "Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." By their own legal system it is not allowed for the accused self confession to convict that person, there has to be witnesses who will also testify to the fact. Caiaphas decides to get Pilate to deliver the guilty verdict and death sentence that he has failed to get.

During the first trial in front of Pilate, Pilate twice says, "I find no fault in him" the High Priest would usually say this about the Lamb in the Temple at the end of the 4 days of inspection. He sends Jesus to Herod, Pilate and Herod become friends on this day, once more Pilate tries to release Jesus and says he finds no fault in Jesus, but the pressure from the High Priest and the other Sanhedrin grows and Pilate finally relents and allows the crucifixion to take place, with the blood of the execution, e.g. the guilt, being on the heads of the Sanhedrin and their sons. Forty years later to the day, the Romans have surrounded Jerusalem and are about to ransack the city and destroy the Temple, casting the Jews out into exile for approximately 2000 years. All of the prophetic shadow picture of the feast must be fulfilled, down to the last little detail and exactly as the Jews have been rehearsing it since they were in Egypt.

So Jesus was crucified because He said he was the Son of God, in their eyes blasphemy. The man who Pilate releases is Barabbas, the meaning of his name in Hebrew is "Bar" meaning son and "abbas", meaning father so his name means Son of the Father, Jesus is crucified in his place, Barabbas is a shadow picture of us.

What the Christian church has got to realise is that Israel was commanded to kill the lamb, they had to, if they didn't all would have been destroyed. You should be glad that they were given the responsibility for doing that and not us. The Jews could not crucify, they were not allowed under the Roman Law, only the Romans are allowed to put anyone to death by crucifixion.

The act of crucifixion has been perfected into a fine art by the Roman Soldiers. All of Jesus bones would have been out of place Psalm 22:14 tells us "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.", Luke 22:44 "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." gives us an idea of the anxiety that Jesus is going through, it is called "Hematidrosis" a very rare phenomenon, the blood vessels rupture in the sweat glands. But neither of these killed Jesus, the sin of the world was placed on to Him, for the first time ever Jesus is removed from the presence of His Father, He is feeling the wrath of God and his heart is breaking as we see in Matthew 27:46 "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 hast thou forsaken me?", then in Luke 23:46: "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost." Jesus entrusted his spirit into the hands of God, the hands of his Father, Jesus trusted God his Father to his last breath even though He was made sin. The people around the cross mocked and jeered saying that he could save others but not himself when in reality Matthew 26 : 53 :- Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?. One legion is 6,000 angels, so if you simply multiply that number by twelve, you’ll discover that twelve legions of angels would include a minimum of 72,000 angels. Isaiah 37:36 records that a single angel obliterated 185,000 men in one night. So a simple maths sum of 185,000 times 72,000 tells us the minimum number of men who would die is 13 billion 3 hundred and 20 million or if you like it in number 13,320,000,000, that is the minimum strength of the army of angels Jesus could have called on. That is more than the population of the earth today, which is about 7.6 billion. Think about that for a moment as you ponder was it the nails that kept Jesus on the cross.

This is also the same day as God gave his promise to Abraham that his descendants would come up out of Egypt.

Now if we look at the Passover meal we find that on the Passover table there are 4 cups of wine, The first one is called the cup of Sanctification, the second is called the cup of Instruction, the third is the cup of Redemption and the forth is the cup of Praise. These four cups are modeled after the promises that God gave to Moses for the children of Israel and they are used to tell and teach the story of the Exodus to the children. Additionally you will see three pieces of unleavened bread. The first piece is eaten by the father the second piece (called the Afikomen) is broken in half and one half is wrapped in a cloth and then hidden and a pillow is placed in front of it, the pillow is called the stone and later on in the meal the children are sent to find the hidden half. They play a game and return saying that the stone has been moved and only the cloth is left. Does this sound slightly familiar? This is how Jesus was teaching his disciples at the last supper by keeping the Passover. We in the Christian communion take a small piece of bread and a cup and try to teach the same thing about the death burial and resurrection, We actually take the Afikomen bread and the cup of Redemption but we don't know them by those names, the old church fathers changed the commandments of the Lord into a new tradition, but we devalue it and loose the whole meaning.

When the Messiah told us to remember him by the eating of this bread and drinking of this cup, he was connecting himself to remember the promise made to Abraham that he had a son promised to him and that Abraham had promised to us that God would provide the Lamb in that place for us. It is all connected, it is all the same message, there is no Old or New testament.

One more piece of info, that piece of bread called the Afikomen, the Hebrew meaning is "It is fulfilled" or "It is Finished" so if you had been stood at the foot of the cross where Jesus was crucified you would have heard Him say "Afikomen", those were his last words.
The Hebrew definition of "fulfilled" is this is the best part it fills it up to its full meaning and enriches it.

I feel I have to give a warning here about those who say that we must obey and celebrate these feasts.
King James Bible : Romans 14:
5: One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
6: He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.
We are clearly told here by the Apostle Paul that if you want to remember and celebrate a day unto the Lord, then do it, but if you do not wish to keep the celebration then dont. We are not allowed to judge anyone for doing it one way or the other. My thoughts here are why do you wish to hold onto the shadow picture of Jesus when you have the real Jesus living with you and in you.