Over 1,000 Rehearsals

After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.    —Matthew 26:30

Spring and summer are seasons for weddings. Along with each wedding comes a wedding rehearsal. At each rehearsal, I usually direct the wedding party to walk through the service from beginning to end two times and maybe three if the details are complicated.

My understanding of rehearsals was greatly expanded this past year after reading a book by Mark Biltz, Blood Moons. The Blood Moon phenomenon concerns the four consecutive total lunar eclipses occurring three times in our modern era. During a total lunar eclipse, the moon appears blood red. NASA calls four total eclipses in a row a tetrad. In recent history, two tetrads have fallen on the Jewish feasts of Passover and Tabernacles (1948 and 1967).

What enlarged my understanding of rehearsals was the way the Jewish feasts represent rehearsals for the events in the life and ministry of Jesus. Leviticus 23 lists the Jewish feasts also called holy convocations or solemn assemblies: Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, Offering the First Fruits, The Festival of Weeks, The Festival of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and The Festival of Tabernacles.

The Hebrew word for convocation means something called out, a public meeting, also a rehearsal. The rehearsal concept is similar to the way we celebrate Holy Communion. 1 Corinthians 11:26 records, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” The sacrament and the Jewish feasts are present blessings that also point ahead to a coming reality. Here is where the rehearsal gets exciting.

After Jesus instituted Holy Communion at the Last Supper, a Jewish Passover meal, they sang a hymn and departed for the Mount of Olives where He would be arrested. Mark Biltz in Blood Moons remarks that we likely have the hymnbook and know the words to the song (51). The Jews sang the Psalms at Passover, particularly what is known as the Hallel, Psalms 113-118.

The last hymn Jesus sang before He was betrayed and arrested might have been Psalm 118, “I shall give thanks to You, for You have answered me, And You have become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone” (vss. 21-22). Just before Jesus is arrested and rejected by the Jewish leaders, He sings about the stone rejected by the builders becoming the chief cornerstone.

Think about it! The last words Jesus may have sung with His disciples before being tied (and nailed) to the Cross might have been, “The Lord is God, and He has given us light; Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar” (118:27).  Jesus, Himself, was the festival sacrifice tied to the altar, the Cross.

Most Christians acknowledge that the entire Mosaic sacrificial system pointed ahead to Jesus’ sacrificial death as the Lamb of God, His burial, and resurrection on Easter morning. But consider the preparation and rehearsal for these events. God commanded the Jews to celebrate these events each year. The Jewish people have been keeping these feasts for 1,500 years. They have rehearsed these great moments in the life of Jesus and salvation history over 1,500 times. We serve an awesome God!