Crucified at the Appointed Time & Place
Matt 20:18 Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes. And they will condemn Him to death, (19) And deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised.Acts 2:23 This man, delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you, through the hand of lawless men, nailed to a cross and killed;
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Jesus knew that, according to the prophecy, He had to be killed on the Passover as the Lamb of God. The prophecies in the Old Testament specified both the time and the place He would be put to death. The Man-Savior had been ministering for over three years in the despised region of Galilee, far from the holy temple and the holy city, the place where it was necessary for Him to die for the accomplishment of God's
eternal plan. As the Lamb of God (John 1:29), He had to be offered to God at Mount Moriah, where Abraham offered Isaac and enjoyed God's provision of a ram as a substitute for his son (Gen. 22:2, 9-14) and where the temple was built in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 3:1). It had to be there that He would be delivered, according to the counsel determined by the Trinity of the Godhead (Acts 2:23), to the Jewish leaders and there be rejected by them as the builders of God's building (Acts 4:11). It was also there that He had to be crucified according to the Roman style of punishment (John 18:31-32; 19:6, 14-15) to fulfill the type concerning the kind of death He would die (Num. 21:8-9; John 3:14). Moreover, that was the very year that Messiah (Christ) was to be cut off (killed) according to Daniel's prophecy (Dan. 9:24-26). Furthermore, as the Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7) He had to be killed in the month of the Passover (Exo. 12:1-11). Hence, He had to go to Jerusalem before the Passover (John 12:1; Mark 14:1) so that He might die there on the day of the Passover (John 18:28) at both the place and the time foreordained by God.
[Continued tomorrow]