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When the wise men came to King Herod they asked him, "Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His STAR in the east and are come to worship Him ... when they saw the STAR they rejoiced" Matthew 2:2&1O.
Concerning the sun, moon and stars, we are told they shall "be for signs, and for seasons and for days and years" - Genesis 1:14. The word 'seasons' (Hebrew moed) means 'appointed times'. The coming of the Lord Jesus into this world was according to God's great plan; His 'appointed times', for we read: "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman" - Galatians 4:4.
Even the events of His death, and the timing of it, were determined by God. The Jews, for a number of reasons, were desperate to destroy the Carpenter from Nazareth, but they had made up their minds, "Not on the feast day [Passover], lest there be an uproar [riot] of the people" - Mark 14:2. Passover was an annual feast when the Jews remembered their great deliverance from the bondage and tyranny of Egypt many centuries earlier. Each home had applied the blood of a sacrificial lamb to the door posts and lintel. They closed the door and hid behind the blood of the lamb. They would readily acknowledge that it was the blood that saved them; not their own righteousness or riches. Unknown to the Jews, this feast was really a figure of that time when Jesus, the true 'Lamb of God' (John 1:29), would shed His 'precious blood' on Golgotha's cruel cross to deliver helpless sinners from the tyranny and servitude of sin and Satan. He died during the Passover feast. He could, and would, die at no other time. It had to be the Passover, God's 'appointed time'! "Our passover, Christ, is sacrificed for us" - 1 Corinthians 5:7.
God had also determined that His Son would rise from among the dead and even the timing of this mighty event was according to God's counsel. He would rise three days after His death, for He Himself said, "For even as Jonas was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights, thus shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights" - Matthew 12:39.
God had also marked out the very day of the week His Son would rise. John tells us that Christ rose again "on the first day of the week" - John 20:1. The Sabbath (Saturday) was the last day of the Jewish week so Christ was raised to life again on a Sunday. The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian believers on the subject of resurrection, calls Christ 'the FIRST-FRUITS of those fallen asleep' (1 Corinthians 15:20), meaning that Christ's resurrection is the guarantee of their resurrection. When Paul uses the expression 'FIRST-FRUITS', he has in mind another Old Testament Jewish feast known as the Feast of First-fruits. At the time of harvest, the priest would take a sheaf (the first sheaf, the first-fruits) and wave it before the Lord. This symbolic gesture declared the fact that a larger harvest of sheaves was to follow. But upon which day of the week did the priest wave this barley sheaf? "On the next day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it" - Leviticus 23:11. This day is obviously the SUNDAY! It is therefore no surprise to find that Christ, 'the FIRST-FRUITS', was raised on a Sunday, God's predetermined day!
Mirror on Creation
5. On Day Five God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens" [NASV]. So we have the creation of all water creatures and all airborne creatures, great and small.
As mentioned previously, the Saviour spent much time by the
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