Passover and Good Friday.
Exodus 12: 1-51u
We take so much for granted. We walk outside and experience the world around us, often without any thought of its majesty and grandeur. We see the night sky, the trees, the ocean, the mountains, any of which is immense enough to overwhelm us as we try to consider its beauty and magnitude. In our defense, there has never been a time when those things did not exist. So, it would be easy for us to take them for granted. However, there was a time they did not exist. In fact, there was a time when nothing existed at all - nothing, that is, except the God that made all we see and experience. And, it is His existence and activity that should cause us to marvel to an even greater degree.
Passover is a Jewish festival celebrating the exodus from Egypt and the Israelites’ freedom from slavery to the Egyptians. The Feast of Passover, along with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, was the first of the festivals to be commanded by God for Israel to observe (see Exodus 12).
Verse 2 – This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.
This verse shows us how important this event is for Israel. It marks their turning point. Before this day, they were a tribe of sojourners. Then they were immigrants. Then they were slaves. Now they are going to be a nation. They are going to get their own calendar. It will mark their independence. It will mark their birth as a nation. Like our calendar is marked in two parts, B.C. and A.D , their history was marked in two parts. Before the Passover. And after the Passover. Their faith in God’s promise and obedience to His command would result in their deliverance and freedom.
And just as the Passover marked their birth as a nation so when we accept Christ we are born again. Our lives can also be divided into two parts. The first part is marked by slavery to sin, bondage to this world. Then Christ delivers us. He sets us free. He gives us a future. He makes us be born again. And everything changes, the old has passed away and the new has come. Our spiritual journey with God begins. Our "born again" day is our spiritual birthday, day one of a new calendar.
The night of the first Passover was the night of the tenth plague. On that fateful night, God told the Israelites to sacrifice a spotless lamb and mark their doorposts and lintels with its blood (Exodus 12:21–22). Then, when the Lord passed through the nation, He would “pass over” the households that showed the blood (verse 23). In a very real way, the blood of the lamb saved the Israelites from death, as it kept the destroyer from entering their homes. The Israelites were saved from the plague, and their firstborn children stayed alive. From then on, every firstborn son of the Israelites belonged to the Lord and had to be redeemed with a sacrifice (Exodus 13:1–2, 12; cf. Luke 2:22–24).
One of the things that made this judgment so powerful was the people of Egypt thought Pharaoh was a god. Pharaoh considered himself a divine ruler who held life and death in his hands. All the plagues that hit Egypt were blows to the power of the Egyptian gods. And the death of the first born was the greatest blow to their religious system. This would bring the reality of death and judgment to every home in Egypt, from Pharaoh's household to the most humble home. No one was exempt.
The LORD God is holy and He must punish sin. There are no exceptions.
Each Hebrew family was responsible for selecting a lamb (Exodus 12:3–5).
Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, "On the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers' households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb."
Every person/household had to have their own lamb – Every person ate of it. In like manner, each person must repent of their own sins and trust Jesus personally.
No bones can be broken (Exodus 12:46 , John 19:31-36)
The meat of the lamb had to be eaten (12:8–11).
Moses gave instruction to the people on how to prepare for their journey in Exodus 12:8–11.
They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord's Passover. " Why roasted and not boiled? Because you have to cut the meat into smaller blocks and break the bones to fit the pot. By doing so the command "do not break the bones" could not be obeyed. Roasting does not break any bones.
Jesus is food for the believer to eat daily. We have to appropriate the provision God has made in Jesus Christ. Not only did God provide for their salvation from the death angel, but He also pro-vided nourishment for their travel. Jesus not only saves us from sin, but He also provides daily bread for our spiritual lives. We must come to Him for nourishment every day. What we ate for spiritual food yesterday will not carry over for today or tomorrow. It is a daily feasting on Christ.
In John 6:51–58 Jesus explains what I mean.
"I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."
Change the metaphor and the need for daily sustenance becomes perfectly clear. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). We appropriate Christ by faith.
No leftovers. All signs of the lamb should be gone by morning. And Jesus was taken down from the cross before nightfall, because the next day was the Sabbath.
They were to eat it in haste. If they delayed a day it would too late. In similar manner, salvation is urgent. You must make haste to believe while there is still opportunity.
The lamb is to be in the prime of its life.
"Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats" (v. 5).
Jesus Christ was thirty-three years old in the prime of his life. There was no reason for Him to die.
The Passover lamb was "unblemished" (vv. 5, 6).
It was kept under scrutiny and carefully watched to make sure it was perfect for the sacrifice.
Jesus Christ was carefully observed for three years. The Jewish leaders and the people scrutinized him. One of those who knew Him best observed that He was "as if a lamb unblemished and spotless" (1 Peter 1:19). He went on to add that Christ, "who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously . . . " (1 Peter 2:22–23). The word for "unblemished," "without blemish" is used of a sacrifice without spot or blemish and morally of a person who is without blemish, faultless and unblameable.
The Passover lamb had to be slain (12:6).
"You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight" (Exodus 12:6).
First they select the lamb and get it from the flock. Then they keep it for four days. Some translations actually say to “take care of it” for that amount of time. Why is that? What would this accomplish?
I think the answer is simple. By requiring the families to care for the lamb separately from the flock for four days would help them to realize that the sacrifice was personal. It was not just a nameless, faceless lamb from among many. It was a lamb that had been with them. It would live with them in their house for four days. They would feed it and care for it. Perhaps they would grow to be fond of the lamb. They would see its personality. And they would know it was innocent of what was going to happen. All of this was designed by God to make them know that the sacrifice was personal. This innocent lamb was taking the punishment for their sins.
It would drive the emotion home. During those four days they would be reminded each time the lamb bleated that it was going to die for them. It was going to face death so that they would be spared.
Just as those lambs were a personal sacrifice for individuals, so Jesus is a personal sacrifice for each of us. Jesus did not die for a bunch of nameless, faceless people. He did not just die for the world in general. He died for you personally as a direct substitute. . And He died for me and for you. It was not a generic sacrifice for generic sins. It was personal.
And just as those people killed the lamb, so we are responsible for Jesus’ death. We were not there, but our sins put him there. People like us nailed him there. Like the Passover lamb, Jesus lived in and among them before they turned on Him and killed Him.
But here is a difference between the Passover lamb. The Passover lamb could not choose his fate. Jesus did. He gave up His life to bring us out of slavery to sin. He gave up His life to bring us freedom. He knew what it was going to cost and He went willingly. He did it because He loves you. He did it because He wants to cleanse you.
In order to receive this salvation, you must have a personal connection to the lamb. He is not just a sacrifice for the world. He is your Passover lamb. He must be the sacrifice for you and for yours sins specifically. You must come to Him ask Him to save you, admitting that you cannot save yourself.
Do you have a personal connection to the Jesus, the lamb of God?
If not, there is only condemnation.
The blood of the lamb had to be applied (12:8).
"Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it" (Exodus 12:8). The blood of the lamb was not to be put on threshold. It was not to be trampled on. Do not trample on the blood of the Lamb of God. How tragic when men demean the blood of God.
Jesus made it imperatively clear that He must be accepted by faith in order to appropriate His salvation. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The apostle John summarizes everything with these words: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (3:36).
The condemnation of those without the lamb
Verse 12-13 – For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
The people who believed in God and obeyed His commands would be preserved. The people who did not believe in God and did not obey His commands would be condemned. Their Egyptian gods were proved powerless. Their hope in other means of salvation would be dashed. They would be judged.
This will be the same fate of all of those who do not come to Jesus, the Lamb of God, for forgiveness of sins.
II. The Passover Memorialized (13-20)
Exodus 12:14 – This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.
The Passover and the Exodus were the most important events in Israel’s history. It was their Independence Day. And more than that, through the events surrounding the Passover, God revealed Himself to His people. They saw firsthand God’s power, God’s authority, God’s sovereignty, God’s rule over nature, God’s defeat of His enemies, and His personal grace and care for His people.
But people have short term memories. It was so easy for them to forget what God had done on their behalf.
Therefore God instituted the Passover in order that they would remember these things. If they remembered and appreciated what God had done for them, they would be much less likely to stray away from Him. But when they forgot God, then they would go after the world and idols.
This event was important. God would remind them of it many times. The statement,
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” occurs at least ten times in Scripture (Exodus , Leviticus Numbers , Deuteronomy and Psalms )
And time and again throughout the Old Testament, God’s people look back on the Exodus to remind themselves of God’s faithfulness (Psalm 29, 78).
But at other times they forgot. For much of the period of the kings, they did not celebrate this festival. They forgot what God had done for them. Forgetting God’s miracles and providence were part of the reason they abandoned their faith, doubted God, and turned to idols. After all, we have seen that God completely destroyed the pagan gods of Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth at this time.
That lamb’s sacrifice was directly connected to their own deliverance. It wasn’t just some lamb somewhere who died for some person somewhere. That specific lamb died for them. And see how it died? It died by their own hand.
Peter observed, Christ "Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed (1 Peter 2:24). Romans 5:6, 8-9 explains why He had to die. "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him."
"Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. . . It is a night to be observed for the Lord for having brought them out from the land of Egypt; this night is for the Lord, to be observed by all the sons of Israel throughout their generations" (Exodus 12:14, 42).
On the night before His death, Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover meal (Matthew 26:26f). However, that night this celebration was more than a Passover; it was the beginning of a memorial supper celebrating God's new covenant with man. Properly officiated the ordinance of the Lord's Supper is a reminder of what Jesus accomplished on our behalf as our Passover lamb.
The apostle Paul gave instruction to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11:23–27.
"For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord."
Commanding them to remember the Exodus was one way to protect them from straying.
Deuteronomy 6:12 – Then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
'We do the same thing. We forget God’s mercies, forget to say, “thank you” and forget the con-sequences of sin, the guilt and the shame, when we repeat the same sin again.
Why do we forget? We forget because we don’t value something enough. We forget because we don’t make the proper effort to remember. Here God has the people take very specific steps to memorialize this event to ensure that they won’t forget what God has done. Every aspect of this festival serves a purpose to remind them of some aspect of the Exodus.
The apostle Paul told the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:7–8). "Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
The Passover was perfect protection God's judgment (12:12–13, 23).
There was only one way to be saved that dreadful night in Egypt when the angel of death came to inflict judgment.
For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. . . For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you" (Exodus 12:12–13, 23).
The people who believed in God and obeyed His commands would be preserved. The people who did not believe in God and did not obey His commands would be condemned. Their Egyptian gods were proved powerless. Their hope in other means of salvation would be dashed. They would be judged.
The blood of the lamb on the door posts and lintels was the only means of escape.
Today there is only one means of escape from the wrath of God. I John 1:7–9 says, "if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving our-selves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
We are also reminded in Hebrews 9:27–28, "And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him."
God's people are saved through the blood of the lamb alone.
On that fateful night in Egypt, some were going to die and some were going to live. The death sentence was on all the firstborn in the land of Egypt (11:5), but the Lord “put a difference be-tween the Egyptians and Israel” (11:7).
The question is, why? Israel was certainly not delivered because of their righteousness. The Scripture is clear that they were guilty of the same sin and idolatry as the Egyptians (Josh. 24:14; Ezek. 23:8, 19). The reason God spared the firstborn in Israel was found within Himself. The first Passover and every following celebration of it was a reminder of grace of God. It is a reminder to every believer that the only reason he will not die the death of the wicked is because of grace of God.
The Exodus teaches that grace, demands atonement and redemption requires a price (1 Peter 1:18, 19). The Passover lamb was a vivid picture-prophecy that points directly and unquestionably to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
However, you must accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lamb. You must accept His blood as your only way of salvation. You also must accept the agony that Christ endured as my Passover lamb in the substitutionary process is the agony that I must endure in hell, if I refuse to allow Him to substitute for me. His pains, His suffering, His thirst, His enduring the wrath of God, His agonizing "why" from the cross, are a prophetic manifestation of what awaits every doomed sinner in the everlasting condemnation. Why would you want to go through an eternal hell when God has provided for you salvation in a perfect lamb?
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved today."
