Exodus: Jesus, The Passover Lamb
Preaching Christ Through the Bible |
Exodus: Jesus, the Passover Lamb
Exodus 12:3-14
3Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 7“Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. 12For 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. 13The 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. 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.
As we continue in our series through the books of the Bible, I pray we are going to see what many Christians have discovered, which is the “scarlet thread through the Bible.” You see, there is an ongoing theme that is met through the pages of the Scriptures. That scarlet thread is none other than the redemption and deliverance brought about by Jesus Himself. It shows that the Scriptures have their united theme found in Jesus alone. Pastor Jerry showed us the beginning of that thread in the book of Genesis. Today, we will continue down that line and see the ongoing strand of Jesus in the book of Exodus.
Now before we start, I think most of us agree that we love celebrations, right? A lot of us love going to parties. Being a BCI pastor for five years now, I don’t remember how many parties I’ve been invited to and had attended. We like being reminded of the good things in our lives, and that’s why we have celebrations for everything. Whether it be weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and even gender reveals, it seems like we can have a party for everything. Just a couple of weeks ago, a lot of us celebrated New Year’s Eve. Although it might have been the strangest New Year’s Eve party we had because it’s 2020, most of us still celebrated because we hope that we can leave behind what happened the past year. We are hoping that 2021 will be different. We have hope that this year will be much better than last year. I am pretty certain that this hope was on our minds when the clock hit midnight on December 31st.
In the passage we just read, God Himself instituted a feast called the Passover. However, this feast is much more unique than our regular celebrations. Part of it is a recollection of God’s people’s suffering brought by injustice and slavery under Egypt. The other part is the remembrance of the great deliverance God had brought to the Israelites. Today we will focus on the main course of that feast, the lamb. This lamb during Passover was not just like a turkey that we have on our Thanksgiving. It was so much more. Today, I hope we realize how the Passover lamb’s sacrifice carries so much meaning in our lives and faith today.
I. The Need for a Passover Lamb
“every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a
Household.” –Exodus 12:3
Before we head onto our passage, let’s have a quick background on the book of Exodus. In Genesis, after the Creation and the Flood narrative, we see the story of the Patriarchs. God chose Abraham and his family to make an everlasting covenant with. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s stories culminate in Jacob being given a new name––Israel–– and having 12 sons later. One of those sons was Joseph. Through God’s providence, he became an important government official in Egypt as he saved this empire from a global famine. Joseph then brought his family to Egypt as they grew exponentially inside its walls. Many decades later, Joseph passed away, and a new Pharaoh reigned on the throne who did not know who Jacob was. This new Pharaoh became fearful of the Israelites and sought to enslave them and make their lives miserable. God then calls on Moses through the burning bush to free the Israelites from the slavery and injustice caused by the Egyptians.
Moses confronts the then reigning Pharaoh and asks him to let the Israelites go free as Yahweh had directed. The Pharaoh rejected this request. In Exodus 5:2, he says, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” God then brings ten plagues to the land of Egypt to show to Pharaoh who Yahweh truly was. We see the climax of these plagues in the last one. God told Moses that He would send the “destroyer” to every household, and He will take the life of all the male firstborns from each family. However, God made a way for the Israelites to escape this plague. By God’s grace, He provided a way through the Passover lamb.
In our passage, we see God told Moses that every family needed to have a lamb. However, if one’s household was small, they could share with another small household. Josephus, the historian, said that 10-20 people or 2-3 families could share one lamb. This lamb needed to be a male and should be no older than one year old. The lamb was either a sheep or goat. It needed to be without blemish or as perfect as it could be. They would choose a lamb and separate it from others for four days and then kill their chosen lambs at twilight. They then would take the blood of the slain lamb and put it on the doorposts and the rafter of their doors. Then they were to roast the lamb and feast on it that night with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. This process was to show the urgency they had to have because they were about to leave Egypt in a hurry to be free from their captivity finally.
Egypt took captive God’s firstborn, Israel (Jeremiah 31:9). And God would not let that continue any further. God made a way so His people can be liberated. In the most unassuming and incredible way that only God could have designed, He saved a nation through a lamb. The sacrifice of an innocent and spotless lamb delivered a whole nation from the most powerful empire back then. The Passover lamb was the way God showed mercy and grace to His people.
So, what can we grasp here in this passage today? We can see this truth that sin enslaves. Egypt can well represent the oppression and slavery that sin can cause us. In that time, we see a physical kind of slavery that tortured God’s people. We need to understand that sin does the same to us in a more spiritual way. Sin takes hold of us, then enslaves us and brings destruction and death to our lives. This is what Jesus was proclaiming in His time. He says in John 8:34, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” And then we look at the verse in James 1:15, which says, “Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” This is why we need a Passover lamb too.
Sin brings addiction, misery, and ruin. And we have no way in and of ourselves to escape it. But God offers us a deliverance. He offers us rescue from any sin that brings so much pain in our lives. So, for us, today, are we going to be like Pharaoh, neglecting and denying who God is and still live life as if He does not exist? Or are we going to submit to God’s word and accept God’s deliverance in our lives? We need to ponder on these questions in our hearts. Is there any sin that enslaves us today? What do we need liberation from? God offers to us His grace and a greater Lamb who frees us from anything that enslaves us. We are no longer slaves, but because of this greater Lamb’s sacrifice, we are now children of God. How then should we live as freed children of God?
II. The Significance of a Passover Lamb
“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.” –Exodus 12:13
The Passover Lamb was not given to the Israelites just as a way to set them free from the Egyptian captivity. They were saved from death itself. The Lord told Moses that He would send the destroyer to Egypt to take the life of the firstborn. In Pharaoh’s refusal to acknowledge God, the Lord sent the direct judgment to show who the true God is. Yahweh was about to show Pharaoh that He can never be compared to the multitudes of gods in Egypt. He is a God who will defend and deliver His people. We see the incredible way the Lord did this in Exodus 12:23: “For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.”
I don’t want us to miss an important detail here. We see that the Lord will “pass through” to strike the Egyptians but “pass over” the door of the Israelites’ houses. He will not allow the destroyer to come inside the house. The word pass over was first used here, and in Hebrew, it is pronounced “pesakh.” According to Charles Ellicot, a bible commentator, this word carries “the idea of a spreading out of wings, to protect.” So, it’s not God just passing by; it’s more like a bird passing over its babies and protecting them from any predators. Isaiah 31:5 carries this meaning so beautifully. It says, “As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.” (KJV)
The blood of the dead lamb that covered the doorposts was the sign that God’s people will be protected and spared from the death of their firstborn. Here, we see God providing a way for the Israelites to be saved from death. You see, it was the lamb’s blood and sacrifice that spared them and not anything else. Because of this lamb, God passed over Israel. God protected and spared them from death itself. Do you know God passed over us too? Because of the Greater Lamb, we have been passed over from the punishment from sin. We had been protected and spared from sure death. This death was not just physical death, but death that separates us from God forever in condemnation. Because of His mercy, we were spared and protected from hell itself. Isn’t that awesome?! For us, today, if God protected us and spared us from death, how much more does He spare us from the evils of this world? How much more does He protect us from other harms and ills we don’t even realize? If God passed over us to protect us from death itself, He still passes over us in so many ways we can’t even fathom. What are we anxious and scared about today? God’s promise in Psalm 91:4 is true for us today. “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings, you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” Praise God He still passes over us with His love, mercy, and grace.
III. The Realization of the Passover Lamb
“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. –Exodus 12:14
And, so, on the night when the destroyer came to Egypt, in each household, death was everywhere. In every household was either a slain lamb or a dead firstborn son. For the Israelites, an innocent lamb took the place of their firstborn. The lamb became the substitutionary sacrifice as it died the death the Israelites couldn’t possibly afford. Its blood was what saved the Israelites from ruin and led them to live. During that special night, Passover was founded and instituted. Israelites had to commemorate this day every year after the event in Exodus. They would have someone, a presider, to explain and commemorate what happened during that fateful night. They had unleavened bread, wine, and a roasted lamb. All are essential reminders of the first Passover. You see, and even today, Jewish communities still commemorate this feast to remember the Jewish people’s freedom from Egypt many centuries ago.
But did you know there was a very unique Passover meal that happened many years after the first one from Exodus? This happened one night in an upper room. Jesus, with His disciples, came together to celebrate Passover. This meal had all the other elements, such as the unleavened bread and the wine. But there was no lamb. Why? Tim Keller points out, “there was no lamb on the table because the Lamb was at the table.” On that night, Jesus said that He is the ultimate lamb of God.
You see, this lamb in Exodus points to Jesus, the greater Passover Lamb. He was innocent and blameless. He was the perfect sacrifice. He liberated us from sin that enslaved our souls. He took our place when judgment and death were what we deserved. His death was the ultimate sign of God’s mercy and grace. Because of His death, we were spared. Just as a lamb was enough for each Israelite firstborn in Egypt, Jesus’ sacrifice was more than enough for every person on the face of the world, for all time. His blood was shed for each person. And yet, salvation will come only to those who would let His blood cover their sins and accept His deliverance. Jesus is our Passover Lamb.
This is why John the Baptist exclaimed in John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Isn’t that wonderful! He was the one that truly saved us from our sins. You see, one day, this Lamb will be on the throne, and we will behold Him face to face, and He will give us real living water. Revelation 7:17 says, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” This is our challenge today. Let us behold the Lamb. We need to think about it, realize it, and grasp that amazing truth in our hearts and lives. In 2021, there will be so many things in our world that beg and crave our attention and devotion. But you see, only the Lamb of God is worthy of our all. We need to place our full gaze upon Him. We need to behold His love. We need to behold His life and sacrifice for us. We need to continue to passionately consider who He is.. We need to continue to look upon Jesus intently and who He is and what He has done for us. We need to continue to let others know of this Lamb who takes the sin of the world. This is our call and privilege. Together, as a church, as a family, as a community, let us behold Jesus, our Passover Lamb.
-Rev. Jerusalem Ona