Passover & The Christians Life
The Passover Part 2 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Please turn in your Bible to Exodus 12 this morning as we consider PASSOVER & THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Last month we looked at the Passover and its importance to the nation of Israel. I also sought to tie it into the celebration of the Lord’s Supper since this was instituted during Jesus’ last Seder meal while living here on earth.
While I do not want to take away from the importance of the original Passover, I also want to emphasize that its greatest importance is in the way it points to Christ and His cross. The original Passover was the shadow which pointed to the substance of the cross of Christ. For Christ, our Passover, has been slain.
This week as we continue looking at the Passover, I want you to observe that the ordering of the events relating to the first Passover demonstrate the ordering of events for one’s journey of faith in Christ. Our journey with Christ begins with salvation, and moves on to progressive sanctification, which leads to the schooling of our children in the things of the Lord, and results in submission to God.
Because we have an extensive passage this morning, we will not look at each verse, but hit the highlights as we go. Let’s begin with the inauguration of the believer’s life in Christ, which begins with
Salvation
Salvation
Note that,
Salvation is not the End of our Journey of Faith, it is the Commencement of our Life in Christ
The nation of Israel’s journey with God did not end with the tenth plague, which was the death of the firstborn throughout the land of Egypt. Rather, this plague was the commencement of their new life.
I don’t recall who spoke at my high school graduation. But I do recall his talking to my graduating class about how commencement is not the end of high school, rather it is the beginning of the rest of our life. And that is exactly what the situation was with the children of Israel. In order for this people group to begin its new life outside of Egypt, God had to do His work of redemption. God had to save them from bondage in Egypt. The Ten Plagues indicate that this was entirely the work of God, and not the work of man. And so it is with our spiritual salvation as well.
To Moses and Aaron, God announced that on the fourteenth day of the first month of the year, He was going to go through the entire land of Egypt and kill all of the firstborn, both of man and of beast. This would be the culmination of His plagues on the nation of Egypt. This would be how God would demonstrate both to Egypt and to the children of Israel that He and only He is truly God.
Not wanting any of His people to perish, but for all to come to repentance, God gave Moses instructions regarding what His people needed to do in order to be saved from this last plague. Look at verse 3.
Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.
The children of Israel could not take just any lamb, they had to taken a year old lamb which was perfect and spotless. And the reason why they had to do so was that this pointed to Jesus Christ who was the perfect, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Peter wrote:
knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
There was both a literal side of this blood as well as symbolic. Literally, the children of Israel were to slay the chosen lamb at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. They were to drain its blood into a basin, and then take a branch of hyssop, dip it into the blood, and sprinkle the blood on the two door posts and the lintel of their houses. This is the literal aspect of the blood.
Later in our passage Moses explained this to the elders of Israel who were in turn to explain it to every household. Look at verses 21-22.
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb.
You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning.
Literally speaking, the applied blood was a sign that this household was under the protection of Yahweh.
The symbolic aspect of the blood is that the blood represents the life of the animal or human being, for that matter. The life is in the blood. In other words, terms like the shed blood refer to violent death. In the case of the lamb, it was to have its throat slit so that the blood would flow out of the jugular vein. You can’t get much more violent than that. In the case of Christ, He died on the cross of suffering. His death, physically speaking, would have been determined to have been by suffocation, and not by bleeding to death. Of course, the Gospels are clear that Christ gave up His spirit and died.
Symbolically the blood of Christ applied to the heart of an individual is a sign that this person belongs to God. The Destroyer cannot destroy this person spiritually speaking.
How did the applied blood work on the night of the original Passover? Look at verse 23.
“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.
It appears that there are two distinct persons passing through the land of Egypt — both are spiritual beings. The first is Yahweh. The second is mentioned as the destroyer. Who is this destroyer? The Bible does not explain who this being is. The destroyer could be an angelic being who was assigned by God to do this deed. It could also be a plague or sickness, after all, this is the tenth of the ten plagues.
The point on the passage is not about the identity of the destroyer, but the work of God. He would not permit the destroyer to kill the firstborn in the homes which were marked with blood on the door frames. And this is where the name of this holy day came from — God would literally pass over the door of the homes marked out as belonging to Him, and not allow the destroyer to enter.
And for the believer, God not only marks us out as belonging to Him, but He indwells us through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, no eternal evil can befall us! Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
We have been looking at the salvation of Israel from Egypt as well as the salvation of believers from sin. Remember that salvation isn’t the end of things — it is the beginning of things, and that brings us to our next thing to consider.
Sanctification
Sanctification
Note that,
The Believer is to Actively Work at Getting Rid of the Old and Putting on the New
In our text there is not only the mention of the Passover but there is also the mention of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
The commemoration of the Passover was a one day event which was to take place on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a seven day celebration which took place beginning on the fifteenth day of the first month. I guess that one could argue that the Passover was the commencement to the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These two things are so closely tied to each other that the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Philip Ryken wrote, “When we consider how the Feast of Unleavened Bread is connected to Passover, we discover a very important truth about salvation—namely, that we are saved in order to be sanctified. Passover is about getting saved. It reminds us that we have been delivered from death by a perfect substitute whose blood was shed as a sacrifice for our sins. The Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us what God wants us to do once we’ve been saved, and that is to live a sanctified life, becoming more and more free from sin.” (Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 338.)
Look at verses 14-15.
‘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.
Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
Based on the regulations which follow in our text I’m guessing that the children of Israel did not celebrate their first Feast of Unleavened Bread until a year later when they were camped in the Sinai Dessert (Numbers 9). I say that because on the fifteenth day of the first month, while in Egypt, they were too busy departing Egypt in haste to spend seven days celebrating this holy commemoration.
For an entire week, or perhaps for even eight days, the children of Israel were to eat unleavened bread — that is bread without yeast. The reason for doing so on the Passover was that they were going to be leaving Egypt in haste. It takes much longer to make bread with yeast in it than it does to make bread without yeast.
But there is another reason for not using yeast or leaven. That is because in the Bible it is often associated with sin. Just little bit of yeast in a batch of dough will spread throughout the whole batch. And just a little bit of sin in a person will spread throughout the whole person and even the whole community.
In our finite human mindset we might be tempted to think that the original sin in the Garden of Eden — eating a piece of unknown fruit — wouldn’t be that big of a deal. And yet it was. And the effect of that one act of sin was that every part of what make a human a human was affected by the fall of man into sin. That is what the doctrine of total depravity means. And because it was affected we are not able to overcome this affect. We need a Savior because we cannot save ourselves.
For Israel, after they have observed the Passover meal which includes unleavened bread, then they were to sweep all of the leaven out of their homes, both on the first day of the feast and on the last day of the feast. Signifying that they were to rid their lives of sin.
One of the practices of ancient times, (one which I have seen still practiced by some) is to take a piece of dough from ones daily batch and set it aside to be used with the next days batch of dough. This little piece of dough would work it’s way through the whole lump of dough causing it to rise.
By the way, modern day gardeners practice something very similar when making homemade compost. They add a bit of finished compost into the new batch to get it jumped started in the composting process.
One commentator wrote, “Because yeast spores can migrate easily, dough can easily become yeasted naturally, thus the need to cleanse the house of yeast so that what was intended to be unleavened bread doesn’t turn out accidentally to be leavened.”(Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, vol. 2, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 283.)
Ryken wrote, “God wanted to do something more than get his people out of Egypt; he wanted to get Egypt out of his people.” (Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 341.)
And God wants to do more than get us out of sin, He wants to get sin out of us!
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
For the believer, salvation comes first. This is accomplished through the finished work of Christ on the cross. All who truly place their faith and reliance for their salvation in Him will be saved. Then the process of progressive sanctification begins, and this process continues on through the rest of our lives on earth. And an aspect of this progress is what we turn to next.
Schooling
Schooling
The Believer is to be Actively Teaching Others the Ways of God — and This Begins at Home
We have already looked at Moses teaching the elders of Israel about what to do for the Passover. These elders were most likely tribal leaders, and were in turn to teach the people in their tribes what to do to prepare for this momentous event.
But Moses had more to say about schooling. Look at verses 24-27.
Exodus 12:24–27 (NASB 95)
And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever.
When you enter the land which the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite.
And when your children say to you, ‘What does this rite mean to you?’
you shall say, ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.’ ”
The Bible clearly teaches that education begins at home. Sadly, in our culture we have, by and large, abandoned the parents role in education and have given that role over to professional teachers. And in my humble opinion this is the leading factor in our culture falling away from it founding principles. The universities have brain washed the future educators, who in turn, as teachers, brain wash their students. And just like that little bit of leaven which leavens the whole lump of dough, so it is with education. It probably started with one teacher whose influence spread down to others, so that in due time the whole educational system has become invaded by the little bit of leaven.
Sadly, the turning of our children over to educators has, by and large, become the practice within the church. Many parents depend on Sunday School teachers and youth group leaders to do the spiritual teaching of their children, rather than doing it themselves. And I believe that it is this abdication of our God-given parental roles which has led to the dying of so many churches in this present age.
For most of us it is too late to reverse this trend in education. But we can still pray for both our children and our grandchildren. Thomas Watson recommended that parents pray that their children be preserved from the harmful ideas and practices of the times. Perhaps at this point we should pray that they be delivered from them rather than preserved. He also recommended that we pray that our children would bear the image of God on their hearts. And that they would become instruments and vessels of glory. It is never too late to pray such things.
So far, we have looked at three words beginning with the letter “S” that relate to our text. Salvation, sanctification, and schooling. We have one more “S” word to look at.
Submission
Submission
Note that,
Submission is the Only Proper Response to the Revelation of God’s Word and His Ways
Look at how the people of Israel responded to this revelation from God. Look at the last part of verse 27 and verse 28.
Exodus 12:27–28 (NASB 95)
And the people bowed low and worshiped. Then the sons of Israel went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
They didn’t sit around and talk about what was told them, and then put it off for another meeting down the road. No, they responded immediately. What would have happened if they had not responded immediately? The firstborn in every house would have perished over night, just like what happened in every Egyptian home. They recognized that this was a matter of life and death. They had seen enough evidence of God’s power to fully believe in His promise to save. And they embraced the message of redemption.
Believer, if you have not yet begun to sweep out the leaven of your old life before coming to Christ, don’t put it off any longer. It will not be easy, but it will be worth the struggle.
Unbeliever, receive the message of redemption before it is too late. You may not feel the urgency that the children of Israel did. But it is just as urgent. You do not know when you will take your final breath in this life. But as soon as you take that breath you will be ushered into your new life in a place which Jesus described as “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
The message of the gospel is quite simple. You are a sinner and are incapable of saving yourself. Jesus was sinless and He died to pay the penalty for the sins of all who place their faith in Him. He rose again on the third day, and now He is in heaven at the right hand of the Father making intercession for His own. Trust Him today and receive His free gift of salvation. Then begin sweeping out the leaven of sin in your life.
Let’s pray.
Dear Heavenly Father,
I thank You for the redemption I have found in Christ. I wasn’t redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, but I was redeemed by the death of Jesus, Your Only Begotten Son. And my redemption was made certain by His triumph over the grave.
I pray Lord, that you enable me, as well as all here who are believers, to be persistent in getting rid of the leaven which belongs to our old way of life. Help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I pray for any who are not believers, that this would be the day in which Your Spirit awakens them from the dead and breathes the breath of spiritual life into them.
I pray this in Jesus Name, Amen.
Closing Song: #305
Jesus Paid it All
I hear the Savior say,
"Thy strength indeed is small,
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all."
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow'r and Thine alone,
Can change the leper's spots
And melt the heart of stone.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
For nothing good have I
Where-by Thy grace to claim;
I'll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv'ry's Lamb.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
And when, before the throne,
I stand in Him complete,
"Jesus died my soul to save,"
My lips shall still repeat.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
__________________________________________
Communion
Communion
As we come to the time of communion, I have to say first, that the bread on this slide does not look like it is unleavened to me. Just saying.
This past week I listened to a sermon online by a Hebrew Christian named Amir Tsarfati. And her referred to the Passover event being the shadow which pointed to the substance which was Christ’s death on the cross.
He pointed out that when the disciples celebrated the Passover with Jesus about 2000 years ago, there were two Seders. There was the private one they had with Jesus on Thursday night. And then there was the one everyone celebrated with their families on Friday night.
There were also two men named Jesus. There was Jesus Barabbas, and Jesus the Christ. When Pilate asked the people which Jesus they wanted to have released for them, they chose the murderer, Barabbas.
There were also two lambs. There was the year old lamb which was slain in celebration of the original Passover. And there was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It was through His death that the sins of believers have been washed away and we stand before God as those who are forgiven.
Paul wrote about this Last Supper. He wrote,
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. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
I don’t always go over the instruction about examining ourselves so that we may partake in a worthy manner. Probably because it is mostly the same group who celebrates this remembrance together each month.
But as I thought about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if Paul had in mind the ridding of the home of leaven which followed a few hours after the Passover meal. Remember that salvation comes first, then comes the beginning of the process of ridding ourselves of our old way of life and putting on the new.
For the Corinthians to whom Paul was writing, the old way of life had to do class distinctions. There was a great deal of division in this body of believers, and much of it was related to class distinctions. You had wealthy people in the same church as the slaves whom they owned. Then again, you had some who followed the teachings of Paul, while others followed the teachings of Apollos, and yet others followed the teachings of Peter. In the early part of this letter Paul asked: “Is Christ divided?” The point is that each of the teachers was teaching about Christ. There was no need to be divided as to which was your favorite teacher because Christ is the substance.
I am glad that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no real division within this assembly of believers. Perhaps that is one of the blessings of having such a small group. But I can say with confidence that we still struggle with sin. I am confident of that truth because I know that I struggle with enough sin to make up for those of you who may not have such a struggle. Of course, I am pretty confident the we each struggle with sin. John said as much in the first chapter of his first epistle.
As we contemplate the celebration of this remembrance, we should be asking ourselves if our struggle against sin is such that our fellowship with God is being hampered. God doesn’t require absolute sinlessness in order to partake of the elements. But He does require a heart that is in fellowship with Him. If God required absolute sinless perfection in order to partake then only Jesus could partake.
That being said, positionally speaking, we who are believers do have Christ’s absolute righteousness credited to our account.
As we partake of the elements of this ordinance, remember that we do not receive grace through the partaking of the bread or the cup. If we are believers we have already received grace through the channel of faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We partake because of the remembrance of the One who knew no sin, and yet became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus absorbed God’s wrath for our sins when He was offered as the substitutionary sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Let’s give thanks for the 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.”
Let’s eat this bread in remembrance of Him.
Let’s give thanks for the cup.
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.”
Let’s drink this cup in remembrance of Christ.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
Let’s pray.