Passover

Introduction

Illustration: How many of you have ever been to a historical re-enactment? They can be a bit cheesy, but when done right they can be really powerful. They can make you feel as if you’ve stepped through time and gotten a vivid picture of the past. Even better than film, you aren’t looking at a flat screen but really seeing it.

It can be a powerful tool for remembering important things from the past. This is probably why God uses re-enactment so much with the nation of Israel. In several of the festivals that He commands them to celebrate every year He asks them to re-enact important moments in the past in order to remind them to be thankful for what He has done for them.

For those just joining us this morning we have this weekend been looking at the seven festivals described in Leviticus that God commanded the Israelites to observe. Today we are grouping two of them together, Passover and the Feast of Unleavened bread, because they are described together and the feast is a continuation from Passover. In passover the Israelites are told to re-enact one of the most important moments in their nations history. Let’s look at the institution of this festival in Exodus:

Exodus 12:1–28 CSB

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they must each select an animal of the flock according to their fathers’ families, one animal per family. If the household is too small for a whole animal, that person and the neighbor nearest his house are to select one based on the combined number of people; you should apportion the animal according to what each will eat. You must have an unblemished animal, a year-old male; you may take it from either the sheep or the goats. You are to keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight. They must take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses where they eat them. They are to eat the meat that night; they should eat it, roasted over the fire along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or cooked in boiling water, but only roasted over fire—its head as well as its legs and inner organs. You must not leave any of it until morning; any part of it left until morning you must burn. Here is how you must eat it: You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover. “I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, both people and animals. I am the Lord; I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt. The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. “This day is to be a memorial for you, and you must celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. You are to celebrate it throughout your generations as a permanent statute. You must eat unleavened bread for seven days. On the first day you must remove yeast from your houses. Whoever eats what is leavened from the first day through the seventh day must be cut off from Israel. You are to hold a sacred assembly on the first day and another sacred assembly on the seventh day. No work may be done on those days except for preparing what people need to eat—you may do only that. “You are to observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread because on this very day I brought your military divisions out of the land of Egypt. You must observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent statute. You are to eat unleavened bread in the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day of the month until the evening of the twenty-first day. Yeast must not be found in your houses for seven days. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a resident alien or native of the land, must be cut off from the community of Israel. Do not eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.” Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning. When the Lord passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you. “Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony. When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’ ” So the people knelt low and worshiped. Then the Israelites went and did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

Throughout this weekend we’ve been looking at each of these celebrations and reflecting on what it meant in the past for the Israelites when they first celebrated it, what it means in the present for us in the new covenant, and what it represents as a foreshadowing of a future reality. In the case of the passover we see that it served for the Jewish people as a way to remember how God delivered their nation from Egypt and made them into a new nation. In the New Covenant we can see how Passover has become communion, a celebration of Jesus’ salvation available for all mankind through His shed blood on the cross. Finally we can see that Jesus being the lamb who was slain in the final passover makes Him worthy to be the judge and king of all the earth when He returns in the future.

What it Was: God’s Deliverance from Slavery

Illustration: Have you ever heard of a fireproof blanket? It’s a piece of safety equipment designed to protect someone through a forest fire. It’s thick reflective material protects from the worst of the heat, and in a forest fire situation the flames move so quickly that it can save your life. To be clear this is a last resort plan that doesn’t always work, but when it does work it does so because the fire passes over the people under the blanket. It burns through the forest quickly leaving them behind in a sea of ash and burned trees.

This is the sort of picture that comes to my mind when I think of the Israelites on the night of the first passover. It’s called Passover because on that night the angel of Death “passed over” the homes of the Israelites. Let’s take a look at the first Passover described in Exodus 12:21-22

Exodus 12:21–22 CSB

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning.

God commanded them to kill a lamb and sprinkle its blood on their doorframes so that the angel of death would see it and pass over their home, preventing the death of their firstborn. The blood of the lamb covered over them in a sense, protecting them. God didn’t just command this as a one time thing however, but also commanded the Israelites to re-enact this ritual every year as a part of the Festival of Passover. Why? To remember what God had done for them.

This is one of the more straightforward Festivals to interpret, since God tells them directly why they are doing it. There’s no hidden metaphor, it’s just straight up acting out the moment in history when God delivered them from Slavery in Egypt. That’s what this is really all about after all, they were living as abused slaves in Egypt and God delivered them and set them free, and this was the climactic moment that finally made Pharoah change His mind. This is the moment God ‘purchased’ their freedom. In the ancient world this is something you could do for a slave. You could pay a price to buy them and set them free. This is a good image for what God did for Israel.

This was an important thing to remember for two reasons. First, as a way to ensure that they treated their own slaves well. Now we aren’t going to get into the moral implications of owning slaves, but the Israelites did have slaves, and God wanted to ensure that they were treated with compassion and care. He did this by reminding them every year that they were slaves as well. The second reason is to remember that God worked wonders for their sakes, and to remember His mercy on them as a people. We know that the Israelites like anyone else were sinful people and that God would be in His rights as God to judge them in the same way He did the Egyptians, but He spared them. He wanted them to remember their indebtedness to Him and that they were His people now.

My friends in the same way we need to remember and celebrate what God has done for us. As individuals let’s ask ourselves, what has God done for me? We can have short memories sometimes, but I think it’s important to remember the life that you lived before God and what He has done for you. To remember the times He’s provided for you or intervened for you. To remember our answers to prayer. And as a group it’s important to celebrate what God has done in us and through us. This year as a camp Bayview is celebrating the Hand of God in forming this camp and spending all these years sowing the gospel in the lives of young people. That’s worth celebrating.

Of course there is one big thing that God did for us that we celebrate as disciples of Jesus, a new passover that created a new covenant and a new lamb.

What it Is: God’s Deliverance from Sin

Illustration: How many people here have ever had to deal with stains? I’m talking grass stains, spaghetti stains, apparently Kraft Dinner makes some pretty hard stains to clean. I tried to do some research into the science of stains, but I didn’t understand most of what I read. Take it with a grain of salt, but it seems that staining is basically when a material bonds with the fabric itself in your clothes. Thankfully I don’t have a lot of experience in this, but I’m told that blood stains can be really tough to get clean. And if I’m right about staining, this basically means that the blood is bonding chemically with the fabric. Imagine if you took a white shirt and soaked it completely in blood. The whole thing would be bonded with blood.

You might see where I’m going with this one. If you looked at that shirt what would you see? You would see the blood. So if you were covered head to toe in a bloodstained garment and someone looked at you, what would they see? Blood. Bear with me friends, I’m going somewhere with this. This is basically the image the Bible gives us about how the blood of Jesus has saved us.

Where in Exodus the angel of death passes over the homes that have the blood of a lamb on their doorposts, things are a bit different in the New Covenant. Jesus is now the new and better lamb. John the Baptist describes Him this way in John 1:29

John 1:29 CSB

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Jesus died on the cross so that His sacrifice could provide the blood of the lamb that we could spread on the doorposts of our heart metaphorically by putting our faith in Him. Then we as Paul says in Galatians “put on” Christ. Galatians 3:27

Galatians 3:27 CSB

For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

In other words we put on Jesus like you would put on clothes, that’s the language Paul is using here, so that when God looks at you He doesn’t see you, He sees His son. The Blood of Jesus covers over us so that it is all that can be seen. No more is our sin or our failure hanging over us, but the blood of Jesus. Except unlike natural blood that makes a piece of clothes look frankly pretty gross, the blood of Jesus the Bible says washes us white as snow. Isaiah 1:18 ““Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” A picture of purity and perfection.

So now we celebrate Passover in the New Covenant not as a remembrance of God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt, but as a remembrance of God’s deliverance from Sin and Death on the cross. And we don’t celebrate it once a year but every week when we gather together in our churches.

Unlike the other feasts which as non-Jewish people we don’t celebrate, Jesus commanded us to continue a new sort of passover, which we call Communion or the Lord’s Supper. So when we take the bread and wine every week it’s to commemorate the New Covenant that the Lamb of God came to inaugurate in His blood.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 CSB

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “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.

So the application of this one is easy. Every week we need to celebrate the Lord’s Supper as a remembrance of this salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross. But I’m not challenging us only to participate, but to really celebrate. To remember what the elements mean, and to sincerely give thanks to God when we take them for what He has done for all of us.

Yet you’ll notice something about the end of that passage in 1 Corinthians. It points towards a future, doesn’t it? We eat the bread and drink the cup to proclaim the Lord’s death until… when? When He comes. Let’s talk about the foreshadowing that Jesus is giving to the future that is waiting for us.

What it Will Be: The Lamb Who Was Slain

Illustration: What does it mean to be worthy? Well worthy sounds like ‘worth’ for a reason. To be worthy is to have the necessary worth for something. What makes a person worthy? Well it depends on what you’re talking about. What makes someone a worthy baseball player for the hall of fame is different than what makes a Dad worthy of a number one Dad mug.

Worthiness is not one size fits all, there are somethings that are harder to be worth than others if you understand my meaning. So what would it take for someone to be worthy of passing judgment on the entire world? Don’t skip right to the Sunday School answer here, let’s stop and think about this for a second. For someone to be worthy of passing judgment they have to be above that judgment themselves. A sinner can’t stand in judgment over sinners, so they would have to be perfect. They also have to have some sort of authority over the people that they are judging. They should have some level of ownership or rule over the people that they are passing judgment over.

Now you can jump to that Sunday school answer. Who is the only one who fits that bill? Jesus. He is the only perfect one there is, having never sinned or done wrong. He also has ownership over the whole world. Not only did He create everything (see John 1) but He also purchased us back from the devil, who was in authority over the world because of the sin of mankind. For that reason Jesus is described in Revelation 5 as being the only one worthy to pass Judgment from the throne. We’re going to read this whole chapter, which is a bit long but very worth it (no pun intended).

Revelation 5 CSB

Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides, sealed with seven seals. I also saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or even to look in it. I wept and wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or even to look in it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Look, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” Then I saw one like a slaughtered lamb standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent into all the earth. He went and took the scroll out of the right hand of the one seated on the throne. When he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and golden bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slaughtered, and you purchased people for God by your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and also of the living creatures and of the elders. Their number was countless thousands, plus thousands of thousands. They said with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing! I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say, Blessing and honor and glory and power be to the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever! The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Jesus is worthy because He is the lamb that was slain. That lamb that was slain language is clearly a direct reference to what Festival? The passover. So then this festival is clearly pointing us towards this future reality. This Kingdom that Jesus stands over as a worthy King because He has purchased us with His blood.

Now I know that the image of slavery is deeply uncomfortable, but the Bible uses it and we can’t shy away from it. Because of our sin we were slaves to our sin, but Jesus paid our ransom. The ancient practice of paying a price to purchase a slaves freedom. He then took us and made us into a people, a new Kingdom over which He is the King. Today that Kingdom is a Spiritual Kingdom in the hearts of all the disciples of Jesus, but a day is coming when the Spiritual Kingdom will become a physical Kingdom in the New Heavens and New Earth and Jesus as the Lamb who was slaughtered will sit on its throne and receive the honor, glory and power that He is due, can I get an amen?

So how can we live today as if we really believe that Kingdom is coming? It means that when we take communion we don’t just remember the past we look forward to the future. We give Jesus the praise and the glory and the honor even now, because we know that He is worthy of it. We give Him worship, in other words worth-ship, in the present as a foretaste of the future. And we spread the good news of the Kingdom to everyone who will hear it so that they can join us in praise around the throne of the Lamb.

Conclusion

Honestly this was probably the easiest of the festivals to write a sermon for, and for good reason. The Passover is a deep theologically rich celebration, and the only one of these festivals that we still celebrate as a church today. Yet it serves us well I think to reflect on its significance. To see that it was a reminder to the Israelites of God’s salvation of their nation. To see that it’s a reminder for us now of how God has rescued us from Sin and Death. To see that it is a foreshadowing of the worth of the Lamb to rule and judge the world when He returns.

So the next time you’re sitting in church and looking at that little cup of juice and that wafer, I want to challenge you to think of it in three ways. To remember the past, to thank God for your present, and to anticipate your future. Let this be our reminder not to just go through the motions of the ritual, but to really take Communion as an opportunity to commune with God and with each other.