The Passover
Christ in the Old Testament • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell 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. And 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. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and 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.
“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. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In 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. 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.
“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. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”
Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike 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 enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
The First Passover
The First Passover
Context
Context
Egypt had just been devastated by nine plagues, which were God’s judgement against their rejection of Him and for the oppression of His people.
God is keeping His promise:
During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
It was not the cries of His people that ultimately moved God to respond. It was His commitment to keep the promise He made with their forefathers.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
But the reality is, they have been in Egypt for centuries. God had determined to bring them out of their slavery.
The tenth plague
The tenth plague
Israel had been exempt from the previous plagues. Their cattle didn’t die, their crops were not ruined by the hail and their land didn’t go dark. God spared them from all of this.
The final plague, which was the death of the first-born would be different. This judgement would be aimed at everyone, and without divine intervention, God would strike down all the firstborn in Egypt, including the firstborn of Israel.
Why was Israel not exempt from this particular judgement?
Israel was God’s chosen people, and they had been oppressed for centuries, but what was also true of them is that they were (are) sinners. They were rebellious. They were idolaters. Ezekiel provides us some insight here:
Will you judge them, son of man, will you judge them? Let them know the abominations of their fathers, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: On the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the offspring of the house of Jacob, making myself known to them in the land of Egypt; I swore to them, saying, I am the Lord your God. On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands. And I said to them, ‘Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast on, every one of you, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.’ But they rebelled against me and were not willing to listen to me. None of them cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt.
“Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made myself known to them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt. So I led them out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness.
The message of the tenth plague is that God is holy and just and therefore punishes (judges) sin. But the message of Passover is that God is also merciful. On that first Passover, God determined to display His wrath against sin and His mercy towards His people at the same time.
God’s provision
God’s provision
God’s instructions to His people:
Tell 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. And 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. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats,
And they were to examine the lamb for four days:
and 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.
And on this fourteenth day, they were to kill the lamb as a sacrifice.
“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.
And the promise was that when God sees the blood, He will pass over those households.
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.
God spares the sons of Israel, not because they were in less need of God’s mercy than the sons of Egypt were, but because a spotless lamb died in their place and its blood covered their doors.
The True Passover
The True Passover
Substitution
Substitution
No one was ever meant to conclude from this miracle and display of God’s grace that animal sacrifices were sufficient to solve the problem of sin before a holy God.
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
The problem of human sin remained a problem in need of final resolution after the first Passover and throughout Israel’s history as seen in the OT through the sacrificial system.
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
Our Substitute
Our Substitute
The Passover shows that God is both just and merciful, and it painted a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ.
Consider the familiar words of the John the Baptist:
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Something to note about the imagery seen in the OT. It pointed to something better than itself. Jesus is greater than the OT type. He is the greater sacrifice. Greater than the lamb of the first Passover.
No person was responsible to provide this lamb like people were in the OT. God provided the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.
But like the Passover lamb, Jesus was
a mature male
Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli,
None of His bones were broken
For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.”
He was thoroughly examined and found spotless
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
And he was slain for our sins
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
