Spring Festivals, Pt 1: Passover

 Exodus 12:1-13                      1The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2“This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover. 12“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

Exodus 12:21-271Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning. 23When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.  24“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’ ” Then the people bowed down and worshiped.

For the first 300 years of the Church the day of worship was Saturday, the Sabbath.  But in 313 the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Many scholars think this was just a political move, but it did solidify the place of the Church.  But he also divested the Church of anything even remotely Jewish and the day of worship was switched to Sunday and the beauty and meaning of Passover was removed.

All of the Jewish Festivals have roots in Jewish historicity, and all of them also are foreshadows of significant redemptive events in the life of Jesus Christ.  One of the misunderstandings of the Passover festival is that it celebrates the passing over of the homes of children of God when God strikes down the Egyptians.  As is occasionally the case, this misunderstanding is rooted in the mistranslation of Hebrew words into English.  The NIV does a reasonable job though as it shows that God will pass through (Hebrew: adar) the land of Egypt and pass over (Hebrew: pesach) the thresholds of the homes of His children which have the mark.  This is important because it changes the focus on what happened that day from passive to active action by God.  It is not that God caused the death angel to simply avoid the homes of his children, but that God Himself actively protected each of those homes from the devastation that was happening in all the other homes in Egypt.

Centuries earlier God had instituted the sacrificial system.  This was intended to teach His children that the shedding of innocent blood was necessary to cleanse a person of the guilt of their sin.  Thus a coming Innocent One would be sacrificed to permanently redeem and cleanse the people of their sins.  So it is no accident that it was the blood of a lamb which was placed on the doorposts and lintel of the door. 

There is a reason we are commanded to celebrate Passover every year, and it is no accident that God ordained Passover to occur in the Spring.  Passover is a sort of visual reminder of God’s love for his children:  He loves us enough to provide a way for us to atone for our sins (the sacrificial system), orchestrates the historical Exodus to provide a backdrop of physical freedom and the spiritual freedom from sin, and then provides the redemption that spiritual freedom signifies by bringing His Son to the Cross at the very Festival which signifies that atonement.

And further Passover is intended to be personal, not just an intellectual understanding.  Each family was to select the lamb on the 10th of the month from the best of the best of the flock.  They were to watch for four more days to determine its perfection and purity, but during this time certainly there must have been created a bond of affection between the animal and each family member.  And then the patriarch had to kill the animal and draw its blood to protect his family.  The point is that God’s justice requires atonement for sin, and that the sacrificial system was inadequate to provide that atonement.  Human beings are not capable of such things, but certainly God is.  It is His mercy through which came the ultimate Innocent One which could provide that atonement.

In a similar way God intents each of us to make personal the sacrifice offered by His Son.  The sacrifice of Jesus is available to very single person, but each person must individually choose to accept Him as Savior.  There are many parallels between the historical Passover and the present atoning sacrifice by Jesus.  By providing a lamb for each household God shows that each of us has an opportunity to become a member of God household of faith.  The lamb dwelt in homes of the partakers because Jesus wants to dwell in the home of our heart.  God passed over the threshold to provide protection to remind us that…

18… it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1Peter 1:18-19)

And finally just as the entire lamb was to be consumed either through eating or fire, we are also to accept Christ as Savior fully and completely.  There is no half-way in this journey.  It is not as if we can avoid worship of our King because our favorite team is playing, or because something else intervenes.  Is Jesus our Lord or not?  If so then we must devote every ounce of our strength and every second of our time to Him.