The Passover which is also called the festival of unleavened bread in Luke 22: 1 is a remembrance for God’s salvation of the Israelites in Egypt. In celebrating the feast of the Passover, we meditate on why, how and who should celebrate the Passover which God instituted?
The Israelites in Exodus 12: 7-14, were to take some of the blood (of a lamb) and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs… Eat it in haste, it is the Lord’s Passover. 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. The blood will be a sign for you in the house where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.
Why the Passover?
It was a remembrance of deliverance from tyranny from oppression. It was God’s final intervention in Egypt that broke Pharaoh’s resistance against God. It was a remembrance that God honours his word; that God saves eternally by the innocent blood which is Jesus symbolized in Egypt as an eternal covenant; and that without Jesus’ blood, we would face eternal death.
God honours his word
God told Moses he would deliver Israel from Egypt and he did so. He said in Exodus 3: 7-8, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
God hears and sees our misery and suffering and he’s concerned about us. That is why Jesus came. John 1: 10-11 say, he was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. If we receive him, he will save us also from our misery and suffering. Numbers 23: 19 says, God is not human that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind. Does he promise and not fulfill?
God saves by Jesus’ blood
The essence of the Passover blood was to mark those God favoured against death. We and our household and our land face death and destruction always and we need God’s grace to escape it because his blood is without sin or blemish. Just as he said to his disciples in Luke 22: 15, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, so does he desire to mark us together with our dwelling when death is near us out of God’s anger this Passover in remembrance of him in Egypt.
Paul said in 1Corinthians 5: 7, Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. It was his blood that marked the doorframes of the Israelites in Egypt enunciated in Exodus 12: 7-14. The effect of his blood which was symbolized in Egypt was for a permanent covenant rather than a temporary one. Hebrews 7: 24-25 say, because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Will we mark our lives and homes and nation with the eternal blood of Jesus that placates God’s anger this Passover?
Jesus’ blood is an eternal covenant
The Passover was to be celebrated throughout all generations. God said in Exodus 12: 24, “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. It symbolized the fact that God had covenanted with his people throughout all generations. It was a foreshadow of what was to come.
Paul stated in Hebrews 9: 15, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. His blood mediates for us the eternal punishment of misery and suffering which we must suffer under the tyranny of sin just as the Israelites suffered under slavery in Egypt. We, who should die will now live because of the blood of Jesus that marks us as his.
We face death without Jesus’ blood
Just as the blood of the Lamb saved the Israelites who obeyed God’s instructions in Egypt, the blood of Jesus saved the Israelites by grace through faith in his word. The blood gave the light of life to the Israelites in Egypt for Jesus said in John 12: 46, I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. Jesus said in John 8: 12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Those who obeyed did not stay in darkness.
We are either marked with the blood of Jesus or the mark of the beast. Israel was marked with the blood of the Lamb even in slavery. The Egyptians were marked by the darkness of sin. Ephesians 1: 7 says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. Israel did nothing except by grace to earn God’s intervention in Egypt. The relevance of the blood is in 1John 1: 7, the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. Has the Passover Lamb purified us?
Prayer
Dear Lord Jesus, as we celebrate the Passover and your death on the cross for us by which you saved us by your grace through faith, let our remembrance be holy and worthy of the purpose for which you heard our cry, saw our misery and came down to save us. Mark our lives and our dwellings with your blood and give us your light of life in our state of darkness. We pray in your holy name, Amen!!
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