Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations by statute you are to celebrate it as an everlasting feast. Exodus 12:14.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
The Passover, on that night I moved in executing judgment and I released My people who were in cruel bondage from the captivity and oppression of slavery and vindicated them so that they did not go out empty handed. I saved them with My outstretched arm. And I went before them leading them by a pillar of cloud filled with fire which would also go behind them as their rear guard.
The LORD has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God. Depart, depart, go out from there, touch nothing unclean; go out of the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the LORD. But you will not go out in haste, nor will you go as fugitives; for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Isaiah 52:10-12.
But you must understand something here about what took place at the Passover, which is often passed over when studying it. If it were simply the Egyptians who had sinned, justice would have just struck the firstborn of the Egyptians for the lives of innocent blood they had shed drowning the Hebrew babies in the Nile (if you recall the first plague I sent upon Egypt seeking their repentance and acknowledgment of evil doing was I turned the water of the Nile into blood). But that was not the case. As you witness later as they crossed the wilderness to the land I had promised their forefathers, the Israelites, though not to the degree of the Egyptians murdering babies and oppressing an entire people group into slavery, were not free from sin. In fact, they were a sinful, stubborn, and stiff-necked people who were constantly fighting among themselves and rebelled against My Words to them. So much so that Moses had to set up a judicial system to accommodate all their lawsuits against one another and give them My laws and statutes to hold them in check from the evil they had at hand. And they ultimately rejected My Word and refused to enter the promised land, speaking that they would rather die in the desert. And as they declared so went their lives.
If justice had struck all the land there would not have been but a few left. Like when Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah.
And this is what the Passover is about. The Passover Lamb was for anyone who would take protection under the blood. Remember that there were Egyptians who learned of what was going on and took refuge in the homes of the Israelites that night and escaped the judgment.
Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock. Exodus 12:37-38.
For those who will turn to Me and make Covenant with Me I am faithful to them for thousands of generations.
Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness, faithfulness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Exodus 34:6-7.
I made covenant with Abraham, and I promised My friend Abraham that I would bring his descendants out of slavery in a foreign land with many possessions and give them the land I had promised him for them. I keep My Word and I never break My Covenant with those who have loved Me enough to enter into Covenant with Me.
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” Genesis 15:13-16.
At the appointed time, I performed My Word, which was received by Abraham when he made Covenant with Me the very day I gave him that promise.
Remember what I told Moses about celebrating the feast of Passover as an everlasting memorial? “Therefore, you shall keep this ordinance at its appointed time from year to year.” Exodus 13:10.
And do you recall what Jesus told His disciples when He sent the to prepare them Passover memorial meal the night before He died?
Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” And He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, “My appointed time draws near; I am to keep the Passover at your house with My disciples.”’” The disciples did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover. Now when evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples. Matthew 26:17-20.
Remember the way I number days with the Hebrew people is from sunset to sunset, so actually the Passover memorial was celebrated by Jesus the day He died for your sins as the true and only Passover Lamb who redeemed all of you from the slavery to sin and death and the oppression of the devil.
And if you recall also Jesus was crucified at 9:00 am, Mark 15:25, which was the time of the morning offering of the unblemished lamb, the hin of wine, and the unleavened bread in the temple and died at the hour of the evening sacrifice of the same. In the book of Acts you see Peter and John going up to the temple at the evening hour of prayer at 3:00 pm when they healed the man crippled from birth at the Gate called Beautiful. Acts 3:1.
But let Me go back. The Passover Lamb and the blood applied to their doorposts and eating the lamb and unleavened bread saved My covenant people from the execution of judgment upon themselves and their homes for sin. I redeemed them by the unblemished lamb and anyone that would join themselves with them by faith. Like the Syrophoenician woman did with the possessed daughter, her faith saved her, for you enter the Abrahamic Covenant by faith in My Words, which is credited to you as righteousness. And now it is by confessing My Word made flesh as Lord and believing I raised Him from the dead with all your sins taken care of by His blood shed in His sufferings and death, and you stand righteous before Me with My own righteousness.
And I still redeem each born again believer with the eternal redemption of the blood of the Lamb, for all of you who enter the Covenant in and through Jesus are My firstborn. Joint heirs with Christ living in, with, and through Him. 1 John 1:9.
Now let us take a close look at the lessons you can learn from the Passover. And you will notice, this was My solution, not that of any other.
Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. 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. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Exodus 12:1-4.
First of all, each family was to have a lamb, and if the household was too small for a lamb they joined with the nearest neighbor. You will notice that the lamb was never too small for a household, but could be too big. It all depended on how much each could eat. You can have as much of Jesus as you will take. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. What with? My Word. I have put My Words in your mouth and put My Spirit upon you. The more Word you take in, speak, and do the larger your capacity becomes.
And you will notice the Passover meal was a communion meal, it was not something you did alone, the congregation was to be acting as one. Where two or three gather in My Name I am there in the midst of you and My presence will manifest in glory. And the church is where the Lamb is.
First we looked at the households of faith and now we look at the lamb. For, indeed, later when Moses instituted the daily offerings of the unblemished lamb every morning and every evening it was all about whether the lamb was perfect, not whether the sinner was. No, the sinner was seeking to put his sins on the head of the lamb in exchange for the purity of the lamb.
Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. Exodus 12:5-7.
Here you see the heart of the matter. An unblemished lamb and you were to keep the lamb in your home as your own lamb. And it was your own lamb that took your place to redeem you from sin. I so loved the world I gave you My only begotten Son. He is yours and He is also your Lamb of sacrifice who died in your place. But the shadow, the lamb of the first Passover, did not rise again to be back with the family to whom it belonged and the family with the lamb forever, for it was born of perishable seed and had no soul, but now Jesus will be your own forever. Christ in you, your hope of glory. And He told you when I raised from the dead and He ascended back to Me that He is with you always till the end of this age and then you shall be with Him in the Kingdom of My Beloved Son and after the Millenium when all is handed over to Me, all of us as one family united forever in the Kingdom of Light that fills Heaven and earth, just as the dream that Daniel interpreted that I gave to Nebuchadnezzar.
In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.” Daniel 2:44-45.
And I gave Moses very particular instructions for applying the blood of the lamb to their homes. It was over the doors in and out.
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. 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. Exodus:21-23.
I told them to apply it with hyssop. Hyssop is a medicinal herb. When David sinned he prayed to Me, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Psalms 51:7. And when Jesus hung on the Cross, hyssop was an instrument of comfort for Him as he hung on the cross and shed His blood to cleanse us of our sin. “A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. John 19:29-30.
And the blood was applied to the lintels and the door posts, forming a letter “chet” which is the first letter of the Hebrew word “life” and also the first letter of the Hebrew word for sin. The blood of Jesus releases you from your sins and gives you His life, which is eternal life.
And when I see the blood, I pass over the door and do not allow the destroyer to come in to your homes to smite you. And it is still the same. The shield of My Son’s eternal Blood. The new and everlasting Covenant.
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. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:27-28.
And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Luke 22:20.
For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Hebrews 10:1. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:14.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Hebrews 9:11-12.
And I instituted the Passover as a feast, a pilgrim feast with the days of unleavened bread. And it became an everlasting memorial the night Jesus raised up the bread and the wine and it became His body and blood. And it will be celebrated forever in Heaven.
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.’”Exodus 12:24-27.
And they were to eat the lamb roasted with fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs and any left over to morning they were to burn with fire. The burnt offering that turned the sinner’s sins to ash. And I give you beauty instead of the ashes. And they were to eat it ready of action.
Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, 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 go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against 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 live; 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. Exodus 12:11-13.
“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. Revelation 12:10-11.
And do not forget one other point, I did not My children to leave Egypt empty-handed. I thus gave them the seed to sow as offerings into the rebuilding of the temple and lives o
Now the sons of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, for they had requested from the Egyptians articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing; and the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have their request. Thus they plundered the Egyptians. Exodus 12:35-36.
But nothing compared to the value of redemption by the Blood of the Lamb.
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. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 1 Peter 1:18-20.
I love you. You are redeemed. And that says it all.
“I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud and your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” Isaiah 44:22.