The Passover
Exodus 12:21-30
Hebrews 9:11-22
You might wonder why God would have allowed His chosen people to labor in Egypt without benefit of either nation or leadership (Moses had been out of the loop for forty years). In order to galvanize the Jews as a people, they had to be in one place and set apart, or clearly distinguishable, from the people around them. Longing for deliverance was a necessary pre-condition to the Exodus.
There were over two million Jews in Egypt by the time Moses was called to lead them out. Pharaoh enslaved them because he feared there were too many foreigners in his country. That was a big mistake because it set them apart as a people and prepared them for what God had in store for them.
I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant…I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. Then will you know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the yoke of the Egyptians.
Egypt was hit with nine plagues in the attempt to force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. Moses stretched out his staff over the Nile River, and it turned to blood. The fish died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink from the river. Still, Pharaoh refused to let the people go.
The plague of frogs was inflicted on Egypt, and we are told that frogs covered the entire land. Pharaoh promised to let the people go, and the frogs went back into the Nile. As soon as he got relief, he refused.
Then there were gnats. Then there were flies. Then the livestock of the Egyptians died, while those of the Israelites lived.
The next plague was the plague of boils on the people and their animals.
The next plague was hail that rained down on Egypt and destroyed crops and animals.
The next plague was locusts that devoured everything green and covered the ground until it was black. The next plague was total darkness for 3 days.
Nine plagues and none of these were sufficient to force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. There was to be, however, one more plague. And that plague was the very sign that has stretched through redemptive history into our day – the plague of death.
The people of Israel were to get ready to leave. They were to ask for silver and gold from their Egyptian neighbors, who, in their desire to get rid of them, readily complied. Each Jewish household was to sacrifice a lamb, paint the doorframes of their houses with the blood, eat the lamb – all of it – and retire for the night.
The Angel of Death came to Egypt that night and slew the firstborn of every household in Egypt that did not have the blood over the door. Here is the way God told it to Moses:
On that night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men 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 on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
In future generations, children would ask of their parents, “What does this service mean? Why do we take all this care about eating the lamb and the unleavened bread? What is the difference between this meal and other meals?”
Parents were to tell their children, “It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover. Even though there was grievous sin in our own camp – sins against the Lord our God, God graciously appointed and accepted the family sacrifice of a lamb, instead of the firstborn.” God Almighty, you see, would have killed the firstborn for their sin. But God as Lord showed mercy.
Just as the patriarchs had erected altars to the Lord to mark times of deliverance, the Passover was another Ebenezer monument for the people of Israel. The people were to look back and remember the mercy and loving-kindness of God. And they were to look forward to the times of fulfillment, when the Lord God would sacrifice Himself as the last lamb – the Lamb of God.
Christians, as well, were obnoxious to the sword of the Angel of Death, but Christ became our Passover lamb – His death for ours. Always, from the Exodus onward to our day, there was the blood: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
It is not difficult to understand how the people of Israel soon forgot, in the uncertainty of the desert. the significance of their ceremonies. We Christians, in our own wasteland, are inclined to forget the significance of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. As we have wandered in the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God, we forget what it cost God to grant us life. Things begin to look dim with time, and though our Passover service is referred to as Communion, we become so caught up in day-to-day living that we forget what it cost. And yet, through it all, the Angel of Death cannot be raised against those who have put the blood of the Lamb of God over their earthly temple.
Jesus said it this way, “I am the resurrection and the life…He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever believes in me shall never die.” That is our Passover promise.
As the Jews look back to the Exodus and forward to the Messianic Age, Christians look back to Calvary and forward to the Resurrection.
The events in Egypt that year signaled a long and bloody trail of remembrance. The writer of Hebrews summarizes it this way: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.”
Lately, I have been visiting a number of blogs on religious web sites. A blog is a place where anyone can express his or her feelings in writing with little recourse except for an occasional accusation by some stranger of being an idiot.
What I have come to understand is that there is beneath the surface of this country a lot of hostility toward God. It is a hostility that has always been there, but it is kept quiet within the folds of religion or unbelief. The blog gives vent to this hostility, and some of it is pretty vile.
Christians are rightly accused of being hypocrites because the Christian community in America is pretty hypocritical.
But the accusation of hypocrisy is nothing but a red herring to justify anger against God. At the core of the anger is a refusal to accept the blood. This comes out in various ways. There are those who refer to Jesus as a wise prophet, but human. That is a refusal to accept the blood. I read of a group of nationally known Christians who formed a speaker’s bureau called “Red Letter Christians.” They are Red Letter Christians because they adhere to the words of Jesus, sometimes written in red in the New Testament.
Not enough! To be a Red Letter Christian is nothing different from being an OT Christian. It is to select a portion of Scripture as a moral code. It is a way of evading the blood. Moral codes, however nice they are, don’t cut the mustard.
Others will rant and rail against Christians as living in fairyland – believing in hocus/pocus magic. What gives them away is the hostility that emotes as they accuse. That kind of hostility is not reserved, you will notice, for neighbors who live in the self-designed fairyland called suburbia. It is reserved for those who claim the blood.
In the history of the ancient Jewish church, you would see traces of blood everywhere. Sometimes there were bowls of blood at the foot of the altar. The place must have been a shambles to the natural taste. Not only was the slaughter of animals part of the worship, their blood was sprinkled on the curtains, the vestments of the priests, all over the altar and on the people.
Here is an important point. The only way anyone could take delight in the blood offerings was if he had a lively faith and felt the need for purification. Otherwise it was repulsive and an ordeal that had to be endured for the sake of ritual. To the unbeliever in our culture as well, the shedding of blood for the remission of sins is repulsive. There are some, however, who endure the ritual, hoping that somehow the ritual can bring forgiveness.
Under the law, there were exceptions to the sacrifice. Each person was to bring the finest of his flock to be sacrificed. But if a person were too poor, he could bring a two turtledoves or a couple of pigeons. If he were too poor for that, he might offer a tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering, to be cast on the fire. That was the sole exception – poverty. In all other instances, blood must flow; life must be given.
With the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, all exceptions expired, even for the extremely poor. It was the final statement of our condition – that we are all spiritually bankrupt. The days of bringing offerings for our sin expired at the Cross. Instead, we come to accept an offering – one that already has been presented. There is now no exception for any person, nor shall there ever be again, either in this world or the one to come.
Can you imagine, then, how foolish it is for Christians to be praying for and hoping for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem? The renting of the temple veil was the end of sacrifices.
The word remission means the putting away of debts. God set the bar too high for us. His standards of righteousness were too high for any of us to reach. But at the core of His plan was to set aside for Himself a people. It began with national Israel and continues to this day with spiritual Israel, grafted into the root of Jesse, David’s father.
It was to be a people who stood in the favor of God, which meant that His justice had to be satisfied. God would not be holy unless He maintained His standard of righteousness for His people. The resurrection of the OT saints who looked forward to the coming of the Christ was on hold until the final sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which Christians believe has already occurred. Those saints could not receive remission, nor have their debt paid to God, until the blood of the Lamb of God was shed.
When you consider the consistency of this work of grace from the Exodus to the Resurrection, how could any of us claim to be a Red Letter Christian? There is no such thing. For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.
The debt, we believe, is not one paid over time on the installment plan. It is paid at once. The sinner is received into the Father’s love as if he never had sinned. We are not partially forgiven. We are altogether forgiven. The corruption of our natures is still a disease, and the sin that is within us must be daily and hourly mortified. But as for the guilt of our sins before God, and the debt incurred to his Justice, the payment for them is complete – not a thing that progresses with time and experience.
These are not matters of mere hope. They are matters of faith, conviction and assurance. Know that “…as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God’s ways above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts.” It is ours to err; it is God’s to forgive.
But it doesn’t end just there. The blood is an offense to the properly religious, who want to earn their salvation, and an insurmountable obstacle to the wise who find the whole thing too messy and untidy and unreasonable.
“Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” There is in this verse a great hope but also a sweeping indictment. Those who are trusting in repentance for the pardon of their sin may be disappointed. Those who, in our culture, think they have secured their eternal destiny by repeating the so-called Sinner’s Prayer may be in for a rude shock.
All the repentance in the world cannot erase the smallest sin. Where repentance is the work of the Spirit of God, it is a precious gift and a sign of grace. But there is no atoning power in repentance alone. For “…without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” For those who insist that you can couple the Sinner’s Prayer with a reformed life, they may also be in for a rude shock. Reformation is a good thing, but a debt already incurred is not settled by not getting further into debt. To reform can make no atonement to God for the sins that were in the past, or those yet to be committed, albeit unknowingly.
For those who are mighty in prayer and make much of public praying, they also may be in for a rude shock. All the prayers of all the saints on earth and heaven combined could not blot out a single sin. There is no detergent power in prayer.
Self-denial, fasting, prayer, baptism, first communion, Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah – all those things, while good, cannot get rid of a single sin. For “…without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.”
There are those who are so engrossed in the Second Coming of Christ that they seem to have fixed their faith on the future – too much of Christ on the throne, and not enough of Christ on the Cross.
Look away from all other securities and confidences and hopes, and rely on the sufferings and death of the Incarnate God who lives today to plead our case before the Father’s throne. For there will come a day when He will stand with us and plead our case: “I have kept them, Father – those you have given to me.”
And the answer from the Father rings down through history: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
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