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Pastor David Mitchell
And in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 10, while you're turning to those places, I wanna spend some time today leading up to a message next Sunday on the Resurrection Sunday about the resurrection. Today, I wanna talk to you about the Passover because that is the season in which what we now call Easter occurs.
And as you know, Easter is not a biblical word. It is found in the King James Version once, but it's a mistranslation. It should be the word Passover. In the Greek language, it actually is the word Passover.
So the word Easter is not found in the Bible and for good reason. I wanna give you a quote from the Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedia. Many of you are familiar with that about the pre-Christian Easter tradition.
It says, the origin of Easter and its name, the origin of its name is unknown. Scholars, however, accepting the derivation proposed by the eighth century English scholar, Saint Bede, believe it probably comes from the word Easter, that's E-A-S-T-R-E, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a month corresponding to the month of April.
Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox and traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, the bunny rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored Easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring and used in Easter egg rolling contests and given as gifts among these pagans.
And so we've seen that the Christian church has carried some of these pagan traditions into this time called Easter, which really should be the time of the Passover and the resurrection. The Roman Catholics began all of that, as you know, they would go into a new part of the world and they would incorporate their pagan rites into Christianity and they did that everywhere they went.
You might say, well, it's innocent, does it matter? Well, let me read you a quote from Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 29. It says, when the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whether thou goest to possess them and thou succeedest them and dwellest in their land, take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that thou inquire not after their God, saying, how did these nations serve their gods?
Even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord your God, for every abomination to the Lord, which he hated, have they done unto their gods, even their sons and daughters they have burnt in fire to their gods.
What thing soever I command you, observe to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it. Now, you read a passage like that, you see the nation of Israel going into what will become the promised land, you see a people that are already dwelling there that are pagans, that are worshiping false gods, that have certain rites that they do, certain idols that they perform these rites with, and they have hated God and they have done things that God detests, even to the point of sacrificing their own children by fire to these false gods.
And God warns the people of Israel not to take up any of the things that these other people have done, any of the instruments, any of the idols, any of the tools that they might use to worship these false gods, God said leave them alone.
And now the most important verse to us, to me, is verse 32, because what God says, you say, well, we've never seen a place where they sacrifice humans and so forth, but the interesting thing as you look at just any common encyclopedia and you read what it says about the Easter egg and the Easter bunny and all these things, they came from pagan peoples who used these things in their worship of false gods and who did things that God hates.
And you say, well, we don't mean that by it. Well, the problem with that thought is that God says, whatsoever I command you observe to do it, thou shalt not add to that or diminish from it. We're not supposed to add things to the true worship of the true God.
So when we take things like that and we add them into a time we call Easter, they have really nothing to do with Christianity. And the very source of it is pagan and comes from the worship of these gods.
What we ought to be focusing on this time of year, of course, is the Passover and what it meant and the last Passover dinner that the Lord Jesus had with his disciples and then also the resurrection and what it means for us.
So look at 1 Corinthians chapter five and verse three. This is a wonderful passage. It's especially important in these last days when we have so many people among the Messianic Jews trying to tell us we need to come back to the law and we need to keep the Sabbath on Saturday and all these different things.
Notice what the Lord tells us by inspiration of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 .3. For verily, for I verily, as absent in body but present in spirit, have judged already as though I were present concerning him that have done these deeds.
Now you remember Paul is dealing with the Corinthian church, a carnal church, and there's a particular man in this church that has been sinning a despicable sin in the midst of this church and the church has done nothing about it and just goes on as if they don't care.
And so Paul is coming to address this in this letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ whom when you are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul is saying I'm not gonna be able to be with you physically but you have my letter and my spirit is with you about this matter.
And he says to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. So is this a saved person or a lost person who is committing these sins in the church?
He was a saved person and his soul is going to be saved. This teaches so clearly the doctrine of eternal security that we're not saved based on our works. We're not saved by good deeds that we do nor can we lose our salvation by the bad deeds that we do.
Illustrated so well in this story. However, it was to be corrected in the church and the apostle Paul was very serious about it even to the point that as an apostle, he was willing to pray that the Lord would take this man if necessary and take his flesh so that his spirit might be saved and the church would not continue to be profaned by this man's actions.
Well, we know the story turned out well. The man repented and he got right with the Lord and 2 Corinthians records the fact that he was brought back into the church and into fellowship. But in the midst of this story, we see this amazing verse.
Look at verse six and seven. Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. He's saying it is not good that you allow this type of sin to continue in the church and to act like nothing's wrong and just go on as you always have.
He said it is not good that you act like everything is okay and you glory when this is going on. Don't you understand that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? What does that mean? A little bit of sin, whether it be introduced into the doctrine or whether it be introduced into the church or into the life or into the family, a little bit of leaven, the leaven pictures sin and Jesus is saying a little bit of that in there will affect the whole life of the church, the whole life of the person, the whole life of the family, whatever it has regard to.
So you don't take it lightly when a little sin is introduced. Now, verse seven says to purge it out, therefore. Now, you're going to see as we go into the Old Testament and we look at the feasts that they kept, Passover and then the feast that they kept for the next seven days after the Passover, it pictures so beautifully what this New Testament verse is saying to do, to purge out, therefore, the old leaven that you may be a new lump because you are unleavened.
You are unleavened. That's what you are as a born-again Christian. So, therefore, purge out the things that don't match what you are. Don't be a hypocrite, in other words. For even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.
So Christ is our Passover and he is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not withhold leaven. Now, this doesn't mean that we literally keep the Passover feast like the Jews did. What it's talking about is our lives.
It's talking the same way in which you live a continual Sabbath every day. You don't keep the Sabbath on Saturday. That was a type. That was a picture. The real thing is revealed to us in the New Testament where you are in Christ, resting in him every day all the time.
You're resting in Jesus Christ and that's what the Sabbath is. It's a rest. You're resting in his work and you are not attempting to do the work of pleasing God and so forth in the sense of trying to save yourself by being pleasing unto the Lord.
He says, rest from that. Just realize that we must be in Christ. And in this same sense, he's keeping us, he's telling us to keep this feast, the feast of the Passover, keep it in our hearts, always understanding that Jesus Christ is our Passover.
His blood was shed for us. Therefore, because of this, we keep the feast, not withhold leaven. Now, let's look and see what the old leaven is. This means we should not live our lives, our Christian lives with old leaven.
You see, it's as if we have gone through the Passover, we have been freed from Egypt, we have gone through the Red Sea, through the wilderness and into the promised land, all the time Jesus being our Passover.
And because of all this, we ought not to bring back in the leaven that we used to have. So it says this, the leaven of malice and wickedness. Who can tell me what malice is? Doesn't do us any good to read this and understand that we're supposed to get to purge this out if we don't know what it is.
So let's talk about it a moment. Hmm? I like that word, meanness. It's like planned, thoughtful meanness. Premeditated, where you're thinking about the other person. Now, why would the Lord say this with regard to the church?
Because it's in the church. It's a little leaven that can be in the church. If you harbor in your heart, in your mind, in your thoughts, negative things towards other brothers and sisters in Christ, always remember that God is no respecter of persons and he loves the other child as much as he loves you.
He loves the other child the same as he loves you. You're a parent. If you're a parent who have parented more than one child at a time, you had some siblings running around, did you like it when they argued with each other?
What about your mom, Brother Clarence? You had brothers. You had, you know, where you got at least two boys. Do you think the mom likes it when the boys pick on each other? They don't like it at all. Now, the dad may say, OK, well, they got to rough it up a little bit.
But the mom never feels that way. Does she, Charlotte? Never feels that way. Does not like that stuff. God does not like it. God does not like it when one of his children picks on another child. Get it out.
If you have a problem with that in your hearts and minds, look at the good side of your brothers and sisters. They all have good sides. They have probably way more good things than bad. So don't focus on the bad.
Our words are to be edifying. Our thoughts edifying. We have to control our thought lives. We have to cast out the imagination where Satan would even put an imagination in our mind about the other brother.
It's not even true. And he builds it up and it's not even a fact. It's a half-truth, perhaps. This is the malice that must be removed, purged. A little leaven leavens the entire lump. Same way in a church, but same way in a family.
That's why parents who are wise try to minimize that kind of thing going on between the siblings. Don't allow it. When you see it, correct it. And in the church, the Lord says that we ought to purge out this malice.
Now, what is wickedness? You see, malice is something we can't usually see as easily because it's inside the heart and mind. But what is wickedness? Wickedness, I think, is more like the sin that was addressed in this story.
An outward sin that could be known about. A sin that was an outward sin going on inside the church. Certainly that should be purged as well. Malice being the inward type of sin of the mind where Jesus said, if you've hated your brother, you've killed him.
This verse, you might say, if you've had malice towards your brother, it's as if you've done wickedly towards him outwardly because on the inside it will affect the church as well or the home or the family, whatever the scenario is.
So these should be purged. Why should they be purged? Because Christ is our Passover and we are not saved by works. We don't even please God by works of the flesh. Only if the works come from him. And so Christ is our Passover.
He is the reason that we can have peace among ourselves in the church. And if you look at the beautiful pictures that God gives in the Old Testament, immediately after the Passover, for an entire week, the following week, they purge all of the sin from the homes.
They go and they hide a little bit of yeast, which pictures sin. The leaven is yeast. It pictures sin. They would go hide a little bit of it in the house, in a place that was kind of easy, depending on how young the children were.
And then they'd tell the little children, go find that and get it out of the house. And they let the children go hunt for it. It was kind of a fun thing for the children. And they went and they hunted all through the house and they would find where the mom had hidden some yeast.
And they would get that and take it and haul it outside of the house and cast it out, purging the leaven from the home. What do you think the children learned from that lesson every year? They learned this very principle, that we ought to cast out the leaven because a little bit of sin ruins the whole lot.
A little bit of leaven, the whole lot. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven. When we come to think of the time of the Passover and what Jesus did for us, and we think of the time of the resurrection, and we live a daily resurrected life, we are in fact keeping the feast, and we should not do it with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Sincerity and truth. Who we are on the inside ought to be who we represent on the outside, and vice versa. That's sincerity and truth. I wrote unto you in an epistle, not to company with fornicators, and the passage continues, but you see how the whole passage deals with getting the leaven out.
That's the gist of it, and in the midst of this passage, this phrase, for even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. What better reason to get the leaven out of our lives, of our church, of our homes?
Jesus has sacrificed himself for us. Now, I want to remind you of a couple of verses in the New Testament before we go into this passage in the book of Exodus, because we're about to go into the Old Testament.
We have to understand that as we study it, even though these are things that truly historically happened in a physical way, they picture spiritual truths in detail, and give us the details and the colors and the nuances of all the things that God means by some of these phrases in the New Testament.
When the Bible says, Christ is our Passover who sacrificed himself for us, those are beautiful words, but they don't give you the depth that you get if you go into the Old Testament and you study the Passover, and you see all the types and examples that are given there to give us the true picture, the larger picture of what this is all about.
1 Corinthians 10, 11 says, now all these things, this is talking about the Old Testament things, happened unto them for in samples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the age are come.
So everything we would read in the Old Testament about the Passover, everything we would study, all of the little details that we can learn about it are given for us as examples, or types, or physical examples of spiritual truths that have to do with Christ, our Passover.
Romans 15, 4 says the same thing, a similar way. It says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime, that means the Old Testament, were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
So let's look at Exodus chapter 12, verse 10. And see what kind of hope we can find, what kind of patience we can glean, and what we can learn as we look at the Passover as it was given by the Lord, understanding that Jesus Christ is our Passover, and that all of these things that we see in this passage are types and pictures of all that Jesus did, of who he was, and what he accomplished in his finished work on the cross.
Exodus chapter 12, let me see something here, I'm gonna make sure I've got that right. Okay, it's Exodus, we're gonna be in chapter 12, but I'm gonna read the last verse of chapter 11. So Exodus chapter 11, and verse 10, leading into chapter 12, I thought I had that wrong.
Exodus chapter 11, verse 10. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land. Now chapter 12, verse one.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be unto you the beginning of months. So this month of Nisan, which is roughly equivalent to April for us, is the first month of the Jewish year.
It's the Jewish new year. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Why do you think God told Israel to change their calendar at this point so that this now becomes the first month of their year?
The time of the Passover, the very first Passover, because they are being freed from bondage and they have a new life. They're going to be freed from bondage the very next day, and they have new life.
Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, in the 10th day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house. I want you to notice something.
Who can tell me what day the Passover takes place on? If you read ahead just a little bit, it's on the 14th. So they're telling, God is telling them to take a lamb and put it in the house on the 10th.
So think about that. They don't just go out and get a lamb and slay it. They get a lamb and bring it into the home with the children and the parents, and the lamb comes into the house. A lamb for each house.
And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls. Every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.
I want you to notice this verse, that the lamb stayed in the house from the 10th day into the 14th. So the lamb became like a pet to the children and the family became attached to the little lamb. All of the people in the household observed this lamb's innocence, his joy of life, and the special love that this lamb would have for the children and that they would have for him.
Now verse five. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall take it out from the sheep or from the goat. So it's without blemish, a male, no sin, a pure, innocent, holy animal.
Hebrews chapter four, verse 15 says, for we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we, and yet without sin. Jesus Christ had no blemish.
He had no sin on his life. And when they chose the little lamb without a blemish, that pictures that the lamb pictured the sinless, true lamb of God. Verse six, and you shall keep it up until the 14th day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
As the men kill the little lamb, they certainly realized some things about themselves. First of all, they realized that it was their own sin which caused it to have to die. If they had not been sinners, the lamb wouldn't have to be killed.
Even though this was a picture, it still was a living, beautiful little animal, alive and full of happiness and innocence, not knowing what was about to happen. This little lamb pictures the innocence of Jesus Christ and the purity of Jesus Christ, the sinless nature of Jesus Christ.
It goes on to picture many other things, but they certainly realized that it was their own hand that would bring death to this little lamb. First Peter 2 .24 says, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness by whose stripes we are healed.
The Jewish men who killed this little lamb realized as they saw it die at their own hand that it was their hand that killed it. Secondly, it died at their hands by the command of the father. It was the heavenly father who commanded them to kill the little lamb.
Matthew 1 .21 says, and she shall bring forth a son and thou shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. Matthew 27 .46, and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani, that is to say, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
So therefore it was the father's will that this take place. And thirdly, as they kill the little lamb, they watched its blood pour from the veins of its neck and the life that was so precious slowly but surely passed from the innocent lamb.
John 19 .30, when Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. Fourth, they noticed that the lamb did not resist death, but lay still and quietly died.
I don't know if any of you have ever killed a little lamb, if you were gonna have it for the family meal or whatever, but if you ever have killed one, you'll see that a lamb doesn't resist like other animals.
All other animals, even cattle, all of them will resist, but a lamb will lay there still and bleed until its breath is gone. So they would notice this. They would notice that the little lamb, as God created the lamb for the very purpose of picturing the Lord Jesus Christ, even today, the lambs, if you were to kill one in this fashion, it would lay there and gently die without struggling, without fighting, without even a kick.
They noticed the lamb did not resist death, but lay still and quietly died. Matthew 27 .39, and they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads and saying, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself if thou be the son of God.
Come down from that cross. Matthew 26 .53, now pray to the Father, and he shall presently give me more than 12 legions of angels, but how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? They didn't realize he could have done that.
As they mocked him, he could have prayed and asked the Father to send angels, but he knew that that wasn't God's will. First Peter 2 .23, who when he was reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness by whose stripes we are healed.
For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the shepherd and the bishop of your souls. So they noticed as they killed the little lamb that he did not fight against the dead. He died willingly.
He died quietly. And finally, they would capture the blood of this little lamb as they hung the lamb on a tree to bleed fully. They would capture all of the blood in a bowl. And now back to the passage in Exodus verse seven says, and they shall take the blood and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it.
And they shall eat the flesh in the night roast with fire and unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it. What a picture of the cross. What a picture of the bitterness of the death of the cross.
But what a picture of the joy of the fact that the blood takes away the sins of God's people. All of this picture and this act that was done again and again, year in and year out. In the nation of Israel.
And next Sunday, we'll continue to study a little bit about this. Today, I just wanted us to see the picture of the lamb itself. The picture that it paints of our Lord and Savior. The one who was so gentle.
The one who had the power to call forth the angels of heaven and destroy the entire world to avoid the cross, but he did not do so. He died willingly for our sins. He died willingly that we might be made to be brothers and sisters.
Therefore, we ought to lay aside malice and wickedness in anything that we find in our own hearts or in our own lives, in our church and in our family life, in our own personal lives. A little leaven, leaveneth a whole lump.
What we'll see is we go in and we study the Passover and then we study the following feast of the seven days of unleavened bread. This is so beautifully pictured and said so simply in the New Testament that Christ is our sacrifice.
He is our Passover. Therefore, purge out the old leaven. So forth. So where would we be if we didn't have the Old Testament pictures? We wouldn't understand most of what we know about what our Lord and Savior has done for us.
So thanks be to God that he's given it for us to study together. Let's stand and have prayer. Father, we thank you for all that this little lamb pictured. We thank you that when the apostle John was given the vision of the heavenlies, as he was told to pen the book of the Revelation, he looked in the midst of the throne at the right hand of the throne of God and saw a lamb, as it were, slain.
And the work was finished. And the blood had been presented. And the Lord Jesus Christ, with the very scars of his death in his glorified body, stood in the midst of the throne of God. John was able to put in words somehow, some way with his limited vocabulary, the majesty that he saw.
And the result, some of the result of the finished work that you accomplished on that cross. So Lord, we thank you that you've given us a glimpse of that today, both in Sunday school and in our message today.
May we contemplate Christ, our Passover. May we contemplate how you want us to live with regard to you and with regard to one another. May we live together in peace and meekness as is pictured by this little lamb.
May we love one another as is pictured by the little lamb being in the home for those days and the affection that grew. Lord, we thank you for everything that you've pictured for us here. Would you go with us into our time of fellowship and bless our meal, bless our time of fellowship together.
We thank you that we can have that each week. Protect those who are not with us today, bring them back safely. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.