Christ our Passover

Well, Andy was going to hold up the two -minute warning sign so that I don't go an hour and a half like I did last

Friday at the conference. So, if you'll take your Bibles and you open it up to 1

Corinthians chapter 5, I'm going to read verses 1 through 8.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, an immorality of such of kind as does not exist even among the

Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed out of your midst.

For I, on my part, though absent from the body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has committed this as though I were present.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you are assembled, I am with you in spirit with the power of our

Lord Jesus. I have decided to deliver this such one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. You do not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover, also has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice or wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Let's pray. Father God, as we come together to look at your word,

Father, I pray that you would give me clarity of speech, clarity of mind, put the cares of this world and of today and in the past, and help me to focus on proclaiming your word in power and in truth.

Father, I pray that you give me extra measure of your spirit, and I pray that I would preach your word and your truth to your people for your glory.

In Christ's name, amen. What we just partook of was something that was typified of the coming of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Jewish people did not see it that way. The night in which they took that Passover lamb, and the

Lord said to them, you take that lamb, you slit its throat, you put the blood over the lentil in a two -door post, and you stay inside.

He gave them clear instructions. Kill the lamb, apply the blood, and stay inside.

They had no idea at that particular moment that this was pushed down in redemptive history to something far greater.

But on that night when they did cut that lamb's throat, they bled it out into a basin, they took the hyssop and they put it over the lentils in the door post, and then they ate it until it was gone.

And as that death angel came across the land of Egypt, and that death angel saw that the blood had been applied, that death angel passed over.

But those whom it did not pass over, those who did not have that blood there, as Andy read, every firstborn child was left dead.

And there's another part of that that we often overlook. Every firstborn cattle as well.

God was making a declaration. He was making a distinction between His people and everybody else.

He was making a distinction between those whom He had selected and chosen to take out of that land of Egypt, and to redeem them out of slavery, and to make them

His own, and then to place them under a covenant with blessings and cursings.

This passage that I read, I don't know if you noticed, but when it says, for Christ our

Passover lamb has been sacrificed, that comes out of nowhere. If you notice as we were reading that, this has to do with a man that was in Corinth, that had been sleeping with his mother -in -law or stepmother, however you want to say it.

The father's probably gone. Paul is saying to put this man out. This Christ our

Passover lamb statement comes in the context of church discipline.

Paul says what this man is doing is absolutely horrific. It's terrible.

It's so bad that this sexual immorality, the pagans don't even do that. He said, so I'm telling you to get this man from out of the body.

Remove him. And he wants to know, most people want to say, well, why? Well, we get to the end.

Because a little bit of sin will ruin the whole lump. He's saying a little bit of sin inside the body will infect the rest.

And he's saying you need to put him out. You've grown arrogant. You have grown proud. You have grown as if, hey, we're doing something better by showing more grace.

And Paul's saying, no, you're not. You're being disobedient to the very thing that the Lord Jesus died for.

Put the man out. And then Paul says something that sometimes is very shocking to people.

But he says, you put him out. And I have delivered that certain person over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his soul may be saved in the day of the

Lord Jesus Christ. You understand that that is hard to do.

I don't think everybody's ever been in any type of church discipline where it actually comes before the body. And you're actually having to either excommunicate someone or to put them out.

That doesn't come easy. We sometimes think that Paul did that with no big deal.

Paul continually said that he struggled not only with the things on outside of the body being robbed and beat up and stoned and drug out of temples.

I mean, out of synagogues and beaten. But he also says, you know, those struggles I have to deal with.

But he says, then I have to deal with the struggles and the problems within the body. He was constantly dealing with these types of things.

So when he says here in verse three, he says, for I on my part, though an absent in the body, but present in spirit.

That's not something mystical. Paul's not saying, hey, my spirit's there, but my body's somewhere else.

But he's saying, I am standing in solidarity that when you put this man out of the body, I am in unison with you.

He says in verse four, in the name of the Lord Jesus, when you are assembled,

I am with you in spirit. Once again, he's showing in unison. And he said, I'm going to be there. And with the power of the

Lord Jesus Christ, as they put this man out. And it says that he put him out for the destruction of his flesh, that his soul may be saved.

Notice how Paul doesn't say this man's unconverted. Paul never says, hey, this man's condemned to hell.

Paul says, we're going to put this man out. He won't be under the covering of blessing of the church. So that his soul may be saved.

God may take his life, but his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. And then he goes on in verse six, and he says, your boasting is not good.

Corinth was probably the most gifted church that we know of in the

New Testament. Had every kind of the gifts of the spirit that you can imagine. Imagine that they were so spectacular that people were boasting of the things that they could do, whether it was tongues and healings or whatever.

And Paul had to rebuke them of that. Well, Paul, now Paul is rebuking them of their arrogance for continuing to let this sin run rampant within the church.

He says, your boasting is not good. I don't know if there's any boasting that's good unless you're boasting about the Lord Jesus Christ.

He says, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Leaven is always looked in in scripture when it's used in this connotation as something that's infectious.

I remember when our kids were little and Sybil was doing the bread baking thing and we were in the homeschool group and they had these little friendship bread things.

And it would be these bags of something that looked like goo on the counter. And I'm like, well, what is that?

She goes, oh, we pass this around and it makes this bread or whatever. Well, it was, I guess it was a bag of infectious yeast.

And they would, I guess, pass it around and everybody make bread and whatever. Anyway, so it was just that little old bit of yeast.

Then they would pass it around. It would make all this other bread, the sourdough. Well, Paul saying right here, it only takes just a little bit of sin.

To ruin the whole lump, just as it takes that little bit of leaven to ruin the whole body.

I mean, that little bit of leaven can infect that whole dough. A little bit of sin can ruin the whole body.

And in this connotation, leaven is always looked at as sin. How many times did we hear

Jesus talk about, beware the leaven of the Pharisees. Y 'all remember Jesus got finished. He had fed 4 ,000, 5 ,000.

I can't remember if it was four or five. And they gathered up all the baskets and they put it in a boat.

And they were supposed to put it in the boat. They were going across the way. And then Jesus says, beware the leaven of the

Pharisees. Just out of nowhere. Beware the leaven of the Pharisees. And the guys go, anybody have the bread?

Where was the fragments? They left it. They left like 12 baskets. And they said, sorry,

Jesus, we left that bread. Do you not hear what I'm saying? I'm not talking about bread.

I'm talking about the leaven of the Pharisees, their hypocrisy, their sinfulness. Beware of it because it will ruin everything.

And that's the same thing that Paul is saying here, that a little bit of sin will ruin the whole lump.

And he says here in verse seven, clean out the old leaven so that you may be,

I'm sorry, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.

Paul is talking to believers. He's saying, take out that sin from among you.

And he says, in fact, you are already unleavened. He is saying positionally, you are already sanctified before God, meaning you are justified before God.

You are sanctified. You are set apart. Why don't you start acting like what you are?

Why don't you start being what you are in Christ, which is holy and blameless and walking in uprightness?

He says, just as you are in fact unleavened, not without sin, but set apart.

And then he says this for Christ, our Passover also has been sacrificed.

Paul at that point takes everything that he has been talking about, the putting this man out, giving him over to the destruction of the flesh, removing sin from among you.

And then out of nowhere, he says, Christ is our Passover and he has been sacrificed.

Would any Jew have ever thought up until the coming of the new covenant that Jesus would have fulfilled the

Passover? It was something that was to be done once. The Passover lamb came one time in history.

It was on that night when God said, this is the last time I will send you to Pharaoh. I'm going to kill his firstborn.

This lamb was to be done one time, one sacrifice, one atonement, one covering for all time.

Now, as we look at the gospels, you see that they were preparing to sacrifice.

Well, that word sometimes needs to, we're trying, they were preparing to sacrifice or to kill that lamb. They were preparing the sacrifice of the

Passover lamb for the meal. That's interesting. If you look at Luke 22, and I think it's around verse four or seven, right as it comes time for Jesus to do the

Passover meal, it says, and the time has now come for the

Passover lamb to be sacrificed. That night that Jesus had what we would call the

Lord's supper or the last supper was the Passover meal. He sat down with his 12 closest confidants, one of them being a devil, and he sat in front of them and he went over many of the things that we just did.

And then he said, I must go away from you. He has to go.

He said he had already told them many times earlier in the week that I'm going to be given over and this goes right over their heads.

I'm going to be handed over to sinful men and be crucified.

And it goes right over their head. More than once. And then it was on this night that he said that I am, that my hour has now come, that I'm going to be delivered into the hands of sinful men and I will be crucified.

Jesus would be handed over by the Sanhedrin or handed over to the

Sanhedrin. He would be mock trials. He would then be handed over to Pilate.

I stood in this very pulpit and showed you six times Pilate had the opportunity on a

Good Friday service, six times Pilate had the opportunity to let

Jesus go and that coward would not in fear of the Jews. He then washed his hands of it and said crucify him.

On that cross that Jesus carried out to that hill Golgotha, when we say hill, we're not talking about a mountain.

It was a hill just high enough on the main road where people could see this man executed, whomever it may be. Jesus went out there, he carried that stipe, carried the cross beam to the stipe, they set him up, they crucified him and when he was suspended between heaven and hell, he was fulfilling in that moment every sacrifice that had ever been presented to the tabernacle or the temple.

We think of the Day of Atonement and that is true. The Day of Atonement typified that he would go in that once a year, he would sprinkle the blood on the horns of the altar and that would put off the sins of the people for another year.

Another year. And they continually did that year after year, 1400 years or so.

Well, on this day, when this

Passover lamb would be sacrificed, that place where those sacrifices had gone in year by year and year by year, when

Jesus said it is finished, it ripped into that veil that separated God and man.

There is no longer a barrier because that Passover lamb had now been sacrificed.

You understand that every sacrifice from that time that Jesus said it is finished was a blasphemous act against a holy

God? Now, God was patient and he let that go on for another 40 years, but he was patient.

But every one of those acts of sacrifice on that brazen altar, on that butcher table, or the ones that went into the

Holy of Holies one time a year, they sprinkled on the horns of the altar were acts of blasphemy because that Passover lamb,

Jesus Christ, had come, he had propitiated the death angel that was on you and me and everyone else, and he passed over us because the blood was upon his people.

Now, we look back 2 ,000 years and we can say

Christ is our Passover lamb. Or if you're a believer in here today, you can say, ask the question, how is

Christ my Passover lamb? How? By faith you were redeemed.

God has bought you back from sin. Our predecessor gave us over Adam with his willful act to not protect his wife in the garden when the serpent was there, and then when he's seeing her eat the fruit, he then himself took it too and put all of us into full -on corruption.

Well, Jesus Christ comes and makes that new. Jesus Christ not only redeemed us, but once he redeemed us as that Passover lamb was redeeming those people out of the land of Egypt, he then now provided a way for us to then come to God.

He had to set up a sacrificial system when they came out of Egypt. Now, we don't have to have that sacrificial system.

How do we come to God? By faith in Jesus Christ. And we can come boldly before the throne of grace. We stand justified before God because the

Passover lamb has paid the penalty in our place. One day, we will stand in heaven before the lamb of God that took away the sins of the world.

We will stand in the halls of heaven and we will see the lamb that was worthy to open the scroll in Revelation.

We will stand and we will see the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.

We will see the lamb standing there, the only one that has scars on his hands and his feet.

And he may even say to you or me, go ahead, stick it in.

That's where the spear went. And he has promised us that we will be glorified with him.

Look, Jesus, no lamb was ever sacrificed at the altar or at the brazen altar or in the holy of holies and was resurrected.

What happened to him? They were either completely consumed or they were divvied up to feed the priest.

Well, in this case, when this lamb died, this lamb was buried in a tomb, a borrowed tomb.

And it had to be borrowed because he wasn't staying. And three days later, resurrected the glorified

God -man, purchasing that which God had foreordained before the foundations of the world.

Those whom he had chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, Jesus Christ purchased with his own blood, providing a way for men and women to be made right with a holy

God. So, nothing novel, nothing new, nothing spectacular, said just the fundamental truth is that Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin.

So that sinners could be set free. And God didn't have to do it.

It's amazing. He didn't have to do it out of his sheer sovereign grace.

He provided a way. God, hey, all he had to do to be a saving God is just save Adam and Eve.

And he could have saved nobody else. But because God is great and loving kindness and merciful and benevolent, and he desires to be with those who are his image bearers, he has provided a way.

And he has provided that way in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Passover lamb. If you're here today and you're unconverted, bad news for you.

If you get in your car and you leave, somebody crosses that line, tire blows out and you die, you will stand before a holy

God, an unholy person. And the Bible says that the only thing that remains for you is a fire indignation of a wrathful

God that will consume his adversaries. That's not my words.

That's the writer of Hebrews. But the good news is it doesn't have to be that way.

The good news is that this very lamb that we're talking about, the

God man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world, who lived a perfect life, fulfilled every type and shadow of the

Mosaic law that God required. He fulfilled it, providing righteousness for every person that would ever believe.

He then, if you by faith, trust in that finished work of what Jesus has done, that then imputation of your sin is put on Christ and then the imputation of Christ's righteousness is then put on your place.

It's called W imputation, if you want the fancy word. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might have the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

God has provided a way for you. And if you're here today and you're without Christ, you would be a fool to leave this place.

Not bow in your needy King Jesus. Now, if you're a believer here today, we've got so much to celebrate for.

We have someone that did what we could not do, which was be perfect. And God was perfect in our place.

He did what we could not do, which was pay the penalty of our own sin that we were in debt for, that we could spend forever in eternity and not pay for one sin.

Understand that not one sin could be paid for if we spent all eternity. Forget all the ones that we've done every second.

I mean, think about the amount of sin that we sin even as believers. If anybody in here ever loved the Lord God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, all his strength for one second.

Anybody want to raise their hand? Nobody. We should be thankful that we now stand righteous before God.

Declared righteous. Ain't nobody in here righteous. Let me just let you know. Ain't nobody here righteous. You know that?

We're not. Nobody in here is righteous. We're living on credit. We're living on what

Christ has done in our place. We have been declared something we're not.

That's what justification is. It's not just as if you never sinned. It's justification is

God declaring us righteous. Then at that moment of being declared righteous, we are justified and then

God through sanctification then begins to make us what he has declared us. And that's holy.

And one day it will be standing before him in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and then clothed in glory just like him.

Not the glorified God man, but we'd be glorified man just as God intended.

So with that being said, let's pray and you'll come lead us in a song.

Father God, thank you so much for our Passover lamb. We look back and see what that lamb purpose was in the

Old Testament. And Father, we look forward to what it fulfillment came in the new and that was in your son who would be willing to not as that lamb which was taken from the herd and then had its throat cut, but the lamb of God who willingly said,

I will pay the debt that they owe. Father, thank you for your son.

Thank you for the provisions that are in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you one day, Father, we will leave this place and we will leave this earth and we'll forever be with you glorified.

And we will see him just as he is and we will be as he is in Christ name.