Resurrection Sunday 2023 (04/09/2023)

I think our musical group hit their peak today. That was amazing.

Charlotte and I cut our teeth on that music when we first got saved. And we've always loved it.

You nailed it. All of you did. Matt, the guitar was great. Bass was great.

The rhythm was great. And the singing was great. That was so good.

What? Oh, man, the piano. The piano, like you, stayed up all night, right?

That's not an easy song. Because, you know,

Keith Green was a pianist. So he wrote his songs. And he could get with it on that piano.

But you did. It sounded just like, I mean, I was sitting up there this morning. Charlotte and I hadn't been saved all that long, maybe about a year.

We were doing youth work. And we would put big speakers up on the drag in Mahea, big speakers, and play that music through it and draw a crowd of teenagers and then witness to them.

And the pastor who founded this church had problems similar to like some of us went through legalism.

So he said we had to get rid of that music that you listened to right there. He didn't want that. It was too rocky or whatever.

So anyway, that was fantastic this morning, beautiful. And Maddie, I know the range on that song.

You hit every note, the low notes and the high notes. It was so beautiful and so just appropriate lyrics for this morning.

So welcome to Easter Sunday here at Park Meadows. And you've all been already kind of bubbly today and a lot of fellowship going on.

It's a beautiful day outside. And spring pictures life, springing from death.

God's put it all, everything's orchestrated. Everything is in its place. Let's have a word of prayer.

And we'll begin with the message today. Lord, thank you so much for this congregation and for being able to be a part of this congregation, this local church.

Thank you that you have your people scattered around this world in different places.

And you're speaking to their hearts this morning. Lord, speak to our hearts through your word.

And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let me tell you about the only mention of Easter in the whole

Bible. Turn to Acts chapter 12 with me, verse 1. It's interesting to note that it's only mentioned once, once in the

English Bible. It's never mentioned in the Greek Bible. I'll show you why in a second.

We miss the boat a lot at Easter. And we'll be talking about that some in the message today.

We're going to have what the modern church calls the Lord's Supper during our mealtime together in the other room.

Not an upper room, but the other room. And we'll talk about it a little more when we get in there together as well.

But each year as we grow in the Lord, we've tried to make the celebration of the

Lord's Supper more biblical, which is very difficult to do when you realize that the Roman Catholics entirely ruined it.

And our wonderful reformers brought a lot of Catholicism out with them, unfortunately.

But boy, the things that they did get right were so amazingly beautiful. Salvation by grace is what they restored into the entire world, which was lost during the

Dark Ages almost. There were just little groups of born -again Christians around running parallel with the

Roman Catholicism in the Dark Ages that kept the light there. God had his people hidden in the mountains, the

Waldenses in Europe, and different groups that kept the word going in its purity.

But when we came out the other side, we brought a lot of Catholicism. And the idea of having the

Lord's Supper every day or even every week is Roman Catholic in nature because they believe when you take the

Lord's Supper that you're saved every Sunday. You have to be re -saved. And you're literally eating his body.

And it literally turns into his body when you put it in your mouth. And the wine turns into his blood when you put it in your mouth.

I've always wondered how any doctors or scientists of any kind would remain Roman Catholic. But they do.

And I guess they just say that they're doing that by faith. The Lord never intended for that. It's a symbol.

It's a picture. It's a picture of his body and his blood. And best

I can tell, it was done once a year at Passover. And that's when we do it here. But I'm not dogmatic about it.

I don't really care to debate it. But I wouldn't even mind if we had it more often.

But right now, until someone convinces me that it was done more than once a year at Passover, we'll do it this way for now.

But it's all about Passover. And the

Passover pictured Jesus, death, burial, and resurrection for thousands of years among the

Jewish people. And because they became so legalistic, and mind you, I cannot say it enough.

Legalism kills. The letter killeth. And the spirit brings life.

And so everywhere where we've seen the truth squandered in this world, it's because of legalistic people.

So beware of them. Never let them come into this church. And if they come, you can let them stay one hour, is what the apostle

Paul said. One hour. And that would have to be Ben's hour, because I'm not going to let him be here during my hour.

All right. So let's read Acts chapter 12, verse 1. Now, about that time,

Herod the king stretched forth his hands. I'm going to get a little assistance here.

My glasses. Stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. Notice what he's doing.

He's going to persecute certain of the church. And he killed

James, the brother of John, with the sword. Did you guys remember that, that that happened? If you forget these things, sometimes we forget the persecution.

They all died at the hands of the evil men, except for John. But James was one of the first.

And Herod took his life with the sword. And because he saw that that pleased the

Jews, so Herod was a politician. And you have to watch them as well, right?

They will destroy everything you have, because all they care about is power and money. And so many of them,

I won't say all of them, but many of them. And because he saw that it pleased the

Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. Then were the days of unleavened bread.

Now, that gives us a clue of the time period, because along with Passover, the biblical

Passover includes a week of what they called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, coincides with the time of Passover.

It's all done together. And so now we know that this time period is at the time of Passover.

And when he apprehended Peter, he put him in prison and delivered him to four quatrains of soldiers to keep him.

He did not want him getting loose. He was gonna kill him. And it says right at this point in your

English Bible, it says, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.

Peter, now that means the Jewish people who would have killed him. Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto

God for him. Keep that in mind. Now, this word Easter in the Greek is Pascha, which means

Passover. It is not Easter. The word Easter is not found in the Bible. It's a pagan religion.

It comes from pagan religion. The little eggs or the fertility goddess, the whole thing is pagan.

Doesn't mean that we have to celebrate it as pagans. However, and it comes through Roman Catholicism who would go out into the world and in order to get converts, they would pick up their habits and their pagan things and bring that into their

Christian religion to make them more comfortable. Do you see any resemblances to the modern mega church today to bring in any filthy thing into the church to make people more comfortable so more people will come and pay the rent for the church?

Same thing is repeating itself today. We are going into what I would call the modern dark ages.

And Jesus and the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit said that a great falling away must happen before the antichrist reveals himself and Jesus comes back after that.

The great apostasy and we're in the midst of it now. Well, so this word is not

Easter. It's the word Passover. And let's keep reading though, because this is kind of fascinating.

I want you to watch what happens with the powerful prayers that were going up for Peter after James had just been killed and they know, well, he's going to kill

Peter and they're praying without ceasing. See the church, the church does not like to pray.

She prefers to play, but when things get serious enough just like the children of Israel will do so many times when they're taken captive into a pagan land after about 50 years of that, they get tired of it and they start to pray.

What a picture of us that is. We finally get tired of the trouble Satan brings into our homes and our churches.

And we begin to pray. Now they're under dire trouble because their pastor is in prison about to be killed by the same person who just killed one of their key apostles,

James. And so they're praying and they're praying and they're praying, they're praying all night. Now watch what happens.

Verse six, and when Herod would have brought Peter forth the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers.

I mean, not enough to have him in prison. They put two soldiers in and made him sleep next to him.

Bound with two chains and the keepers before the door. So you had keepers at the door.

You had two sleeping next to him and two chains holding him to the wall of the dungeon.

And behold, the angel of the Lord came into him. Now, many times when we see the word angel it always in the

Greek means messenger, but it can be various types of messengers. It can be an angelic being.

It can be Jesus Christ. It can be any type of messenger depending on the context.

Well, normally when it calls them the angel of the Lord that's a reference to Jehovah or Jesus incarnate.

Now, this is kind of interesting when you look at the time period of this.

This is after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And yet it says the angel of the Lord comes to Peter while he's in prison. Was this Jesus? Well, it could be an angelic being but it calls him the angel of the

Lord. So sometimes that's Jesus. So we'll just leave it at that. But look what happened.

Light shined in the prison. Do you think this could have been a frightening experience for those two soldiers laying beside Peter?

Maybe even for Peter. So I think, you know, we can read so quickly through scripture, a little phrase is like light shined in the prison.

Well, imagine you're lying there in complete darkness with no light at all between two soldiers with two chains around you about to be killed by Herod, the politician.

And it just lights up and it lights up. That's one reason I like alien movies, science fiction because they'll be in their pickup going down the road and all of a sudden there's no noise and it just goes to, you know what

I'm talking about? To, there's that light. This is what happened. Okay, this is what happened.

Now, I think that it was quite an experience. And so the

Bible just says light shined in the prison but you have to picture that. And now picture this, this heavenly being whether it be an angel or the

Lord himself smoked Peter on the side. Do you think Peter was sound asleep? Now, think about that a minute.

You just had your friend killed by sword by the very leader that just put you in prison.

You got two soldiers laying there with you, two at the door and a whole bunch, several quadturians of Roman soldiers out there.

And he's sound asleep. Do you think Peter had given it over to the Lord? Hey, Marian, you were talking to me.

I love to share private things about Marian with all the rest of you. But he said, you know,

I'm learning as a new Christian, I'm learning to give things over to the Lord. And he said, and the best thing is

I'm learning not to take it back again. That's good, that's good. We can all learn from that.

But look at Peter, so sound asleep. Okay, he's laying there about to be killed but he's sound asleep, trusting the

Lord, totally peaceful, sleeping, no entrepreneurial fear, sound asleep, the whole room lights up, still sound asleep.

Now that would have gotten me, wouldn't it, Charlotte? Like you can put a little blue light on our

Apple TV comes on and out, there's a burglar in the house. And I'm up with my nine millimeter, walking around looking for the burglar and it's just the

Apple TV, but he's still sound asleep. So here we see the

Lord himself perhaps come up and smite him on the side, picture that.

Wake up, boom, you can picture, you know, one guy waking up another guy, right?

Boom, he wakes him up. Now Peter's eyes open up to this resplendent light that's in the room and this angelic being and two totally unconscious soldiers who just had a heart attack.

That's what he wakes up to and it doesn't stop there. After smiting him on the side, he raised him up saying arise quickly and the chains fell off of his arms and his legs.

It just fell off. And so now this is interesting.

So they just walk out of the prison right past everybody. Now, the angel leaves him on his own.

That would be interesting. By now he has escaped prison and he's walking down the street, looking for the house that the disciples are in, praying for him to not be killed.

By now we're possibly in the middle of the night, right? So I'm gonna pick it up in verse 16 of chapter 12.

It says, but Peter continued knocking. So now he's at the door where the disciples, his brothers and sisters are knocking.

They're in there praying for God to raise him up and save his life and get him out of prison and save him.

And he's knocking and they won't answer the door because it can't be Peter, he's in prison. Isn't that how we pray?

Would you admit to me that every time you get a prayer answered, you are surprised? Yeah, why is that?

Because we're human. And Peter continued knocking, they wouldn't let him in. And when they had finally opened the door and saw that it was him, they were astonished.

Lord, get him out of prison. He knocks on the door and they're astonished. I love that. Verse 21 says, here's how the story is.

And upon a set day, do you think God is sovereign? Do you think that he has like to the hour and the minute of when every one of us is gonna go either to be with him or to be in hell forever, not us, but humans, we'll be with him, that he knows the exact minute that's going to happen already.

And you can't cross the bounds thereof, Job says. Well, on a set day, Herod arrayed in royal apparel as this great politician sat upon his throne and made an oration unto the people.

He's probably gonna give a speech and say, I'm gonna kill Peter because you liked it when I killed James. He gives an oration and the people gave a shout saying, it is the voice of God and not a man.

This man was an orator. He was a genuine politician. And immediately the same angel of the

Lord that had smitten Peter on the side and awakened him and taken him out of that prison, that same angel of the

Lord smoked this man because he gave not God the glory for his gifts and abilities as a speaker and a leader.

And he was eaten by worms right in front of the people as they watched the speech and he gave up the ghost and died.

Worms coming out of his mouth, ears, eyes and nose. Worms. This is how he ended.

And then it ends with this, but the word of God grew and multiplied. So guess what?

The poli, excuse me, I didn't do that. The politicians cannot stop the spread of the word of God.

They cannot stop Christian schools. People will just give more. It'll grow.

We'll still get our gym without the government money. I wasn't comfortable with it anyway. I guess you saw the newspaper.

Oh, you didn't see it yet? You didn't see it. Did you see it? Yeah. So they voted it down and I think most of them were

Republicans, right? It's not.

Well, this was a vote on the finances of apparently the budget. And they just said, we're not gonna allow our budget money to be spent on private schools.

So it's pretty well shot down for another year anyway. We'll see. But it doesn't matter.

The point is, it doesn't matter. The word of God grew and multiplied. Now, let me talk to you a little bit about what this day is all about from scripture.

We were in the same time period when this happened, when this amazing miracle was done, where Peter was released from prison and miraculously.

And even God's people were surprised at that. And it was at the very time of the

Passover and the Feast of Weeks, which is the Feast, I should say the Feast of the

Unleavened Bread. And today, the Jewish people call it the

Seder. They still celebrate this this time. They're celebrating it now.

It's interesting. It coincides with the Muslim Ramadan, which is going on right now.

And so the word Seder itself in the Hebrew means order, kind of like the order of the cosmos that's mentioned in John 3, 16.

The order of God's universe, the order that the Holy Spirit, as he hovered over the earth when it was without form and void, and the

Holy Spirit hovered over it, and all of a sudden order came into everything that we see today.

And not exactly as we see today because we're on this side of the curse, but I often, do you ever thank the

Lord that it's still so beautiful even on this side of the curse? His world is so beautiful even after the curse.

But anyway, so that word means order. So the celebrations that the

Jewish people do in their homes this time of year, every year, it's all about God's order, number one.

Now, they have perverted the celebration of it, obviously, because obviously when

Jesus Christ was nailed to that cross, that was the end of the

Jewish sacrificial system. Now, no historian can explain why that just stopped right there.

I don't even think the Jewish historians can explain why that stopped right there. But when

Jesus became the antitype of the type, and by that,

I mean all of the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed as a picture to the real lamb of God, Jesus.

So he's the antitype. He's the one that fulfilled the type. And when it was fulfilled, it ended because you can only crucify him once.

And Ben said it so well in Sunday school this morning. There are many people in denominate, supposedly

Christian denominations across the city today that preach to their people that they can lose their salvation.

And then they say they can get it back again. In Hebrews chapter 11, I believe it is, first several verses of that chapter, prove if you, now you've got to read it grammatically and carefully.

If you don't understand grammar, you'll never figure it out. But if you understand grammar and you use the rules of interpretation using grammar properly, what that passage literally says is, well, okay, if you think you could lose your salvation, then you could never get it back again because to do so, you would have to re -crucify the son of God and put him to open shame, it says.

That's not happening. Ben said that this morning. It's not happening. He died once for the sins of his people.

And these denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, Church of Christ, the Methodists, Pentecostals, and yes,

I name them because they're wrong and they're false prophets and they're teaching every day to re -crucify Jesus and get saved again.

Come down to this altar, bring some money with you because they're all in it for their belly's sake. The Bible says, and re -crucify the son of God today, even on Easter.

How about that? Ain't gonna happen. You can teach your false doctrine all you want to and the word of God will continue to spread.

The truth will continue to spread because God's people will not compromise on it. Now, this is all about order and they have perverted it today.

What's interesting is God in his grace gave me a Jewish believer as a mentor,

Dr. Erwin Freeman. And he taught me a lot about what's actually supposed to happen in a biblical

Passover. And so you can go out and read about it on Google, but I got it straight from the

Jew, as he called himself. Oh no, no, no, no. He's an evangelist, right?

And they take up love offering. He said, no, you don't take up a little love offering for the Jew. I want a big love offering. He would say stuff like that.

But so they've messed it up a little bit, but let's see if there's still some truth in the pictures, even that the

Jewish families are doing today. But better than that, let's look at the scripture and see what the

Bible says these things actually do picture and symbolize. So there's three major things that the

Jewish family have got to have. Now they've added two or three other things such as they've added an egg that they put on the table.

That's nowhere in the Bible. That's paganism, just like the Roman Catholics brought paganism into it.

They put an egg on the table, just like we have little Easter egg hunts, which is ridiculous. We shouldn't do it.

But when you're a grandpa, sometimes you allow it. But I mean, I didn't as a parent and I'm kind of starting to not like it as a grandparent anymore either.

The newness of the grandkids is worn off. Let's stop. But it pictures a fertility

God and a rabbit lays the egg, which is a picture of, if you're an adult, you know what rabbits picture, right?

It's unclean. Okay, so the Jews bring it in too and put the egg on the table. They can't even tell you why the eggs on the table.

Can you tell me why we have Easter egg hunts? Okay, so there you have it. Satan will bring in the leaven when this feast is all about unleavened bread.

It's all about no leaven because leaven pictures sin. So here we have these things that they,

I'm gonna give you three things that they have on their table that is correct and biblical. And I'm gonna leave the unbiblical stuff out, okay?

But the first thing is called the Pesach. And the Pesach is the shank bone of the lamb.

Now we have cow today for our dinner, but it has a shank bone as well.

It's the hip bone of the lamb. And what's interesting about the Jewish families is this side of the cross, since there is no more sacrifice, they don't do a biblical

Passover anymore because they used to sacrifice the lamb right up until Jesus was offered.

In fact, when they nailed the nails into his hands and his feet, the high priest had to leave immediately after that and run down the street to go into the temple and kill the last sacrifice.

And that was the last one ever done. And so they used to literally kill a lamb or a little goat without blemish, had to be a male.

All of it's a picture of Jesus. And then they would take the blood and that blood pictured the blood of the

Messiah that would die for us for the sins of God's people. And then they would eat the lamb and any of it that was left over had to be destroyed by fire because you couldn't keep it for the next day.

It was totally consumed, which is a picture of Jesus Christ totally allowing himself to be consumed by the father turning his head from him and separating himself from him, which is hell.

Total sacrifice of body, soul, and spirit for us. What are the pictures? The Jews don't know this anymore, but they used to see a little more of it than they do now.

But when they rejected their Messiah, they lost even that. You talk about seeing through a glass darkly.

They are blinded, the apostle Paul said, and until the end when Jesus, when he comes back at the second coming, their eyes will be open and all

Israels that are alive and see it will receive him as their Messiah and they'll be saved because they get called at that moment. Many of them, in fact, all of them will be ushered into the millennial kingdom and save people and a bunch of Gentiles will too as well.

So now we have this shank bone is what they use now. Why? Because they're not offering a little lamb anymore.

So they have a resemblance of it, the shank bone of the lamb. They still eat lamb in their meal and the shank bone reminds them of they've forgotten what.

Isn't that sad? They don't know. They don't know why it's there. Do you know what they've done?

The Jews, the Jewish person today who's not born again believes that all of these things picture their own sufferings as a

Jew. If you take Isaiah chapter 53 and you read it, it's so clear.

It is like the Roman's road in Isaiah. It shows that Jesus died for the sins of his people as a sacrifice, as a ransom, all of that's in there.

But if you go and you read the Targums, which are the paraphrased versions of the Old Testament that the

Jews were teaching for 300 years prior to the time Jesus came and the reason the Jews missed their Messiah is they weren't taught by the

Bible anymore, they were taught by paraphrases like the living Bible is today. Those kinds of things were, instead of reading the

Bible to people, they'd say, here's what we think the Bible means and they read that to them. And in Isaiah 53, the

Targums say that the nation of Israel suffered, not that the Messiah suffered, totally removes it and inserts the nation so the poor pitiful

Jew is suffering. And it makes it about themselves. This shank bone to them pictures the sufferings of the

Jew, the dispersed Jew around the world. Well, they have suffered, but that's not what it pictures. It pictures the death of Jesus Christ, the

Messiah on the cross for the sins of his people. But it's still important to them, so they have that.

Now let's go to Exodus chapter 12, verse five and let's look at the biblical Passover explained in scripture.

Exodus 12, five, your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year.

You shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats, but it has to be without blemish in male.

And you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. Now we know that this is the month of Nisan, which is the first month in the

Jewish year, which is now in our Western world, it's

March, April, March dash April is when Nisan occurs. So this is the

Jewish January. This is their first month in this 14th day. The first month is when they do

Passover and have done it for thousands of years this way. 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. And they shall take the blood and strike it on the two posts and on the upper door post of their house wherein they live shall eat it.

And then they eat it. Now, this is the genuine Passover. This is the only, the shank bone does not picture this.

The shank bone is replaced this. What they are supposed to do is kill the lamb.

And I will tell you, I did it once with a Jewish believer friend of mine and thought he was doing the biblical

Passover. And I wanted to see what he did. So you were little Katie at the time.

We went over to his house. Y 'all watch, we didn't let you watch too close from the porch.

And me and my friend went out in the middle of his little backyard and he's Jewish. He was a Jewish guy.

And he said, I'm gonna hold the little goat down, David. Here's the knife, you kill it. And I'm going, okay, it's a picture.

You do realize this will be done in the millennial kingdom as a memorial. It'll be looking back at the cross.

So it's not like it's wrong to do it, by the way. But I took, listen to me.

I took that knife. I grew up in the country. So like I can kill stuff.

You know, I killed too much stuff as a boy before I was saved. I mean, animals, not people.

And I, a few fish, some birds too. I took that knife and I sliced the throat of that goat while my friend held him down.

And you know what the goat did? He did, he I'm sure went into shock but he just laid there.

He didn't fight, he didn't move. He just laid there and slowly bled to death. And I'm holding the knife with the blood on it and picturing that's

Jesus and I killed him. Tell me that's not a good thing to do with your kids.

Now, if you do it, we'll be another cult group, right? So I don't want you to do it, but I did it once.

And it was profoundly affected me for months and months and months, if not even till now. As Satan would do, he had someone in our church who found out about it, who's no longer with our church.

And that person called a very close Bible teacher, friend of mine in Mahea and told them on the phone that David Mitchell was now offering live sacrifices as part of what they do in their church, which was not done at church.

It was in my friend's backyard one time just to see what it was like. And now I'm offering goats, goats, and she believed it.

And I grew up under her ministry, the woman believed it. So finally she gets the guts to call me and ask about it.

I said, no, no, that did not happen. This is what happened. Oh, I'm so glad to hear it, David.

So anyway, but here's the point. My point is this, why is it now they just have a shank bone on the table?

They're not doing this anymore. So they're not picturing it, they're not even seeing it, but they did for thousands of years and still missed it, didn't they?

So here you have this and verse eight says, and they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire along with, very important, unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

So now the first thing is the shank bone, which really should have been, pictures the sacrificial lamb dying or the goat, it doesn't matter, pictures the death of Jesus.

They're not doing that, but they do have part of it. The hip bone of the lamb that they're gonna have at their meal.

Second thing is mentioned right there with unleavened bread. That's now called the matzo, you've heard of that word.

It's unleavened bread. Leaven pictures sin, so unleavened pictures sinlessness and to them, that's what it pictures is sin.

To us, what it pictures is the body of Jesus Christ given for sin. His body, his perfect sinless self, holy was given for us so that we would never see hell or even know what it's like or know anything much about.

He suffered that for us and that's what the unleavened bread pictures. That's part of what we call the Lord's supper, which

I'm not even sure that's the right name for it, but it's okay with me to use it. The third thing that is part of is also mentioned in verse eight.

It says, they ate the flesh thereof, roast with fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

And today the Jew calls it the maror and it's a bitter herb that they have at the table.

Sometimes they, most of them make it out of horseradish. Luckily we're going to have that today, but Charlotte didn't make it out of that.

Lucky for you, because that can be so hot, it just kill you when you touch it. But it needs to be a bitter herb of some kind and we will have that at the table.

So we'll have everything at the table. That's the three main things that are mentioned here. Now there is a fourth thing.

So look at verse 13, and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are.

You see, they were supposed to kill that lamb and put the blood above the doorpost of their house, their front door, picturing the

Passover of the death angel coming by and killing the firstborn of all the pagans, but not doing that in the home of those who are covered by the blood, which pictures our salvation.

They were supposed to be doing this every year at Passover. Now they got a hip bone, right? But, and they forget, but this is the way it should be.

So the blood was taken as a token. That tells you right there that the Roman Catholic has it wrong.

Look up the word token sometime when you have time in the Hebrew, and you'll see that it means this, token.

Did you get that? A token is not the real thing. It is a type or a symbol or a token of the real thing.

And so the blood does not turn into his blood. It is a token of his blood. The unleavened bread does not turn into his body when you eat it.

It is a token or a picture of his body when you eat that, and a remembrance of what he's done for us is what this is all about.

And so here, this blood was taken as a token upon their houses where you are.

And when God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when

I smite the land of Egypt. You're talking about the plague. If you want to think about the wrath of God on this world, the wrath of God is going to annihilate this world.

It's coming. And yet God is going to pass over his people. He's going to protect his people.

If you're walking with him in the scripture, you will be protected. There's even information in the

Old Testament that you will be hidden. I don't know how all that works yet. It's not the rapture, by the way.

It doesn't happen till after it's all over, or most of it's over. Not all of it, but all at the end.

Let's put it this way. It won't happen until after the resurrection, which happens at the end of the seven -year period, but he will protect us and hide us if we're walking with him and we're in the word.

And we are in his church, the best we can be. So this is what was happening.

This was the Passover. Now, this one other thing we must mention, the fourth thing here is the blood is pictured by the wine, correct?

So we will have what we call here among former Baptists, we call it the new wine, and it's grape juice.

You cross the street over here at the Bible church, they serve real wine, not very

Baptistic. And, but anyway, it is new wine that we will serve today.

And it obviously pictures the blood of Jesus. It is a token picturing his blood that was given for us.

Now, in Exodus 12, verse 18, it says in the first month, that's Nisan, their first month of their year, which is now for our year,

March, April, on the 14th day of the month in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the one and 20th day.

Now, this begins to talk about a coinciding feast that goes along with Passover. It's called the Feast of Unleavened Bread and lasts an entire week.

So they are not allowed to have any leaven in their home the entire week, which pictures sin.

They wanna remove the sin from their family, from their life. And so from the 14th to the 20th day of the month in the evening, then they can end the unleavened bread feast.

Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your homes, pictures sin, pictures holiness, pictures sanctification, for whosoever eats that which is leavened.

Now listen to this, if you're on the other side of the cross and you're a Jew, if you eat it, that soul will be cut off from the congregation of Israel.

What do you think that means? Do you think that God was serious about these pictures? Ben talked about that in Sunday school, about how if you violate one of God's pictures, you know, like Moses did when he smoked the rock twice, which pictured you had to re -kill

Jesus, God never let him go into the promised land. He was the one leading there, never got to go into it because of that.

He messed up the tide. Well, here we see that if they eat leaven in their home during this seven day period of the

Feast of Unleavened Bread which pictures the sinlessness, it pictures positional righteousness.

They didn't know all this yet, but us looking back, positional righteousness that Jesus gives us because he did save us, that when

God looks at us, he sees us as if we never had any sin and never will, that's what it pictures. So when you eat leavened bread in the home during that seven days as a

Jew, you violate the tithe and guess what? You go to hell. Say, is that really what it means?

Yes, that's what it means. However, let me add this, would you agree they also back then had the sacrificial system so that they could confess their sins and go offer another sacrifice and be cleansed and not really lose their salvation?

Isn't that true? Isn't it true that part of the keeping of the law was the sacrificial system that atoned for their sins?

So it didn't mean they just gone forever. If they repent of it and they continue with the sacrificial system which pictures the coming

Messiah, then they'd be covered by that blood because God's not bound by time and they would be saved.

It's very interesting to look at. So even they really were saved by faith. Would you agree with that? Not by the works, but they had to have the faith to understand that it took the death of the

Messiah to cover, to remove it actually, they could only picture it and God sort of covered it and rolled it over every year as brother

Otis would say, year after year he rolled the sins over until he rolled them onto Jesus while he was on the cross and then he eliminated them, even for the

Old Testament Jews, kind of interesting. But listen, one thing, it's a very strong message.

Don't mess up the type. I liked what Ben said in Sunday school this morning about that.

So that soul would be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger or born in the land. So what if he was ignorant and he's a

Gentile and he goes into that house and eats leavened bread, he's gonna be cut off. He's not gonna be allowed in the congregation.

What does that congregation picture? It pictures heaven. It pictures God's court where God is. It pictures separation from God if you can't go in there anymore.

And verse 20 says, you shall eat nothing leavened. In all your habitations shall you eat unleavened bread.

Is there an emphasis on the unleavened bread here? All right, so now let's talk about the blood a little bit.

Look at verse 21 there in Exodus chapter 12. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, draw out and take your lamb according to your families and kill the

Passover. Now here it brings in another element in verse 22. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, which was a prevalent weed in that part of the world still is today, and dip that weed in the blood that is in the basin.

So as you kill the lamb, you cut the neck and it bleeds out into a basin. You save the blood, you dip the hyssop weed in it and you apply it to your doorposts.

And here it's describing as you take a bunch of hyssop and you dip it in the blood that is in the basin and you strike the lintel and two side posts of the door with the blood that is in the basin.

And none of you shall go out at that door of this house until the next morning. So you don't, once you put that blood there, you stay right there.

So that, and it's picturing. Now, the first time this happened, it was literal. The death angel literally came by every home in Egypt and killed everybody that didn't have that blood on the door that night.

I mean, killed the firstborn of every family. And so you don't leave the house.

And so as they practiced it through the years, the thousands of years after that, they would not leave the house. They stayed together as a family under the protection of the blood of Jesus Christ, which is what it pictured.

The Lord will pass through to smite the pagans, the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and two side posts, the

Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroy, the death angel, the destroyer to come in and to your houses to smite you.

And you shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to your sons forever.

And you say, well, why aren't we still doing it? Let me ask you this. Who's he speaking? When you're interpreting scripture, you gotta ask, okay, who's it speaking to and what's the context?

So who is being spoken to here? The you, who is the you here that needs to do this forever? Jews, okay, it's not us, it's

Jews, all right? So the Jews should still be doing this and they should be doing it like this, killing the lamb, putting the blood there, and they're not doing it, are they?

They stopped the day Jesus was killed. So a Jew that has his eyes open, like my mentor,

Dr. Freeman, where the Holy Spirit called him and opened his eyes, well, he didn't keep doing this, but he worshiped his

Lord for the rest of his life and he's with him now. And so this is all what it pictures.

The hyssop weed is a beautiful thing because it actually pictures the calling of the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who applies the blood to your individual life on the birthday of your new man.

When you got born again on that moment, on that day, the Holy Spirit literally applied

Jesus' blood to your soul that day. And once that was applied, you were saved forever and you had done nothing yet.

You're saved by the blood plus nothing, but it took someone to apply the blood. I mean, the blood was given 2 ,000 years ago for you, was it not?

But someone had to apply it to you individually. The modern church has substituted something there. They say that the thing that applies it is you yourself, that you have to make a decision that will affect your eternal destiny.

And you have to choose to take that gift and take that blood and apply it to yourself so you become the hyssop weed.

But the Bible teaches very clearly that the hyssop weed is not you. It is not you at all.

It is in fact, the Holy Spirit, while we were yet in our sins, had he quickened us. He applied that blood to us, which is pictured by this hyssop weed, the application of the blood to the individual, personal life.

And I will tell you something, there's a way in which everyone in this room is saved the same, but there's a way in which everyone is saved different.

Your personal experience of when and how and where you got saved is different than mine and always will be. And it's yours to hold on to.

I was in my car driving to work one day, just me and the Holy Spirit. I don't know where you were.

My wife thinks she was in a little Sunday school class like the one she teaches and a godly woman led her to Christ as a child.

And many of you have different experiences and it's always different. But the thing is, the thing that saved you was when the

Holy Spirit opened your eyes, he called you, opened your eyes of understanding, gave you the faith of Christ, gave you the gift of repentance and applied the blood to your soul that day, whenever that day was for you.

It's all pictured here in the Passover. And it says, and it shall come to pass when you be come into the land,

I'm in verse 25 now, which the Lord will give you according as he promised that you will keep this service.

You won't stop doing the Passover. There were times when Israel did stop and they were cursed for it. And then they would start it over again.

And they were blessed for that. It shall come to pass when your children, that's very important. Look at this.

What should we be doing on Easter? What should we be doing this time here as Christian parents and grandparents?

Well, look at this. It shall come to pass when you be come into the land, which the promised land, by the way, pictures victorious

Christian living. So as you live your victorious Christian life, when you come into the land, which the

Lord will give you according as he has promised that you will keep this service. And it will come to pass that when your children shall say to you, what do you mean by this service?

If you ever had them ask you, what's the deal about the Easter eggs, daddy? What's the basket?

Where's the rabbit? What's the deal about that? What did you teach them? You can't teach them anything. But it says here, you're supposed to use this entire event and season as a type and picture for your children so they never ever forget it.

So when your children shall say to you, what do you mean by this service? That you shall say it is the sacrifice of the

Lord's Passover. It doesn't say anything about Easter. Of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel while they were in Egypt, when he smote the

Egyptians and delivered our houses. That's the elect, you see. You teach them about God's election and his power and his sovereignty and the blood of Jesus and the unleavened bread and the people bowed the head and worshiped.

So there's some interesting facts about the matzah, by the way. I know this is going a little over time, but we started a little late.

So let me go just a little longer. The unleavened bread is very interesting.

In the home of the Jew today, if they're doing it traditionally and historically like they've always done it, you're gonna see something really interesting.

A couple of things. One about the bread, but something about the wine as well. In Genesis 2, 24, where it says, let the man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.

That Hebrew word for one is the word echad. And that word is going to be used here in the

Jewish celebration. So I need you to know that word. But the word is interesting because it means unity of plurality.

It means, a good example would be one cluster of grapes.

In fact, that's used in the Bible, I think in the book of Numbers, where it talks about one cluster of grapes, but aren't there many grapes in a cluster?

So it's plurality, but it's one cluster hanging over their shoulder when the spies came back, right?

One cluster. So that word for one is a word that means plurality of a lot of things or several things that are actually one thing.

Do you have it? You see the word picture? Word pictures are important in Hebrew. So that's what this word means.

Now, yeah, that's in Numbers 13, 23, where it talks about the grapes. So the

Jew today does not, I think, know why he does this, but he's still doing it. So he takes, there's a little bag called an echad or echad, and it's one bag, but it has three chambers in it.

So it's got little cloths sewed across, edge to edge, so that it makes three chambers in this little bag called the echad.

They take the matzah bread and they break it into three parts, and one piece of the matzah is placed into each of the three chambers in this bag.

Now, the matzah that's placed in the first chamber is never touched or seen again.

And I want you to be thinking about what God's picturing here, but the Jew doesn't see it necessarily. He sees some of this, but the part, the important parts he doesn't see, he probably gets that part, maybe.

That's the first chamber, and I want to read to you John chapter one, verse 17.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the

Father, he has declared him to us. That's why he's called the Word, Jesus.

So Jesus was with him. He's the only man that's ever been with the Father. Now, if you're with the

Father, you're eliminated out of existence. Your molecules fly in every direction, but Jesus didn't.

He was the only one that was actually with the Father, and he declares the Father to us.

But what I want you to see is this part where it says no man has seen God at any time. So when they put that matzah part in that first little section, where it's never to be touched, seen, smelled, or dealt with, or done anything with again, it pictures the invisible

Father, God of the universe, who is not a man, who does not sit on a throne.

He is pure spirit being, who is everywhere at once, and who is outside of time and space, not in time and space with us, and that's who this pictures,

God, the Father. Now, the second little section in this little bag, and there's a piece of, one third of the matzah is placed into this.

It's interesting because what the Jew does with this little piece that goes in the middle part is he breaks it in half.

At the beginning of the Seder celebration, the Passover, he breaks it in half, and one half of the broken piece is placed in the little bag.

The other half, and they have names for this, I don't know if I can pronounce it, afikomen, afikomen, afikomen.

That's pretty good for a Texan. That's the half, the other half, and it's not placed back in the bag.

It's placed in a white linen cloth and covered. Let me read to you 1

Corinthians 11, verse 24. And when he had given thanks, he break it and said, take eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.

This do in remembrance of me. This is the Passover meal. This is what we like to try to call the

Lord's Supper, but this was a Passover celebration. It was the last Passover celebration that he had on this earth with his people.

And after the same manner, also he took the cup, which he had when he had supped, had supper with him, saying, this cup is the

New Testament of my blood. This do ye as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me.

So as often as you have this Passover celebration and you have the bread and you have the lamb and you have the bitter herbs and you have the wine, remember it's picturing me.

Passover pictures me. This is what it means. I don't care what the Catholics turned it into or the

Protestants brought with them. This is what it means. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, how often do they do this?

Once a year. You do show the Lord's death until he comes.

John chapter three, verse 13 says, and no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the son of man, which is in heaven.

Now I want you to think about that. That one verse, John 3, 13 pictures both pieces of this matzah at the same time.

The one piece that is placed back in the bag pictures the living

Christ who is at the right hand of God now that you can't see because he's not here. He's in the third heaven.

You can't see him, but he's there at the right hand of God right now. The part of him that goes in that bag pictures that, unseen, but still there, still physical, still there with the father right next to the compartment which pictures the father, only now he's right beside the father.

That's what that pictures. And it says, no man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven.

Now that pictures the other half of the matzah, which was covered with the white linen because it pictures his death on this earth, in our place for the sins of his people.

And it pictures his burial. And so they're picturing both of it every time they do the

Passover. What would be wrong with us picturing this in memorial and teaching our children these things at Easter time and calling it the

Passover celebration rather than Easter and getting rid of the Easter eggs and replacing it with some games we can play with these things, which

I'll show you that the Jews actually do here in a moment. So John 3 .13

pictures both halves of that, the part that was not seen anymore that's with the father. He will come back though, isn't he?

And then it pictures the part that died for us on this planet in time and space.

Then there's the third piece of matzah that goes into the third little compartment of this bag. And what's interesting about this, this was taken to the table with the other elements of the

Passover and eaten during the Seder celebration as food.

1 Corinthians 3 .16 says, know you not that you're the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you.

So when you eat that part of the matzah, it pictures the Holy Spirit in dwelling your body.

All of this, the entire Godhead, the father, the son, the Holy Spirit is pictured every Passover on every

Jewish table in the world and they still miss it because they don't get the middle compartment. They don't understand the son of God part.

They will if they live long enough, because if they are here and alive at the end of the seven -year tribulation period, when he comes, they will fall to their knees, the

Holy Spirit will call them and open their eyes and 100 % of them will be saved. Hallelujah, that's gonna be a beautiful day for the whole world,

I can hardly wait. During the

Seder, this linen cloth, which this little half of the middle compartment, matzah was placed into.

After dinner, the parents take this little piece of matzah, unleavened bread in the little cloth and they hide it in the home somewhere.

And they send the children to look for it. Instead of hunting for Easter eggs, they're hunting for this little piece of matzah, unleavened bread covered with white linen, which pictures that Jesus died for my sins and they hide it in the house and send the children to look for it.

The child that finds it, brings it to the parents and the parents ransom it, so they can play the game again, isn't that wonderful?

Wonderful, so they can play again, another child can find it.

The matzah that's used in the Passover, Charlotte, we can make sure this happens today. It must be prepared in a certain way.

It must be unleavened and Charlotte has prepared for us two loaves of unleavened bread, they're really pretty to look at.

Pictures the body of Jesus, the perfect sinless body of Jesus. But the thing is, this loaf must be striped.

You have to slice stripes across the top, picturing the stripes that Jesus took,

Isaiah 53, five. The other thing is it must be pierced,

Psalm 22, 16. The other element is called the maror, which is the bitter herb.

The Jew thinks that it reminds us of their tears in the wilderness, but what do you think it reminds us of? What did he say on the cross?

When the father turned his head, who can say it for me?

What a picture. And then they have a vegetable called the karpas, and it pictures the hyssop weed, which is the

Holy Spirit. And let me just take another moment. They of course have the wine, but what you and I probably didn't know, and I didn't learn this till this year, and I've studied this for 40 years.

Even Brother Rocky didn't tell me this one, but the

Jew today has four cups of wine, and of course they all drink from the same cup like they did at the

Lord's Supper. Jesus passed the cup around to the disciples, didn't he? But they had four cups.

Now, I don't know. Part of that I would think might be Jewish tradition, but it does have biblical meanings.

So it probably actually was happening at the time Jesus had the Last Supper with his apostles.

He probably had four cups. I cannot find yet in scripture, but two. But you're gonna be surprised that there's two because you've never noticed it before.

I never had it. I think there were probably four. And the first cup pictures sanctification, which means being set apart from the world unto

God. And the Holy Spirit does that to us over time through the word of God.

The second cup of wine, let's call it new wine, pictures the cup of judgment, which will be poured out, as the book of Revelation says, during the tribulation period, the last three and a half years, especially in the

Battle of Armageddon, the wrath of God will be poured out as wine. They call it the cup of the wrath, the cup of the wine of the wrath of God against those who are not covered by the blood.

And of course, the judgment on the cross is really what it pictures is that Jesus literally suffered hell in our place while he was on that cross.

When he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was separated from the Father. And the third cup pictures the cup of redemption.

His blood is that price that was paid to buy our souls back from Satan unto

God so that we're saved forever. Redemption being set free by the price that's paid.

And the only price that was ever paid was the blood of Jesus. And then the fourth cup is a cup of praise, but really not so much praise, but more specifically, it comes from Exodus chapter six, verses five through eight, where these different four things are mentioned that these cups are supposed to picture.

I believe to the Jew. And this is where he says, starting in verse five, he says,

I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians kept in bondage.

And I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore saying to the children of Israel, I am the

Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

That bringing out is the first pictures, the first cup or the first cup pictures this, where they are separated from the world by God.

God takes them out of the world unto himself, right? Can you picture that? Okay, so then it goes on and it says,

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. That's the second cup of wine. It's redemption.

It's the wine pictures the blood, which is the price that was paid to set us apart and to save us and to buy us back from the slave market of sin.

And I will redeem you with a stretched out arm with great judgments. That's the third cup, which pictures

God's judgment on the world and on sin and where his own son was judged in our place.

And he says in verse seven, and I will take you to me for a people. That's the fourth cup and they call it the cup of praise.

But really what we're praising is that we were a people who were not a people.

We were a people who were without God and without hope in the world, a people that he then saved and made us to be the people.

We were not a people. Now we are the people of God. All of that is pictured in the fourth cup.

And no wonder we praise because he's made us part of his family. God has.

It says, I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God and you shall know that I am the

Lord your God, which brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians that I might bring you in.

And I love, I preached a sermon when I was in my thirties on that very passage. I will bring you out that I might bring you in.

What does that mean? All of this pictures that he saves us from the world, the flesh and the devil, but he doesn't just save us for the sake of saving us.

He doesn't just save us so that we don't go to hell. He saves us that he might bring us in to the promised land, which means victorious

Christian living, where we shine as lights in this world that other people can see. And we are witnesses.

And we witness with our life when we go to the grocery store, to the hairdresser, everywhere.

That's what this whole season pictures. Let's stand. I think I'm done. Thank goodness because the shank bone is going to burn in there.

Lord, thank you for your word. We thank you that it is a living book.

It teaches us both old and new things every time we go to it. Thank you that you

Holy Spirit who wrote it are our great teacher. Lord, thank you for each other.

Thank you for the Lord Jesus who we celebrate today. Thank you, Lord, that all of this pictures his death and his burial, but also we as Christians celebrate his resurrection every

Lord's day, every first day of the week. And Lord, we celebrate his resurrection today as well.

And Lord, we thank you that you're with us. You live within us. You're by your spirit.

You're all around us. We're baptized in you. And Lord, we just ask you to give us knowledge of where we should walk and how we should walk each day as salt and light in this world until you come back for us.

Give our families protection and strength and power. And we ask you to bless the meal as we picture this last supper with you today.

We ask you to bless it. May you search our hearts for any unclean thing and cause us to confess that prior to our supper together here in a few moments.

And we ask all these things in Jesus name, amen. Now, before you leave, Charlotte, do you have any instructions for us?

Do you want us to go straight to the table first and or do you need to prepare it for a minute?

Okay, so give it like usual. We'll take five or so minutes and Charlotte will let us know when the ladies are ready for us in there.

All right, you're dismissed. So, I was looking at a prayer.

That's what you did. That was terrible. That's what you have to do. I have to tell my husband that he's coming back for the

Lord's supper first. Okay, so here's what we'll talk about first. I should have probably said that. Okay.

If you can still hear me, we're gonna have the Lord's supper first and then our regular meal.

So if you need to leave for lunch, if you can stay for the first part, which is the Lord's supper, we'll do that first.