The Passover Sacrifice of the Lord

Well, this morning we have arrived at something we have, in one way or another, been pursuing ever since we began

Exodus. We come to the very beating heart of the great redemptive event,

God's deliverance, as He now liberates His people from the bondage of Egypt as He promised

Abraham all the way back in Genesis chapter 15. So we see here the beginning of the

Exodus proper, nestled within this great plague narrative, and with it also the tenth plague, where God spares

His own people and yet strikes the people of the evil empire. So we're not going through all of chapter 12, of course, simply the verses we've read, which is the

Passover proper, and then we'll keep that with us as we move forward the actual

Exodus next week, as we see God bringing His armies out of the land, and then we'll have perhaps more to say about the

Passover and its connection to our understanding of the church, the

Lord's Supper, what it means to be a Christian, and how that plays into membership within the covenant.

So that'll be at the very end of chapter 12 before we read the following Sunday our next allotment of chapters in this wonderful book.

So here we are, as Michael Morales said, tremendous book, I'll reference it a lot this morning on the great biblical themes found within Exodus from a new series that B &H has put out.

Michael Morales says, indeed, one cannot grasp the meaning of Israel's Exodus out of Egypt without understanding the

Passover ritual. The Passover is the Exodus, and that's really the main point.

The Passover is the Exodus. What we'll consider and rehearse here this morning is the very center of what the

Exodus is. That's true for the ancient Israelites in context here, and it's certainly true for us as believers.

Exodus 12, beginning in verse 1. Now, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,

This month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying,

On the tenth of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.

And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons.

According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month.

Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.

Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails.

You shall let none of it remain until morning. And what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire, and thus you shall eat it, with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.

So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover."

This event is so significant that it essentially resets the calendar, or at least we could say the liturgical calendar, for the people of God.

If you glance ahead on your calendar app, I don't know how many of us still have paper calendars that we refer to, if you glance ahead you'll see that coming up we have

Rosh Hashanah, literally head of the new year. So we have a new year that takes place in autumn, and here the first year reckoned in Exodus chapter 12.

This is speaking to how the Israelites were to reckon the beginning of the year liturgically.

This event is so significant that the religious year and religious observations begin in this month of Abib.

The Passover event will kick off the spiritual practice of the Israelites evermore.

This redemptive event is so significant that it reorients time itself, so to speak.

It makes something that had been something entirely new. Now this is the chief month of the liturgy.

And subsequent with each new year, the Israelites recall and celebrate by virtue of this shift in time the fact that God had brought them up out of Egypt by the blood of the

Lamb. So notice we have a redemptive event that reorients time. That's very significant when we get to the fourth commandment in both

Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, a redemptive event that shifts or reorients time as a result.

So preview for however many more months it takes to get to Exodus chapter 20. Follow the order of the instructions.

God is very specific. Preparations begin on the tenth day of the first month.

The head of each household finds the lamb, which must be without blemish and must be chosen according to the number of people that will consume it.

Later on in rabbinical writing, that number was settled at no less than 10, no more than 20.

And it was a great opportunity to exercise loving your neighbor. You'd have to find those neighbors that needed to somehow be combined for the sake of this ritual meal.

That lamb or goat, because of later revelation where Christ is figured as the lamb, we perhaps always think of the

Passover sacrifice as a lamb, but there's really no reason that it couldn't have been a goat.

God implies that either a lamb or a goat, so long as it's a one -year -old male without blemish, will do.

We have no problem thinking of the typological ramifications of a goat. We have the scapegoat ritual connected with the

Day of Atonement, so goats have their place, but of course Christ is figured as the lamb, especially in the

New Testament. Christology in terms of sacrifice is the lamb who was slain, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

But again, here the ritual calls for either a lamb or a goat. They must be slaughtered at twilight, and oh how the rabbis debated exactly what time that meant.

And perhaps had to change things to give time for the Levites to aid in the formal

Passover ritual after a sanctuary had been established and the cult was now centered toward priesthood.

Here of course there is no sanctuary in the land of Egypt. There is no priesthood yet consecrated and established, and so this is done by the heads of the household.

The blood from the animals after they've been slaughtered at twilight, again, most likely the time between the setting of the sun and the loss of it beyond the horizon.

So it's getting dark, but God's not likely encouraging His people to do this work in darkness itself, so this is in twilight between the initial setting of the sun and as it slips away beyond the horizon.

Each animal must be slaughtered in such a way that the blood is collected in a basin. The blood must be applied to the entryway into each home.

The doorframe and the lintel. Some debate over whether the lintel is actually the top crossbeam or sort of a window upon a parapet that would have been typical.

There's really little evidence archaeologically that slave dwellings would have had that typical

Egyptian feature. A lintel being a wooden crossbeam makes the most sense.

That night, huddled within that home, nestled together as brother and sister, husband and wife, mother, father, neighbor perhaps, weird cousin that always shows up, all nestled together underneath the blood.

They roast the lamb and eat it entirely, along with unleavened bread, along with bitter herbs. And all of the animal is roasted by this fire.

Not one piece is left out, and all of it is meant to be consumed, and if there's any portions left in the morning, even that must be consumed with fire.

If not by the people, then with fire. The point, of course, is the entire sacrifice must be consumed.

And then, of course, the last injunction is the meal must be eaten with haste.

They're to eat it as on the run. This is the one time Israelite mothers said it was okay to eat like a barbarian at the table.

Usually that was something that would get you a firm look or maybe even a slap on the wrist, but here you're supposed to eat it in haste.

In fact, you must have your walking stick, your sandals, your bags packed, everything has to be ready to go.

And that, of course, speaks to the fact that this night will be the night that God brings them up out of Egypt.

So they must be prepared, and that preparation will come by trusting in the

Word of God. They will not prepare themselves unless they trust that God truly will deliver them as He has promised.

Verses 21 and following, of course, Moses calls for the elders and gives some renewed instruction, perhaps new instruction at the time or perhaps it's reiterating instruction that had been given, but now given to us as it's given to the elders.

Moses calls for the elders of all Israel, we read, verse 21, said to them, pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families and kill the

Passover lamb. They add lamb to the translation here, it's simply kill the Passover.

That's important, last week we looked at 1 Corinthians 5, 7, Christ our Passover. So here's a new word, it's not just the

Passover lamb, as we said it could be a lamb or a goat, the significant element is that Christ is the

Passover itself, Christ is the Hebrew term Pesach, and you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and notice this word, strike the lintel.

Not gingerly paint, not carefully paint even, as though it were a delicate matter.

This is something brutal even. This is something that is done with a strong hand, and that's the last time we saw this verb strike.

God said with a strong hand He would strike the firstborn of Egypt, and so too will the

Israelite sons be struck unless they as a substitution strike the blood on the doorpost.

So either way there will be a striking, but this striking will be a substitute by way of the lamb or the goat.

This will be a substitutionary striking. That's the importance of that verb.

And notice that again the Israelites in recounting this would remember that they, their sons figuratively speaking, they should have been struck just like the

Egyptians, but because they struck the blood they were saved.

Alicia tried her best some months ago to cut in across the ceiling.

She had been impatient with how long it was taking for me to get to it, and she said I'll go really slow, you can teach me and show me, and so I worked up enough time to kind of give her a quick demo, what to do, what not to do, and then of course she came down with a sort of bewildered look on her face and said don't go up there, and I went up to see three inches over on the ceiling and all that, and I thought now looking at this she would have been an excellent one to paint the lintels, you know, just really get it all in there and strike the blood all over the place.

Blood splattered. It's a scene of slaughter. This is not something neat and intricate.

This is something traumatic, and yet this grisly scene of the butchery of the lamb upon the wood is what will save the people of God.

For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the

Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you, and you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever.

A little word about the idea of an everlasting ordinance. The term in Hebrew is olam, and sometimes we unload the understanding of everlasting or eternal to olam because often that is how olam is used in context.

The barik olam, the everlasting covenant or eternal covenant, and yet there's all manner of times in Scripture where the same term olam is used, which could be translated as everlasting or unceasing, and yet in the context, of course, that cannot be.

Moses' days are olam. That can't mean eternal, but it means without number, and the root behind olam, it means yet to be revealed, something hidden.

So even in the context of a marriage, the wife of an Israelite is olam until the wedding night.

There are certain parts of the wife that are olam, yet to be revealed, hidden until the proper time.

And so you can see it's not meant to be unceasing, it's meant to be within the confines of God's design, and so whenever we read in these rituals that this is to be done in an everlasting way, remember that it's best translated perpetual, and it may expire as redemptive history continues to unfold, as this particular ritual does.

So keep that in mind. I know there was perhaps some discussion about it last week. Notice what the

Lord says, because this is something that is kept as a feast each year, it will provoke the people of God to remember what the

Lord had done, and it will spur their children to ask that all -important question, what do you mean by this?

Something that we went into over the past two weeks. And this is the answer that the father must give.

It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord. It is the Passover sacrifice of the

Lord. No Christian could have put it better than that. What is the meaning of this blood of the

Lamb? It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord. To put it in the language of 1

Corinthians 5, Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us.

And so the people, upon hearing this instruction, bowed their heads in worship. Boy, what a difference in the people of God.

The last time Moses came bearing revelation to the people, all the way back in Exodus 4 and 5, they rejected him entirely.

They rolled their eyes at him and held him in contempt. Look at what you've done to our lives and to our labor.

You know, we would have been better off if you had never come and attempted to deliver us. We'd rather be rid of you, something that Moses will unfortunately hear again once they're walking through the wilderness.

But here, after all of these nine plagues have unfolded, God's people's hearts have been tenderized, their necks have been softened.

And here, they're finally able to bow their heads and worship. They went away and they did so just as the

Lord had commanded. Oh, let me tell you, we're not going to see that phrase very often in the rest of the

Old Testament. God's people going away and doing just as they had been told. And so it is in our lives as well.

And it adds some richness to the beauty of what we'll uncover this morning. So the elders are briefed.

We see some new details, particularly the hyssop being used to paint.

And of course, this painting is immediately recognizable as a purification rite, as hyssop or marjoram was often used later on in Levitical instruction as a means by which some were purified or even consecrated.

So the idea of hyssop always has within its wings and also with it the idea of sprinkling blood, a purification rite.

The prayer of David in Psalm 51 .7, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me, I shall be whiter than snow. So here you have the idea of a cleansing or a purification.

The Hebrews, of course, will come to know the grounds and means of their deliverance. It's by a sacrifice substitute.

The destroyer is coming one way or another and he will strike every household, unless the household has already been struck.

So the Hebrews must strike their homes with the blood or otherwise be struck down by the destroyer.

Conversation about the destroyer. Of course, if you've ever heard any teaching that this is some sort of malevolent being, a demonic force, you've been mistaught.

The Lord is the one who passes through house to house in the land. This is the

Lord's doing. The debate is whether this is directly the Lord, is he the destroyer, or does this speak of an angel tasked with destruction, akin to the destroyer that we read of elsewhere.

Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 10 speaks of the one who destroys, and of course, an angel could be an extension of the

Lord. It's no problem to use the Lord interchangeably with an angel that is carrying out the intent of the

Lord. We see that throughout Scripture. Psalm 78 may imply that it was even more than one angel, that it was a band of angels.

There's a multitude or a destroying band in the language of Psalm 78, 49.

But in the context there, the multitude most likely is connected to other forms of destruction within the bi -colon poetry.

So we don't have a plurality of angels here. We have the destroyer, which is either lowercase d, an angel sent by God, or capital

D. This is the angel of the Lord himself. That of course adds some speculation to the beauty of this, if it really is capital

D. And this is the angel of the Lord striking down the enemy of God, but not striking any household that has the blood of the sacrifice, and yet in the fullness of time, that same angel of the

Lord will be the lamb that is sacrificed as a covering for his people.

So I tend to lean that way. I don't want to be led by the beauty of it all, but I think God writes and thinks and designs things in such a way.

29 and following, the actual 10th plague descends.

It came to pass at midnight. The Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the pit, in the dungeon.

Last time we saw that language was with Joseph, from the throne to the pit, and there's a lot to say.

We'll unload it in a few weeks' time about the story of Joseph continuing even here through the

Exodus narrative, and of course we'll see it as Moses prepares to leave, the bones of Joseph are taken with him.

So Joseph has not left this narrative, and the typological significance of Joseph is here. We'll save that for another

Sunday. The firstborn of Pharaoh, the firstborn of everyone in Egypt who did not have blood over their home, even the firstborn of the livestock.

So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, because there was not a house where there was not one dead.

The previous plagues had all been building toward this moment, and yet this moment fulfills what

God had initially warned, what He had patiently, long -sufferingly brought Pharaoh to see again and again.

There is no point in resisting my will, you must bend your knee and obey.

Why, why will you perish? Essentially, God is saying to Pharaoh, successively with each plague, and yet he hardens his heart, he stiffens his neck, he refuses to turn to the way of the

Lord, and so the initial threat is now fulfilled. He had nine plagues of working through the resolve to find yet some mercy, but now, as he had said from the beginning, if you do not let my son go,

I will kill your son. And that's what he does. Pharaoh for the first time cries out, something he should have done from the very moment

God spoke to him through the mouth of Moses. He should have immediately cried out, that the God, the

Maker of heaven and earth would speak to him and make a demand upon his life. He should have cried out, woe is me!

But it took the judgment of God, it took the crumbling of his empire and the loss of his lineage to bring him to this point.

Now of course, there's all sorts of significant details. It's not for nothing that Jesus, following the will of the

Father, understood that the time appointed for his sacrificial death would coincide with the celebration of the

Passover. And so as he draws near to Jerusalem, he's drawn near with so many others who are traveling to keep this great sacred feast, what is a joyous festival of remembrance.

And Jesus, as we'll see in part today and even more in two weeks' time, Jesus reorienting the

Passover around what he will do with his broken body and his blood being poured out.

The disciples caught up in the midst of entering into Jerusalem, marveling at the stones of the temple, getting caught up in all of the excitement and adrenaline of this great festival, one of the three that they travel each year to enjoy, and it never loses its charm.

It's like Christmas morning every year, it doesn't matter if you've had three or thirty, there's a nostalgia and a joy and a delight in the day.

And yet for Jesus, that very night, he will be sweating blood, great drops of blood as he prays for the

Father to take the cup from his lips because he understands what it will mean for him to be the

Passover for his people. They didn't practice the rite by painting with hyssop any longer after a certain point in time, and yet you can imagine the lambs that were being inspected by the priests, the preparations that were bustling in the city, and all of that was pointing toward this man, the

God -man, walking through their midst, preparing himself to be slaughtered, for his blood to be, in a more meaningful way, struck upon the wooden beams.

And so John captures these details so well. We have the bunch of hyssop that's unique to this ritual, and hyssop is a particular term that only appears in ritual cleansing rites, and then pretty much nowhere else unless you're reading the

New Testament, and there in the midst of the passion narrative, we have recorded for us that the soldiers take the bunch of hyssop and dip it in vinegar and put it to the mouth of the lamb, put it to Jesus' mouth, and the significance of that is not lost to the

Gospel writers. Here the hyssop is again being put to the bloody sacrifice. And then we have the great cry as a result of the strike of God, but unlike Exodus 12, where the enemies of God, where Pharaoh and the slave master empire is crying out as a result of being struck, there's only one great cry in the passion narrative, and that is the

Lord Jesus, who lets out a great cry. Same phrase in Greek from the

Septuagint of the Hebrews, same phrase. The great cry, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The cry of dereliction, the cry of abandonment, the cry of the lamb being slaughtered for the sins of his people.

Liberation comes as a result of this sacrifice, the exodus of the people of God out of the watery death of the land of Egypt, something we'll get into, the bondage, the slavery, the toil, the crying out, the hopelessness, the despair, the cries of God's people are met and answered by the cry of the

Son of God. And it's a great cry, greater than their cries, as his blood is richer than sacrifices that they may make.

And so we see three elements, if we're to boil all of this down, the Passover sacrifice, there's three central elements of what this must mean for the

Israelites, what it must mean for us. Now perhaps there's five, 10, 15, 20 more. We could stay in Exodus 12 for half a year and still find all sorts of wonderful things to admire.

But if I could pick the sort of zenith of what the sacrifice of Passover means, it would be these three terms, deliverance, consecration, and identity.

Deliverance, consecration, and identity. So we see in the

Passover, first and foremost, that it's a delivering sacrifice. Second, that it's a consecrating sacrifice.

And third, that it's an identifying sacrifice. So first, the delivering sacrifice, again, leaning and sort of interacting with Michael Morales and some of the arguments from his great study of Exodus.

Israel's deliverance out of Egypt was defined as a ransom from death.

That is the function of the goat or the lamb. It is a ransom for the people underneath the blood.

And so that means that whatever we speak of the deliverance of God's people from slavery, it's not a mere political release, as some of the

Marxists in the 60s and 70s would do with so -called liberation theology, particularly

Gustavo Gutierrez in South America, one of the great architects of liberation theology, turned to the story of Exodus and said, we basically need to understand the economic and political disparities that call forth

God leading, again, people out of captivity. This was a national or even a socioeconomical captivity.

We can't say it's merely a political, economic release. We can't say it's merely a redemption from bondage.

We must say that the deliverance of the Passover is a ransom for death.

Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants in all of Egypt, and there was great crying, a great wailing, because not one house there was without one dead.

Morales develops this in some ways. Every Egyptian household with the firstborn struck down becomes a microcosm of Pharaoh's household, the sort of uppermost, most symbolic household of Egypt, where his firstborn is dead, which is a way of saying

Egypt itself is now the empire of death.

So the Egyptian house had become the house of the dead, and thus there's great mourning and lamentation, and that's a microcosm for Egypt itself.

It's become the land of the dead, and that's how it's been described all along. It's not for nothing that we entered into Exodus by way of water, literally floating down the basket as the people of God were being slaughtered, as importantly the sons of God were being slaughtered.

And we will now leave the Exodus narrative by way of water again, not with the sons of God being slaughtered, but the sons of Pharaoh being slaughtered.

The contours of water basically make Egypt the land of water, the abode of water, which is to say the abode of death, water, flood, emblematic of judgment and death and chaos.

So we have Egypt as the land of the dead, as the watery grave, as Sheol itself.

The Passover is God's way of bringing His people out of Sheol by means of the blood of the

Lamb, by means of a substitution. So if we ask the question, how is it possible for the people of God to be rescued from the pit of Sheol, Egypt by extension?

We would have to answer this. To escape this land of death, to escape Sheol, one must be redeemed by the blood of the

Lamb. The Passover is obviously in this connection a prelude to the work of Christ.

As we've heard already in the prayers and hymns this morning, that's a surprise to no one.

If you've been a Christian for three minutes, you immediately recognize the Passover points to the work of Christ.

So it's about redemption from slavery. Remember redemption is slave market language in the first century.

It's about redemption from slavery by the blood of the Lamb. It's about a sacrifice that passes through the fire, which is the significance of it being entirely consumed by fire.

And it's being passed through the fire when everyone around that sacrifice is facing judgment.

And it's about the power of faith being worked out through obedience, taking the hyssop, eating with haste, preparing to leave, obeying everything that God had said.

So families were not saved by their piety in the middle of the night. They weren't saved by the confidence they had in the

Lord God. They were saved because they obeyed the revelation, slaughtered the Lamb, put it through the fire, and threw the blood upon the wood, and then took refuge within.

When we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

That's the gospel. Jesus forsaken under the judgment of my sin so that I will never be forsaken.

Jesus crying out with a loud cry to the Father who has struck him down so that I will never be struck down and never cry out to the

Lord, why have you abandoned me? But rather held an embrace in arms everlasting with a face shining in the warmth of his love.

No longer I who live, but Christ living in me so that the life I now live is lived by faith in the

Son of God who loved me, gave himself for me. That is the gospel.

The blood on the cross having power to save because it's the blood of the perfect spotless

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world as the Son of God. There's no more precious blood than this in all the universe.

1 ,332 lambs could not even replace a drop of this precious blood.

Forty trillion lambs, three million years of yearly sacrifice with channels of blood rushing down Hinnom Valley could not atone for a single sin.

Oh, the richness, the power of the blood. Jesus does not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves.

He enters the most holy place once for all by his own blood.

Not yearly, ineffectually, as a high priest who can only hold some sort of temporary patience and forbearance upon the people's sins, entering through the great corridor of the veil, but having no power to open that veil and expand

God's presence to the lives of the people so that their sins are always before them, accumulating upon them.

They are always unclean and unable to enter into the holy place. Until this

Lamb, by His own slaughter, doesn't just pass through the veil,

He rips it open and now the holy presence of God inhabits and indwells

His people like the temple itself. How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal

Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from death that we may serve the living

God? We believe in the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

We believe in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ Jesus our Lord. We believe in the sole, exclusive, efficacious, meritorious power of His blood.

And the New Testament couldn't be more clear about this. Whenever we speak of the cross connected to our salvation, we always must hold the blood in view.

It's not the cross that is effective, it is the blood. It wasn't the lintel or the door frame that was effective, it was the blood upon it.

We have now, Romans 5 -9, been justified by His blood. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus also suffered to make a people holy through His own blood.

You were redeemed, Peter says, not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, a

Lamb without blemish or defect. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, 1

John 1 -7. Imagine the multitude of these

Israelites. If you could walk by each home when the midnight hour struck, and the screams from across the streets began to bellow out as helpless mothers holding the carcasses of their sons rush out looking for some help, and there's none.

And so the Hebrew mothers embrace their sons a little bit tighter, and the son begins to cry and to mourn, and the whole family perhaps begin to mourn.

That's one household. Then you walk by another, and they're singing, and they're rejoicing.

They don't have time to mourn because they've already packed, and they're getting ready to walk out of the bondage that they've only ever known for centuries.

And they'll no longer eat bitterness, but milk and honey in the presence of their

God. And you walk by the one house, and the husband is weeping, not only for the thought that his son might be lost that night because he can't help but think,

I've done everything that the Lord has required, and yes, there's blood on my lintel, but I am an unclean man, and I try to scrub my conscience like I can delete my browser history, but I'm an unclean man, and I try to make the same resolutions that I make every week, but I'm a defiled man, and I can't help but defile my own family, and rather than wash my wife in the water of the world,

I'm allowing her to be filthy, and rather than guiding my children in the will of God, I'm allowing them to follow after the world because deep down in my heart,

I love the world just as much as they do. And so he weeps at the thought of his son being taken from him because of his sin.

And the wife, she has all the praise and all the acclaim, but deep down in her heart, she knows how vicious her selfishness is.

The way she thinks about the other Hebrew women, the way she compares herself, her tongue, her arrogance.

And she mourns as she embraces her son and thinks, surely for this, the Lord will not forgive me. Our house will not escape death.

But in the next house, there's the Israelite who's kept his commandments from his youth.

And every day, he wakes up and he recites the Shema, and he goes through all of the commandments of God, and he's memorized

Psalm 119, and he really feels that it's true of his life. If he reflects upon what the psalmist is describing, he says, yes, this is true of me.

I know that my life is pleasing to God. And perhaps he's even confused to such a degree that he thinks somehow he's merited.

If others will be lost, other people that I know, at least I will be saved. I've done good. I've tried really hard.

And both are spared. And both are spared, not because on the one hand, there were those that were too filthy, too defiled, too stiff -necked, too stubborn, too unrepentant, too pitiful a return on the love of God.

And neither was it the ones that were holy, and were sacrificial, and had been missional, and had always gained interest on anything the

Lord gave to them. Their own life is a testimony of taking ashes of trials and making them beautiful unto

God. But neither are they saved by their righteousness, nor are the sinners saved by their sinfulness.

All alike are saved by the blood of the Lamb. This is the delivering sacrifice.

And because it's a delivering sacrifice, it's a consecrating sacrifice. To move into the second point, it's a consecrating sacrifice.

The Passover ritual is actually a consecration ritual. It's not evident here in chapter 12.

By the time we get to Exodus 29, it's very apparent. In Exodus 29,

Aaron and his sons are being consecrated in their work as priests. The tabernacle has been constructed, and now there must be priests that are set apart and cleansed and made holy by a rite so that they may work and labor unto the

Lord within the tabernacle. And so here we have a description, really, of the

Passover ritual repeated. There's some differences, of course, but there's so many things that are the same.

Notice, not a lamb or a goat, but now a ram being slaughtered, its blood being sprinkled on Aaron and on his sons, and then being roasted and eaten along with unleavened bread at the tent of meeting.

And since this meat was sacred, no one else is permitted to eat it. Any meat that remains after the priests eat their fill must be burned and consumed by fire in the morning.

So notice the similarity here. You have the sprinkling of blood, the sacrifice being consumed by fire, eaten along with unleavened bread.

These are the central elements of the Passover, the central elements of the priests now being consecrated.

Which is to say, we read that in reverse from Exodus 29 to Exodus 12, and we understand something of why in a few chapters,

Moses will say, you are a nation of priests. You are a royal priesthood unto

God. This Passover has consecrated all of you, not just the sons of Levi.

And so we could say the Israelites were set apart or consecrated from the

Egyptians, from the Gentiles, as a holy people. And so, as J. Sklar points out, the sacrifice of the animal atones for the sin.

It provides a ransom from death, but it also purifies those underneath it, purifies those who have been sprinkled by it.

This anticipates a holy consecration to God. Now, as the people of God are being released into the land, they go from serving

Pharaoh to serving the God, from laboring unto Pharaoh to laboring unto

Yahweh. That's because the Passover has consecrated them and cleansed them unto the service of God.

So they're now a holy people. They're now a holy nation. They're now a blood -bought and ransomed people of God, delivered from death through the blood of the

Lamb. So it's a consecrating sacrifice. And then lastly, it's an identifying sacrifice.

It's an identifying sacrifice. Alistair Wilson, in his book,

Echoes from Exodus, he has a great little summary. What is the

Passover about? He says the Passover is about purity. A spotless lamb, the removal of leaven.

Hyssop dipped in blood. All of this is required. It's about purity. It's about suffering.

Bitter herbs and a lamb being slaughtered. It's about unity. Entire households gather to eat this lamb.

None of its bones broken. None being left over in the morning. It's about memorial. Israel's life, its liturgy, its worship, evermore indelibly marked by this event.

And it's about childbirth. Childbirth. Egypt, as we said, has become a tomb.

It's now covered in darkness, covered in ash from mourning. But out of that dark tomb,

Israel emerges like a son out of a womb. Emerges through the bloody doorpost, quite like a womb, in fact.

And is now consecrated and set apart as the firstborn son of God. Entering into new life, right?

This is the first now. This is the beginning. Entering into new life from a narrow passage through the waters.

So you have, as it were, the birth complex within the narrative of Exodus as the

Son of God is birthed toward the new land. And all of this is contained for us as an identifying sacrifice as well.

Not particularly the elements of the Passover as they were celebrated then and thereafter, but the

Passover as it is kept by us in the Lord's Supper. This is, of course, instituted by the

Lord Himself on the night He was betrayed. In the context of Jerusalem's preparations for the

Passover, the Lord Jesus institutes and introduces the true

Passover. His own body. His own blood. Those who are able to partake with Him because of His sacrifice.

And so we're identified by this Passover. We, and this will play in a couple of weeks into our understanding of church and covenant and church membership.

We are identified by the Passover of Christ much more meaningfully than even the

Israelites were identified by their Passover. We are identified by the

Passover of Christ in a much more meaningful way than any Israelite celebrating the

Passover under Moses could ever imagine. Spurgeon put it this way so wonderfully,

Beloved, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be declared until He comes. Sounds a lot like the language of you are to observe this perpetually.

No truth can ever be discovered which can put His sacrificial death into the shade.

Whatever occurs, even if He comes on the clouds of heaven, yet our song shall be forever unto

Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. Amid the splendor of His endless reign,

He shall be the Lamb in the midst of the throne. You see what he's saying? This is the feast until He comes.

This is our Passover celebration and memorial until He comes. But even when He comes and we're no longer taking vials of wine or eating squares of bread,

He is still the Passover for us. He is still the Lamb who takes away our sin.

Our hallelujahs and choruses still resound to you were slain as we see in Revelation 5.

And so with this we see three things, three things about being identified by this

Passover. First, we see the importance of remembrance, the importance of remembrance.

Now, if you're up on your Eucharistic theology, you'll know that most

Baptists, generally speaking, Baptists, Evangelical, Southern, non -denom,

Baptists of whatever stripe, Baptists that don't even call themselves Baptists, they've inherited from Ulrich Zwingli out of the

Swiss Reformation a view of mere memorialism or strict memorialism. The idea is the

Lord's Supper is simply a memorial. It's a time of remembrance. And that was Zwingli pushing to the opposite extreme of the

Roman Catholic mass in his day, where that was quite literally a re -sacrificing of Christ.

And Zwingli said, no, it's just a remembrance. Do this in remembrance of me.

Now, we following more in Calvin's train as Reformed Baptists, we recognize that there is not so much the sacrifice coming down to the elements so much as the people of God partaking in the

Supper being brought up to be with our Savior. This is communion in a much more meaningful way.

We don't partake merely of the elements. We're partaking of Christ by them, by the blessing of the

Spirit of God. We have to explain somehow why death comes to those in Corinth who don't partake rightly.

That seems like more than a memory to me. So we have a spiritual view of the

Lord's Supper. It's our little niche place as Calvinists when it comes to Eucharistic theology.

But that's not to denigrate the fact that this is a remembrance. We might not be mere memorialists when it comes to the

Lord's Supper, but we do remember. This is at least a memorial. We're saying it's even more than that.

The Lord ensured that every generation of the Israelites would forever look back upon their deliverance through the lens of the

Passover sacrifice. They could not think about how they had been in Egypt and now they were in Canaan unless they did so by this feast, by this ritual, through the lens of the

Passover sacrifice. And so it is for us. We can never conceive of our own walks, of how the

Lord has delivered us from bondage unto sin and death and is now bringing us to a land of His presence, flowing with milk and honey, new heavens and a new earth, our great hope.

And now we're walking with Him. We cannot think of that deliverance except through the lens of the

Passover sacrifice, which is why we don't just gather here to talk about,

I'm so glad I'm no longer a slave to sin and I can't wait to be in a glorious new realm.

We gather to look back and say, Lord, thank you for spilling your blood for a wretch like me.

Thank you for breaking your body for a wretch like me. And so the

Lord's Supper is a remembrance for us. We are rehearsing His promises while we remember

His deliverance. I love what the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the great early 16th century catechisms coming out of the

Reformation, and this is from Q &A 78 and 79. They're beginning with, how do we understand the elements?

Is there a real presence? How do we understand the elements? So 78, do the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ?

No. Just as the water of baptism is not changed into Christ's blood and does not itself wash away sins but is simply a divine sign and assurance of these things.

Anyone see Keech's Catechism in our bulletin today? It's quite relevant to this, in fact.

They're made effectual by the Spirit. I love it providentially when the catechism lines up.

So, too, the holy bread of the Lord's Supper does not become the actual body of Christ even though it's called the body of Christ in keeping with the nature and language of sacraments.

Now, 79, so why then does Christ call the bread his body and the cup his blood or the new covenant in his blood?

And Paul uses those words, a sharing in Christ's body and blood, and this is the answer.

Christ has good reason for these words. He wants to teach us that just as bread and wine nourish the temporal life, so, too, his crucified body and poured out blood are true food and drink to our souls for eternal life.

And more important, he wants to assure us by this visible sign and pledge that we, through the

Holy Spirit's work, share in his true body and his true blood as surely as our mouths receive these signs in his remembrance and that all of his suffering and all of his obedience are as definitely ours as if we had personally suffered and made satisfaction for our sins.

So you see the wisdom of God in instituting the Passover for his people in this way.

As real as the bread pressing between your teeth, as real as the wine staining your tongue, so real is your interest in the blood of your

Savior. I said this quote last week and I didn't pause to tease out.

A .W. Pink said, the basis of this feast was what the Lord had done for Israel, delivering them from the land of bondage.

In other words, its foundation was redemption accomplished, entered into, known, enjoyed.

And no soul can really feast upon Christ while he is in doubt about his own salvation.

Just as the Israelites would have kept this feast as a remembrance of God having accomplished their redemption.

They come to Jerusalem in the land of Canaan to celebrate the feast with great joy.

Why? We're living proof. Redemption has been accomplished for us. Look where we are and look what we have.

And look at the precious promises that we will continue to exercise faith toward. We've entered into this redemption.

We've known this redemption. And here as we feast, we enjoy this redemption. Let me tell you, it's no different for a

Christian. We need to hold this supper as our

Passover feast with great solemnity and great delight. It's something that we know. It's something that we've entered into.

It's something that has been accomplished for us. So as William Ames warned to the individual, beware of a strong head and a cold heart.

Or as Thomas Manton said, really of a church, he said, the church is like a river. If it gets wider instead of deeper, it loses its power.

There's no greater depth to our faith than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our

Lord. And if we lose that, we lose everything.

So it's the importance of remembrance. Secondly, the importance of Christ's blood, the importance of the blood.

I've already made this point, but I can't leave it alone. This is the centerpiece of the

Passover ritual. The Israelites were saved by the blood. Who would have slept that night after midnight?

Who would have slept? I don't know. I don't know that I could have slept. Could any of us have slept on a night like that?

Hearing the wailing. And yet, if they were afraid, if they were anxious, if they were fearful, if they doubted and the more they looked at themselves, as I described, the more they look at their lives, the more they look at their lack of fruit.

Their pharaoh like hearts, maybe the more they doubt, the more they fear, the more anxious, the more discouraged, the more despairing they feel.

What must they do to find courage and strength? Is there anyone or anything within them or around them that they could look to, to find that encouragement and hope, that confidence?

Well, I hope if one of the sons was crying out with great fear, that the father would grab his hand and point him to the blood on the doorpost and say, my boy, that is why you will not die.

It's the blood of the lamb and that's a sign for them as it's a sign for us.

So we have the same confidence. What is our strength? What is our confidence when we're despairing, when we're anxious, when we're fearful, when we're flooded with doubt?

How could I be a Christian and still be like this? You need a brother or sister to take your hand and point you to the cross and say, that is why you will not die.

It's the blood of the lamb. It's by his blood that with confidence you now draw nigh and Abba, father,

Abba, cry. It doesn't matter who's inside. It doesn't matter what they have done.

It doesn't matter what they failed to do. All that matters is whether the blood of the lamb is over their doorway.

Can I tell you, children, there is a difference between being at church and being in church.

It would be analogous to being in the home or around the home on the midnight of this

Passover. There is no refuge. There is no salvation in being at church.

You must be in the church because that's the body of Christ.

That's the refuge. That's the shadow of the cross. You must be one with him, united to him by faith.

There's a difference between showing up and communing, having an interest.

You say, well, I don't know that I have faith. I don't know that I'm a Christian. I don't even know what it would mean for me to take the hyssop and do all this.

And I'm saying, nothing to do with that. You're thinking so far ahead. Listen, you're here and you've come and here

I am at least this morning. Here I am and I'm painting the doorway with the blood of Christ.

But you're outside of it. And every day you go home and I hope your mother and your father are painting a doorway with the blood of Christ.

But just because you're in the home or just because you're in a church doesn't mean you'll be saved by that blood. You must be under it if you would be saved.

So what do you have to do? Do you have to crumble together hyssop and try to atone for yourself? No, you have but to enter in and bend to the cross.

You have but to walk through these portals that are faithfully painted for you week after week, come into the refuge and sit under the blood.

That is how you will be saved. It doesn't matter what you surround yourself with.

If you're not under that blood, you will be struck down. Spurgeon says this so well.

What is it that you would put with Christ? Your good works? What would you yoke a reptile to an angel?

What are your good works? Your righteousness is filthy rags. Should filthy rags be joined to the spotless celestial righteousness of Christ?

It must not be. It shall not be. Rely on Jesus only and you cannot perish, but rely on anything with him and you are as surely damned as if you relied on your sins.

Jesus only. This is the rock of our salvation. And here he says, let me stop and combat a few forms and shapes which our self -righteousness takes.

Oh, says one. I could trust in Christ if I felt my sins more. Sir, that is a damning error.

Is your repentance? Is your sense of sin to be a part savior? The blood is to save you, not your tears.

Christ's death, not your repentance. You are bidden to trust in Christ, not your feelings, not your convictions, not your trembling, not even your pains on account of your sin.

Many a man has been brought into great soul distress because he's looked more at his repentance than the obedience of Christ.

Could thy tears forever flow? Could thy zeal no respite? No, all for sin could not atone.

Christ must save in Christ alone. Nay, says another. But I feel that I do not value the blood of Christ as I ought.

Therefore, I'm afraid to believe. He's not precious to me. I know he's a lot to all of you.

I just feel so out of place. I look over and I see people wiping their eyes away and I just kind of feel like I'm here.

I guess I'm not a Christian and I guess I can't be a Christian because he's just not that precious to me.

My friend, this is another form of the same error. God does not say when

I see how you estimate the blood of Christ, I will pass you over. No, he just says this when

I see the blood. It is not your estimate of that blood, it is not your value of that blood, it is simply the blood that saves you.

That blood alone saves. Nay, says another. But if I had more faith than I would have hope.

That too, Spurgeon says, a very deadly shape of the same evil. You're not saved by the efficacy of your faith.

You're saved by the efficacy of the blood. It's not your believing. It's Christ's dying.

I bid you to believe. But I bid you not to look at your believing as the ground of your salvation.

No man goes to heaven if he trusts his own faith. You may as well trust your own good works to trust your own faith.

Your faith must deal with Christ, not with itself. The world hangs on nothing, but faith cannot hang upon itself.

It must hang on Christ. And so that's the last point, briefly, the importance of faith.

It's not the quality, it's not the degree, it's not the intensity, it's not the effects, it's not the fruitfulness, it's not the impact, it's not the labor, it's not the holiness, the delight, the joy, the eagerness of a faith that saves.

It is the object of that faith. It is what you have faith in that saves.

By faith, we read in Hebrews 11, 28, Moses kept the

Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.

Do you see? By faith, he kept the Passover. And what did that actually look like?

What did it look like for Moses or for any Israelite to keep this Passover by faith?

It looked like sitting underneath the blood of the Lamb and waiting for judgment to pass by.

That's what it looks like. It is by faith and by faith alone that we gain that saving interest in the blood of the

Savior. There's no other way we can present to God a worthy sacrifice. Our whole lives and all that we could ever do with our lives are not able to atone.

They're not able to dwell with God. There's only one sacrifice that draws us near. How can we sprinkle ourselves with the blood?

How can we deliver or consecrate ourselves with that atoning blood? Well, it's not done by us.

And it's certainly not done by our repentance or by our love or by any other grace. It's done by the spirit of God who gives us faith as we exercise faith.

It is faith alone that apprehends Christ. Faith alone given and then exercised by the spirit that obtains every benefit of his death for us.

And so I close with that great sentence from Spurgeon.

As an encouragement to the believer, as a warning to the unbeliever, faith cannot hang upon itself.

It must hang upon Christ. It must hang upon the blood of the

Lamb. Amen? Let's pray. Oh, Father, we have no words to express what this chapter means to us because of what this chapter points to.

Not just points to in the abstract as something distant from us, but points to our very soul, our very heart as your people.

Our emotions, our affections, how could they be unstirred by thinking of what you've done, what your purpose was from the very beginning and all that you've undertaken to bring us into so great a salvation?

How dare we neglect it? Can it be, as the hymn says, and can it be that you died for us that we would gain a saving interest in your blood?

Did you die for us who caused your pain? Lord, help us, each one of us, to have a faith that hangs upon you and upon your finished work, never looking or being filled with dread or doubt or despair, upon our own efforts, labors, successes or failures.

May we always remember your deliverance, your redemption is simply by the blood of the

Lamb. And if there's those who are at church but are not in this body, may today be the day they enter through the bloody doorpost and take an interest in that saving blood and are filled with awe.

So many make a wretched choice and rather starve than come. Let them come and let them feast upon the

Lamb. Let us all feast upon the Lamb this day until He returns.