On Eagles' Wings Pt 161 — Don Courville

The Lamb and the Passover

I want to talk to you today about the Lamb. There's a song out called Watch the Lamb. If we were to title this passage today, I think we would give it that title, Watch the Lamb. I don't know of a more appropriate title for Passover than the title to Watch the Lamb.

Jesus, the Bread of Life

In John chapter 6, the Lord Jesus Christ had just laid out before His disciples and the crowds that He was the Bread of Life. He came down in verse 63, He said, It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. Heavenly Father, we pray today that Your words would be life. We thank You, Holy Spirit, that You give life through Your Word to us.

I pray that You'd open up our ears to hear and our eyes to see what You want us to see. In Jesus' name, Amen. In that passage, after Christ had shared that He was the Bread of Life, it says that many turned away from Him at that time.

Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not and who should betray Him. And He said, Therefore said I unto you that no man can come unto Me except it were given unto him of My Father.

My friend, the Holy Spirit will give you light. And what you do with that light will depend upon for all eternity where your destiny is. And then He turned to His disciples, because the Scripture says from that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.

And He turned and Jesus said unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? And then Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. There's a song written by Charlotte Elliott entitled Just As I Am.

I'd like to stop and read to you a few passages or stanzas out of this song. Before we go into the subject of the Passover, she wrote, Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, and waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot, to Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict and many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind, sight, riches, healing of the mind, yea, all I need in Thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am, Thou wilt receive, wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve.

Because Thy promise, I believe, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Today I'd like to challenge you to come to the Lamb. If you remember in the first part of the book of John, chapter 1 and verse 29, when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming unto him, he said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

My challenge today to you is to behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. And down in verse 36, again it says the next day after John stood, two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus as he walked, John, again he said, Behold the Lamb of God.

Finding the Messiah and the Lamb of God

Have you found him? Have you found the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ? I don't think we can understand what that meant when John said, Behold the Lamb of God, unless we were to go back into the Old Testament and come back through the pages of scripture.

And we wouldn't have enough time this morning to go back through all of the passages. But we'd start off with Adam and Eve when they sinned in the garden. And I believe that God took a little lamb and shed that blood and made coats of skins for them.

The scripture doesn't say it was a lamb, but because of later on, Cain and Abel, when they were supposed to bring the sacrifice and Cain brought the works of his flesh and presented his fruit there and God wouldn't accept it, he wanted a lamb.

Abel brought the lamb and that was acceptable. All through the Old Testament, the lamb spoke of the Lamb of God. So when John the Baptist said, Behold the Lamb of God, everything should have come to life to those that heard.

Here was the Lamb of God. All those lambs that had been slain, those thousands upon thousands of lambs that had been slain, all spoke of the Lamb of God. And they found him. Have you found him? When you come down to verse 41, it says, talking about Andrew, let me start off in 40.

John 1 .40,. And one of the two which heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. It says, He first findeth his own brother Simon. And he said unto him, We have found the Messiah.

Israel's Messiah and the Gentiles' Grafting

I have a burden for the Jewish people. For you see, the one that I know and love, the one who died on the cross for me is their Messiah. They are the olive branch, and I'm the wild olive branch grafted in.

He was their Messiah. And because they rejected him, we as the Gentiles have received him. I love the Jew. I love the Jewish people. I love the Jewish nation. I pray for the Jewish people. Right now, I'm praying that God would open up to any of you that are Jewish, that Jesus Christ is your Messiah.

He was your Messiah. The Bible is a Jewish book, written by Jewish people, basically, and we that are not Jewish receive our blessings because of the Jewish people. And so he first findeth his own brother Simon, and he said unto him, We have found the Messiah which is being interpreted by Christ, and he brought him to Jesus.

Have you found him? This is indeed the Christ. Back over in John 24, you remember the woman at the well? When Jesus met her, and he had his, her discourse, and she left the water pot, and she went back to the city, and she said, Is not this the Christ?

And they came out. And when they came out, they said, They said, This is the Messiah. This is him. Scripture says, When the Samaritans were coming to him, they besought him that he would tarry with them, and he abode there two days, and many more believed because of his own word.

And said unto the woman, Now we believe not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. My friend, if you're convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world, then he will be your life when you receive him as your lamb, your substitute, and he will be the object of your life.

He will be the object of your attention. He will be the object of your devotion. He will be the object of your, of your very life. When you get up in the morning, it will be, Jesus is my life. When you're born again by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit will give you a love for God.

He'll give you a love for God's word. He'll give you a love and a desire to obey and do what God wants. Have you found him? One of our greatest tragedies today in our modern society is that we have so many that know about him, but have not yet found him.

Our churches are full of religious people. We go through our, our Sunday morning rituals and do our thing and think that God is impressed. And all the while God is not impressed because much of it has nothing to do with him.

But it's all of ourself. We're doing it for ourself because we've never found him. When you find him, he is the center and the object of everything. Whether we live or die, it's for his glory. And wherever you go, it's for his glory.

My only object when I go in some place and preach is to do what Jesus Christ tells me to do and to speak. And it doesn't matter if others don't like it or others don't think that I'm saying what I should say.

That is my desire is to go in and obey the Holy Spirit and do what he tells me to do. And he will tell you to do things and they may not always be conventional and what other people expect, but he will accomplish what he wants when you do that.

Forgiveness Through the Blood of Christ

If you love him, you will obey him. Have you found him? Man's greatest need is forgiveness of sins. And that's found in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says in Leviticus 17, 11,. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.

For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. I have a question for my Jewish friends. Where is the blood today? In your temple worship, in your synagogues, where is the blood? Because God has said in your own scriptures that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.

For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. There's no blood sacrifices today because the blood sacrifice was made almost 2 ,000 years ago in a town called Jerusalem. On a hill called Calvary.

When God himself, as the scripture says that God was manifest in the flesh, God himself died on that cross and made atonement for our souls. The Lord Jesus Christ was God incarnate. The scripture said in the book of Acts in chapter 20, when Paul was addressing the church, He said, Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost had made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he had purchased with his own blood.

When did God ever shed his blood? He did on Calvary for you and me. And that was the fulfillment of this passage where it says the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar.

So where is the blood today? The blood, we look back 2 ,000 years ago, was shed there at Calvary. And where the blood was shed is where forgiveness is. Because he said, I've given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.

And that's where forgiveness is. The Bible says in Colossians 1, 14, In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Man is riddled with guilt. We are running to our psychologists and our counselors all over the place.

And all we need to do is go to God and get the cleansing that we need. When you come to Jesus as your Savior, you are cleansed. The blood of Jesus Christ is and cleanses us from all sins. And then we stay there for that cleansing.

Passover, Easter, and God's Provision of Salvation

Let me ask you a question. Exactly what is Passover? You know, we've got this thing that we call Easter, which is a pagan term. Pagan to the core in its worship. The eggs, the fertility, the rabbits, all of that stuff is pagan.

Why has the church adopted it? Why have Christians adopted into our, what we call Passover, pagan things? That's just one area. It's all to point us away from Christ and his resurrection. The Passover was God's provision of salvation for Israel to leave the land of Egypt.

That's simply what it was. If you go back over to Exodus chapter 12, you have the basis of it laid out to you. It was God's provision of salvation for Israel to leave the land of Egypt. And the Lamb was the key to their salvation.

The scripture says in Exodus 12 and verse 3, it says, Speak ye to all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house.

First thing you notice, there's a lamb for a household, and if the household was too small, too little for the lamb, then they were to take his neighbor next to his house, take it according to the number of the souls, every man according to his eating shall you make your count for the lamb.

So two families would get together. But if there was to be the lamb, he was the key. And then also in verse 5 of Exodus, the lamb was to be without blemish. The Bible said in Leviticus 20 and 21 that it shall be perfect to be accepted.

Can you offer to God a perfect sacrifice of yourself? Can you appear before God and say, I lived a holy, sinless, perfect life, so you should let me into heaven? Many of us believe that we will get into heaven because of our good works, because we've joined a church, been baptized, given money, tried to live a good life, and all those things might be all right in their place and in their time and their setting.

But God cannot accept you because you are sin. I am sin. We're born in sin. And this is why Christ came into the world. He was without sin. There was no sin in Him. And so the lamb had to be without blemish.

The Perfect and Substitutionary Sacrifice

Isaiah 53, 11 says, He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. God was satisfied with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because He was perfect, holy, blameless, without blemish. And so God accepts His sacrifice.

And when we accept God's offering for us in the person of Jesus Christ Himself as the gift, His gift to us, then He accepts us. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Where are you at? Are you forgiven? Something else about that lamb, the lamb was to be slain. It had to be killed. Verse 5, He said, Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month.

And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. It had to be killed. This is why Peter, under the influence of Satan, the strong satanic influence of Satan, rebuked Christ when He said He was going to go to the cross.

Peter took Him, and he began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee. You see, the Lord Jesus had told him that He was going to go to Jerusalem, that He was going to suffer many things of the elders, and the chief priests and the scribes would be killed and be raised the third day.

And Peter rebuked Him. Be this far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee. But He turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan, for thou art an offense unto Me. For thou savest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

You see, the cross is the center of our Christianity. If it's not the center, the blood of Christ, if it's not the center of your worship, then the focus. The blood of Christ speaks of a sacrifice being made for us.

And we take and then we tie it all together, the death of Christ, His blood, and His resurrection, and we have the gospel that Jesus Christ was crucified, He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.

This is the gospel, and He did it for us. A lamb was to be slain. It had to be killed. But not only that, the blood had to be applied. You see, what we have today is we have a bloodless Christianity. And many of our denominations have taken the blood out of everything, out of their preaching, out of their song books, out of their conversation.

The Blood of the Lamb Must Be Applied

My friend, you might as well take the book of Revelation out of your Bible. You ought to go back because the book of Revelation talks about the lamb. And we overcome Him by the power of the blood of the lamb.

The blood was precious, but the blood had to be applied. Now, the setting back there was God had told Him He was going to pass through the land, and whoever didn't have the blood was going to die. This is why they called it the Passover.

Verse 7, They shall take of the blood and strike it on the two side posts, and on the upper doorposts of the houses wherein they shall eat it. It was called the Passover. When I see the blood, I will pass over you.

He slipped down to verse 13. He says, And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. And 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 see, the unbelievers would not apply the blood. Israel applied the blood. And so when the death angel came through, he passed by, he passed over them. But when he went through the land of Egypt, the Scripture said that there wasn't from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on the throne until the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

There was not a house where there was not one that was dead. Why did God smite them? It's because they did not believe. When you do not apply the blood, it shows that you are an unbeliever. You see, you can sit in church all your life.

You can hear about Christ being your Savior. You can hear about Him dying on the cross, being buried and rose again. But unless you apply the blood personally to your own life, you'll never be born again by the Spirit of God.

How was the blood applied? Verse 21, it said, The blood, Moses called for all Israel and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families. Kill the Passover, and ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel.

And the two sideposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. There is so much there about Christ. Matter of fact, the Old Testament is just from page to page.

Every page speaks of Christ. It's covered with Christ, details about Christ and His life. You go through the tabernacle and the temple. It all spoke of Christ. Every detail had some kind of reference to Christ.

Loaded with the beauty of Christ. I do preaching, revival preaching and messages like that. And it's almost sometimes it begins to get to you when you get so much that's needed to do to get the church clean before we can receive of Christ.

We have to preach of repentance of sins and dealing with bitterness which we started a couple of weeks ago. And dealing with our anger and our idolatry and all of this stuff. We can't receive the beauty of Christ when we have all this stuff in our life.

So if we can ever get ourselves back to Christ, get ourselves clean so we can see and receive. You see what we do today, so much we got preaching of Christ but we won't receive it. It won't come into our lives.

It won't have an effect in our lives because we're so cluttered up. We got so much jealousy and so much other stuff. We just can't receive the beauty of Christ. I like to preach Christ and Him crucified.

I love to teach of the beauty of Christ. The blood of Christ as we're doing today. And so many places you go and even with people you get with people. Some people profess to be Christians, you can't talk about Christ with them.

They got a worldly mind. Their mind's off on their money or their things they got to do. If you get together, two of you get together and you're Christians and you can be together for a while and you don't talk about the things of Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ, then you're not having fellowship.

Fellowship always revolves around Christ. The blood had to be applied. And boy, once the blood was applied and the blood was put on the post and they were saved because of the blood applied. It affected their lives.

It'll affect yours. Listen, if I was to take you back over to the book of Romans and take you through just a few minutes. I don't know how much time we'll stay here. But the book of Romans is so beautiful to take you through and to show you what we're talking about.

Justification by Faith in Christ's Blood

Romans 3, let's say verse 20. Therefore, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe for there is no difference. You see, how was the blood applied? It was applied by faith. They went out by faith and they put it on there and then they stayed in the house by faith.

The blood had to be applied to be of use. How do we apply the blood of Christ today? It's by faith. It's simply by faith. It's said there, by faith of Jesus Christ. And verse 23, for all who sin and come short of the glory of God being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God has sent forth to be a propitiation through, listen, faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.

I'm afraid of many of us today that we have not applied our faith in the blood. We put our faith in our decision. We put our faith in some kind of experience. The faith that we have is to be applied to the blood.

His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God has sent forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.

It's faith in His blood. And He goes on to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus who is boasting then. It is excluded. By what law?

Of works? Nay. But by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith. In what? In the blood. Without the deeds of the law. It's faith in the shed blood of Christ alone. Not even repenting of your sins get you saved.

Repenting of your sins is a step to get you to apply the faith that's necessary to the blood. You go to chapter 4, verse 3. For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

Now to him that worketh is a reward not reckoned of grace but of death. But to him that worketh not but believeth on him. This is what we're doing in a lot of our churches. We're working, we think that because we've done all this stuff, God's going to save us.

Listen. But to him that worketh not. In other words, you live and you go into the realm of faith. But believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly. His faith is counted for righteousness. It's faith in the blood.

Even as David also described it, the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness without works. Saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven. And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

We have a charge by the high court of God against us that we are in sin. And so when we receive Christ as our Savior, we apply the faith that we have in his blood. We have faith that his blood was shed for the remission of our sins.

God puts that on our account and imputes to us the righteousness of Christ. And sin is not imputed on our account anymore. But righteousness is. Look at verse 24. Romans 4, 24. 25. But for us also to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.

It's faith in the blood. Romans 5, 1. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace through God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of you, when you lay down at night, you have trouble going to sleep, you wonder if you die, what's going to happen to you, if you have a heart attack, you get in a wreck, you have cancer or whatever.

If you've got that kind of fear, you might search your heart and see if you really have faith in the blood of Christ. Because when you have received Christ your Savior, he gives you peace. Therefore being justified by faith.

Watching the Lamb and Resting Under the Blood

When you're justified by faith, we have peace with God. We don't have this fear of dying anymore, where we're going to go. We know where we're going. So when John the Baptist looked and he saw the Lord Jesus Christ and he said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

He knew that there was the hope of Israel. There was the peace of God. Do you know the Lamb? Are you watching the Lamb? And have you applied the blood of the Lamb? Someone said there are many people who believe in the shedding of the blood.

They believe that the Lord Jesus died, but they have not appropriated his work for themselves. And so are not resting under the sprinkled blood of the Lamb. The Bible says, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

This will be in the book of Revelation, the wrath of the Lamb. Where are you? As we close up today, where are you? Are you under the blood, safe and secure, free and in joy, rejoicing in Jesus? Are you out from under the blood of the Lamb?

Well, it's time to go. I just want to leave you this challenge. I know I might have got wrapped up a little bit, wound up a little bit today, but let me tell you, if you miss Jesus Christ, you miss life.

He that has the Son has life. Let me challenge you to receive Christ. Apply the blood. Put your faith in the blood, not in yourself, not in your church, but in the blood of Christ. Till next time, may God richly bless you, my friend, and remember Jesus Christ is all you need.

But, have you come to a point to where He's all you want? God bless you.