The First and Final Passover

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This may seem more like a theology lesson to some than it will be a preaching sermon, but the only difference between a theology lesson and preaching is the application at the end.
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So we will get to the application at the end.
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So preaching is actually the proclaiming of right theology.
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I want us for a moment to think about some important dates.
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I want us to think about personal dates that we reflect on, whether it be births of children, whether it be graduations, wedding days.
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Sometimes we remember the loss of loved ones, funerals.
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We even remember major geographical moves.
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But what about major dates in history? Do we really reflect on them like we should? Let's talk about October 29, 1929.
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Most of us in here probably don't remember what happened on that day.
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That is the day the stock market crashed.
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People were jumping out of buildings for their loss of money.
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Then you have December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor.
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And then we have these dates, and I can probably just say the names.
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Most of you may be able to tell me the dates.
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Hiroshima, 140,000 people were died by a bomb called the Little Boy.
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That was on August 6, 1945.
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And then three days later, Nagasaki killed another 80,000 people.
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Those are dates in history that we remember.
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And all I have to do is say these two numbers, and everybody will remember these, 9-11.
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Think about those days and the tragedy and the loss of life that took place.
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On a good note, what about July 4, 1776, our Independence Day? Great loss of life, though, for our freedom.
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Or this one, January 1, 1863, President Lincoln, with the stroke of one pen, emancipated 3 million slaves, giving them legal freedom in the United States.
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The Emancipation Proclamation.
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We forget those days.
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We forget how important those last two days are to our American history.
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But I want to talk about another day that's far more important than any of those days.
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Because had this day not taken place in history, we would not be meeting here today.
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It would be the 14th day of the month of Aviv in the Jewish calendar.
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It's called the Night of Redemption.
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It's when tragedy would meet triumph.
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It would mean when a liberation would lead to a promised land.
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It would be where the rebellion of a ruthless king would lead to the redemption of God's people.
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And it would be the assault on the national deities that would lead to the adoption of God's chosen nation.
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The 14th day of Aviv is an event called the Passover.
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We say it's Passover.
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Understand, the is the definite article.
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There would be no other day like this day in all of history.
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Although we commemorate it and celebrate it, it would never happen again.
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But in order for me to bring you up to speed on the 14th day of Aviv, I need to give you some context.
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So I'm going to cover about 400 years in about two minutes.
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God made a covenant with Abraham.
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He called Abraham when he was bowing down in the Mesopotamian Peninsula in a place called Ur.
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He made a covenant with him solely and completely on God alone.
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He said, I'm going to make you a nation.
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And out of your seed, I will bless the whole world.
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The problem was, he couldn't have children.
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Well, his wife could not have children.
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But God, in his sovereign act, gave Sarah a son.
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And we have Isaac.
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So you have Abraham, his descendant Isaac, and then you have Jacob.
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Jacob had 12 sons.
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Out of those 12 sons, you had 10 of those brothers sell one of those into slavery.
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Well, through the sovereign act of God, that one brother, his name was Joseph, he became the most powerful man in all of Egypt.
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The family was reunited in Egypt in a place called Goshen.
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And 70 people, 70 Hebrews, went into the land of Egypt.
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The nation was birthed.
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Some type of family reunion.
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After Joseph dies, the people are taken into a hard bondage.
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And this will be the first systematic persecution of the Jewish people ever known.
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It would be by Pharaoh.
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But God raises up the deliverer.
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That man's name is Moses.
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And Moses is going to stand before the most powerful man in all the known world at the time, and he's going to say, let my people go.
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And this ruthless ruler will say no.
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And God says, you know what you're going to do? You're going to do signs and wanders, and you're going to do all of these things in his face to show that Yahweh is God.
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And there is none like me in all the earth.
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And he will bow down.
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So the God of all creation did exactly what he said he would do.
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He sent nine plagues through the hands of Moses.
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One, he turned the Nile into blood.
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Two, frogs.
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Three, lice.
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Four, biting flies.
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Number five, he killed all the livestock in the land.
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Six, he sent boils on them.
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Seven, he sent hail from heaven mixed with fire.
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Number eight, he sent locusts to eat up whatever was left from the carnage of the hail.
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And then the ninth one was thick darkness, darkness that could be felt over all the land, that they could not even see the person in front of them is what the Scripture says.
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But none of these plagues affected the nation of Israel and Goshen.
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They were protected completely from it.
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Each one of these were designed to humiliate, mock, and to ridicule each god and deity of the nation of Egypt.
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Egypt was a polytheistic culture that bowed down and worshipped beetles and birds and frogs and snakes and flies and any other type of animal you could imagine.
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It's actually a very good description in the book of Romans where it says that men would rather worship the creature rather than the creator.
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And then God gives them over to a demased mind.
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But there would be the tenth plague, the crescendo.
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It would be the one in which it would crush the people in Egypt.
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The tenth plague would liberate and redeem the Israelites, the killing of the firstborn in every household.
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If you don't understand the tenth plague and its historical and theological context, you will not understand the Passover.
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And if you do not understand the Passover, you will not understand this table which we will take of today.
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Each week we take of this Lord's table.
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And if you do not understand the plagues, if you do not understand the Passover, when you take that, you do not have a clear understanding of what that table means.
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So my attempt is to bring a clear understanding of what the Lord's table is and how it came about and how it's connected to the liberation of a nation, how it's connected to the promised land, how it's connected to liberation, adoption, redemption, and an inheritance in which we all get because of this very night.
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The Exodus is the most important event in redemptive history of the Old Testament.
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If you do not have the Exodus, it makes no sense.
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All the minor prophets, all the major prophets, post-exilic, pre-exilic, all the writings, searching far and wide, high and low, all of them point back to this event constantly.
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I'm going to read Exodus chapter 12.
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I'm going to read verses 1 through 6.
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Then I'm going to skip a large section.
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And then I'm going to read 21 through 32.
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And because it's so long, I'm not going to ask you guys to stand.
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I'm going to ask you to follow along in your Bible.
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Now, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt.
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And He said, This month shall be your beginning, the beginning of months, and it shall be the first month of the year to you.
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Speak to all the congregation.
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On the tenth day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.
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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 his persons, according to each man's need, you shall make the count for the lamb.
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Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year, and you can take him from the sheep or from the goats.
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Now you shall keep him in your home until the fourteenth day of the same month.
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Now let's get down to verse 21.
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Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, Pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families.
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Kill the Passover lamb.
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You shall take a bunch of hyssop, you will dip that blood into a basin, and you will strike the lentil into the doorpost, and with the blood from the basin.
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And none of you shall go out of the door or out of his house until the morning.
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For the Lord shall pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the doorpost, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come into your house and strike you.
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You shall preserve this thing as an ordinance for you and to your sons forever.
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It will come to pass that when you come to the land in which the Lord will give you just as he has promised, you will keep this service.
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And it shall be when your children will say to you, Why do we do this service? And you will say to them, It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, and he struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.
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So the people bowed down their heads and worshipped, and then the children of Israel went away and did so just as the Lord commanded, Moses and Aaron, so they did.
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And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, and from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat in the throne to the firstborn of the captives who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.
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So Pharaoh rose up at night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in the land that there was not one house where one was not dead.
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Then he called for Moses and for Aaron by night, and he said, Rise up, go out from among my people, both you and your children, and go serve the Lord as you have said.
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Take your livestock, take your herds, as you have said, be gone.
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Now listen to what the prideful Pharaoh still says, but bless me also.
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But bless me also.
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Alright, let's walk through the text.
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You have God's people, the congregation.
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God calls the two leaders, Moses and Aaron, and he tells them to do something.
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He says, I'm going to command you, I'm going to send you to the people, and I want you to do one thing, gather the people together.
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And he says, on the tenth day, he says, I want you on the tenth day of the month, in verse three, I'm sorry, in verse two, he says, this month first will be the beginning of the beginnings.
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What is he saying to them? He's saying, old things have gone away.
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All things are becoming new because of this event.
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All the things that have happened in the past, all the persecution, all the bondage, all is fixing to go away.
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In a single night, God's going to deliver his people.
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In a single night.
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He said, it will be the beginning of beginnings.
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It will be the first month of the first year for you.
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So this is the beginning of the Jewish calendar.
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All things are becoming new.
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Do you understand the subtle thing that we overlook right here, is they were promised a future.
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There is a future promised right there.
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If it's the beginning of a month, that means there's plenty of things to come after.
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And he says in verse three, On the tenth day of every man, he shall take for himself a lamb, according to the household.
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They were supposed to go out, look among their flocks, look among their sheep and their goats, and they were to select a lamb.
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A specific type of lamb.
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A lamb that was going to be able to feed the whole household.
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One that would be able to feed them complete, as a meal, and if the neighbor was too small of a household, he was to come in and do this collectively together.
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It says in verse five, That that lamb shall be without blemish.
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Here's the criteria.
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Not just a lamb.
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Not some one-eyed, one-horned, broke-toothed lamb.
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This has to be the best that you have.
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That's going to take some time.
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Why do you think he says go out on the tenth day? Right? The tenth.
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So you have four days.
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What are you doing for four days? You're looking for a lamb.
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And if you find that one, you bring it in the house.
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And your little kids are going to play with it.
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They're going to rub its face.
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It's going to cuddle.
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Understand, that little lamb is to be one year old.
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It's going to be the cutest little thing.
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I've always wanted a little goat.
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Some people think I'm crazy.
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But they're so cute.
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The lambs and goats bounce around, and they hop, and they lick, and they look all happy all the time.
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But they're bringing that very little thing into their home to be part of their family.
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It's perfect.
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Perfect wool.
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Perfect skin.
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No scabs.
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No broken toenails.
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No broken teeth.
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The gums can't have any speckling on it.
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Perfect.
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Because on the tenth day, they bring it in.
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On the fourteenth day, they bring in that sheep and that goat.
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Here's what they're going to do.
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They're going to kill it.
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That's what they're going to do.
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They're going to kill that lamb.
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And if you go down to verse 21, this is the reason why I skipped the bigger bodied section.
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That's actually concerning the feast and the unleavened and all of that.
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But here's the command He gives them.
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Kill the lamb.
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Verse 21 and 22.
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I could preach a sermon right there.
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Kill the lamb.
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Apply the blood.
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Stay inside.
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That's the gospel.
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Kill the lamb.
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Have His blood applied.
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Stay faithful.
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So it is right here that they were to kill the lamb, and there was a specific procedure that had to take place.
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You were to suffocate it.
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You were to strangle it.
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You were to drown it.
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You were to bind its feet.
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You were to take it outside.
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You were to take a sharp knife, whether it be flint or steel, and you were to cut its throat.
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Are there hunters in here? Have you ever killed an animal with your hands? It's bloody.
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They're going to slit its throat.
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And then specifically, when they slit that animal's throat, they're going to drain its blood into a basin, not on the ground, not just forever to go.
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They had to capture the blood for a specific reason.
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And when they were to capture that blood, they were to take that blood, and they were to strike the lentil.
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The lentil is the upper section of the doorway.
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Most lentils are the supporting structure of the roof for the rest of the home.
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Some of these would have been tents in Goshen.
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You know what I'm saying? If it was a tent door opening, whatever that piece of wood is, whatever those two things that are holding up the side of the doorway, you put the blood on them.
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You take hyssop, which was a specific type of moss that would soak up a liquid, and you were to wipe it on the lentil.
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Now, in verse 13, it says it'll be a sign to you.
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Interesting.
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It says in verse 13 that when you apply that blood, it'll be a sign to you.
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How is that a sign to you? It's a sign to you that I just killed something, put its blood over the door in my...
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Someone died in your place.
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That little lamb, cute and cuddly.
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Want to snuggle with it? It was just murdered, killed, cut.
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Blood drained out of it.
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Fixed to be roasted over a fire to be eaten and consumed.
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And it did that in your place.
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Then it says in verse 22, none of you shall go out of the door of this house until the morning.
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Specific reason why they were not to go outside the door.
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They were not to go outside the door because anyone on the other side of the blood-stained door will die.
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The firstborn will die.
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Whether it be the firstborn of the livestock or as your firstborn child, it will die.
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Verse 33, for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians.
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And when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the doorpost, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your home.
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If you all ever read through the Exodus and see all the other plagues in Sunday school, we've been talking about this.
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Understand that nine of those plagues did not touch any of the Israelites, only the Egyptians.
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And they were completely unconditional.
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God didn't tell them, hey, go make some smoke so the frogs don't come up here.
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Go build a bigger fire so the flies don't come into the land.
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None of that.
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He says, I'm going to do this.
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And when I do this, it will make a distinction between the nation of Israel and the Egyptian people.
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And they will know that you are my people.
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But for the first time, God requires something of them and it's obedience.
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He requires them to put faith that when they cut this lamb's throat, they drain its blood, they begin to roast it over an open fire, and they put that blood over top of the lintel and the doorpost that they're trusting that God, because of their obedience, the destroyer, and understand that destroyer is not some evil angelic being.
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That is none other than God Himself who's going to pass through the lamb and He's going to strike the firstborn.
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Stay inside.
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Do not come outside of the door.
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It's going to be utter chaos.
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Verses 24-28 speak of the obedience that would come to the law.
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24-28 says you'll observe.
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You'll observe an ordinance.
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An ordinance? Well, there has to be a law given if there's going to be an ordinance, correct? Without an ordinance, if you have an ordinance, there has to be a law.
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Here's God pointing to them that He is going to give some type of legislation to them.
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He's going to make a covenant with them.
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And know that once again, this points to there's going to be a bigger and greater future for the nation of Israel.
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Understand, they've not even been told to leave yet.
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And He's already saying, this is going to be the beginning of your first month.
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And then when you get out of this land, you're going to keep this as a continual ordinance.
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He is promising them that there is a greater future for them.
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Here's a reminder that they were going to obey and observe this very ordinance for their sons and their sonsons and their grandsonsons forever.
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Forever.
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Forever.
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It would come to pass that God was going to strike the firstborn in all the land to show that the nation of Israel was His.
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Understand that the Israelites, too, deserve the wrath of God.
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I want you to understand that.
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The Israelites weren't exempt from the wrath of God.
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They deserve it.
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Just like everybody in this room, there's a hell-deserving, wrath-deserving sinner.
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And if God did what was right to each and every one of us, me included, this would be my last breath.
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But because God is gracious, because God is merciful, He has withheld judgment.
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And in this case, they deserve to be punished.
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Write this passage down.
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Joshua 24, verse 14.
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We like 24, 15.
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As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord.
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And that is good and great.
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But you understand what the verse was right before that? You have bowed down to the gods of Egypt just like your fathers.
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They were bowing down and worshiping beetles and frogs and snakes and every other kind of thing you could imagine.
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That's what they were doing in Egypt until Moses came on the scene.
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Also, in Ezekiel 20, verse 7, the same thing.
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But because they still disobeyed God, they should have been punished for their idolatry.
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God in His sovereign grace chose to show them grace so that He could make a peculiar people for Himself.
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And God provided an atoning sacrifice for them out of His sovereign grace.
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God did not have to do that.
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Then you have verses 29 through 32 where it says at midnight, God went through the land.
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He struck the firstborn.
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He struck them in all of the land.
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Not just in Pharaoh's household.
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Not just in the guy's house down the road.
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Not just in the well-established people.
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From every economic, social, economic caste you could imagine.
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From Pharaoh's house to the person in prison.
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That's what happened.
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He kept His word.
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Back in Exodus chapter 4, verse 21 through 23, before Moses ever stood before Pharaoh, before he ever did any signs and wanders, He told Moses, you're going to go.
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He's not going to listen.
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I'm going to strike this firstborn dead.
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Then He's going to let you go.
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God is a covenant-keeping God.
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He's doing exactly what He said He would do and how it has come to pass.
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At night, Pharaoh rose up because all of them had been struck out.
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What did he immediately do? In the middle of the night, he sent someone to Aaron and for Moses.
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And he said, hey man, y'all need to get all your stuff and get out.
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Get out of here.
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Can you imagine the chaos? In every household, there was a person, at least one dead.
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At least one.
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In that particular culture, sometimes groups of households stayed together.
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Like families would stay together.
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Like we just take, for the instance, the tribe and the clan of Judah.
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You see that when you get into the numbers.
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A lot of them lived in the same home.
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So you would have multiple deaths of the firstborn in the home.
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If, I was still staying with my father, my oldest brother, if he was there, would have been dead.
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Then my oldest son, Zach, would have died in the same household.
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Understand it would have been fathers crying, mothers sobbing, and the children that were the secondborn had to be asking themselves, am I the next one? Imagine the chaos.
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Imagine no consolation, no comfort.
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Me losing my firstborn, going next door to Eli's house to embrace him for some consolation, and he's doing the same thing, weeping over the death of his firstborn.
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There was no consolation in Egypt.
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There was no consolation from the Pharaoh's house to the one that was in prison.
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Absolute terror.
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This is what some believe to be called the Lex Talionis, the law of retaliation.
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I believe it is.
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I believe this is God demonstrating justice for all to see, because some 80 years ago, what was Pharaoh doing? He was throwing babies into the Nile to be eaten by crocodiles so that the deliverer would not come.
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God says, I got you.
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And He did.
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Exactly to those firstborn is what the Pharaoh was doing.
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What a night of terror.
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Sorrow.
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The destroyer had come.
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And that destroyer's name was Yahweh.
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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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The God of the Hebrews.
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He had come to set His people free.
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And in one night.
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430 years of bondage.
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Get out.
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No strings attached.
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Any other time they tried to leave, there was supposed to be strings attached.
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Don't take the kids.
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Don't take the women.
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Leave some cattle.
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And He said, no, this time, take it all and get out.
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Because of the tenth plague and the Passover that night, the exodus takes place.
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And because of this event, a national covenant is about to take place.
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If the exodus had not happened, there would have been no national covenant.
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Israel's sacrificial system, their civil society system, and their priesthood system all come because of this event.
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God liberated the nation of Israel from the bondage of Pharaoh.
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God redeemed the nation of Israel from slavery and captivity.
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God had now adopted these former slaves as His sons and His daughters.
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God took no good, rotten, idolatrous scoundrels and made them His own.
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Nothing in them.
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God says, if you will take the blood of the lamb, I will protect you from the wrath of God.
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I will protect you from My wrath.
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I will lead you out and I will make you My own.
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Because He has liberated, redeemed, and adopted them as His own, He has promised them a land of inheritance.
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A place of provision and prosperity where the whole nation could flourish.
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Why did God do this? Sovereign grace.
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His election.
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Because He wanted to.
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As a matter of fact, right before they go into the land, you go into Deuteronomy, which is the second giving of the law.
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The same law, just given a second time because all the disobedient generation had died off.
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He says, hey, you know why I love you? Because that's what I wanted to do because it was right in My eyes to place My affection on you.
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So now I want us to fast forward from the Exodus, almost 1,500 years, to this declaration by the forerunner of the Messiah.
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Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
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Not only once did He say that, He said it twice.
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As a matter of fact, as Jesus walked up on the scene, nobody even knowing who He was, He goes, there He is! That's the One! That's the Lamb of God that will take away the sins of the world.
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And then not only did He do it that day, He did it the next day.
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And the next day that He did it, John's disciples began to follow Him.
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No man in all of history had ever been called the Lamb of God.
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No man.
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No man had ever been called a lamb.
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No man had ever been called God.
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So now we have the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world.
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It had to be painted a picture by John the Baptist.
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The Lamb was always the sin-bearer.
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Always the sin-bearer.
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And he goes, that's the Lamb of God.
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And He's going to take away the sins of the world.
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That lamb would have to be a perfect lamb because no sacrificial lamb could come in there with one eye and one horn.
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So it would have to be perfect.
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And we know that that perfection had nothing to do with Jesus' appearance because the Scripture says there was nothing in His appearance that distinguished Him from anyone else.
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He looked like a common Jew.
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It was the moral perfection of His being.
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He was God in human flesh.
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And that's why it qualified Him to be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
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That man would be the one that would fulfill all the Mosaic prophecies.
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All of the law.
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He would fulfill all of the dietary laws.
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He would fulfill all of the sacrificial laws.
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And then He would fulfill all of the priesthood laws.
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That's why Mike read this morning all of those types and shadows that was all thrown into the Mosaic legislation.
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And sometimes we look at that and we get confused in all the blood and the cutting and all this and do this and do that.
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And we go, well, how does that point to Christ that had to do with His moral perfection? He did everything that the law required.
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All that the law required.
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Everything from not eating shellfish to not mixing two types of fabric together.
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All of that perfectly thought-word indeed.
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Passive and active obedience of the Lamb of God so that these words heard at that final fulfillment of Passover could be celebrated.
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They were commemorating on this final Passover some 1,500 years later.
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They would be commemorating the deliverance of Israel and the giving of the law.
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And you would hear this saying by Jesus Christ.
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Luke 22.
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I'll start in verse 7 and 8.
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Then came the day of the unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed.
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And He sent Peter and John saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat.
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Understand verse 7 is must be killed.
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There was no other time.
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There was no other time in which the Passover land could be killed.
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So they had reached that time.
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They had reached that appointed time.
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And then in verse 14 it says, And when that hour had come, He sat down with the twelve apostles with Him.
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And He said to them, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
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But I say to you, No longer will I eat of it until it's fulfillment of the kingdom of God.
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And He took the cup.
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He gave thanks and He said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.
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For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
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Then He took that bread.
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He gave thanks.
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He broke it.
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And He gave it to them.
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And He said this, This is My body which is given for you.
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Do this in remembrance of Me.
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And then likewise, He took the cup after the supper.
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And He said, This cup is the cup of the new and everlasting covenant which will be in My blood which I am going to shed for you.
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It would be at this Passover commemoration nothing had ever happened like this before.
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No Jewish man had ever taken the unleavened bread and broken it, handed it out.
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He said, This is My body.
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No man had ever taken the cup.
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Some believe it was the wine glass with the cup of peace that would celebrate the next Seder dinner which we have done here.
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We went through all of that here.
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He says, Take this cup.
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And this cup, this cup of peace is going to be the blood of the new covenant that I am going to shed for you.
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It would be on that night that all the types and shadows of the old covenant were coming to converge on one man, Jesus Christ, who would take away the sins of the world.
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1 Corinthians 5, verse 7 says, Jesus Christ, our Passover Lamb, was sacrificed for us.
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I want you to think for a moment going to Jerusalem, on Jesus every year.
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Every year.
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From the time He was a baby, when He was 8 days old, He was taken into the temple to be circumcised.
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When He walked in with His parents holding Him, a man, Simeon, saw Him and said, Behold, that is the consolation of Israel.
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And then as soon as he said that, another lady who had been a widow for many, many years came up and says, There it is, the redemption of Israel.
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And that was at the Passover feast.
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Then, Luke chapter 2, verses 39-41 says that He went every year to the Passover feast.
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Just as the Mosaic law had determined.
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Every male person was to go to the Passover and was to be in Jerusalem.
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He would go with Joseph year after year with His mother.
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Imagine Jesus walking up the temple stairs with Joseph, His earthly father.
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His earthly father with the sacrifice of sin in His hands.
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And laying it out on that butcher block.
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Slitting its throat.
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And Jesus looking at that going, My time is coming.
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One day that's going to be me.
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Hey Dad, I'm going to take care of that for you.
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Imagine His mother.
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Every time they slit a lamb's throat, they butcher an ox, they run off a pigeon's head.
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That's my son.
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She knew.
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Simeon had already told her.
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He's going to pierce your soul for the consolation of Israel.
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Every year watching those countless sacrifices during the Passover feast.
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Jesus counting down.
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My time is coming.
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My time is coming.
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My time is coming.
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We have some sanitized view, first of all, of the tabernacle and the temple.
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We have some sanitized view of some sacrifice.
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Look, this was not a slaughterhouse like we have today.
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The place was bloody.
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We romanticized the temple.
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We romanticized the tabernacle because of its beauty.
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One, because of the grandeur of its stones and the gold, and all of the Herodian, the stuff that Herod had done to make it pretty.
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All the white marble, the stones on the front, overlaid with gold.
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All of the huge timbers of cedar.
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All of that whitewashed on the front.
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We can see pictures of what that looked like before it was destroyed that people had drawn.
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And absolutely gorgeous.
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And you could see it from miles and miles and miles away.
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On that temple mount, when the sun would hit the front of that, the gold front would just gleam.
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But understand the temple was a place of death.
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It was not a place where blood didn't run.
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The temple was made for a specific reason.
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The Holy of Holies to hold the Ark of the Covenant.
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So that one time a year, man would go in there and throw the sprinkles of a goat on there to propitiate or to set aside the sins of God's people for another year.
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But what happened in the courtyard? There was a 22 foot tall altar that constantly, day in, day out, blood, blood, butcher, blood.
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The smell of burning animals' flesh.
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Singed hair does not smell good.
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Imagine whole animals laid up on there.
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Burned.
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Feathers.
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Bones.
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Day in, day out.
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And we talk about the temple being its grandeur and its place of sweet aroma.
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The sweet aroma was not sweet in the sense that it was sweet to us.
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It was sweet to God because it pointed to something greater.
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It pointed to the perfect sacrifice that would come that would take away the sins.
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The temple was a place of execution.
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The temple was a place that was a constant reminder of the sinfulness of man.
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How many times do you have to walk up there with an animal, lay it on the table, slit its throat, butcher it, and understand the worshipper did the butchering.
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For the sin offering and for the burnt offering, the worshipper did that.
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A bloody mess.
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How many times do you have to do that to go, wow, this animal died in my place.
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I should have died.
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I sinned but this animal died in my place.
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It was a perfect reminder of man's inability to stop transgressing the law of God.
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A reminder that a perfect, spotless lamb could never take away.
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The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin.
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If that was the case, the first sacrifice that took place, it would have never had to do it again.
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But what did Mike read earlier today? What had to continually happen? Day in, day out, day in, day out.
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More killing and killing and killing and the blood had to continue to run.
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It was a picture of a type of substitutionary atonement every time they took an animal there.
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The priest's clothes would have been saturated in the blood.
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Tables, laid out, blood everywhere.
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It's not like shooting a deer from 300 yards from a deer stand.
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You're talking about doing it with your hands.
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It would have been a bloody mess.
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I want you to think about it.
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You write this down.
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Go back in 1 Chronicles chapter 7.
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You don't have to look it right.
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I'll write it down.
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Read it when you get home.
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On the day in which Solomon dedicated the temple 120,000 sheep.
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One day.
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22,000 bulls.
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Matter of fact, it says that they had to stop sacrificing because the altar could not take the blood nor could it take any more animals.
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That is a lot on Passover.
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You know how many animals were sacrificed at the temple? Just on the Passover alone, you can go read it in Josephus' writings.
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He was a first century historian.
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265,000 lambs at the Passover feast.
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And you tell me that was not a bloody mess.
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Necks were cut.
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Blood was drained.
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Passover was a commemorative of the lamb that was slain as a substitute for Israel.
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It was a picture of their deliverance.
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So, on this 14th day if I believe, in 30 A.D., there was another place of execution.
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There was another place of sacrifice.
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If you were to go from the temple, just go northwest outside the temple, there was a gate called the Damascus Gate.
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And Jesus, after that Passover with His disciples and that meal, He was betrayed.
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He was falsely convicted.
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He was beaten to the point where He was unrecognizable.
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His flesh torn from His bones by Roman scourger on His back.
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He was convicted as a common criminal.
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He was given a wooden beam.
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And He would be led out the Via Delarosa, the way of suffering and sorrow.
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And He would come to a place called the Skull.
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Golgotha.
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And He would be at that place where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of criminals had been executed by Rome.
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It was a place that ran red with the blood of its victims.
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It was a place of no mercy.
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Golgotha was repulsive.
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It was vile.
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It was disgusting.
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There was maggots there.
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There was vultures there.
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It was a place of death.
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Jesus was then laid down.
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He was stripped down to nothing.
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Willingly laid His hands out on that wooden beam that He had carried to His own execution.
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And the Roman soldiers hammered spikes through His hands.
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They then took the innocent, precious hands of God, the Lamb of God, drove nails through them.
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Then they took and lifted Him up on that crossbeam and they dropped it down into a site.
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We have some Sunday school picture.
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On a hill far away.
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Look, it was not on a hill far away.
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It was on the main road that went into Jerusalem.
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It was on the main street.
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You understand, the Damascus Gate was the main road that led into Jerusalem.
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And Jesus was then erected.
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Golgotha was not a hill.
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It was the road.
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The place of the skull.
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The background of it looked like a skull.
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Jesus was then erected on that.
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The crossbeam set on the site.
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Then His feet, His heels, through the Achilles tendon was nailed to the site to support what little bit of weight He had.
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Bones contorting, twisting, massive and profuse bleeding.
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Who did this to Him? Who did it? We would say Judas did it.
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We would say, man, those scheming Canaan and Sanhedrin did it.
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Some of us would even say, you know what? Those rude, crude Roman executioners did that.
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And some of us more theological people would say, no, no, no, we did it.
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Let me tell you the correct who did it.
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God did it.
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God did it.
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His Father did it.
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Isaiah 53, in two passages said that He was smitten and afflicted by God.
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And then you go on down in chapter 53, verse 14 it says He, it pleased God to crush Him, putting Him to open shame.
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Jesus was stripped down to nothing.
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He was degraded.
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He was humiliated.
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Suspended on that cross that God would now pour out white, hot, unbridled wrath.
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Jesus Christ wasn't executed in a back room in a prison somewhere.
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Jesus Christ wasn't taken out into the woods and murdered for no one to see.
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Jesus was not taken out into a desert somewhere where nobody saw what happened.
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It was done on the main road.
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Jesus was executed in public plain view.
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And Romans chapter 3 makes that very clear.
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It says that He was set forth, chapter 3, verse 25, He was set forth publicly as a propitiation.
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Peter even says this.
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1 Peter chapter 1 chapter 2 verses 22-24 It says, He had committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth.
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Who when He was reviled, He did not revile in return.
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When He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.
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Jesus Christ, hanging on the cross, bleeding profusely, bones contorted, being pulled out of joint.
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We hear these words, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? And God in His actions says this, The Lord your God damned you.
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God damned His own Son.
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He was damned in our place.
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He bore the punishment that you and I deserve.
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He bore the suffering that we should have taken.
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He took it in our place.
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That's why Jesus Christ, the Passover Lamb, bore the unmitigated, immeasurable, unbridled wrath of God for every sinner of every sin that sinner would ever believe.
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Every sinner that would ever believe.
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Every sin at that moment.
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All those sins that had happened, Romans says, that had previously been committed, that it looked like God was slack on sin in times past.
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No, no, no, no.
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It was at that moment that all the sins of every person that would ever believe past, present, and future was put on the sinless Lamb of God.
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That's why 2 Corinthians 5.21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.
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Look, Jesus didn't become a sinner.
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Jesus became our sin-bearer.
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If Jesus was a sinner, His atoning sacrifice would not be enough.
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But because He was perfect, He was undefiled without sin.
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He was the only substitute.
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And then when Jesus cries this, It is finished.
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Paid in full.
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Pass over that.
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You know, it is finished is an actual economic term that was used in that day to tell a side.
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It meant done.
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Paid.
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Well, what did Jesus pay? Well, Peter tells us.
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1 Peter 1.18 Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold from your aimless conduct received by the tradition of your forefathers, but you have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish and without spot.
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King David made a prophetic statement.
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And the Passover lamb in Israel, once it was sacrificed on that night and how they would commemorate it from that on forward with that lamb was to either be eaten by the whole family, consumed completely, or was to be roasted over fire till it was gone.
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But it was not to be taken out, thrown out, and discarded outside the city to decay.
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Psalm 16 by King David says this.
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Do not let my soul stay in the grave, nor do not let your holy one to see corruption.
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Jesus Christ was crucified.
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He died.
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That lamb of God died.
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But I can tell you what had never happened.
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There was no Passover lamb that ever come up after it had its neck slit.
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But I can tell you what did happen three days later.
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Jesus Christ being the atoning sacrifice, fulfilling the day of atonement, fulfilling every sin offering, grain offering, the wave offering, the drink offering, every offering that you could imagine, Jesus Christ fulfilling that on that day.
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Busted out of that grave three days later, conquering death, hell, and the grave, releasing the power of sin and death.
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It could no longer have a hold on men.
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And because of that the time of ignorance is over.
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And now God's called every man every way to repent because he's appointed today when he would judge the world in righteousness.
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And he would judge the world in righteousness by the God man.
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And how do we know that? Because Acts chapter 17 verse 31, 32 it says because he raised him up from the dead.
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If you're here without Christ, the wrath of God abides on you.
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I don't care how old you are.
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It does not matter.
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If you're here and you have not placed faith in Christ and him alone for forgiveness of sins, the wrath of God abides on you.
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Children, your parents' faith will not save you.
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We can look back in Israel and see that the faith of the parents, the faith of that first Passover where they cut that lamb's neck and blood ran out and the dad obeyed what God told him to do, that was only a temporary stay of the wrath of God.
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If you do not place faith in Christ, you will be forever lost.
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Man, woman, young man, young girl, you're sitting in here and you think that you're not that bad? I'm going to tell you what, everyone that's been here, lying, thieving, adulterous, and murderers at heart, we covet, we backbite on one another.
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You say, well, I'm not that bad, but let me tell you something.
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If you're sitting here and that is your attitude, Isaiah 64.6 says that your righteous deeds are as minstrel rags.
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That's what it says.
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And if that's not pulpit worthy for you, I'm sorry, take that up with the prophet Isaiah and the Holy Spirit who inspired that writing.
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The English language has dumbed it down.
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Your best work is putrid.
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And apart from the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, you will die.
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And you will go headlong into an eternity.
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Not separated from God.
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Absorbing in your own body and soul for all of eternity.
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The white, hot, justice wrath of God.
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That's why we celebrate this.
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This right here is a celebration, a commemoration of what Christ did in our place.
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You don't take this if you're not a follower of Christ.
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You heap up more wrath on yourself.
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So on that first Passover, point it to something greater.
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The final Passover, 100% fulfillment.
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I wrote just a few things down that pointed to Christ being the first Passover lamb and then how Jesus fulfilled it and then went better than that.
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Are you ready, Earth? You ready? You ready? This is what you've been waiting for for two weeks.
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The first one was a night of redemption.
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The second one, when Christ came, the day of particular redemption where He would save His people.
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One had to be the lamb of the flock.
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Jesus was the lamb of God.
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The lamb of the flock was sacrificed against His will.
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Jesus Christ willingly sacrificed Himself.
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The first Passover set aside the sins of the nation of Israel temporarily.
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Jesus Christ propitiated and expiated the sins of the elect.
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It was a temporal stay of God's wrath under the first Passover.
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Under the second Passover, it was the permanent appeasement of the wrath of God for all of eternity.
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The first one was the preservation of ethnic Israel.
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The second one, when Jesus came and fulfilled that final, was the preservation of all of God's people.
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The first one was the purchase and redemption of a nation.
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The second would be the purchase and redemption of the church.
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The first one would be liberating the nation of Israel from the bondage of Egypt.
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Jesus Christ liberated us from the bondage of sin and death.
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The first Passover was the beginning of a temporal and provisional covenant.
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Jesus Christ, on that Passover, brought in the new and everlasting covenant where God would no longer dwell in a temple made with hands, but He would dwell in the hearts of His believer.
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And that new covenant is that God will take out your heart of stone and will put in a heart of flesh that will cause you to walk in obedience and obey His law.
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He will give you a desire for the things of God.
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If you sit here and you have no desire for the things of God, the Spirit of God does not live within you.
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Sorry.
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Sounds tough, but that's the cold hard fact.
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If you don't desire God, you are dead in your trespasses and sins.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, thank You for Your Son.
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That is the biggest understatement that could ever be said.
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But God, what else can we say? There's nothing else to say but thank You, thank You, thank You, thank You.
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Thank You for sending Your Son into this sin-cursed world to be the substitute in our place.
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And Father, for those in this room that don't know You, they could cry out to You, throw their self at Your mercy, and You say, all that come unto Me, I will by no means turn them away.
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And Father, if they were to throw themselves at the mercy of God, trust completely and solely in the finished work of Jesus Christ, they could walk out of here today a friend of God, clothed in the righteousness of Your Son, having their sins propitiated by the Lamb of God that takes away sin.
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Father God, be with us here in a moment as we partake and commemorate that very night in which You sacrificed Yourself.
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Once again, thank You for Your Son and His shed blood.
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In Your name we pray, Amen.