Basic HTML Version
172
The Beginning of the End
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs at night, as Moses said, “with
a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in
your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.”
The Lord declared, “I will pass through the land of Egypt on that
[134]
night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man
and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.
... Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you
are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague
shall not be on you to destroy you.”
To remind them of this great deliverance, Israel was to observe a
yearly feast in all future generations—“the Passover sacrifice of the
Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt
when he struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.”
The Passover Points to Christ
The Passover was to be both commemorative and symbolic, not
only pointing back to the deliverance from Egypt but forward to
the greater deliverance that Christ was to accomplish in freeing His
people from the bondage of sin. The sacrificial lamb represents
“the Lamb of God,” in whom is our only hope of salvation. The
apostle Paul wrote, “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us”
(
1 Corinthians 5:7
). It was not enough that the Passover lamb be
killed; its blood must be sprinkled on the doorposts. In a similar
way, the merits of Christ’s blood must be applied to the soul. We
must believe not only that He died for the world but that He died for
us individually.
The hyssop symbolized purification. “Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”
(
Psalm 51:7
).
The lamb was to be prepared whole, with not a bone broken; so
not a bone was to be broken of the Lamb of God, who was to die for
us (see
John 19:36
).
The flesh was to be eaten. It is not enough that we believe on
Christ for the forgiveness of sin; by faith we must be constantly
receiving spiritual nourishment from Him through His Word. Christ
said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His
blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks