The Perfect Passover Lamb

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My memory came to me of some of the things I saw growing up in an area that was prone to natural disasters, tornadoes and the like, that you would see after a storm, and I saw this also in working with disaster relief ministries, saw this in Louisiana and South Mississippi in the aftermath of hurricanes, that you would drive through a neighborhood and you would see spray painted on a garage door on the front of the house somewhere a big X. Some of you have seen this or seen pictures of it. There’d be a big X spray painted there, and there’d be different numbers and letters around the X.

That’s code for law enforcement and first responders, for them to know whether a building has been searched or not. And so they’ll mark that, and they’ll say who searched it, when they searched it, what they found, was everybody there safe, that sort of thing. It’s a mark that you’ll see in the aftermath of tornadoes and hurricanes and floods and things like that to let you know, hopefully let you know that everybody in that building was found safe after the disaster.

And I thought about this this week because I remember thinking at one point, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a mark you could put on the building before the disaster that would ensure everybody was safe inside? That would be nice, right? I wish there was some kind of tornado repellent you could spray.

We’ve had all of our stuff done for the last three weeks for the storm shelter people to come out, and we’re just waiting for them to schedule their site inspection. I don’t know what, but Charlie got real upset Friday night and said, do I need to call them? Because they were talking tornado watch and all that.

He said, I don’t know that they can come get it out before tonight. So we’re wishing at that point there was a big mark you could put on the building that would, you know, beforehand that would keep everybody safe. You know, the Bible talks about just such a mark, and that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning with the Passover lamb.

It was the mark that you could use beforehand that would keep everybody safe. If you would, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and we’re going to look at a few verses before we get into the specifics about the mark and the Passover lamb, and we’re going to talk about, we’re going to see how the Apostle Paul compared this mark to Jesus Christ. Because the story of the Passover lamb is not just history for us, it’s something that applies to our lives today. So 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and when you get there, if you’re able to, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

If you don’t have a Bible with you this morning, it’ll be on the screen for you. But 1 Corinthians chapter 5, starting in verse 6, it says, Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

And you may be seated. Now, Paul wrote this letter, this entire letter, to the church at Corinth to deal with a problem with an issue of immorality within the church. Specifically, as he’s talking here, there was a man who was involved in a relationship with his stepmother, which in addition to being kind of icky, God said, don’t do that.

Paul said, you shouldn’t be doing this. Now, it was totally acceptable to the people of Corinth, that kind of relationship, but God had said, don’t do it. And he’d said to the believers, you are supposed to act better than the culture around you.

By the way, that’s a message that our churches need today, that we are supposed to act differently from the culture around us. He said, don’t let this go on. The church needs to deal with this.

When you find sin, you cut it out. And he uses this example of the Passover, because part of the feast of the Passover is the idea of the unleavened bread. Leaven is yeast. and throughout scripture we see yeast or leavening being used as a symbol of sin because you cannot put yeast in half a loaf of dough and expect it to just stay in that half.

I mean, you can’t make a loaf of bread that’s half flat bread unleavened and half rises. No, the yeast spreads throughout the whole thing. And so he says when you find the yeast, when the yeast comes in contact, you rip it out and you throw it away instead of leaving it there where it permeates the entire thing.

He’s talking about the sin within the church. When you find it, you deal with it. Not necessarily saying first step, you throw them out of the church.

But you find it, you deal with it so that it doesn’t spread. Because sin always has this spreading effect. And while he’s talking about the Passover as it deals with sin, he talks about how we have been cleansed and we have been changed.

This is not just try harder, do better. This is we can be better because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. So he points it all back, not just on our morality and our religiousness, but on what Jesus Christ has done.

And he puts Jesus out there as the example of the Passover lamb. He says, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Jesus Christ is the Passover lamb.

Now, there was a literal Passover lamb in the Old Testament that was not only celebrated on the first Passover, but observed every year up to now. And it had a real meaning in history, but part of its function, part of its design from the very beginning was that the Father was pointing the people of Israel to Jesus Christ. And that clue is in there for us as well. So that by the time Jesus Christ came and made the sacrifice that he made, they would be primed, they would be ready, they would understand what it was that he was coming to do so that you and I could understand what he was coming to do as our Passover lamb, that he was coming to give his life for us.

And so for us to understand the comparison, we need to make sure we understand the Passover lamb. So I’m going to ask you to turn with me also to Exodus chapter 12. You don’t have to stand this time.

We did that part already. But Exodus chapter 12 is where we’ll spend most of the rest of our time this morning on understanding the Passover lamb and how that corresponds to Jesus Christ, as the apostle Paul said. So Exodus chapter 12, starting in verse 5, says, Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.

And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two. . .

Excuse me. You ever have one of those days where you just are tongue-tied? And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat.

Then they shall eat of the flesh on that night, So they were supposed to use all of the sacrifice that was made, and they were supposed to do it in a way where they were prepared to leave and go at a minute’s notice. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike at all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.

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 when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be a feast to you, excuse me, shall be to you a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations.

You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, verse 15. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. On the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them, but that which everyone must eat, that only may be prepared by you.

So you shall observe the feast of the unleavened bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. So he’s talking about the judgment.

God is telling Moses about the judgment that’s about to fall on Egypt. That because of the sin that Egypt had committed repeatedly, not only in enslaving the Israelites, but in repeatedly, repeatedly ignoring the command of God to let them go, repeatedly rebelling against God and daring God to do something about it. For this sin, for this rebellion against God, God is about to judge Egypt.

Now, sometimes we will look at these Old Testament stories and we will think they have nothing to do with us today. Let me tell you, the judgment of God is just as certain today as it was then. We think because we live in a different time.

We are somehow immune to this, but listen, we live in a world, we live in a world that deserves the judgment of God every bit as much as Egypt, if not more. We look at some of the things that are going on around us. I was appalled this week to hear that there’s a court case in New York demanding the right for a parent to be able to marry their child and saying that it is protected, the right to do so is protected under the 14th Amendment.

There’s another court case in Texas saying that abortion is considered a religious exercise under the First Amendment and any rules against it should be struck down by the courts. We’ve got madness like this going on, and not only in the culture outside, but far too many of our churches compromising with and capitulating to the spirit of the age instead of standing firm on the authority of God’s Word and calling men lovingly but truthfully to be reconciled to a holy God. Instead of that, we try to accommodate what the culture wants.

if ever there has been a society that has been ripe for the judgment of God, it’s ours. And so we can’t look at this and say, this is a different world. This has nothing to do with us.

Folks, this could be ripped from the headlines of today’s newspaper. It doesn’t mean that God’s going to send the angel of death and take every firstborn. It doesn’t mean that every bad thing that happens is the judgment of God.

It’s just, my point in this is saying, if God looked at Egypt and its sin in enslaving the Israelites and refusing to listen to him, if God looked at them and said, I am absolutely going to judge, we cannot delude ourselves today into thinking that God will ignore our sin and let it go. Folks, each of us has an appointment with God. I’m not even just talking about our country.

Every person has an appointment with God. His word says it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. We will all stand before God.

And so judgment is as certain on every one of us as it was on Egypt. And Israel had every potential of being swept up in that judgment because you see the people of Israel were sinners as well. It’s not that they were somehow any less deserving of God’s judgment, but God was gracious and God offered a way of escape to those who were willing to believe him and were willing to take it.

And so there was this Passover lamb. The sin had to be paid for. It could either be paid for in judgment or it could be paid for by an innocent sacrifice.

So we need to understand that the payment for sin required a perfect lamb to be sacrificed. Now he says in verses 5 and 6 that the lamb would be without blemish, a male of the first year. You would take it from among the sheep or the goats.

They would keep it until the 14th day and then they would come out and they would kill it at twilight. They would sacrifice it. Now who exactly had that lamb hurt that they deserved to be slaughtered?

Nobody. But there’s a precedent that runs all throughout scripture from Genesis chapter 3 when God made them a covering of skins to cover their sinfulness up until the time of Christ. There’s a thread that runs throughout scripture says, the innocent died to pay for the sins of the guilty. And so a lamb was taken as a picture of this.

But elsewhere in scripture, we see that it wasn’t the blood of the lambs that was effective, otherwise they wouldn’t have to keep doing it. It wasn’t the blood of bulls and goats and pigeons and sheep and everything else that was sacrificed. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have to keep doing it.

It was their faith in a sacrifice that was to come. And so they were told that they were supposed to take this lamb without blemish. It had to be without blemish or it would mess up the picture.

He says a male of the first year. Now, you couldn’t try to play a trick on God and say, oh, we’re supposed to sacrifice a sheep? I’ll find a really old one that’s about to die anyway.

You know, that’s how we operate, right? You have a couple of toys there. You know, you have a new ball and an old ball laying in front of your kids, and you tell one of them, now, you have to share one of those with your brother.

They’re going to keep the new one, right? And give the old one to their brother. They’re not going to sacrifice any more than they have to.

God knew it was our human nature that we would take one of the old sheep that was about to die. Had already lived a long life, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice to us. He says, no, it’s got to be a genuine sacrifice.

It’s got to cost you something. It’s going to cost the lamb more, obviously. But it’s got to cost you something.

So you take a male of the first year. You take one with all this life left in it and all this promise remaining. You take that one and you sacrifice it.

He also said one without blemish. So it couldn’t be one that was sickly or deformed because we would do that, right? Well, we don’t necessarily want that one to breed with the characteristics it’s got.

So we’ll take and sacrifice that one. God said, no, it couldn’t be sickly. It couldn’t be deformed.

It had to be one of the good ones. One of the ones that was going to cost you something from your flock. Now, the reason why that was important is because he was painting a picture here of a sacrifice that was going to cost a tremendous amount.

If somebody cut down in the prime of life and cut down with no blemishes, no sin, no guilt of his own, that was fulfilled in the New Testament. We have in each of these cases, we have an Old Testament picture and a New Testament fulfillment. We see in John chapter 1, where John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John the Baptist, the hard-headed preacher, the last of the Old Testament prophets there in the New Testament, saw Jesus coming and said, That’s him. Look here. There’s the lamb that’s going to take away the sin of the world There’s the lamb the innocent one that’s going to take your guilt on himself and be sacrificed in your place And paul explains why he was able to do that when he said in second corinthians 5 He made him who knew no sin To be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of god in him See the reason why jesus christ was able to pay for my sins And the reason why jesus christ was able to pay for your sins is because he had no sins of his own If I said I’m going to go get crucified to pay for your sins, I’d just be taking some of the punishment that I deserve for mine.

I can’t do a thing about yours. My suffering is not even going to be enough to wipe out mine. Jesus Christ had no sin of his own, so everything he did, everything he suffered was on our behalf.

Everything he suffered was for somebody else’s sin. And he was able to do that. He was able to be the Passover lamb without blemish because he had no sin.

So just like that Passover lamb, he was able to take our sins on himself. He’s the lamb without blemish. We see that the payment for sin required a perfect lamb to be sacrificed.

And the Old Testament picture of that was the Passover lamb. The New Testament fulfillment was Jesus Christ. But we also see that the lamb’s blood made sin’s condemnation pass over God’s people. See, God’s judgment of sin is certain.

It’s going to happen one way or another. Each of us have a date with destiny, you might say. Each of us have an appointment to stand before God, and that sin is going to be dealt with one way or another.

But Jesus Christ, like that Passover lamb, causes the condemnation that we deserve to pass over God’s people. Now this Old Testament picture we see in Exodus 12 verse 7 that we just read. He said, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the house where they eat it.

They were supposed to take some of the blood from this lamb, this Passover lamb, and they were supposed to drain it into a bowl, and they were supposed to go out there and they were supposed to paint it over the doorposts of their house. And the Egyptians probably thought they were crazy. Who goes out and I guarantee you, if you see one of your neighbors out there painting blood on the doorposts of their house, that is the house you want to stay away from at Halloween and every other day, right?

Do not accept treats from that house. We would think they were nuts. It probably didn’t make sense to the Israelites themselves, but God said do it.

God often calls us to do things that don’t make sense to us, but they make perfect sense to him. We just have to trust that they make perfect sense to him. So he said, go and paint the blood on the doorposts.

And he gave further explanation in verses 12 and 13. He said, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. There was going to be this plague that every Egyptian family was going to lose their firstborn, both man and beast, against all the gods of Egypt.

I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. He said, I’m the only God.

They’ve been worshiping all these false gods. See, we could say, why didn’t he just punish Pharaoh? All of Egypt was complicit in this.

All of Egypt was in rebellion against God. All of Egypt had had nine other plagues to turn their hearts to God, and they had still rejected him. And so now God said, I’m going to execute judgment against the gods of Egypt.

I am the Lord. I’m the one. Not those false gods, those idols of wood and stone and metal that they bow down to.

I am the Lord, he said. Now the blood shall be a sign to you on the houses where you are. God’s judgment is coming to Egypt, but that blood is going to be there as a sign.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. When I see that blood, I’ll look at it as the mark and say, I’m not going in there. My judgment has already been executed on the lamb.

I see the blood, and so the condemnation, the judgment is going to pass right over you. And the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. The people of Israel were told literally to hide themselves behind the blood of the Passover lamb or else God’s judgment was going to fall on Egypt and sweep them up in it too.

Egypt was doomed at this point. God always keeps his promises. Their only hope was to do as he said to believe him that when he said they’d be safe they would be safe and to hide themselves behind the blood of the Passover lamb just like he said.

And so those who believed God went out and sacrificed the lamb and they painted their door frames and they went in and they locked themselves in their houses all night and they ate their Passover and they huddled together while all of Egypt fell apart around them. But they were safe because the blood of that lamb caused the condemnation of God’s judgment to pass over them. And there’s a further fulfillment of this picture in the New Testament.

1 Peter 1. 18 and 19 says, you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. It wasn’t gold or silver.

It wasn’t your religious traditions that redeemed you, but the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. It wasn’t anything you had. It wasn’t anything you did that saved you.

It was the blood of Jesus Christ, that precious Passover lamb. And in 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul said, you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead. Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath.

Just like in the Old Testament, our only hope to escape the wrath, to escape the judgment of God, is to hide ourselves behind the blood of the Lamb. That’s our only place of safety. That’s our only place of refuge is behind that blood.

And we are able to rest securely in Jesus Christ, just as they did in the knowledge that the blood of the Passover Lamb stood between them and the condemnation. And it doesn’t make sense to the world to say, wait, there’s a painting of blood on the doorpost and you think that’s going to be enough to withhold all this? If God said it would, it would.

And we can try all these other religious things. We can try being good. We can try all sorts of things to try to deal with God and deal with our sin and think it’s going to save us.

But in the end, God said it is the blood of that spotless Passover lamb that we hide behind, and that alone is what makes the condemnation of God pass over the people of God. And then this morning we see that the lamb’s sacrifice marked the coming of freedom for God’s people. See, this wasn’t just a momentary reprieve, but it was the mark of something better.

It was the beginning of something better. In verse 17 of Exodus 12, it says, So you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. For on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt.

Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. See, when that Passover lamb was sacrificed, and they alone who hid behind the blood were spared from the judgment, Egypt didn’t know what to do. And Egypt finally, at least for a moment, bowed its knee in submission to the one true God.

And then, and only then, did Pharaoh finally let God’s people go. Then, and only then, did 400 years of slavery come to an end. Finally, and God’s people were free.

See, that Passover lamb wasn’t just a one-time matter of saving them from judgment. That Passover lamb marked the start of something new and better for them. And folks, there’s a direct New Testament fulfillment of that.

Because the sacrifice of Christ didn’t just buy us a one-time forgiveness of sins. It didn’t buy us just a one-time get-out-of-judgment-free card. The sacrifice of Christ opened the door for the beginning of something better.

Paul writes about this in Romans chapter 6. He says, we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him.

For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. They were set free from slavery to Egypt, and we were set free from bondage to sin. Doesn’t mean that we will never sin again.

It means we no longer serve sin because that’s all we can do. He has set us free and turned us loose to serve him. Just like the death of the Passover lamb marked the end of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, the death of our perfect lamb marked a new day for us.

It was the end of our bondage to sin, and it was the beginning of our freedom in Christ. And our opportunity to walk with God the way we were created to. Israel finally got, they didn’t always get it right, but they finally got to walk with God in freedom once they were set free from Egypt. And you and I are able to walk with God in freedom once we’re released from the clutches of sin through the blood of Christ. Folks, the Passover lamb, it was a real thing that really happened in history.

It was a real thing that meant something specific to the people of Israel at that time. But as God instituted it, he also had in mind preparing them for the coming of Jesus Christ. It was a picture so that they would understand. It should be something that we can relate to.

We do this sort of thing with our kids. If you’ve ever had a little boy that you’ve bought one of those fake shaving kits for, anybody else ever do this with their sons? have the little brush.

I’ve never used one of those shaving brushes in my life. Maybe I should, but their little fake shaving kit comes with one. And you mix it up and you paint it on your face with the shaving cream and then there’s the little plastic razor with no blade in it and they practice shaving.

Well, it’s fun and it’s, I mean, it’s a mess, but it’s fun and it’s something for them to play with, but it’s also preparing them. It’s a picture so that they will learn what to do and so that they’ll understand what comes later. Same reason Carly Jo plays with baby dolls.

It’s it’s something for her to do. But she’s learning you take care of baby and you don’t throw baby down the stairs. We’re a little slower on learning not to throw baby down the stairs, but we’ll get there.

And by the time she’s a mommy, she’ll know not to throw baby down the stairs. You practice on something else. We do this all the time.

Folks with a lot of stuff in the Old Testament. Yes, it had its importance in the moment and its significance and its meaning in the moment. But understand, God used a lot of these things too to prepare us for what was to come.

And that Passover lamb was there so that we might better appreciate what Jesus Christ was coming to do for us. Jesus Christ is the perfect Passover lamb whose blood keeps us secure in the face of God’s judgment. I don’t want you walking out of here this morning thinking, well, this was just a hellfire and brimstone message to make us feel bad about ourselves.

No. If you come to church and the message makes you feel bad about yourself and doesn’t tell you anything to do about it, then we haven’t accomplished anything. The object here is not for us to feel bad about ourselves.

The object is for us to understand where we stand with God and that only Jesus Christ can fix it. So the message is not leave here feeling bad and understanding that you deserve the judgment of God. The message here this morning is that Jesus Christ took the judgment of God for you and that when God’s judgment falls on this world, the place you want to be is behind that blood.

The only place you want to be is behind the blood of Jesus Christ. And it is as simple as realizing that we have sinned against him. We have all disobeyed him. We have all rebelled against him.

Not just in the things we do, but even our attitude, even the condition of our heart is in rebellion against God, if we’re honest about it. So we’ve all sinned against him. We all deserve judgment, even if we’ve only done one thing wrong.

And by the way, that would be incredible. I’ve had sinful attitudes this morning. Usually before I get out of bed, I hear the alarm and the sinful attitudes start right there.

Y’all laugh, but it’s We are sinners and we deserve the judgment of God. And when we acknowledge that, if we at the same time believe that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died on the cross to pay for our sins because we could not, and that He paid for our sins in full, we believe that He made that payment and we believe that He rose again from the dead to prove it, then we can ask God for that forgiveness and we are hidden behind that blood when the judgment comes.