Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. --Exodus 12:5-6
Beloved Daughters,
First Peter 1:19 tells us that we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Girls, Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. What a foreshadowing we have of Christ, our Passover Lamb, sacrificed for us.
A blemish is an acquired defect. A spot is an inherited defect. Jesus was without inherited sin and he was without blemish...He was the sinless One. God made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. For the Passover lamb to be a picture of Jesus it had to be without blemish and without spot.
Exodus 12:6 says that they were to set the "perfect" lamb apart on the tenth day and it was to be kept for four days and then slain on the fourteenth day. I have read that many brought the lamb into their house where it was probably treated as a pet. What a picture they had of atonement before their eyes as they looked on this innocent little lamb that would die in their stead for their sins.
Jesus was presented to Israel as their Messiah and King on the tenth day...which was Palm Sunday and crucified on the fourteenth day for the sins of the world. There are so many pictures like this one in the bible that were written beforehand and have the signature of God on them. These never fail to shore up my faith and strengthen my belief. The bible is a book that writes history before it happens. The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. Our God is amazing.
There is one more picture in this chapter that I want to bring out. Look at verse 15.
Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 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.
In the bible leaven represents sin. Why...think about what leaven does...a very little bit of leaven will cause an entire loaf of bread to rise. Sin does the same thing. A little sin in your life left unchecked will eventually permeate and fill your whole life. That is why the bread was to be unleavened.
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 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.[c] 8 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.--1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Jesus says in John, chapter 6, that He is the bread which came down from heaven...He is the bread of life. That year the true meaning of the Passover came to light. Through Jesus' death on the cross (the lamb slain) we have obtained a refuge...a place safe from judgment by the shed blood of God's Son. It was at the Passover feast that Jesus said these words:
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat;[b] this is My body which is broken[c] for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same mannerHe also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.--1 Corinthians 11:23-26
It is not the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt that we are to remember but it is our deliverance from the bondage of sin and death that Jesus wrought on the cross by His broken body and shed blood. AMEN!
Love
Mom
Love
Mom
