April 1st
April 1st
Today is Passover. It is technically a multi-day festival, but this would be the night that the seder would take place. The seder is the official dinner when the Jewish people would read from the Haggadah and celebrate/remember God’s provision, rescue, and grace. God covered them with His grace and saved them from the angel of death in Egypt and then rescued them from Egypt and provided for them in the desert.
You can read about it in Exodus 12. Here are some excerpts. God told Moses to have them put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts and that would prevent death. That night as death took all of firstborn of Egypt, only those who had the blood of the lamb over their doors were safe. It is called Passover because death passed over them. Jesus is the Lamb, slain for us, and covered by His blood we are saved from eternal death.
Exodus 12:7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.
Exodus 12:12-14 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.
Exodus 12:24-27 “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’ ”
What does that have to do with us? Everything. It was a foreshadowing of Jesus!
When we hear Passover, we should think of the sacrifice of Jesus for us. WE should celebrate Passover. We should celebrate our rescue by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We don’t need to do the seder dinner and have all of the different foods and symbolic rituals that are done by Jews. But we should still set aside a time to honor Jesus and His sacrifice for us. Share a meal with family or friends and spend some time reminding each other of what Jesus has rescued you from and how it has changed your life. Take communion together, that is like our seder, Jesus told us to do that regularly in remembrance of Him.
There is value in practicing the seder tradition of remembrance. If you ever have the chance to experience a “real” seder dinner, do it! You will be blown away by how much of the symbolism in it points exactly to Jesus!! We also need to be praying for our Jewish brothers and sisters to awaken to the truth of the symbolism of the Passover seder. They are practicing this without even recognizing Jesus as the fulfillment of the whole thing!
John 1:29 The next day John (the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Jesus is our Passover lamb, let’s celebrate Him today!
Jesus, thank you for being the sacrificial lamb for me! Thank you for providing a way for me to escape eternal death. Help me to always be grateful for that. Help me to find ways to share that with others and to celebrate you today! Thank you for your grace and mercy. It should have been me on that cross. Thank you for being the fulfillment of the law so that I could live by grace!