This week in our morning revival we are enjoying the matter of the Passover as seen in the book of Exodus.
Most believers know that Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and their understanding and appreciation of the Passover is limited to this aspect. However, we need to have a deeper and more thorough understanding of what the Passover is.
Regarding the Passover, God gave detailed instructions on how to prepare the lamb, how to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on the door posts, how to roast the lamb and eat it with the bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and how the people of Israel should be ready to go as they eat the lamb.
The Passover is a full type of the wonderful redemption of Christ; the type of Christ’s redemption is seen in other places such as Genesis 3 – the skins covering Adam and Eve, in Gen. 6 – the offering of Abel, and the ark of Noah later in Genesis, but the full development of the redemption of Christ is seen in Exodus 12 with the Passover.
God’s purpose in the Passover was not just to spare His people from His judgement coming over the land of Egypt, give them something to eat, and get them ready to get out of Egypt. God didn’t necessarily need the people of Israel to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on their door posts – He knew who they were and where they lived, and so there’s more to this than God’s judgement passing over them.
God gave the detailed instructions on how to sacrifice the lamb, sprinkle the blood, eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, so that God’s people would learn to enjoy Christ as the Passover. The primary matter in the Passover is not being spared from God’s judgement or getting out of Egypt but enjoying the Lord Jesus as the reality of the Passover for the course of our entire life.
God wants us to remember Christ’s redemption in a specific and detailed way, and He wants us to enjoy Christ again and again until He returns.
Christ is our Passover: He is the Lamb of God judged by God and prepared for us to eat, His blood was shed for our sins that we may be forgiven and spared from God’s judgement, He is the bitter herbs who cause us to reject sin and death within, and He is the unleavened bread for us to eat with no natural affection or entanglement. Hallelujah for Christ, our Passover!
Christ is our Passover: He was, is, and will be the Lamb of God for our Redemption and Enjoyment!
In 1 Pet. 1:19 we see that God prepared the Lamb, Christ, in His foreknowledge before the foundation of the world. Even before God created everything, He prepared Christ to be the Lamb of God. It was then, before the foundation of the world, that Christ as the Lamb of God has been slain (see Rev. 13).
The sacrificing of Christ as the Lamb for our redemption and enjoyment is not something accidental, something that God “tried to remedy” due to the fall of man. God foreordained Christ before the foundation of the world, and in time Christ came as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
Christ came to redeem us, the fallen sinners, by His blood, and He provided His flesh to be our real meat and His blood to be our real drink so that we may be nourished, supplied with the divine life. In eternity future in the heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem we see Christ as the Lamb of God sitting with God on the throne.
Our enjoyment and appreciation of the Lamb is not something only for now in this age, as we realize that we are sinful and need the blood of the Lamb to be saved; from eternity past to eternity future Christ is the Lamb to be enjoyed by us forever!
We will never graduate from enjoying and appreciating Christ as the Lamb, the One who was slain for us and who became our life supply daily! For eternity as we see Christ as the Lamb sitting on the throne of God we will not only be reminded that we are sinners saved by grace and redeemed by His blood but that He is the eatable Lamb: His flesh is meat indeed and His blood is drink indeed!
God’s intention is that His people would feast on and enjoy Christ; the blood of the Lamb is secondary – it paves the way for us to enter into the enjoyment of Christ as the reality of the Passover. For the entire span of our Christian life we can enjoy Christ as the Passover!
This should be a memorial to us: God wants us to keep the feast of the Passover perpetually as a memorial (Exo. 12:14). Throughout our whole life as a memorial to remind us we need to enjoy Christ as the Passover again and again.
On the last night of the Passover, the Lord Jesus ate the feast of the Passover with His disciples and then He instituted the Lord’s Table with the bread and the cup as a replacement of the Old Testament Passover saying, Do this until I come.
The Lord Jesus instituted the Lord’s table to replace the Passover so that we as His believers we would enjoy until He comes! The Lord’s Table is the fulfillment and the reality of the Passover, and we should enjoy it week by week in the church life, partaking of God in Christ as the Lamb for us to eat, enjoy, drink, and partake of.
As we are before the bread and the cup, we shouldn’t remember the Lord objectively by thinking of His death for us but enjoy His redemption and eat Him and drink Him! The Lord’s table is a bridge between the Lord’s first coming and His second coming, and it is by our continual enjoyment of Christ that we will bring Him back!
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming to die for us as the Lamb of God, thus taking away the sin of the world. Lord, we thank You even more for being the eatable Lamb of God to be our life supply for the entire span of our Christian life. Lord, Your flesh is meat indeed and Your blood is drink indeed. We want to keep the feast by enjoying You as the Lamb of God, the unleavened bread, and the bitter herbs so that we may go on with You day by day in our Christian journey.
God Intends for us to Remember Christ’s Redemption in a Specific and Detailed Way
If we read the account in Exodus 12 concerning the Passover we realize that God intends for us to remember Christ’s redemption in a specific and detailed way (see Exodus 12:14; 13:9; 1 Pet. 1:18-20; Matt. 26:28-29; cf. Rev. 22:1).
Because of the fall of Adam, the man created by God in His image to express Him and represent Him in Gen. 1:26 became fallen and eventually ended up in a coffin in Egypt in Gen. 50:26. We were created by God for His purpose, but due to the fall we became dead in our sins and offenses, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:1, 12).
But hallelujah, this is not the end! On the day we believed into Christ as our Passover, we had a new birth, a new beginning – we were born again, entered into God’s kingdom, and started a new calendar, our “sacred calendar” (see Exo. 12:2-3).
The Passover was in the seventh month of the civil calendar, but God ordained that according to the sacred calendar the Passover is in the first month!
In the Bible this is quite meaningful: when Noah’s ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat it was the seventh month, but God ordained that it would be the first month of the sacred calendar. When the Passover was held it was the seventh month, but God ordained that it would be the first month. The Lord Jesus was crucified in the seventh month, during the Passover, and then He rose again to give us a new beginning: this is our first month!
Every genuine believer in Christ has two calendars: the civil earthly calendar and the sacred calendar. Since we believed into the Lord, we have a new calendar: we have the “month of Abib” (Exo. 13:4). Abib means not only a new beginning but sprouting, budding, denoting a new beginning of life and the beginning of life’s energy.
We as believers in Christ have two births: our physical birth from our parents with a physical beginning, and our spiritual birth from God with a spiritual beginning for our salvation (see John 3:5-6). Hallelujah, when we were born again we not only had a new beginning, but the divine life was budding in us, germinating us with God’s life!
The Passover was more than just a new start: we are like a plant in God’s eyes, and we were budding and sprouting! In God’s eyes the Passover is more organic than judicial since, at the time of our regeneration, we had a new beginning, we had a sprouting and budding of life, and we had a beginning of life’s energy. Hallelujah, we all have an Abib!
We should look not at our physical beginning but our spiritual beginning with life! The divine life within us is productive: it is budding, sprouting, and producing life! Praise the Lord!
Lord Jesus, thank You for being our Passover for our redemption and our enjoyment. Thank You for regenerating us and giving us a new beginning by which something of the divine life was budding and sprouting in us! Hallelujah, we are no longer dead in sins and offenses but are redeemed, brought back to God, and we enjoy Christ as our Passover in a detailed way in the newness of the divine life! Lord, keep us enjoying You today in a specific and detailed way as our Passover to live the Christian life in the church life!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus (pp. 250-251), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (1), week 5 / msg 5, The Passover.
- Further reading on this topic: see ch. 3 in, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1969, vol. 2, “The Crucial Revelation of Life in the Scriptures”.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lord, Thou art our true Passover, / God passed over us thru Thee; / By Thyself and Thy redemption / We with God have harmony. / Thou, the Lamb of God, redeemedst us / With Thyself and with Thy blood; / We apply Thy blood, our ransom, / Eating Thee, our real food. (Hymns #196)
# Lamb of God so pure and spotless, / Lamb of God for sinners slain. / Thy shed blood has wrought redemption, / Cleansing us from every stain. / Lamb redeeming, Lamb redeeming, / Bearing all our sins away, / Bearing all our sins away! (Hymns #1089)
# Take, drink this cup, each one, / His death show till He come. / Eat, drink, display this feast: / God in the Lamb released! / Around the table, sup and dine; / We eat the bread and drink the wine. / All blessing in this cup we find. (Hymns #1109)
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Exodus 12:2 speaks of the month of the Passover: “This month will be the beginning of months for you; it shall be the first of the months of the year to you.” This verse indicates that the Passover was held during the first month of the sacred year. Originally, this month was the seventh month of the civil year. According to Genesis 8:4, Noah’s ark landed on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. Many Bible teachers believe that this seventh month was the first month of Exodus 12. The Passover was on the fourteenth day of this month. This means it was held three days before the day that marked the landing of the ark on the mountains of Ararat. This landing of the ark was a type of the resurrection of Christ. Christ was killed on the fourteenth day, and He was resurrected on the seventeenth day. (Witness Lee, Life-Study of Exodus, p. 250)
We need to remember Christ’s redemption in a detailed and specific way. I appreciate that putting the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts and lintel of the house is a picture of our entrance into Christ as our dwelling through His redeeming blood (Heb. 10:19) so that in Him we may enjoy a feast.