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Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN, 55345
952-935-2425
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

“Christ Our Passover”

July 7, 2004
By: R. W. Glenn
Exodus 11:1-13:16

Introduction
Just a week ago our country celebrated Independence Day—the day that commemorates
the unanimous adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress
in 1776. Though it is the Constitution that provides the legal and governmental framework for
the United States, we celebrate Independence Day because it signals our resolution to liberate
ourselves from the authority of England and because it signals our commitment to the founding
of a new nation.

Most people, however, do not celebrate Independence Day to commemorate our national
inception. In fact, most of us do not even call it “Independence Day”; we call it simply, “the
Fourth of July.” And we have barbecues, eating hot dogs and potato salad and ice cream and we
watch fireworks, saying “ooh” and “ah” and we go to bed. Oh, the idea of our nation’s
independence from remote monarchical rule is in the back of our minds, but it does not often
come to the forefront.

Now allow me to suggest to you that the reason for the obscuring of the meaning of
Independence Day is that we have not been faithful to communicate the significance of our
celebration. Not many American families sit down together to listen to their father explain the
circumstances leading up to the resolution of the Second Continental Congress and therefore the
significance of the holiday.

It is not so much, then, that the meaning of Independence Day has been obscured so much
as it has been forgotten. And instead of celebrating for the sake of commemorating our
independence from England, we celebrate for the sake of celebrating—of enjoying food and
family and a day off from work.

We could say the same thing about other holidays as well, including Christian ones, but I
hold before you Independence Day because of its national significance. We celebrate
Independence Day because it represents a defining moment in the history of our nation. And

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since we are studying the book of Exodus, an illustration of a holiday of national significance is
particularly relevant—especially when it comes to Exodus 11:1-13:16.

For the people of Israel, every holiday is a holiday of national significance; for they are
holy days for God’s holy nation. But there are two holidays in this text that have special national
significance. They are the holidays that, not unlike our Independence Day, serve to
commemorate Israel’s birth as a nation.

And also like our Independence Day, over the years these holidays could easily become
all of form and none of substance. It is not hard to imagine succeeding generations going
through the motions of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened bread without any idea of their
significance. In fact, the Lord himself anticipates this possibility within his instructions for
future celebrations.

Look first at Exodus 12:25-27a:

"When you enter the land which the LORD will give you, as He has promised,
you shall observe this rite. And when your children say to you, 'What does this rite mean
to you?' you shall say, 'It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD who passed over the houses
of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.'"

You can see that the Lord expects the children of coming generations to ask, “What does
this rite mean to you?” (verse 26). So in verse 27a, the Lord tells the fathers what they are to
say to their children: You shall say, “It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD who passed over
the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our
homes.” Future fathers are commanded to explain the significance of the holiday to future sons.

And with respect to the Feast of Unleavened Bread God gives a similar command. Read
with me 13:8: You shall tell your son on that day, saying, “It [the celebration of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread] is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.”
Again the Lord demands future generations to explain the meaning of his special holiday.

Finally, I want you to look with me at the consecration of the firstborn. Now although
this is not properly a holiday (it is to be performed with every firstborn son following every
birth), the same principle applies. Notice 13:14-15: And it shall be when your son asks you in
time to come, saying, “What is this?” then you shall say to him, “With a powerful hand the
LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. It came about, when Pharaoh
was stubborn about letting us go, that the LORD killed every firstborn in the land of
Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore, I sacrifice to the
LORD the males, the first offspring of every womb, but every firstborn of my sons I
redeem.”

The ceremonies demand explanation. Without explanation the visual power of the rites
is lost. How will I know to what the visible sign is pointing without a verbal explanation? How
will I know the importance of the rite without having its meaning plainly articulated? Without
explanation the rites would become nothing more than a barbecue for the sake of a barbecue,
fireworks for the sake of the fireworks.

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So in order not to miss the significance of these events, over the next several weeks I’d
like us to take them one at a time. This morning, let us begin with the Lord’s Passover.

What Passover Means to an Israelite before Christ

Now to understand the Passover, we must start with the tenth plague: what we will call
“the plague of death.” Look back to 11:4-7 for the Lord’s description of what he will visit on the
land of Egypt:

Moses said, "Thus says the LORD, 'About midnight I am going out into the
midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of
the Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind
the millstones; all the firstborn of the cattle as well. Moreover, there shall be a great cry
in all the land of Egypt, such as there has not been before and such as shall never be
again. But against any of the sons of Israel a dog will not even bark, whether against man
or beast, that you may understand how the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and
Israel.'"

Here we notice two things: first, verses 4-5 tell us that the Lord will go out into the
midst of Egypt with the result that all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. None will
be spared—from the greatest to the least of men, from the exalted Pharaoh to the lowly slave girl,
and even to the cattle—no firstborn in Egypt will be exempt from death. And verse 6 tells us that
the experience will be so dreadful as to occasion unprecedented mourning in the land of Egypt:
Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as there has not been
before and such as shall never be again.

The second thing we learn about the plague from this text is that Israel will be spared.
Look again at verse 7: But against any of the sons of Israel a dog will not even bark, whether
against man or beast, that you may understand how the LORD makes a distinction
between Egypt and Israel. There will be no sounds of grief among the sons of Israel—not even
a dog will bark against man or beast. The Lord will set Israel apart from Egypt.

Now jump ahead to 12:12-13 where we see these two points intensified. Verse 12
contains the first point about God’s activity in Egypt’s midst for their harm. Read it with me:
For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn
in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. There’s the first point of 11:4-5 made stronger. The
Egyptians will not merely die; God will positively bring about the death of all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt.

Then verse 13 intensifies the point that God makes about sparing Israel in 11:7. Look at
12:13: The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the
blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the
land of Egypt. The reason why a dog will not even bark against Israel is owing to the Lord
passing over Israel so that no plague will befall them for destruction when he smites the land of
Egypt.

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Finally, these two points are brought together in 12:23. Let’s read it together: For the
LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel
and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the
destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.

So then, what have we learned about the plague of death? We have learned that God will
kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt while at the same time he spares his own people.

Now we are in a position to understand the ordinance of Passover. This morning, we’ll
look at the instructions preserved for us in chapter 12; for in verses 3-11 we learn almost all we
need to know about how to celebrate the Passover. The Lord gives commands in at least six
areas:

1. First, the selection of the sacrifice in verses 3-4: Speak to all the congregation of Israel,
saying, “On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves,
according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household. Now if the
household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are
to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each
man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.”

The thrust of this is simply that the animal’s size is to be in proportion to the amount of
people eating it. Generally speaking, there would be one lamb per household; but
occasionally, the household would be too small to necessitate an entire animal, in which
case, neighbors should collaborate.

2. Second, the quality of the sacrifice in verse 5: Your lamb shall be an unblemished
male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

There are four items here with respect to the quality of the chosen animal: (1)
unblemished; that is, it should not be sick or scrawny or deformed, this would be
disrespectful to the one to whom the sacrifice is being made; (2) a male; likely to
correspond to the death of the firstborn males; (3) a year old; and (4) it may be a sheep or
a goat. God is quite specific about the quality of his sacrifice.

3. Third, the protection of the sacrifice in verse 6a: You shall keep it until the fourteenth
day of the same month.

According to verse 3, the lamb is to be selected on the tenth. But as this verse tells us, it
is not to be sacrificed immediately; instead, it is to be kept until the 14th day. The
language of “keeping” here suggests that the owner(s) of the animal should see to it that
nothing happen to the lamb in the five day window.

Though there are numerous reasons given in the scholarly literature to account for the
delay between the time of choosing and the time of slaughtering the lamb, since no reason
is given in the text, we will not speculate.

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4. Fourth, the slaughter of the sacrifice in verse 6b: Then the whole assembly of the
congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.

The word twilight is as good a guess as any as to the precise time at which the lamb is to
be slaughtered. The Hebrew behind this translation may be literally rendered with the
phrase, “between the two settings.” And like the question about the first part of verse 6,
there has been much speculation in the commentaries as to its precise meaning.

What is important is that each one’s animal is to be killed at the same time, making the
Passover a community affair.

5. Fifth, the use of the sacrifice in verse 7: Moreover, they shall take some of the blood
and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

In order to gain a bit more clarity for verse 7, look ahead to verse 22: You shall take a
bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the
blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall
go outside the door of his house until morning.

Looking at verses 7 and 22 together, apparently the animal was to be killed in such a way
as to drain its blood into a basin. Then, with a bunch of hyssop (the specific identity of
this plant is debated) the blood is to be applied to the doorposts and the lintel, the
horizontal supporting timber across the top of the doorway.

6. Sixth, the preparation and consumption of the sacrifice in verses 8-11: They shall eat
the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but
rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails. And you
shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning,
you shall burn with fire. Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins
girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it
in haste—it is the LORD’s Passover.

Within this sixth area there are at least four noteworthy items:

a. The animal’s flesh is to be consumed in its entirety; there are to be no leftovers

(they shall eat the flesh that same night…and you shall not leave any of it
over until morning). What leftovers there are must be burned to ash. There can
be no leftovers because the Israelites won’t be there to eat them!

b. It must only be roasted (roasted with fire…Do not eat any of it raw (underdone)
or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its
legs along with its entrails).

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In setting forth the necessity of roasting, the Lord contrasts alternative ways of
cooking (or not cooking) the animal to make his point clear. Since blood is never
to be consumed, the Lord stipulates that the lamb not be eaten raw (or possibly,
“half-cooked”). And since according to verse 12:46, not a bone of the animal may
be broken, it may also not be boiled; for boiling would have necessitated
dismembering the sacrifice. Instead, the animal is to be preserved whole.

In terms of significance, the wholeness of the animal, like the simultaneous

slaughtering, likely points to the community nature of the ritual—a whole animal
for a whole community.

It is to be consumed with specific side dishes: they shall eat it with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs. The significance of the first side dish is found in verse
39: They baked the dough which they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of
unleavened bread. For it had not become leavened, since they were driven
out of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any provisions for
themselves. So the unleavened bread is eaten to commemorate the haste with
which the sons of Israel would be forced to leave the land of Egypt.

The bitter herbs are used perhaps to remind the Israelites of their bitter servitude
under Egyptian rule. The same Hebrew root for bitter is found in verse 1:14:
They made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all
kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on
them.

c. Finally, it is to be eaten in a particular manner: (1) with your loins girded, (2)
your sandals on your feet, and (3) your staff in your hand; and (4) you shall
eat it in haste. All of these elements—shirt tucked into sash, sandaled feet, staff
in hand, and hasty consumption—point to an imminent and sudden journey,
which is precisely what the Exodus turned out to be. Future generations are to eat
it the same way.

So then, here in Exodus 12:3-11, the Lord gives command regarding the selection,
quality, protection, slaughter, use, and preparation and consumption of the Passover sacrifice.
And though some of the specific elements of symbolism have been obscured to us by the passage
of time, what is clear is that they all revolve around one thing—the lamb. A lamb is selected,
qualified, protected, sacrificed, used, prepared, and consumed.

But it is not simply that they all revolve around a lamb, but that they revolve around a
sacrificed lamb. The lamb is selected, qualified, and protected in order that it may be properly
sacrificed and used in the ritual to protect God’s people from the plague of death. And it is this
sacrificed lamb that is cooked and consumed by the members of the community.

Perhaps now you can see why it is crucial to understand the plague of death before we can
understand the rite of Passover. The sparing of God’s people is inextricably linked with the
blood of the lamb. Passover would not be “pass-over” without the slain lamb. For without the

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blood on the doorposts and lintels of Israel’s houses, Israel just as much as Egypt would be
exposed to the hideous work of the destroyer.

We looked earlier at verses 12-13; in this connection, let’s look at those verses again: For
I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in
the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute
judgments—I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you
live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy
you when I strike the land of Egypt.

When the Lord moves to strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt he will see
not the meat, not the unleavened bread, not the bitter herbs, not even the basin or the hyssop—he
will see the blood. And when he sees the blood he will pass over his people, and no plague
will befall them to destroy them when he strikes the land of Egypt. Without the blood of the
lamb Israel would not be spared.

That the Passover is centered in the sacrificed lamb is also clear from verses 21-22. Read
it with me: Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for
yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. You shall take a
bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood
that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the
door of his house until morning.”

This is an important example of the sacrificed lamb-centeredness of the Passover because

it represents Moses’ call to the elders to tell the people to perform the Passover. All of what had
been told to Moses and Aaron in 12:3-11 about the ordinance of Passover is reduced in verses
21-22 to selecting and sacrificing the Passover lamb so that its blood might be applied to Israel’s
entranceways.

And why? Because without the blood on the doorposts and lintels, Israel would not be
protected from the destroyer, Israel would not be passed over. Look at verse 23: For the LORD
will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on
the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to
come in to your houses to smite you.”

Now in case the sacrificed lamb-centeredness of the Passover is still unclear to you, try
to remember what future generations are to tell their children about the meaning of the Passover
rituals. Look with me again at verse 27a: You shall say, “It is a Passover sacrifice to the
LORD who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the
Egyptians, but spared our homes.”

Do you see it there?! “When your children want to know the meaning of the Passover
ordinance, tell them that it is a Passover sacrifice. And tell them that on seeing this sacrifice the
Lord passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when he smote the Egyptians, but
spared our homes.” So you see, the passing over of the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt,
the sparing of Israel’s homes is owing to the performance of a ritual sacrifice: the slaughter of the
Passover lamb.

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So then, what is the significance of the annual celebration of the Passover? To answer
this, let me again quote verse 27: It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD who passed over the
houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.
God saw the blood of the Passover lamb and he delivered us from judgment.

Now you may be wondering why Israel while in bondage would have to be spared from
judgment. After all, doesn’t verse 12 say that through the plague of death the Lord was executing
judgments against the gods of Egypt? The sons of Israel certainly weren’t liable to judgment…or
were they?

Well, according to Ezekiel 20, Israel was in reality committing acts of idolatry while in
captivity. They were going after Egypt’s gods right along with their Egyptian oppressors. So
Israel was liable to the same judgment that God visited upon Egypt that night. But because God
provided a way of escape through the blood of the Passover lamb, Israel was spared that
condemnation.

So then, this is what gets told and retold to generation after generation. Picture yourself
the head of a Jewish household:

“Kids, kids, come here. It’s the first month of the year and that means that soon
we’ll celebrate Passover.”
“What’s Passover?” says your youngest.
At this your oldest rolls his eyes and the second to last child says with audible
exasperation, “The Lord passed us over!”
“That’s right,” you say, “that’s right.”
Another chimes in, “Is that why we kill a special lamb and put its blood in our
doorway?”
“Exactly. We kill the Passover lamb and apply its blood to our doorposts and
our lintel—that’s the part that goes across—and we remember how the Lord saw the
blood of his special sacrifice and didn’t allow us to be harmed by the destroyer.”
The youngest says, “He saw the blood of the lamb and kept us safe.”
“That’s right,” you say again. “He saw the blood of the lamb and kept us safe.
The Lord is so faithful and loving and merciful!”

Now imagine being one of those children, hearing this every year, and seeing it depicted
just as often in the ritual of Passover. Do you think that seeing the images coupled with the
appropriate explanation would leave an impression on you? Would it be easy to forget that the
Lord saw the blood of the sacrificed lamb and so kept you from being judged along with the
world? I think not.

I think that it would be part of you. It would be part of your calendar, your months would
be numbered from it, and year after year after year you would see and hear of the Lord’s
deliverance from judgment. It would be woven into the fabric of your being. You would see the
Lord as the one who spares you from his judgment on the basis of a bloody sacrifice. If handled
properly, this holiday would not be reduced to a barbecue for the sake of a barbecue; it would be
a true celebration of a mighty act of God’s lovingkindness. As the psalmist says, “To him who

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smote the Egyptians in their firstborn, for his lovingkindness is everlasting” (Psalm 136:10). “He
saw the blood of the lamb and kept us safe.”

Is Jesus Easy to See?

Now with this truth deep in your consciousness, do you think that you would be prepared
for its fulfillment in Jesus Christ? Do you think that it would make your more or less receptive
to the Apostle Paul’s teaching that “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7)?
Do you think that when the fulfillment came and Christ was made a bloody sacrifice to appease
the wrath of God for us—do you think that you would see in his work a recapitulation of the
Passover? Would it be clear to you on the basis of your knowledge of Scripture that the Passover
lamb was a type of Christ who by his death propitiated his Father, so that we should not perish
with the world?

Let me help you answer these questions by asking you again to engage your imagination.

Picture yourself as one of those Jewish children we met earlier all grown up. You were
born in about 4 BC and it is say, 29 or 30 AD. You are a man in your early thirties; you are a
faithful Jew with a wife and six children. And you are about to celebrate the Passover again with
your family.

It is one of your favorite holidays—you have come to love the roasted lamb, unleavened
bread, and bitter herbs. More than that, you love the holiday because of what it means to you.
You love it because it reminds you of the Lord’s special mercy in Egypt so many years ago. It
reminds you of the formative event in your people’s history. It reminds you that the Lord saw the
blood of the lamb and kept you safe.

At the same time, there is something astir in Jerusalem. You have met a man named
Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, who has astonished you by his authoritative and unparalleled
teaching and by his ability to work miracles. You have seen him heal countless sick people—the
lame, the leprous, and the blind. In his presence you have shared five loaves of bread and two
fishes with 5,000 men. And you have heard that he had even raised the dead. Believing him to
be the promised Messiah, the final deliverer of the people of God, you laid your garment on the
street as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and with the crowds you shouted, “Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

As a result of the influence of Jesus, this Passover has become the most exciting event of
your life. You cannot remember when you had been more excited at this time of the year. And
as you reflect on its meaning, you find yourself hoping that perhaps this Jesus, like Moses, will
usher in a plague of death to destroy the Romans and inaugurate the kingdom of God—the Lord
through his servant Jesus destroying the Romans while Israel is kept safe.

And so you wait this year with baited breath, ready to make haste, with the loins of your
heart girded, the sandals of your expectations on, and your staff of hope in hand. Perhaps this
Jesus is the one who will finally deliver us.

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What happens next utterly astonishes you. After having enjoyed your Passover meal with
great expectations, you wake up one morning to find that Jesus has been condemned as a
blasphemer by the Jewish High Council.

Then through friends you learn that Jesus has been flogged by the Romans and that a
large crowd has gathered before Pilate to await Pilate’s sentence. You arrive late. Jesus stands
before you on the pavement; you barely recognize him. And just as you are about to feel pity for
him, anger, rage wells up in your heart. He is not the Messiah! He is a blasphemer! “Give me
Barabbas! Crucify him!” you think. And then, with the crowd, you cry out, “Crucify him!
Crucify him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate responds affirmatively—he will have Jesus
of Nazareth crucified. “Good,” you think. “Who needs him? What good is a bloody Messiah?
How can he save us when he can’t even save himself?”

Does this seem far fetched to you? It shouldn’t. It is what happened with the Jewish
multitudes and it is nearly what happened with Jesus’ own disciples. Though they did not shout
for his crucifixion, they abandoned him in his darkest hour and resigned themselves to the fact
that the one they thought was going to rescue them from Roman oppression was dead.

But then they met the Risen Christ. When they met him on the road to Emmaus Jesus
rebuked them for their lack of faith and “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He
explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). And Luke
24:44-45 says, “Now [Jesus] said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I
was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the
Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the
Scriptures.”

So then, here’s the difference. Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
Until that time the eyes of their hearts had not been opened to see Jesus in the Scriptures. They
knew the Scriptures, but a bald knowledge of the contents of the Bible did not suffice. You see,
the Lord has to do a work in your heart in order for you to see Jesus Christ as the central figure of
the Hebrew Bible.

Now if you have ever witnessed to a Jewish person you know this to be true. Take them
to something even more apparently obvious than the Passover. Take them to Isaiah 53 and read:

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our
iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we
are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him (Isaiah 53:5-6).

Do you think that seeing such an obvious reference to Christ they will immediately
repent? Do you think that the argument for Jesus as the center of the Bible is so compelling that
they will by the evidence alone concede that Jesus is the Christ?

Perhaps you are thinking that if they don’t they are refusing to see something that is as
plain as the nose on your face. Isaiah 53 is obviously talking about Jesus. Exodus 11:1-13:16 is

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obviously talking about Jesus. And I would concur: Jesus’ presence in texts like these is as plain
as the nose on your face.

But my dear brothers and sisters, the only thing that makes Isaiah 53 obvious, the only
thing that makes Jesus as the Passover lamb obvious, is that the Lord has made it obvious. Listen
carefully to what the Apostle Paul says: “But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over
their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Corinthians 3:15-
16).

God must say within our souls, “Let there be light!” For until he illumines our
understanding to the Christ-centeredness of Scripture, we will never see him there. We will
never believe in him there. We will never affirm with Paul that the sacred writings of the
Hebrew Bible are able to give one the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in
Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15).

We would more probably assert that the early Christians made up incidents in the life of
Christ to correspond to texts from the Hebrew Scriptures. Or perhaps we would take a more
sympathetic approach and agree that there are some striking parallels between the sacred books.
But we will never see with faith what is oftentimes obvious to the Christian reader until we
become a Christian reader ourselves.

Conclusion
Now then, in light of what we’ve seen in Exodus, I have two goals for this morning’s
message.

The first is now obvious: I want you to see Christ as the Passover lamb; I want you to see
the Passover lamb is a type of Christ. His blood has been applied to the doorposts and lintels of
our lives. And the Lord has seen that blood and will spare us from the wrath to come. Romans
5:9 says, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the
wrath of God through Him.”

But in saying this, I want you to see Jesus as so much more. For with all things Old
Testament, the fulfillment is qualitatively richer than the promise. Think of the Old Testament as
a picture of a city and Jesus Christ as the city. So even though you could point to a picture of a
specific city and say, “This is New York,” these words take on an entirely different meaning
when you are standing on 5th Avenue and pointing to your surroundings!

The same is true when I say that Christ is the Passover Lamb; for the difference between
Christ the Lamb and a lamb from your flock is vast. The Passover lamb of Exodus provides
temporal salvation from the death of firstborn sons—and that’s it. But the Passover Lamb called
Jesus provides eternal salvation from the furious, eternal wrath of God awaiting everyone in hell.
So the lamb of Exodus 12 should be glorious to us insofar as it points us inevitably and
obviously to Jesus Christ. We should see in Exodus 12 Christ our Passover. And we should be
full of gratitude.

Christ Our Passover © 2004 by R W Glenn

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But my second goal this morning has been this: to show you that the obviousness of the
first point is the result of the earth-shattering, veil-rending, light-giving work of the Holy Spirit.
Without it you would see none of Christ’s glory and beauty and majesty and infinite greatness in
the Hebrew Bible. In fact, without God’s activity upon your heart it would forever remain just
the Hebrew Bible, but in Christ it has become the Old Testament, the glorious Old Testament,
pointing us with energy toward the one about whom it had always anticipated.

Praise the Lord that he has opened the eyes of our hearts to see the truth and embrace the
reality of Paul’s declaration that “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed”! For Christ our
Passover has been sacrificed! Amen.

Christ Our Passover © 2004 by R W Glenn