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The descendants of Jacob (Israel) had been living in Egypt for 400 years, and
the time had come when God determined to bring them back to the land which He
had promised by covenant through their ancestral father Abraham
(Gen. 12:7).
The Egyptian Pharaoh had enslaved the Israelites, keeping them in bondage,
because he feared their numbers; thinking that perhaps one day in the event
of war they might join themselves to Egypt's enemies and depart from the land
(Exe. 1:10). But Israel lived daily with the hope that the God of their
fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would Himself deliver them from their
bondage and bring them back into the promised land they had left to come
down into Egypt because of a seven year famine (Gen. 45:6-11).
And the day finally came when God sent His deliverance through a man named
Moses. Born the son of Hebrew slaves but through divine providence raised in
the luxury of Egyptian royalty. When He fled Egypt for killing an Egyptian,
he lived for 40 years in the wilderness as a shepherd. So when God sent him
back to Egypt to deliver His people from the grips of Pharaoh, Moses was very
familiar with both the government of Egypt as well as the region in which he
would lead them for the next 40 years.
Because Pharaoh had hardened his heart to determine not to let God's people
go, over a period of approximately ten months God brought upon Egypt ten
plagues which not only inflicted the people and their land, but defied their
false gods as well. They worshiped the Nile which was turned to
blood and became foul. The frog was an object of worship as well as
the fertile soil; all three becoming a curse to the Egyptians
through the first three plagues (Exe. 7-8). The God of Israel was
God even in Egypt.
The tenth plague was not a plague per se, but the final stroke by
which the first born of all Egypt would die, not sparing even the first born
son of Pharaoh.
While Egypt suffered the loss of their first born, Israel would observe what
is called the first "Passover" (Exe. 11-12). According to their families
they were to take for themselves an unblemished lamb and slay it. This lamb
would be called the "Passover" lamb. They were to take the blood of this
lamb, which was caught in a basin, dip into it with a bunch of hyssop and
apply the blood to the lintel and two door posts of the outside entrance to
their homes.
"For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the
blood on the lintel and on the two door posts, the Lord will pass over the
door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to
smite you" (Exe. 12:22).
That first Passover, observed by the children of Israel the night before they
came triumphantly out from their bondage in Egypt, prefigured what God would
eventually accomplish for all mankind through the death of His own
"first born" Son, Jesus Christ. When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming
toward Him he exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world" (Jn. 1:29). For it is through Jesus Christ and His shed blood
on the cross that God delivers all who believe in Him from their own personal
bondage to sin and death (divine judgment). As the Apostle Paul wrote to the
Church at Corinth, "For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed"
(1 Cor. 5:7b).
The sacrificial Lamb, whose sprinkled blood protected
Israel, pointed to Him whose precious blood is the only safety of
God's people; the hyssop (as in the cleansing of the leper, and of
those polluted by death, and in Psalm li.7) was the symbol of
purification; and the unleavened bread that "of sincerity and
truth," in the removal of the "old leaven" which, as the symbol of
corruption, pointed to "the leaven of malice and wickedness." More
than that, the spiritual teaching extended even to details. The
lamb was to be "roast," neither eaten "raw," or rather not properly
cooked (as in the haste of leaving), nor yet "sodden with water"
--the latter because nothing of it was to pass into the water, nor
the water to mingle with it, the lamb and the lamb alone being the
food of the sacrificial company. For a similar reason it was to be
roasted and served up whole-- complete, without break or division,
not a bone of it being broken, just as not even a bone was broken of
Him who died for us on the cross. And the undividedness of the Lamb
pointed not only to the entire surrender of the Lord Jesus, but also
to our undivided union and communion in and with Him. So also none
of this lamb was to be kept for another meal, but that which had not
been used must be burnt. Lastly, those who gathered around this
meal were not only all Israelites, but must all profess their faith
in the coming deliverance; since they were to sit down to it with
loins girded, with shoes on their feet and a staff in their hand, as
it were, awaiting the signal of their redemption, and in readiness
for departing from Egypt (Alfred Edersheim, Old Testament Bible
History).
As the destroyer "passed over" every home of the Israelite on which he
saw the blood of the lamb, so God will "pass over," (not execute
judgment) the one who has put his faith in the Person and work of Jesus Christ
on the cross on his behalf. Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he
who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does
not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life"
(Jn. 5:24).
"The Lamb, Blood on the doorpost, Death of the First-Born, Deliverance out of
the Hostile Country, and the continuance of this Feast throughout Israel's
history, all seem to have been intended of God to be a grand Historical
Picture of Christ the Passover Lamb, and our Deliverance out of a Hostile
World by His Blood" (Henry H. Hally, Hally's Bible Hand
Book).
Jesus Christ died on the cross the very day Israel observed the Passover
Feast, which they had done every year since the deliverance of their
ancestors from their bondage in Egypt. But unlike every Passover prior, this
time God provided His own unblemished Lamb, and three days later
this "Lamb of God" rose bodily from the dead. Scripture
says, "He was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised
because of our justification" (Rom. 5:10). We who were once enemies of God because
of our transgressions and sins are now, through faith, reconciled to God
through the death of His Son. "For all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the
redemption which is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:23-24).
Have you put your faith in God's Passover Lamb that divine judgment
might "passover" you?
 Written by Gary Nystrom
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