Christian Passover
Luke 2:8, Exo 12:1-27, Rom 3:23, Rom 6:23, Isa 53:1-6, Eph 2:8-9, Heb 11:6, John 3:16 - 18
Rom 5:6-7, John 1:29, 1 Cor 5:7, John 19:32 - 36, Gal 4:4-5, 1 Pet 1:18-20
December 19, 2002
I. I don’t like to start a sermon with something that is my opinion, but the fact that I said that is a sure sign I’m about to.
A. I have given you other people’s opinion of when Jesus was born, and now I want to give you my opinion.
B. As I said couple of weeks ago, one thing is pretty sure Jesus was not born in December, the bible says that the shepherds that came to Jesus’ birth were in the fields with their sheep. (Luke 2:8 NIV) And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. Shepherds in Jerusalem didn’t live out in the fields at night in the Winter time.
C. It was too cold and they usually brought their flocks into some kind of a stable at night. So Jesus was not born in the winter.
D. Like I said this is my opinion, but there is some evidence that it is true. The fact that the Shepherds were in the fields with their sheep at night indicates that it was warmer weather.
E. I think that Jesus was born in the Spring near the time of the Passover, because there are so many connections between Jesus and the Passover, and it would be just like God to do something that way.
II. The Passover was about deliverance. God’s people were enslaved in Egypt, and God was going to deliver them, but their deliverance required something from them. It meant that they had to trust God, and follow his instructions.
A. On the 10th of the month each family was to choose a lamb to be slaughtered at twilight on the 14th. The blood was to be smeared on the doorposts and lintel of the house, which God would see and thus spare the people in that house from the destruction that would come on firstborn of the Egyptians.
B. God was going to spare the Israelites the death that would come to the Egyptians and through this he was going to deliver his people from bondage.
C. The word Passover, is the Hebrew word ( pesa) which comes from a verb meaning to pass over, in the sense of to spare.
D. Jeremiah Unterman says it this way, The ultimate significance of the Passover, though, is not in its sociology or history, but in its unique role in the life of the Jewish people. It was and is the festival of freedom and redemption par excellence. Representative of Gods love and saving acts, it always gave the people hope in the face of physical and spiritual oppression.
E. The Passover was about deliverance and redemption. It was the way that God delivered his people from bondage, but it was also something that they had to participate in to the extent that they had to follow God’s instructions and trust that what he told them was true.
F. If you are a parent you can understand how much faith it took to sit still if you were told that the angel of death was coming to the place where you were, and that the first born child of every family was going to be killed. But, if you smeared the blood of a lamb on the door post and door header of your house and followed specific instructions, including keeping your whole family inside the house where that blood was, your child would be spared.
G. Those people had to have faith in God. They had to trust God, and take him at his word to believe that if they trusted his instructions that their family would be spared.
(Exo 12:1 - 27 NIV) The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 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. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire--head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn--both men 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. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat--that is all you may do. "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. "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.’" Then the people bowed down and worshiped.
H. This ceremony was about deliverance, but it was also about remembrance it says "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. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, "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.’"
I. This Ceremony or ordinance was to be a reminder to the people of Israel that God had delivered them from slavery, and freed them from bondage.
J. The book of Numbers tells us something else about the lamb that was to be slaughtered so that the people in the house might live. (Num 9:12 NIV) They must not leave any of it till morning or break any of its bones. When they celebrate the Passover, they must follow all the regulations.
K. None of its bones were to be broken it was to be perfect in every way.
L. To the Israelite people the Passover meant deliverance, and peace, and freedom, and it was a reminder of the place that God was to have in their lives and reminder of all that God had done for them and that their trust had to be in him.
III. The night before Jesus was taken away by the soldiers and later crucified he was celebrating the Passover with his disciples, but he changed it. What had been a symbol of freedom for the Israelite people would now be a symbol of freedom for all people.’
A. What had been a reminder of the deliverance of God for the Israelite people would now be a reminder of the deliverance of God of all people who would trust him and follow the instructions that he gave for them to be saved from death.
B. But their salvation would be even greater than what the Israelites got in Egypt.
C. In Egypt God delivered the people from the bondage and slavery of the Egyptians, but after Jesus’ death on the Cross God would deliver all people from the bondage and slavery of sin.
D. In Egypt God would save the first born of all those who were covered by the blood of a lamb from physical death, but after Jesus’ death God would save everyone who would trust him, and believe from eternal death or hell.
E. When God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden there was no such thing as sin, but they didn’t trust God when he told them not to eat the fruit on a certain tree. It had nothing to do with the fruit or what kind it was. It was about them trusting God, and they chose not to trust God. After that everybody was born with the ability to sin, and everybody does sin. (Rom 3:23 NIV) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,.
F. Everybody sins, and that causes problems between us and God. People who have sin in their life can’t be where God is, and Hell is the only place where God isn’t. But, God did something to fix that. He came to earth as a man, and died for our sin on the Cross so we don’t have to. (Rom 6:23 NIV) For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
G. Wages are what we get for something that we have done. If we get what we deserve we would go to hell, because we have sinned and it separates us from God, but God payed for our sin and offers us a gift of being able to be with him. He took away our sin.
(Isa 53:1 - 6 NIV) Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
H. Those verses are talking about Jesus, who was God in the form of a man. All the things that we did wrong were laid on him and he suffered in our place, and God offers us forgiveness as a gift.
I. Its free. (Eph 2:8-9 NIV) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--(Eph 2:9 NIV) not by works, so that no one can boast.
J. Salvation is a gift from God that is free. It is only by grace. Grace means that God loves us and wants to give us something that we don’t deserve as a gift, because he wants us to be with him.
K. But there is something that we have to do, and it is basically the same thing that the Israelites had to do and that is have faith, or believe that what Jesus did on the cross is enough to make things right between us and God. (Heb 11:6 NIV) And without faith it is impossible to please God,.
L. When God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit they didn’t trust him, and it messed up the relationship between them and God. When Jesus died on the cross he paid for all our sin, but for it to do us any good we have to believe or trust that is enough, and all it takes to make us right with God just like the Israelites had to trust in the blood that was on the door posts.
M. God wanted Adam and Eve to trust him and they didn’t so through Jesus God is giving us a chance to give him back our trust, the very thing that Adam and Eve took from him that messed up the relationship, and if we will trust and by faith accept the gift of forgiveness that God wants us to have then we are seen by God as forgiven, and we can be where he is.
N. But there has to be a time that we actually say, God I believe that what Jesus did on the Cross is enough to make things between us right again, and I put my trust, I believe that what Jesus did is all that can make me right with you, and God forgives us. And, the things that separate us from him, our sin, are taken away and we can be where God is in heaven when we die and he can be a part of our lives now. (John 3:16 - 18 NIV) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
O. Our trusting what Jesus did on the Cross makes all the difference. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you have done God loves you so much that he would die for you. God knows that you have done things wrong, but he loves you anyway.
(Rom 5:6-7 NIV) You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
P. You see Jesus is our Passover Lamb.
(John 1:29 NIV) The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
(1 Cor 5:7 NIV) Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast--as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
Q. Just like the Passover Lamb none of Jesus’ bones were broken when he was sacrificed
(John 19:32 - 36 NIV) The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken,"
R. He came so that we could be redeemed or brought out of the slavery and bondage to sin.
(Gal 4:4-5 NIV) But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.
S. He is our perfect lamb, and died in our place, and we have to have the faith in his blood to trust what he did enough stake our life for eternity on Him.
(1 Pet 1:18-20 NIV) For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
T. But when we will put our trust in Him and only him, not in how good we are, not in whether we go to church or not, not in how well we treat others, but in the blood that Jesus shed for us, then we can be forgiven and made right with God.
U. And I hope that if you have never done that you will do it today. We are also to publically profess that we have done it, so if you have never done that I hope that when we sing in a minute that you will come down here and do that.
V. Or if you have done that and you have never come in front of a church to publically say that you have, and follow it up with baptism I hope that you will do that when we sing.
