The Gospel of Jesus Christ (6) Passover Lamb

​“Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch - as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” (1Co 5:7)
 
Review
We’ve been talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When introducing the gospel, the apostle Paul said, "He promised the gospel beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son” (Rm 1:2)
 
This verse shows that the gospel of Jesus Christ was planned long before He actually came to the world. In fact, we see a lot of prophecies, symbols, and indications that point to Jesus and His ministry in the Old Testament.
 
We’ve specifically been focusing on how God revealed His plan of salvation through His Son in the Old Testament. Last Sunday, we talked about animal sacrifice.
 
Before Jesus came to the world to solve the problem of sin, God had given His people the way through which their sins could be forgiven through animal sacrifice.
 
Leviticus chapter 1 describes the six steps of animal sacrifice. First, the person who wanted to be forgiven had to bring an animal without defect to the entrance of the tent of meeting.
 
Second, the person would lay a hand on the head of the animal. This was a very important step because laying a hand meant exchange. By laying their hand on the animal, a person’s sins were exchanged for the blamelessness of the animal. That’s why the animals used as sacrifices had to be pure and without defect.
 
Third, the animal had to be killed and shed its blood because it bore the person’s sin, and the wage of sin is death. What’s important here is that priests didn’t kill the animal. The person who brought the animal and ascribed his or her sin to the animal by laying their hand on it had to kill it.
 
The fourth step was to skin the animal, and the fifth step was to cut it into pieces. These steps describe the nature of sin, especially how hard it is to get rid of it. The last step was to burn all the pieces of the animal.
 
What’s important is that animal sacrifice served as a shadow of Jesus’ sacrifice for the sin of the world. The apostle Paul called Him “a sacrifice of atonement” (Rm 3:25).
 
Just as the animal used for sacrifice was without defect, Jesus Christ came to the world as “a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Pt 1:19). Jesus was just like us in every way “yet he did not sin” (Heb 4:15).
 
Because there’s no one in the world who’s without sin, the Son of God, whose nature is God, chose to come down from heaven in human form so that He could bear our sins in His body and so that He could give His righteousness to those who believe in Him. That’s one of the important purposes of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
 
Hebrews 2:17 says, “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that… he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” (Heb 2:17)
 
That’s the Jesus we believe in. This is the essence of the gospel. This is the central belief of Christianity. We may believe a lot of things, but without the faith that Jesus died in our place as a sacrifice of atonement for our sins, it means nothing, because that was the very purpose of Jesus coming into the world—to save us from our sins.
 
2. Passover Lamb
Now, let’s move on to the next indication of Jesus written in the Old Testament, which is the Passover lamb. As you may know, Passover is the greatest holiday in Judaism. The reason Passover has such an important meaning to the Jews is because it commemorates the Hebrew’s liberation from slavery in Egypt.
 
In order to understand why it is so important for the Jews to celebrate Passover, we need to know the history of Israel. Let’s begin with Abraham, who is known as the father of the people of Israel.
 
God appeared to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia and made a covenant with him. God told him to leave his country and his people and go to the land God would show him.
 
God said that He would bless him, give him the land, and make his descendants numerous like stars in the sky. Abraham had a son named Isaac and Isaac had a son named Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel. Israel had 12 sons, who became the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel.
 
Out of his twelve sons, Jacob loved his son Joseph the most. Because Jacob’s other sons were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was always with him, and he ended up becoming the second-in-command in Egypt. Then a famine struck the whole land of Egypt and Canaan. So Jacob sent his sons to buy food in Egypt, where they met Joseph again. That was how Israel went down to Egypt along with all his family.
 
At that time, around 70 people went to Egypt and settled in the region of Goshen. While Joseph was alive, the Egyptians were kind to the Israelites, but they began to have problems after Joseph died.
 
Over the course of 400 years, the small family of Israel that consisted of only 70 people became so numerous that they filled the land of Egypt. So, when a new Pharaoh who didn’t know about Joseph saw how numerous the Israelites had become, he and the rest of Egypt became afraid of them. So they enslaved them and began to oppress them.
 
The hardship of the Israelites was extreme, so they cried out to the Lord, and God heard their cry. God chose one person in order to deliver all the Israelites from Egypt. That person was Moses, who is considered the greatest leader of Israel.
 
When Moses first stood before Pharaoh and delivered God’s message to him, the Pharaoh just ignored it. He said to Moses, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.” (Ex 5:2)
 
Pharaoh would not send the Israelites until he realized that the God of Israel was the only true God. So, in order to make him see the truth, God sent 10 plagues on Egypt through Moses. Each plague was related to a different Egyptian god. By sending the 10 plagues, God showed Pharaoh and everyone else in the land that He is the only true God in the universe.
 
The Last Plague: Death of the Firstborn Son
The last plague out of the ten was the death of the firstborn son. God said,
 
“I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will drive you out completely… About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt - worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.” (Ex 11:1, 4-6)
 
The last disaster was the death of every firstborn son in Egypt, whether human or animal. But God gave the Israelites a way to avoid this.
 
Now, let’s read some verses from Exodus chapter 12 together.
 
“…Each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats… all the members 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… 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” (Ex 12:3, 5-7, 13)
 
That was the only way for the Israelites to avoid the plague of the death of their firstborn. They were to take a lamb without defect, kill it, and put the blood of the lamb on the sides and tops of their doorframes.
 
The blood served as a sign that they were God’s people. God said that when He saw the sign, He would pass over that house. That’s the meaning of Passover. It means that death passed over.
 
At midnight on the night of the plague, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the prisoner along with the firstborn of all the livestock. After that, Pharaoh finally gave up the Israelites and let them go. This is the story of how God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
 
And that’s why Passover is considered the greatest festival to the Jews. After teaching the elders of Israel how they could avoid the last plague, Moses told them,
 
“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.” (Ex 12:25-27)
 
From that time on, the people of Israel have kept Passover in remembrance of how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
 
From this story, we see that the salvation of the Israelites started with the death of a lamb. This has significant meanings in our salvation as well because what God shows through this story is how He saves not only the Israelites but also all people on earth.
 
Jesus, the Lamb of God
In other words, the story of Passover illustrates how God delivers us from our slavery to sin and Satan and death through the death of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
 
Let’s read today’s verse together again.
“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” (1Co 5:7)
 
Here, Paul calls Jesus ‘our Passover lamb,’ which means that the lambs who were killed and whose blood was applied to the doorframes of the Israelites’ houses point to Christ.
 
In Exodus, the blood of a lamb was the sign of the Israelites being God’s people. Death passed over the houses whose doors were covered with blood.
 
Likewise, Jesus came to the world as the Lamb of God to save us from our death because of our sins. We were slaves to sin, but the precious blood of Jesus set us free from sin and made us children of God.
 
If our hearts are covered with the blood of Jesus, in other words, if we believe in Jesus Christ and accept everything He did on the cross as truth, our sins are forgiven and death no longer has an effect on our lives. That’s what the author of Hebrews says is the purpose of Jesus coming into the world in human form and tasting death for us.
 
Hebrews 2:14-15 says,
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Heb 2:14-15)
 
We talked about three consequences of sin before. Because the essence of sin is rebellion against God, it severs our relationship with Him, which results in eternal death. What’s more, we make ourselves enslaved by Satan without even realizing.
 
That’s the spiritual condition that the Bible reveals all people are in. But the good news, the gospel, is that Jesus Christ came to the world to set us free from sin, death, and Satan’s authority over us. That’s why only Jesus Christ is the good news to us.
 
The relation between the Passover lamb and Jesus is also depicted by His crucifixion. The day Jesus was crucified was the day the Passover lambs were killed. John 19:14-16 says,
 
“It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.” (Jn 19:14-16)
 
John reveals that it was on the day of preparation of the Passover that Jesus Christ was handed over to be crucified. On that day, Passover lambs were killed. Likewise, Jesus Christ laid down His life and tasted death on the cross to allow us to overcome death and have eternal life in Him.
 
That’s when our salvation truly began. In the exodus story, the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt began with the death of a lamb without defect. The only way for the Israelites to be saved from death was to kill a lamb and put its blood on every side of the doorframe.
 
Likewise, our Lord Jesus Christ came to earth as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”(Jn 1:29). He bore all our sins along with their consequences and died on the cross, shedding His precious blood.
 
His blood is the only way we can be saved. Just as the Israelites could only be saved from death by putting the blood of a lamb on a doorframe, the only way for us to be saved from our sins, death, and slavery to Satan is to accept Jesus Christ, believe in Him, and put His precious blood on every side of the doorframe of our hearts.
 
That’s the only way for us to overcome our sinful nature and death. That’s the meaning of Passover, the second indication of Jesus Christ. 
 
So, I want us to remember who Jesus Christ is and what He did to set us free from death and slavery. The only reason we can stand here and call God ‘our heavenly Father’ is because Jesus saved us from our slavery to sin.
 
As Paul said,
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now you are known by God” (Gl 4:8-9)
 
He also said, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air… we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.” (Eph 2:1-5)
 
The biggest change we experience in Jesus Christ is that the Lord of our lives changes. Before believing in Him, we used to live in darkness as children of the devil who were enslaved to him. But now, we’re known by God and have become children of God by His grace. In order to give us this blessing, Jesus Christ died on the cross as our Passover Lamb.
 
Before believing in Jesus, all of us were heading to eternal death in our separation from God. But Jesus Christ shed His precious blood to forgive all our sins and thus made a bridge through which we can go to the Father, be reconciled to Him, and find eternal life in Him again. In order to give us this great blessing, Jesus laid down His life on the cross.
 
We’re to remember that our salvation didn’t begin when we chose to believe in Him. It was achieved long before we came to exist in the world by the death of Jesus Christ.
 
And the power of the blood of Jesus Christ can still take effect in our lives. It has the power to set us free from slavery to sin, including all kinds of addictions, and enables us to overcome death.
 
 So, if you are facing difficulties because of your sin or bad habits, I want you to look to Jesus in whom we find true freedom from all kinds of sins. If you have worries, I want to strongly encourage you to fix your eyes on Jesus in whom we find true hope in both this world and the world to come.
 
I really hope and pray that all of us here today may know who Jesus Christ is and have stronger faith in Him so that we can experience the power of His blood which changes everything and enables us to overcome all situations.
 
Let’s pray.
 
[Closing Prayer]
“It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life… but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1Pt 1:18-19)
 
Heavenly Father, thank You for allowing us to hear Your word and better understand who Jesus is. We thank You for sending Jesus Christ as our Passover Lamb to save us from our slavery to sin and death. We believe and profess that we’re saved only through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
 
Now Lord, we want to welcome Your Son into our hearts. We want our hearts to be completely covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. We give our lives to You.
 
Please continue to work in us so that we can fix our eyes on Your Son and be victorious in all circumstances with the power of His blood that sets us free from everything that hinders us from reaching You.
 
Again, we thank You for all the things You’ve planned and achieved through Your Son. We love You, Lord.
 
We pray in your precious name. Amen.
 
[Reflection Questions]
1. What worries you most nowadays? Where do you think those worries come from? How do you think you can overcome those worries through Your faith in Jesus?
 
2. Jesus once said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn 8:32) Have you experienced the power of the blood of Jesus Christ setting you free from anything?