[AI translation] In the story of the Exodus, the story of the exodus of the Lord's people from Egypt, we have come to the most significant event of all: the mystery of the Passover. So great is the significance of this event in the life of the Old Testament people that from now on a new era begins. "And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, "This month shall be to you the first of the months of the year; it shall be the first of the months of the year to you." (Exodus 12:1-2) So from now on, the whole calendar changes. God reaches into the familiar flow of the civil year and tells His people that from now on He will start a new calendar for them, as a sign that real life begins now: from the moment of deliverance, the people of the Lord are truly alive!And so it is in the lives of all people who already know from their own experience what it means to be in exodus, to be freed by Christ from the bondage of sin, death and Satan. Every believer can testify that his life was truly meaningless until he became aware of his salvation, until he was reconciled to God through the power of the blood of Christ. His life before his regeneration and conversion was not life, but death. All that he did then was empty and vain, even if it was an unbroken chain of great deeds by human standards. And it was only when Christ shone forth before him that he stepped into the path of true life. It is then that he begins to live truly, that his life becomes truly life, when he comes to know by faith, by the grace of God, the One who said of Himself, "I am... the Life" (John 14:6). Has this new era already begun in your life? Has that life begun when you begin to live in Christ, of Christ, with Christ and for Christ? If someone were to say that they do not remember when this new dispensation began in their life: that is always suspect! I am afraid it has not even begun! Major events in our lives are not easily forgotten. If a person does not remember the greatest event of his life, when he passed from death to life, when he came out of Egypt, where he was born, when he was delivered from Satan and death: nothing happened to that soul! He who has married at all can tell the time of his marriage. Could it be conceivable that one could have made a covenant with the Lord Jesus and not know when? If you don't know when the new dispensation began in your life, it means that the new life, the eternal life, has not begun!
God considers this deliverance so important and so significant that He specifically calls it to the attention of Moses and Aaron, saying, "This month shall be to you the first of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year to you." (Exodus 12:2) The time spent in Egyptian captivity was of no significance, but only served to keep alive and deepen gratitude for the saving grace God had bestowed on His own by remembering it!
What, then, is the great event that turns everything around so dramatically that from that moment on life is life? Something quite extraordinary: namely, deliverance from God's punitive judgment through the blood of the Passover lamb! For on the evening of the last day before the Exodus from Egypt, the whole congregation of the Lord's people were to slaughter a lamb, each family, a male lamb of a year old, intact, and sprinkle its blood on the two doorposts and the eyebrow tree, and eat its flesh that night, fully prepared for the Exodus that began in the morning. God had told them beforehand that He was preparing a final plague on the Egyptians that would far surpass all the nine plagues that had gone before, and would force the Egyptians to release the Lord's people at last. For on that night all the firstborn in Egypt were to die. The Lord's people, living in Egypt, would also fall victim to this punishment, so the blood of the slain lamb had to be used to mark the doors within which the Lord's chosen live, so that when the punishing angel passes through Egypt and sees the blood, he will pass by them and spare them. "And the blood shall be a sign unto you upon the houses wherein ye shall be; and I will see the blood, and will pass by you, and the plague shall not be upon you for your destruction, when I smite the land of Egypt." (verse 13)
Brothers and sisters, as a historical fact: it majestically reveals God's saving grace to us, but even more important is the majestic truth that this historical event symbolizes! The whole story, with all its details, points forward to the Lord Jesus, His death on Calvary, and the majestic miracle of redemption through His holy blood. And here the mysteries of the Holy of Holies are revealed which can almost only be told and listened to on almost spiritual knees. The Passover lamb that had to be slain here in Egypt: a poignantly accurate foreshadowing of the Jesus of Nazareth whom John the Baptist, on beholding, cried out with exultation, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! (Jn 1,29) From that time on, the New Testament calls our Saviour the Lamb, whose blood is shed for many for the remission of sins, more than 25 times! It was the blood of the Lamb that saved the Lord's people in Egypt from judgment. While elsewhere there was destruction, perdition and mourning, under the protection of the blood of the Lamb there was complete peace and safety. While death was raging elsewhere, it went on by the doors marked with blood, for there death had already raged: not, it is true, on the firstborn, as in the other houses, but on a lamb. But it was grace that the Lord accepted this substitutionary sacrifice of the lamb, this slaying! "When the Lord shall go by to smite the Egyptians, and shall see the blood on the brow-tree and on the two doors, the Lord shall pass by the door, and shall not suffer the destroyer to enter in to slay in your houses." (verse 23) From this description we can form our own idea of the significance and power of the blood of Christ. The blood is a staggeringly holy thing in God's sight! Behold, He declares of it, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to be a propitiation for your life, for the blood makes atonement for the life that is in it." (Leviticus 17:11)
And let us not think that this is just outdated Old Testament thinking, because in the New Testament the Lord explicitly states that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins!" (Heb 9:22) That is why the New Testament speaks incessantly of the blood of Christ. "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness for the remission of sins," (Rom 3:24-25); "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwell in you. But he that hath not the Spirit of Christ is not his." (Rom 8:9); "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." (Eph 1,7); "For it hath pleased the Father that in Him all fullness should dwell; And that through Him all things should be reconciled to Himself, being reconciled through the blood of His cross; Through Him all things that are, whether on earth or in heaven." (Col 1:19-20); "For if the blood of the goats and of the bulls, and the ashes of the cow, sprinkled on the unclean, sanctify the uncleanness of the flesh: how much more the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God: it purifies your conscience from dead works, that ye may serve the living God." (Heb 9:13-14); "...(Heb 10,19); "Knowing that you have not been redeemed with perishable things, silver or gold, from the vain life which you have inherited from your fathers; But with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and spotless, even Christ" (1 Peter 1:18-19); "And of Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. To him who loved us and washed us from our sins by his blood" (Rev 1:5); "But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." (1 John 1:7)
These words mean that in God's sight the blood of Christ is of such great value that, in view of it, He can forgive all sin and receive a sinner as fully cleansed and justified by Christ. Spurgeon once spoke of an old man who, at the end of his life, lying in his sickbed, became exceedingly anxious at the approach of death. Somehow the old man felt that if he was to die now, he was not right with the Lord God. He asked his little grandson to sit by his bedside and read him something from the Scriptures. The little girl was happy to do as the old man asked, but the longer she read, the more anxious the patient became. She felt more and more miserable. Her guilt grew more and more terrible and everything became darker and darker. One day she came to this passage in the Bible. (1 John 1:7) Is that what it says in the Bible?" asked the old man. "Yes, grandfather, it is," replied the little girl. "Then read it again," the old man beckoned. "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." Now come here, my little girl, take my finger and put it in the place where you have just read... Is my finger in the exact same place? Now, good. And tell the rest of the family that I died believing the Word. With that, his eyes closed and the old man, free of all doubt, went into eternal rest.
Put your finger on God's promise, which he has written, that the holy blood of Christ will cleanse you from all sin! Believe that under the protection of that holy blood there is full security: the security of forgiveness of sins and eternal life! If the blood of that Passover lamb kept away the slaying angel, how much more does the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the God of the Trinity, protect and cover the one for whom he fell on the cross! He that hath this holy blood, he that is under the blood, shall be passed by in the last judgment by the judgment of God, as the angel of Egypt before the house of the elect; he that hath this holy blood, he that is under the blood, shall be shunned by Satan, and shall not be hurt, because he cannot pass through him. Practically speaking, this means that if you feel that the Tempter has got close to you: flee under the holy blood, there he can do you no more harm. The command conveyed by Moses was: "And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning." (Exodus 12:22) Only there, behind the blood-sprinkled door, was there safety for the Lord's chosen ones. Only those who remained under the blood were safe! Put your thoughts, your desires, your body, your heart, your family life, your vocation, your financial situation, your rest, your work: everything that is yours, everything that is you, under the blood, and there you will experience the power of this precious blood! Then you will know what it means in practice that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin!
Finally, just to say that, according to the divine decree, behind the blood-sprinkled doors, the people stood fully ready for the journey, as if in a state of waiting. Thus the command was, "And thus shall ye eat it: girding up your loins, with your shawls on your feet, and your staffs in your hands, and eat it with great haste; for it is the Passover of the Lord." (Exodus 12:11) Does not this mean that we must be known by our appearance, that we are a redeemed, separated, waiting people? A people whose present conduct is in keeping with its future destiny?! A people who are striving with all their might to achieve what Christ has caught them for.
Would that this world could know from our lives that we are a people redeemed from all that others live and die for. We are a people who have made ourselves available to God, who have taken our pilgrimage to a better homeland, who look forward to the glorious appearing of Christ. Nothing will convince the world of the reality of our Christianity more than such a life!
Amen
Date: 16 October 1949.
Lesson
2Móz 12