Daily devotion – The Passover!
The Passover service is significant in the Old Testament and it was the Last Supper that Jesus celebrated with His disciples the night of His betrayal. Next Wednesday evening, the 26th March, here at Calvary Chapel Secret Harbour, Yaniv Wainshtain from Israel, will be take us through the Passover or Seder service, explaining the all the elements and their meaning.
We encourage you to join us for this unique one off event that will give you a tremendous insight into the Passover and assist us in our heading toward Easter.
The first Passover is recorded in Exodus 12 in Israel’s history. Here God laid out the pattern for redemption which He followed in future dealings with His people.
The Passover teaches the basis of God’s redemption and looks ahead to Christ’s redemptive work on the Cross of Calvary. The Passover must be understood in the context of a death sentence that fell upon Egypt because of Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to let the Israelites depart – Exodus 11: 4-8. God announced that all the firstborn in the land of Egypt would die. That included Egyptians, slaves and Israelites. But the God of judgment is also the God of salvation, and He provided a way for the Israelite firstborn children to be delivered from the sentence of death.
Each family. God said, was to prepare a small animal from the herd for sacrifice. In celebrating the Passover each year since then, the Jews have usually sacrificed a lamb, but a goat could also be used on that first Passover. After being killed , the blood of the animal was to be applied to the doorposts and lintels of the Israelite homes – Exodus 12:7.
The blood served as a symbol of the death of the substitute. Then God announced, Exo 12:13 ‘Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”
This makes a profound theological statement about redemption. God said the blood of the animal would be accepted in the place of the blood of the firstborn. This act of substitution anticipated the work of Christ, who died in the place of all of us who are under the sentence of eternal death!
The Passover sacrifice should not be interpreted as a work by which the Israelites earned their deliverance. God’s salvation is always a gift of His grace and is never the result of human effort or works of merit.
So the sacrifice was not a work, but a demonstration of the faith response by those who heard God’s plan for deliverance and believed it!
The Israelites were saved by faith, not by their own works.
Yahweh’s salvation came to its culmination in redemptive history when Jesus, the Lamb of God, shed His blood for a world of lost and dying sinners. All the previous pointed to this singular event.
1Co 5:7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.
This is the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!