Don't Just Pass Over the Passover
Why the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread are good reminders of the common spiritual heritage Christian believers share with the Jewish nation from which our faith, and the world's Savior, come.
“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... 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 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... it is the Lord’s Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people 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.’”—Exodus 12:1-3, 5-7, 12-13
It’s at precisely this time we find ourselves on Passover Eve (Pesach)—the 14th day of the month of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar—that marks the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Matzot in Hebrew; during which faithful and observant Jews mark the night when God passed over and spared Israel’s first-born from the death he sent on all the fist-born of Egypt somewhere around 3500 years ago, as a judgment of Egypt’s proud defiance of God’s sovereignty and its enslavement of Israel, that by that time had grown excessively cruel and unjust for God to tolerate anymore...
And then follow that up with seven days of Unleavened Bread, to mark the Exodus, during which the Jewish nation was forced to take their unleavened dough with them as is after hurriedly packing themselves up and making good their escape the day after Egypt’s first-born were taken from it. (Exodus 12:34)
The feast is a bittersweet, bad news/good news kind of thing: in which the bitterness of 400 years of enslavement culminating in one night of retributive death, is remembered with the joy of the resulting emancipation of an entire nation.
It’s a bittersweet, bad news/good news kind of thing for Christian believers—both Gentile and Jewish—also: the Passover feast marks the night during which the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, was arrested by the Jewish authorities, handed over to the Romans, and the Lamb of God was sacrificed on the altar of the world to propitiate the holy and righteous God of All Creation for the sins of all mankind, to obtain the forgiveness that makes the free gift of everlasting life his sacrifice purchased, available for all who believe. (Isaiah 53:1-12; John 3:16-17; 1 John 2:2; Hebrews 9:12)
So at this time, when the faithful and observant of Israel are marking all of that during the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread this next week, it’s a good opportunity for faithful and obedient Christian believers to take a moment to reflect on some of the significance of this celebration for ourselves and the faith with which the Lord has blessed us.
The faith that doesn’t differentiate, distinguish or separate the Christian believer from the Jewish nation as a whole as God’s elect (except in our faith in the Messiah who has already come, testified of the Gospel and finished the first part of his work to the satisfaction and pleasure of the holy and righteous God the Father); but unites us together with it in the spirit in and by which that work the Lord Yeshua completed on the shameful Roman execution stake, is going to be completed in the world.
The faith that makes the context in and through which it developed until it was finally manifested with the coming of the Messiah Yeshua, now a common heritage of both the Jewish nation in which it was nurtured and revealed, and the rest of the believing world.
So that the foundation upon which that faith is built—everything we have from Genesis 1:1 to Malachi 4:6 (according to the order of the Bible) or 2 Chronicles 36:23 (according to the order of Hebrew scripture)—provides both Jew and Gentile with all the knowledge, understanding, insight, wisdom, guidance and command, we both need for a correct and complete understanding of that faith, and of the Lord our God, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, who gives it to us.
Our histories as people (Jews and Gentiles) may be separate, but that all ended with the Lord Jesus; who, by his sacrifice, created the common denominator—the faith in the universal salvation from the wages of sin which is death (Romans 6:23) and from the wrathful, destructive judgment on the world and humanity that sinfulness is soon going to necessitate—by which we’re all united in one spiritual assembly with the seal placed in our hearts and minds containing the presence and power of God through the person of the Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians 2:11-22:
“Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (which is done in the body by human hands)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
That common bond now in the process of forging a unified Body of Christ, comprising both Jewish and Gentile believers, is held together in one sense through the foundation of the faith built by the Lord in the nation of Israel, by and throughout the course of its history.
That course—for both God’s chosen nation as well as for his chosen faithful from the rest of humanity—was set by God from the very beginning, when right after Adam and Eve committed the disobedience that got the whole earthly ball rolling, God tells the two of them (and the rest of us), the world’s story was going to be one of a struggle between the leader of the rebelling, fallen angels cast out of heaven (who’s trying to drag all the rest of humanity down into eternal judgment with him), and the redeemer of humanity God will send into the world to save it from itself.
In Genesis 3:14-15, we learn:
“So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’”
And the rest of both the ante- and post-deluvian history of the world, is the course of human development leading up to the creation of the conditions by which the culmination of that plan is now within historical sight of coming.
From Abraham leaving Ur on God’s command in Genesis 12:1 to become the father of both Israel and many nations (Avraham Avinu), to the triumphant return of the Messiah Yeshua spelled out in minute if excruciatingly cryptic detail throughout Old Testament prophesy, New Testament pronouncements made by the Lord Jesus during his first time on earth, and in the Book of Revelation, we have in Holy Scripture a historical record and prophetic guidebook for the unfolding of that story according to the plan and will of the God who is the author of it.
And a diligent and faithful study of the word of God contained in that Holy Scripture, discloses to us—both Jewish and non-Jewish faithful—that our ultimate earthly and spiritually eternal fates are inextricably intertwined: from the past, to the present, and into the future as well. The ultimate redemption and restoration of fallen humanity as a whole is tied to the ultimate redemption and restoration of fallen Israel.
Because that happy ending is common to both faithful Jews and Gentiles, the entire process by which we’ve been led towards that end by God’s will in the execution of his plan, is also common to both of us.
Just like the unhappy ending for the unbelieving world (comprising both unbelieving Jews and Gentiles), and the process by which it’s concurrently unfolding, applies commonly to both of them, too. (Romans 1:18-32)
And so everything that’s applied to the nation of Israel as God’s chosen nation in the past (historically and spiritually), also applies as part of the foundation of what’s happening to faithful believers in the Lord Yeshua—both Jewish and Gentile—in the present, as well as moving into the not-too-distant-anymore future.
Which is why it would logically follow that for the non-Jewish believer in the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, it would seem to be of necessary and important significance to become as familiar as possible with the foundations of the faith brought to us by the Lord Jesus, based as they are in the earthly history and the spiritual development of the nation of Israel as chronicled in the books of the Bible.
Because when we do (get familiar with it, that is), we discover that most of what happens to Israel at any given time over the course of its history, serves as a type for what’s going to happen for Israel first, and then the faithful in the Lord Jesus, as well as to the rest of the world, in the future.
The serpent of Genesis is the type for the dragon of Revelation. The man the world would come to know as Antiochus Epiphanes (Daniel 11:21-45), is the type for the beast of Revelation. Melchizedek the mysterious priest-king (Genesis 14:18-20), is a type for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus. Moses the prophet of God and deliverer of Israel, is a type for the Lord Yeshua, Son of God and redeemer of Israel and all mankind. Elijah is the type for John the Baptist. The tabernacle of Israel is a type for the temple of Jerusalem, which is the reflection of the throne of God that will come to earth when the Lord Jesus returns to reign in the Millennial Kingdom and the Eternal Order to follow it.
In that same vein, at this time when faithful and observant Jews the world over will be sitting down to the Pesach seder, non-Jewish believers in the Lord Yeshua come to realize from a diligent study of God’s word (and especially of the Old Testament), that the Passover in which the Jewish slaves were saved from God’s wrathful judgment of Egypt, is also a type for our own salvation from God’s wrathful judgment about to come on the whole sinful, disobedient, disbelieving, depraved world.
The blood of the sacrificed, unblemished lamb on the doorframes of the Jewish houses of Egypt that saved them from God’s wrathful judgment then, is the type for the blood of the sacrificed, sinless Lamb of God who is the Lord Yeshua, which saves the believer in him from God’s wrathful judgment about to come.
The seal of the blood placed on the doorframes of the Jewish houses of Egypt that saved them from God’s wrathful judgment then, is a type for the seal of the Holy Spirit placed on the hearts of all believers, which designates them for salvation from God’s wrathful judgment about to come.
The salvation of Israel from enslavement and their deliverance into the promised land of Canaan that resulted from the Passover judgment of Egypt, is a type for the salvation of the faithful in the Lord Jesus from God’s wrathful judgment of the unbelieving world into eternal condemnation, and deliverance into everlasting life in first his millennial and then eternal kingdoms about to come.
The faith with which the Jews of Egypt smeared their doors with the blood of the Passover lamb, trusting it would protect them from God’s judgment of Egypt then, is a type for the faith with which believers in the Lord Jesus accept the seal of the Holy Spirit on their hearts, trusting it will protect us from God’s judgment on the rest of the world about to come.
And the plagues, death and destruction of God’s wrathful judgment of unbelieving, disobedient, spiritually and carnally depraved Egypt back then, is a type for the plagues, death and destruction of God’s wrathful judgment on the unbelieving, disobedient, spiritually and carnally depraved about to come.
Multiplied by exponential factors, spread out over the whole world, and instead of—among other horrors—hailstones damaging crops, flaming mountains of rock—among other horrors—slamming into the earth, busting up continents, poisoning oceans and killing millions.
So just like the Passover is a bittersweet time for the Jewish people—with the bad news of the death and destruction of God’s wrathful judgment ameliorated only by the good news of the deliverance from judgment and enslavement—so is the coming judgment of the world and humanity a bittersweet prospect for the faithful in the Lord Yeshua—with the bad news of the death and destruction of God’s wrathful judgment ameliorated only by the good news of the deliverance from judgment and consignment to everlasting death and salvation, into everlasting life in God’s reestablished holy and righteous sovereignty over his creation.
All of which is just one more reason why non-Jewish believers in the Lord Yeshua can only benefit from diligently studying and absorbing the faith not just through the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament, but also through the foundations of that faith brought to us by the Lord contained in the Old Testament of Holy Scripture, as well as by a study and understanding of the Jewish history and culture through which it’s brought to us.
Because the house of our faith isn’t built on a hill of sand, nor did it just appear out of nowhere to float magically suspended in mid air.
It’s built on the foundation of the history of the world and of the Jewish nation chronicled in Holy Scripture, and on the solid rock that is the will and word of the God of All Creation who makes it all happen.
And it’s not a house just for Jews or just for Gentiles, but a home shared by all who believe in the truth of the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, who reassures us in John 14:1-3, that in God’s eternal kingdom, there’s plenty of room for us both:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
So on this Passover (especially at a time when it looks like the setting for the final countdown to Israel’s and the world’s ultimate fate is starting to be laid out), let’s remember—both Jewish and Gentile believers in the Lord Yeshua—what Paul counsels us in Romans 15:7:
“Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
And make it a thing.
(Photo Credits: freepik via Pinterest; TheGospelCoalition.org; BibleHelp.ru)
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Typos! I know it's Book of REVELATION. I don't know how I looked at that the five or six times I read this over, without seeing it. Remember what Jonas Clark says: wherever there's confusion, that's a sure sign of witchcraft at work. And I just happen to live in the heart of the Magic Kingdom! May the Lord help me do better in his name! But, I won't be losing any sleep over this, either.