The Feast of Passover Part 2

[0:00] We didn't get to the end of Passover last week, did we? And so we're going to carry on this morning pretty much from where we left off. And the idea of today is to unearth what I think is a bit of a gem, really.

[0:16] I've studied the Passover for over 40 years, off and on. And there's an aspect to this morning that I've never seen before. And yet it's the same set of words. And you just, how many times can you read something and not see something that once you see it, you can't not see it?

[0:33] It's just so obvious. Well, we'll get to that. What we've done so far, and I was going to say, it's online.

[0:44] So if you haven't heard this, then go online and get it. Well, it will eventually appear online because I've got an appointment with a recording device later. And I've got to preach to that just so that there's not a gap in the record.

[0:56] But with regard to the word feast, the word feast in some ways is a misnomer. Now, the Jews have been using the word feast for years, so I'm not going to try and correct the whole of Jewish history.

[1:08] But in English, if you've got footnotes in your Bible, you might have a little thing that says feast or appointed time.

[1:20] And the term appointed time is a better descriptor. Because history is littered with God's appointed times for one thing or another.

[1:31] Genesis 18 verse 14 tells us that Isaac was born at the appointed time. So this Isaac's birth wasn't some birth like everybody else's birth.

[1:44] But in particular, because of his destiny, he was born at an appointed time. And so everybody can look back to the birth of Isaac and say that that birth was appointed for a purpose.

[1:58] It was purposeful. Habakkuk 2 verse 3 tells us that God's judgment will take place at the appointed time. So we kind of don't know when it's going to come.

[2:10] And because we're on the right side of the ledger here, we kind of wish he'd hurry up. But there's an appointed time for this judgment. And so this is the word moed.

[2:23] I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it. Moed in Hebrew. This is a far better use of the phrase that just means a time that was appointed. One of the things we're going to discover this morning is that Passover wasn't only appointed to show us the coming crucifixion.

[2:42] But it was actually appointed for an even bigger purpose than that. And I'm going to leave that hanging till the end. Keep my powder dry. So what we saw last time were all these parallels between Jesus and the Passover lamb.

[2:56] A spotless and without blemish, Jesus was. He shed his blood on a cross, just like the blood that was on the doorposts and the lintel. Blood was applied with a hyssop branch.

[3:10] Jesus was given a drink of red wine with a hyssop branch, symbolic of the blood of Jesus. So even the hyssop branch was part of the foretelling of an event.

[3:22] And we saw the lining up of the dates, the 10th of Nisan lining up with that first Palm Sunday. It probably wasn't a Sunday, but it was Jesus.

[3:33] It was what called the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And then the 14th of Nisan being the predicted date that the lamb would die.

[3:44] And Jesus died right on time. So God has always forecast his intention, sometimes in a mysterious way, but always in a way where if you dig hard enough, you can understand it.

[3:57] And so let's go back to Leviticus 23 and kind of wrap up last week and start this week.

[4:12] Sorry, it wasn't Leviticus, it was Exodus 23. I'm all wrong. It's Exodus 11 and 12. Well, Leviticus 23 covers all the feasts, you see, which is why I keep getting confused.

[4:24] I'm a bear of little brain, particularly this morning. So in chapter 11, verse 2, you may recall, they were told, speak now in the hearing of the people, that each man asked from his neighbor and each woman from her neighbor for articles of silver and articles of gold.

[4:45] And you tend to think no more of that. They asked for silver and gold articles. And for some reason, God made the people well disposed towards the Jews and they would give them these gifts.

[5:00] But in verse 36 of chapter 12, you see what then happens is, now the sons of Israel, oh, sorry, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so that they let them have their requests.

[5:18] Thus they plundered the Egyptians. Now this is interesting. Ask them for silver and gold articles. After this final plague, when the angel of death went through the land and all the firstborn died and there was an outcry that could be heard throughout the land, when the firstborn of human beings died, but also the firstborn of all cattle and animals, the death of all firstborn, suddenly they can't wait to get rid of this Israelite mob from Egypt.

[5:51] And they didn't steal any of these articles, but it paints this picture of, take it, go, have it, you know, we'll do anything to get you out of the land.

[6:06] And the passage, one can infer from the passage that, I think I said this last week, sin itself will alienate itself from you, will push you away.

[6:20] Whereas at the moment, sin draws us, doesn't it? We all, to some extent, have a battle with sin. And it draws us. Well, there's going to come a time when it doesn't any longer draw us, it keeps us at arm's length, it doesn't want anything to do with us.

[6:36] Now, I do wonder if that coincides with the New Testament teaching that at some point, this corruption is going to put on incorruption.

[6:47] And this mortality is going to put on immortality. Verse 31, I think, is more... Hang on. Somebody stole in verse 31.

[6:58] There we go. Then he called... This is Pharaoh. Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel, and go and worship the Lord as you have said.

[7:12] Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go. And bless me also. Yeah, okay. Pharaoh wants a blessing, and yet as soon as this is over, he chases them all through the wilderness, and they all finish up getting drowned in the Red Sea.

[7:30] But this is an insincere thing. But you get this impression that God has defended his people to the extent where people are saying, just get out, leave us alone, go away, don't want to know you anymore.

[7:45] And that is the reaction. It's the reaction of the righteousness to sin. I don't want to know you anymore. But it's also the reaction of the sinful towards the righteous.

[7:58] And you may have noticed if you try to share the gospel, you get some people who warm to it, and you have great conversations. Ask Malcolm about it. He'll tell you, you know, they're there, but they're few and far between. A lot of the time, people just want you to shut up.

[8:11] I don't want to hear this. I don't discuss religion, religion or politics. And those two often get lumped together, which is odd. So they've reached this point where God has brought such a big judgment on the land that the land doesn't want them anymore and they are free to go.

[8:32] So the question then is, how does this apply to us? Because this was a thing that happened in Jewish history way back then. And what's the Passover got to do with us?

[8:45] Now, we've seen some of this last week, haven't we, that Jesus, the Passover lamb modeled Jesus, a perfect spotless lamb. Jesus modeled that perfect spotless lamb.

[8:58] The lamb was a sacrifice for sin. Jesus was a sacrifice for sin. There were lots of parallels. But the New Testament actually applies the Passover sacrifice to Jesus in that Jesus is our Passover.

[9:16] And it goes beyond just a symbolism. And this is an important thing to take in because later on we'll see an aspect of this that I have to say was new to me. And when I tell you, you might say, well, that's not you, right?

[9:29] That's fine. I don't mind. I don't feel threatened much. So if we turn to Matthew 26. Matthew 26, verse 28.

[9:50] Jesus identifies himself as the sacrifice of the shedding of blood.

[10:00] And he says, start with verse 27, otherwise we're starting in the middle of a sentence. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them. Now this is the Passover Seder meal he's eating when he does this.

[10:12] So it's the New Testament equivalent of the Passover meal we've been learning about and are going to learn a bit more about in a moment. So in that meal he says, drink from it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

[10:28] So in that verse, Jesus says, I'm the Passover. I've got this cup, the cup of redemption and I want you to drink it knowing that this is the cup of my blood.

[10:41] This is the cup of my covenant. And he says, but I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. So he's identifying himself with the shed blood of the lamb, which is what the red wine in the cup symbolized.

[11:01] And he's identifying himself with the coming of the kingdom, both together. It's quite a complex thing to unpack and it's more than we're here to do this morning. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5.

[11:17] And if we start reading at verse 5, what you start, what you realize is he's dealing with sin in the church and he's in particular dealing with some people who are unrepentant.

[11:30] And so the apostle Paul says, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

[11:43] Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? And we're going to do more about leaven and dough in a moment.

[11:55] Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump just as you are in fact unleavened for Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

[12:09] So he's saying to them, by the way, the word leaven, it's a name for yeast. Leaven is yeast. And leaven always signifies sin.

[12:20] And so if you're unleavened as a person, your sin has been removed. Whereas if you're still leavened, you're still paddling around in your sin. And what he's saying here is, you're in the church.

[12:34] You belong to Christ. So you have been unleavened because Christ, your Passover, has been sacrificed. And if you think, if you make the link back to the Passover Seder meal back then, the first one, the blood was on the doorpost.

[12:52] If you were under the blood of the sacrificed lamb, you were protected from the angel of death coming and dealing with you as a sinful person. I just want to make a point as we fly by this, and that is, the occupants of the Israelites' homes were not less sinful than the occupants of Egypt.

[13:12] They're different sins, possibly, but they were all sinful. It's just that the houses of the Jews had the blood over the doorposts. And another point to which we'll probably touch again later is the salvation from the angel of death wasn't granted to you because you were a Jew.

[13:31] It was granted to you because you had the blood on your house. And so Gentiles could, now, okay, you can get into all sorts of discussions about the law, and in order to come under the Jewish law, you'd have to get circumcised and all that.

[13:45] But the point is that the blood was what protected anyone whose house had the blood on the doorposts. And so, to use a long word, it was a ubiquitous thing.

[13:58] It was worldwide. It applied to everyone. 1 Peter 1 verse 19 describes Jesus' blood as like that of a lamb, perfect and without blemish.

[14:10] That identifies it with the Passover lamb. or the sacrificial lamb. John 19 verse 36. John links Jesus with the fulfillment of the Passover scriptures by saying, not one of his bones shall be broken.

[14:26] When Jesus was crucified, not one of his bones was broken. And that passage, in fact, turned there. I'm trying to save time when in fact, I'm going to miss a very important point if I'm not careful.

[14:37] John 19. And verse 36. Sorry, start at verse 33 because that gives the context.

[14:51] In fact, verse 32. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and the other who was crucified with him. Now, they would, they'd be hanging on a cross in agony, dying, and normally they would leave them to die, but it was a feast day the next day and so you don't want dead bodies hanging around on crosses while you're trying to celebrate a holy feast.

[15:16] No hypocrisy at all there. But, they would break the legs so that the body would drop so they'd be unable to breathe so they'd die more quickly. And in some ways it was merciful because otherwise the pain would be, carry on sometimes for several days.

[15:32] But it says, verse 33, but coming to Jesus when they saw that he was already dead they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately blood and water came out.

[15:45] Now, that identifies Jesus with the Passover. Right? Not one, because the instruction when we read through it last week, the instruction was you roast the lamb and you don't break any of its bones.

[16:01] So, Jesus not having broken bones was part of the fulfillment of the Passover. In John's Gospel it also says it was around about the sixth hour.

[16:14] Matthew 27, verse 45 tells us even more precisely that the darkness came upon the land from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, which in Jewish timing would be noon until 3 p.m.

[16:26] and on the original occasion, the angel of death passed during the night after the lamb had been killed and eaten. So, you took the lamb at twilight, which was between 3 and 6 approximately, because they did it by the sun.

[16:46] So, somewhere between 3 and 6 they took the lamb, slew the lamb, cooked the lamb, and began to eat the lamb. At the same time, the lamb would be consumed before the Passover celebration began.

[17:05] It would be just on the cusp. You'd be eating the lamb as it started, if you can follow that. In the notes, what you'll find is a link that tells us there were two permissible Passovers that could be celebrated.

[17:24] And this was a bit of a shock to me to find out. But the Judean Passover was from the beginning of the beginning of the Friday night, if you like.

[17:36] So, 6 o'clock Friday evening through to 6 o'clock Saturday evening. But you also had the Galilean Passover, which actually they ran a normal day.

[17:49] Back in Genesis, it was always there is evening and there is morning one day. So, you'd start the day in the evening. But the Galilean Passover did what the rest of us do and it started the day in the morning and went through to the following morning.

[18:05] And so, you had a whole group of people in Israel celebrating the Passover earlier than everybody else. Now, the reason I mention that is it's often bothered me how could Jesus eat the Passover meal and still be the Passover lamb because he'd be eating the Passover meal when he should have been on the cross.

[18:29] Do you see what I mean? There's this discrepancy that I couldn't reconcile in my head. Now, for me, that reconciles that discrepancy that Jesus could legitimately have eaten the Passover meal about 12 hours earlier than everybody else and still being crucified on time.

[18:45] It's a semantic point, and you may or may not agree with it, but it helped me. So, I hope that might untangle a mystery. Maybe everybody else hasn't found it to be a mystery.

[19:00] So, let's look at how families conduct the Seder meal. Now, this, every time I look through it, it is remarkable because we're going to see that the Jews, all through ancient history, and when we read the setup for the Passover sacrifice, we didn't see this in the text.

[19:24] And when you see how they actually celebrate it, you realize that they've unearthed stuff there that goes beyond Exodus chapter 12 and shows them not only what the Passover was for, but it reveals things about God and it also reveals the futuristic aspect of the Passover that nobody could have known because it's future.

[19:54] I'm probably making everybody say, right, Ray, what are you talking about? How did they conduct this meal in Jesus' time, should we say? Or perhaps for a few hundred years running up to that time.

[20:07] We don't know when some of these things happened, but they reached this decision, the religious Jews reached this decision that one lamb should be for ten people.

[20:18] Now, that could be two small families or one large family. Families of more than ten were pretty common in Israel in those days. So, the original idea was you take a lamb for a household, if you've got a small household, you share with another small household and you combine your households.

[20:39] In Exodus 12, 24, we go back to Exodus, and I'm trying to give some context to what we're about to study. In Exodus 12, 24, what we read is, this is the instruction of God to the people celebrating the Passover, and you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever.

[21:05] So, how are you going to make sure that you observe something forever? You know, I could say to my family, I'd like you to observe this forever. I wouldn't, I won't be around to know whether they do or they don't, but God wanted this observed forever.

[21:21] So, it had to be handed down from generation to generation. It's not just enough to write it on paper, because paper gets lost or burnt or whatever. There had to be some means of handing it down from generation to generation.

[21:35] And that involves teaching the children about it. Don't teach the kids, it doesn't go to the next generation. So, the first thing they would do, and for those of you who have a history in Israel yourselves, because there are at least two in the room, if I get the order wrong, it's not the order that matters, it's what happens.

[21:57] And so, if there's anything massively wrong about what I say, talk to Linda, talk to Ali, and ask them, and they can correct me. They'd have a massive cleaning of the house, but it wasn't just like spring cleaning.

[22:15] It wasn't just put the hoove around, love, you know. It was specifically to clean the house of leaven, yeast, symbolic of sin.

[22:27] And there'd be a massive great clean-up, and of course the house would get cleaned in the process, but it was to get rid of anything that might have yeast in it. Crumbs, you know, a corner of crumpet that the kids have left under the bed, or whatever it was, you had to get rid of leaven.

[22:46] And to make the point, to symbolically make the point, as a teaching aid, the mother would deliberately hide some leaven, some crumbs or something somewhere, she would deliberately hide something for the kids to find, and for the father to find.

[23:05] And then the father would finally go through the house, and he would find where the leaven was hidden, and I've got to put my Bible down for this, he'd get a wooden spoon and a feather, I wish I'd brought one with me, but I didn't have one to hand, he'd get a wooden spoon and a feather, and when he found the crumbs, he'd sweep those crumbs onto the wooden spoon, and then he'd wrap the wooden spoon in linen, and then he would take it, usually to the temple, but to a communal fire, and he would burn it.

[23:39] The father was purging the house of leaven to the very last crumb, and burning it. If you will be cleansed, you will not be burned, but if you refuse to be cleansed, your destiny is to be burned.

[23:58] The fires of hell. Now, I'd never quite seen this with this impact before, but also think of this, the father is cleansing his own house of the leaven.

[24:11] leaven. The purpose of Passover, again, not seen this before, the purpose of Passover is to demonstrate that the father is cleansing his own house of leaven.

[24:24] We are that house. I can't remember where the reference is, but there's a scripture that says Moses served in his house as a servant, but Jesus the son serves in his house as a son, whose house we are.

[24:41] So the father is cleansing his own house when he cleanses us. And just like those Jewish houses where the sin hadn't gone, it had been covered by the blood, God's way of dealing with our sin was to cover it with the blood of Christ.

[24:59] And every last bit of it is scooped into the spoon and burnt in the fire and it's no longer present. I just find that mind-blowing. And this was a feast that was definitely for all mankind.

[25:10] We just read in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 6. This was preached to a Gentile church.

[25:21] This wasn't preached to Jews. There's probably some Jews there, but it was a Gentile church. And he said, Christ is our Passover. Two Gentiles. Important distinction.

[25:32] So Passover was always to do with God seeking houses that would choose to come under the blood of the Lamb so that their leaven could be cleansed. And the other clear thing was that all houses that would not come under the blood and did not volunteer to be cleansed faced the angel of death.

[25:49] Very cut and dried this. You know, the world doesn't like cut and dried stuff. They like to debate it. And they call you arrogant if you say Jesus is the only way. How can you say he's the only way?

[26:01] I didn't. He did. And if it's true that he's the only way, what's the point in telling people that that's not true. And unfortunately we have the church at large telling people, oh no, you Muslims can come to Christ as well.

[26:16] You can get saved through your Muslim faith. No, you can't. There's one way. And it's not said through arrogance. It's said because it's a fact. And personally I don't want to see anyone go to hell.

[26:30] But through what we've just discussed we can understand that the Passover didn't just tell us about judgment but it told us about the final judgment.

[26:42] Remember it said Pharaoh I have got one more judgment to bring against Pharaoh. So that was the last judgment. And this feast typifies the outcome of the final judgment.

[26:56] The final judgment is my leaven is swept away and burnt in the fire without me attached to it. or I am the leaven that is swept into the fire and judged.

[27:08] Harrowing. Praise God we're saved. So the feast took place in households and the teaching would take place in the house led by the father. It would start with the lighting of two candles which was the one part that the mother did.

[27:25] And the significance of that was that Jesus the light of the world would come into the world through a woman. So she was the one that brought the light to the situation.

[27:38] And so it prefigures Mary or Miriam. Mary, Miriam, same name, different way of saying it. And they would be prompted, the children would be prompted to ask four questions.

[27:52] Although if there were no kids then somebody would ask these questions. Why is this night different from all other nights? You can imagine them sitting down, doing all this stuff, lighting candles and kids going, what's going on here then?

[28:06] Why is this night different from all other nights? And this prompts a discussion of the Passover traditions. Why do we celebrate Passover? Because we were delivered from Egypt. So you get the historical view without necessarily getting the forward looking view.

[28:23] So it was a discussion of what Passover celebrates, provoked by that first question. The second question would be, on all other nights dad, we eat leavened bread or matzah, which is an unleavened bread.

[28:36] So why on this night do we only eat unleavened bread? Why on this night do we only eat the matzah? And therefore the answer of that, the common answer to that was, they had to leave Egypt in such haste that their bread didn't get a chance to rise.

[28:55] So they had to eat it unleavened. But even then, there was a connection between leaven and sin. And so, in the background, they had this connection with righteousness.

[29:08] Sometimes it would have been spoken of, sometimes not. Sometimes it would just be, well, we were taken out of Egypt so fast, we didn't get a chance to let our bread rise. Third question, on all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables.

[29:22] Why on this night do we only eat bitter herbs? Well, they ate something called maror. I don't know if that's how it's pronounced, but maror.

[29:33] And maror was bitter herbs, things like endive, horseradish. Now, you imagine you take a mouthful of horseradish, that'll make your eyes run, won't it?

[29:47] You know? And so, it was deliberate so that it might induce tears, but at least it induces bitterness, a bitter taste, and the whole point of it is, it was to remind them of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.

[30:01] This is what you've come from. Now, when we preach the gospel, we encourage people to look at their lives and look at the bitter time that they dwelt in sin, and to reflect upon it.

[30:14] And even now, even this morning, we've reflected on that, and we think, thank God we've been delivered from that. And the fourth question, on all other nights, we do not dip our food at all.

[30:27] Why on this night do we dip twice? And it refers to this practice of dipping food twice during the seder meal, once in salt water, to symbolize the tears shed during slavery, and then again in this haroset, which is a sweet mixture of fruit and stuff, I think, which represents the sweetness of freedom.

[30:51] And you've got this starkly opposed memories of bitter slavery but sweet freedom. And so, by answering these questions, all those in the room would either learn for the first time what it was all about, or they'd be reminded about what it was all about.

[31:10] Now, there should be a picture of a matzatash. they would also introduce this bag that had three pockets and in each pocket was an unleavened piece of bread.

[31:26] Believe it or not, it doesn't like we used to loaves that look like loaves. This is a matzah loaf. All right? But the bag represents God.

[31:38] Now, this means that the Jews back then understood the Trinity. You've got one bag with three pockets. We have one God with three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[31:53] And so in each of the pockets would be a matzah loaf representing one of the personalities of the Trinity. And before the meal, yeah, I think timing I'm not certain of, but they would take the middle one out.

[32:10] So if you've got Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, what have they taken out? The Son. So they would take the Son out, and they would break that in half, and they would take a half of it, and they would call that the afikomen.

[32:31] And the word afikomen, as far as I've been able to find out, means he comes. And so they would take that half, and they would wrap it in linen, and hide it. So you've got a picture of Christ, the one who comes, being hidden from everyone, as he would have been when he went into the tomb.

[32:53] The other half, they would do a kind of a breaking of bread ceremony with, with a cup of wine, and they break bread together. At the end of the meal, the children would be sent to find the afikomen.

[33:06] And they come back, and quite often it wouldn't be that badly, or that well hidden, because they didn't want the kids to struggle to find it. Would have been really difficult if they'd not found it.

[33:18] But they bring the afikomen back, symbolizing the resurrection from the dead of Jesus. So the Jews have had this in their tradition, when they, this is my phraseology, and if you people who know better do correct me, but it seems to me, they had this in their tradition before they even understood it, because I can't see how it would have made sense to them, and yet somehow God introduced this into their tradition, and I can't find it in the Bible, I can find the outline of it, but these nuances of the three pocketed bag, and taking the middle one out, and the mock-up of putting them in the grave, and then the mock-up of the resurrection, all centered around the Afrikoman and the Matsu Tash.

[34:10] I can't find it in the Bible, but it was in their tradition, and somehow over the years it blossomed among God's people, because God wanted them to understand it.

[34:23] Could I have the other picture, please? Right, Matsu bread, something else they knew of, I don't know how and I don't know to what extent, but important things about the Matsu bread.

[34:39] The first one was it had to have a bruised appearance. Looks like bruises, doesn't it? All these dark spots. Bruised for our iniquities, Isaiah 53 verse 5.

[34:51] It also had to be pierced. He was pierced through for our transgressions, Isaiah 53 verse 5. Again, if you hold them up to the light, you can see through them.

[35:02] Lots of holes. It also had to have stripes and you can see the stripes, self-explanatory. Again, Isaiah 53 verse 5. And by his stripes we are healed.

[35:14] Also in 1 Peter 2 verse 24. So the Matsu bread, oh of course the fourth thing is it always had to be unleavened, no yeast. So the Matsu bread, in their old tradition, long before it happened, spoke of somehow this salvation coming through someone who was bruised, someone who had stripes, someone who was pierced, and someone who was perfect and spotless, therefore unleavened.

[35:45] So the Matsu itself is symbolic of Christ in his death. So the overall purpose of Jesus' death, I think what we've learned this morning, and you always look for application, what's the takeaway?

[35:57] The takeaway here is the gospel, and the gospel in the sense that the overall purpose of Jesus' death was to cleanse his own house from the leaven of sin, and that means cleansing you and me, because we are his house.

[36:15] Unless somebody says to you one day, Jesus Christ, and you go, nope, don't want to know, don't want my house cleansed, I don't want to join that household, in which case, you are doomed, which is why it's so important for people to embrace the gospel.

[36:36] And we mustn't lose sight of the passion with which he did this. He was so passionate to achieve this cleansing of his own house, that he was prepared to pay the ultimate price for it, giving his own life, and taking the punishment that we would use so that we wouldn't have to be punished.

[36:58] And I find that remarkable. I haven't a clue where I am with the time, Sharon, I think I'm done anyway. About five minutes. Do you know, I thought I would run over today. He paid the price so that, was it, he paid a debt he didn't owe so that we wouldn't have to pay a debt that we did owe.

[37:20] And that's the underlying message of Passover. So if you're in the room and you don't know the Lord, get to know him quick because his Passover was symbolic of what he did in person.

[37:34] The Passover ceremony itself was a symbolism, but it spoke of a coming sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ who would take the place of the lamb.

[37:45] One of the scriptures that lets us know that Jesus was the Passover lamb was John the Baptist saying, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

[37:56] Notice he didn't say take away the sins of the Jews. He said takes away the sins of the world. The lamb that took away the sins of the world was the Passover lamb, not the furry little animal that was meh, meh, as it went to the slaughter, but the real Passover lamb that was the fulfillment of what you saw in the sacrificial lamb, which was the sacrifice of humans or the sacrifice of Jesus' human form on the cross.

[38:29] Father, I am so grateful for this word, not just because it's been amazing to just study it and preach it, but because it sets us free. And your word tells us when the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

[38:43] I am so, so grateful that you have set us free. And Father, I ask that we will always find times to remember what you did. The reason we now break bread is the same reason they celebrated Passover, so that we would never forget what you've done.

[39:01] And I pray that you'd burn it into the backs of our eyeballs so we're always seeing it, that we would never ever lose sight of the amazing sacrifice you did. Out of a love that is so deep, we cannot even begin to imagine it.

[39:15] Lord, we give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.