Perhaps no other event is as significant in the Jewish calendar as Passover. It is the first holiday ever created for them, and it celebrates the provision that God made for them so that their firstborn would not be slain when the 10th and final plague was unleashed on the Egyptians to cause Pharaoh to set them free from slavery. It has been observed in essentially the same way for almost 3,500 years.
The Passover was decreed by God in Exodus Chapter 12. In Ex. 11:4-10, God said that He would cause every firstborn of every person in Egypt to die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of slaves, and everyone in between, including even cattle. However, in Exodus 12: 1-13, God said that to provide a way of escape from death for His own people, He wanted each family to kill an unblemished lamb, and then to dip a bunch of hyssop, which was a large parsley like plant, into the blood of the lamb, and paint some of it on the doorposts and on the lintel (which was the cross-beam or header) of the door that was the entrance way to their home. God promised that when He passed through Egypt on the night of this plague, that if He saw the blood painted there, He would pass over that home and spare its occupants from death.
God also decreed that the Jewish people were to have a special meal on the night of Passover, and that it was to consist of the flesh of the Passover Lamb (Vs. 8), whose bones were not to be broken (Vs. 47), and that beginning on the Passover and for (7) days thereafter, they were to eat unleavened bread (Vs. 18) and no leaven was to be found in their houses (Vs. 19). In fact, on the 1st night of the Passover, all leaven was to be removed from their houses, or else they would be cut off from the assembly of Israel (also Vs. 19).
This particular plague was different from all of the previous (9) plagues that God had brought upon the Egyptians. In those plagues, no response was required by the people of Israel. But with the 10th plague, they had to respond in faith to what God had said, and put their trust in Him to spare them.
What a beautiful picture this is of our own salvation by the shed blood of Jesus. The Bible says that it is appointed to all people once to die, and then comes the judgment. However, when God sees that we by faith have trusted in the shed blood of Jesus to set us free from judgment for our sin, then we will be spared from judgment and will enter into glory with Jesus in Heaven.
Like the Passover Lamb, our Lord was unblemished too, for He was completely free from any sin.
Several times in the Bible, leaven is used as a picture of sin, which must be done away with for us to have any fellowship with God who is Holy, and Ps. 103:12 tells us that Jesus has banished our sin as far as the east is from the west. Later, hyssop was used in the animal sacrifices decreed by the sacrificial laws of Israel, and when our Lord was crucified, John 19:29 says that it was a hyssop branch that was used to lift the sour wine up to Him on the cross. Not only that, but John 19:36 tells us that, just like the Passover Lamb, not a bone of His was broken when He was on the cross, even though this was normally done by the Roman soldiers to hasten the death of the person being crucified. The blood of the Passover Lamb was placed in essentially the sign of the cross over the entrance to a Jewish home, but His blood was shed on a real cross.
In Vs. 17, The Jewish people were instructed to observe the Passover on its anniversary every year, and in Vs. 26-27 to do it as a way to remember and to teach their children of what God had done, and they were to call it “the Lord’s Passover.” In Vs. 1, we see that it also changed their entire calendar, in that the month of the Passover was to become the 1st month of the new year for them.
The last meal that Jesus had before He died was the Passover with His Disciples in the Upper Room. So, just prior to His death, He obediently ate the unblemished lamb and the unleavened bread, just as He, on our behalf, obediently fulfilled all of God’s commands. At that Last Supper, He offered bread to His Disciples as a representation of His body given up for them, and wine as a representation of His blood shed for them, and He instructed them to do this after He was gone in remembrance of Him. This practice became known as Communion or the Lord’s Supper.
In both the Passover and Communion, all glory is to go to God as the author of deliverance and salvation.
Just as Passover changed the Jewish calendar, the coming of Jesus changed the Gentile calendar. Passover marked the start of a new year, and when a person comes to Jesus as Lord and Savior, they receive new life.
As has been seen here, there are many parallels and similarities between Passover and the work of Jesus. Yet, while the Passover Lamb took away death from a plague, it did not take away the cause of death which is sin. Only Jesus did that, and so the salvation that He brings is cause for a much greater celebration. No wonder that John 1:29 tells us that when John the Baptist saw Jesus, he declared “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
