The Book of Exodus

Explanation

God gives Israel a new calendar first: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months." Redemption starts the year over; the night of deliverance becomes the beginning of everything. Then He details the lamb. It must be "without blemish, a male of the first year," taken on the tenth day and kept until the fourteenth, watched four days to prove it flawless, then killed by "the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel ... in the evening." Its blood is struck on the two side posts and the upper doorpost, and its flesh eaten that night, "roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs." They eat it dressed to travel, "loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand ... in haste: it is the LORD'S passover." Then comes the promise that is the heart of it all: "when I see the blood, I will pass over you." God would pass through Egypt in judgment, "and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment," but where the blood was seen, death would pass by.

Gospel Focus

Every line of the Passover points to Jesus Christ. The lamb was "without blemish," and Christ is "a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19); it was examined four days and found flawless, as Christ was tested and no fault found in Him. John saw Him and cried, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), and Paul says plainly, "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7). But mark the center of it: it was not enough that the lamb died; the blood had to be applied to the door. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you," not when I see the lamb slain in the yard, but when I see the blood on your house. A dying Savior saves no one whose own heart and life the blood has not touched. Salvation is by the blood personally applied, received by faith, as "through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood" (Hebrews 11:28). And notice how they ate: in haste, dressed to go, feeding fully on the lamb with the bitter herbs of repentance. Those who take shelter under the blood become a pilgrim people, finished with Egypt, ready to follow God out.

Explanation

Bound to the Passover is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, seven days in which no leaven may be found in any Israelite house. It begins and ends with a holy convocation, and the command is strict: "whosoever eateth leavened bread ... that soul shall be cut off from Israel." The same deliverance that put the blood on the door put the leaven out of the house. God would have His redeemed people not only sheltered from judgment but also separated from the old corruption. The removal of leaven was a yearly, house-by-house cleansing, a picture of a people learning that salvation and holiness belong together.

Gospel Focus

Paul takes this feast straight into the gospel. "Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?" he asks, and then, "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump ... For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast ... with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). The lesson is unmistakable: the people saved by the blood of the Lamb are called to put sin out of their lives. Redemption is never meant to leave us as we were. The blood on the door and the leaven out of the house go together; a profession of the Passover with the old corruption still spreading inside is a contradiction God will not accept. This is the call to holiness that runs through all of Scripture. Christ died to save us not only from the penalty of sin but from its power, that we might "keep the feast" as a cleansed people, sincere and true. Sweep the leaven from the house; the Lamb was slain to make you new.

Explanation

Moses gathers the elders and gives the command: take hyssop, dip it in the blood caught in the basin, and strike the lintel and doorposts, then stay inside until morning. Safety was only within the blood-marked house; to step outside was to leave the shelter. Moses adds that when their children ask, "What mean ye by this service?" they must tell the story of the LORD's Passover, so the meaning would pass down the generations. And the people "bowed the head and worshipped," then obeyed. That midnight the sentence fell: "the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon." From palace to prison, no Egyptian house was spared; "there was not a house where there was not one dead." But the destroyer could not enter where the blood was seen.

Gospel Focus

"The LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in." The blood did what no Israelite's worth could do. Inside those houses were sinners no better in themselves than the Egyptians; the difference was wholly the blood. So it is in the gospel. We are not saved because we are better than the world, but because we have taken shelter under the blood of Jesus Christ. And the blood had to be applied and then trusted; they struck the door and stayed inside, resting on God's word that the blood was enough. Faith does not stand at the door wondering if it is safe; it applies the blood and abides under it. Note too the humble hyssop, the plainest of branches, enough to apply the blood. Saving faith need not be great or eloquent; it need only lay hold of the blood of the Lamb. And the charge to teach the children, "What mean ye by this service?", lays on every believing home the duty to pass on the story of redemption, that the next generation may know why the blood was shed and take shelter under it too.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Broken at last, Pharaoh calls for Moses by night and drives Israel out, even begging, "bless me also." The Egyptians are "urgent upon the people" to leave, "for they said, We be all dead men," and they give Israel silver, gold, and raiment, so "they spoiled the Egyptians," the wages of their bondage as God had promised. Israel journeys from Rameses toward Succoth, "about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children," with "a mixed multitude" and much cattle. After "four hundred and thirty years," on "the selfsame day," the hosts of the LORD go free. The chapter closes with more of the Passover ordinance: it is kept in one house, no stranger uncircumcised may eat it, and, strikingly, "neither shall ye break a bone thereof." A people who came in as one family under Joseph now march out a nation under God.

Gospel Focus

The command that no bone of the lamb be broken (verse 46) reaches across the centuries to the cross. When the soldiers came to break the legs of the crucified, they found Jesus already dead and broke none, "that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken" (John 19:36). The true Passover Lamb kept the pattern to the letter. So did the rule that the lamb be eaten only by the circumcised; none could share the Passover who did not belong to the covenant, a shadow of the truth that its blessing is only for those who are in Christ, marked by "the circumcision made without hands" (Colossians 2:11), the inward circumcision of the heart. There is a caution too in that "mixed multitude" who came out with Israel; not all who leave Egypt in the crowd have truly made the Passover their own, and that mingled company would later stir up trouble in the wilderness. But over it all stands the glory of the deliverance: on the selfsame day God had appointed, not one day late, His people went free. God keeps His word to the hour. What He has promised, He performs, and the God who brought Israel out by the blood of the lamb brings us out of the world by the blood of Christ, a redeemed people, on our way to the promised inheritance.