Continuing our notes on David Dalton’s teaching on the Feasts of Jehovah:

Reading – Exodus 12 v 1-17; 1 Cor 5 v 7

Personal Appreciation

Note the increasing personal appreciation of Passover in three expressions in vs 3-5 of Exodus 12 – v3 ‘a lamb’,  v4 ‘the lamb’,  v5 ‘your lamb’.  It is lovely to compare these to the Lord Jesus Christ. In Gen 22 Abraham tells Isaac ‘God shall provide Himself a lamb‘. Come to John 1, and the Baptist proclaims ‘Behold the Lamb of God’. The question is, is He your Lamb? Do you have a personal appreciation of Jesus Christ as your Saviour?

Careful Description

First we note the lamb was to be a male, without blemish, and of the first year. How careful these descriptions are, and how wonderfully they speak of our Saviour. We rejoice that He was both physically, morally, wholly the perfect man – without sin!

It must be clarified that the Scripture is clear He was sinless (Hebrews 4:15). It’s not that He did not sin, but He could not sin. The Passover details further emphasise this point.

Consider how the lamb was taken on 10th day and kept until the 14th to be observed (possibly for around 3.5 days), just as the Lord Jesus was observed for 3.5 years, by:

1. The Father – ‘my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased‘ (Matt 3:17, 17:5)
2. Powers of darkness – ‘holy One of God‘ (Mark 1:24)
3. Friends – Note how the conclusions of Paul – ‘He knew no sin‘ – Peter – ‘He did no sin‘ – and John – ‘in Him is no sin’ – correspond beautifully to the details given for the offering and enjoyment of the lamb in Exodus 12:9 – ‘his head, with his legs, and with the inwards’.
4. Foe – Finally, even those who would send Jesus Christ to His death, did so with these commendations to His life and character. King Herod declared ‘no cause of death in Him‘, and Governor Pilate’s verdict was ‘I find no fault in him‘.

Important Application

Now, it wasn’t enough for the lamb to die. The Israelite, for the blood to be effective, had to apply the blood to the doorway of their own homes.  Similarly, the death of Christ does not automatically guarantee everyone salvation and redemption. For the blood of Christ to be effectual to us, we must apply it to ourselves in faith.

‘Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold … but with the precious blood of Christ, s of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory’. 1 Peter 1:18-21