CHRIST OUR PASSOVER

On that momentous evening our Lord was reclining around a table with His eleven beloved disciples and Judas. A passover feast, His last, was drawing near, and He said to them, ‘With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer’, Luke 22.15. In the mind of the Father, not to say in the mind of the Son and the Holy Spirit, this was the most significant of all the passovers since their inauguration in the time of Moses. Each successive passover feast, and every passover offering, had pointed to this particular One.

God, with the wrath-averting death of His Son in mind, had decreed that the paschal offering itself, whether a lamb or a kid, had to be carefully selected to ensure it was without blemish - perfect in every way, as was His Son. It had to be observed for several days until the evening moment when it was to be killed and its blood taken and daubed over the lintel and down the sides of the doors of each Israelite house. The remains of the offering were then to be roasted and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. God promised His Israelite people that, when He came down in judgement upon the unbelieving, rebellious Egyptians, He would pass over every household that sheltered under the blood, and would not bring judgement upon it. ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you’, Exod. 12.13.

See the ‘Paschal Lamb by God appointed’ as He puts into words the thoughts that were in His mind that night - ‘before I suffer’. The spiritual roasting with fire and the bitter herbs were on His mind now. The bread, blessed and broken before them, was to remind His own of His body given for them; the cup was to remind them of the shedding of His blood. The new feast, the breaking of bread, was instituted to commemorate the suffering passover Lamb. ‘This do in remembrance of me’. Having appropriated this passover offering for ourselves, we are to show our gratitude by living lives, and keeping assemblies, pure from the leaven of sin, even as the holiness of that passover Lamb was shown by the feast that was eaten with unleavened bread. May the leaven of malice and wickedness be put away from amongst us and only sincerity and truth be characteristic.