The Passover and sacrificial lamb foreshadow the Messiah.
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An explanation and meditation:
Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed!
The Bible is not a collection of stories, each with its own little moral, which, if we learn and follow them, will make us pleasing to God. Rather, the Bible is a single story of our God who knew us before time began and saved us to be his own. When we rejected him, he did not reject and abandon us, but came, though it cost him all, to rescue us. He was the Passover lamb who was sacrificed, so that the judgment due us fell on him.
What are the symbols of the Passover that relate to the coming of the Messiah?
The main symbols of the Passover, as a picture of salvation, are the Israelites in slavery and of the lamb sacrificed so that judgment and death would pass over them. The Israelites were slaves of the Egyptians, but of what are we slaves? Jesus said that anyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. We certainly commit sin, so we are slaves of sin. What does that mean? What is at the root of our enslavement? What is so enslaving about sin? Put in the simplest terms, we are slaves of our independence, resulting in over-desires. The default mode of our hearts is to be committed to meeting our desires ourselves rather than looking to God to meet them, making us slaves to our desires. The problem is not our desires. The desires are good. God made us with desires, strong desires, to be beautifully and wonderfully met by him and his creation. The problem is that we have demanded to be our own gods and to meet our own needs, using his creation, that he made, but trying to do it without him. We don’t love him. We love his things. We love them so much that they are now over-desires, super-desires. They are what we live for – not bad things, but good things that we have made ultimate things. They are our gods, our idols. We are slaves of our independence, resulting in over-desires. This is our sin.
Some call it pride. We think we can do a better job of running our lives than he can. We think we don’t need him. As a matter of fact, we don’t trust him as far as we can throw him. The default mode of our hearts is to be self-oriented and self-willed: self-justifying, self-protecting, and self-satisfying. We can’t help it. “The heart wants what is wants.” The result: envy, malice, and every problem of mankind, including death. What is salvation? Salvation is liberation from the misery and slavery of loving anything more than God and neighbor as self; and salvation is eternal life. It begins when we believe in Jesus and continues after we die. This is the gospel message and is what the Messiah, Jesus, came to do.
The symbol of leaven is a bit confusing because we prefer leaven for our bread. Leaven seems like a good thing. It makes bread taste better. However, leaven is associated in the Bible with envy, malice, and all the evil deeds of mankind – the problems that result from being enslaved to super-desires. Leaven is an excellent symbol because we like it and for its invisibility and pervasive presence throughout our lives. There is no part of our lives or our world unaffected by it. Being “unleavened” requires a completely new lump of dough, and that is what the new birth is – when one believes, the old self “dies,” a new person is “born,” and the Spirit begins working in us to clear out the debris. The clearing process is Oh, so slow, but it is unstoppable. It continues day by day until we see Jesus and are changed in a twinkling of an eye to be like him. This hope encourages and purifies all who believe. It is the hope for heaven, the hope that in the end, God will make every wrong thing right.
Thank you, Father, for knowing us and loving us before time began – for not forsaking us but remembering us and coming to rescue us. Thank you that, no matter who we are or what we have been like, we can all be saved in this same way – that Jesus our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us, opening the way for us to enter the Promised Land: knowing you, the Father, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.