to Exodus chapter 12, Exodus chapter 12. I'm gonna ask the Lord's blessing before we begin. Our God and our Father, holy, holy, holy God. We are sinners, incapable of coming before you except through the blood and the righteousness of your dear son, our Lord Jesus. Lord, we're thankful that you provided him, that you've made your people perfect, complete, righteous, holy in the Lord Jesus. Lord, we ask now that you would send forth your spirit and exalt our Savior in our hearts. Give us faith to worship. Make us truly worship. Bow down in our hearts to you, Lord, through the message. Speak affectionately into our heart. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

All right, brethren. The reason I'm going to preach from Exodus 12 is because we've been going through Luke, and we're at this passage in Luke that begins like this. The second hour, I'm gonna preach from the whole passage in Luke, but it begins this way. It said, now his parents, speaking of Christ, of Joseph and Mary, it says, now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.

Now Exodus 12 tells us about the Passover and the feast. Now originally, God established the feast of the Passover so that every believer in Israel, every believer in Israel would remember how the Lord redeemed them out of Egyptian bondage. And they were looking for Christ to come. They were looking for Christ to come. Christ has come now. He's fulfilled what the law of the Passover typified, the feast of the Passover. He has fulfilled it. He has fulfilled the whole law for his people. So that the law has nothing to say to us because we are what the law requires in Christ.

The moral law, Christ is our righteousness and our holiness. The civil law, Christ is our king over his kingdom, who rules us as citizens of his kingdom, of his heavenly city, and we follow him because he leads us, directs us, guides us in spirit through his gospel. And the ceremonial law, Everything in the ceremonial law typified the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the great high priest of his people. He is the lamb of his people. And that's what we're gonna look at specifically here today.

We are not obligated today to observe the Old Testament laws, the ceremonies, the feasts, the holy days, and the Sabbath days. To do that today, we'll be counting the blood of Christ who have been shed in vain. To look to our works and any obedience of ours to be accepted of God would be to say Christ died in vain. Galatians 2 is clear on that. The last verse of Galatians 2, I do not frustrate the grace of God. For if righteousness come by the law, Christ died in vain. That's what we're saying.

So we don't go back to these old covenant law and the ceremonies, that would be idolatry. Our Savior replaced the feast of the Passover with the Lord's table. And we come to the Lord's table and observe his, remember him, we remember his broken body which he laid down for his people, broken for his people. We remember his blood that he poured out by which our sins were put away.

Now, for each sinner born of God and in whom Christ has revealed himself, Christ is our Passover, sacrificed for us. That's what this Passover lamb pictured. Christ our Passover sacrificed for us.

Let's go, we'll start here in Exodus 12, one, and we're gonna go verse by verse. Just take a few verses at a time. Verse one says, and the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Now, who spoke first right here?

Salvation begins with God. It's carried on by God and it ends with God. Salvation is of the Lord. The children of Israel had been in bondage in Egypt for 400 years, for 400 years. They were slaves in Egypt. Now, Israel being in bondage in Egypt is a picture of every sinner born of Adam being in bondage under the curse of the law and in bondage to our depraved sin nature.

Now that's true of God's elect who he saves. We were in bondage under the curse of the law and in bondage to our sin nature. But when the children of Israel became slaves in Egypt, That was according to the purpose of God, the purpose of God to glorify his name and his son. Over 400 years before this, God told Abraham, the Lord told Abraham, the children of Israel, his seed would go into bondage in Egypt, and the Lord told Abraham, promised Abraham, he would deliver them out of Egyptian bondage.

He said this, let me just give this to you. Genesis 15, 13, he said to Abram, know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them and they shall afflict them 400 years. and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward they shall come out with great substance. That was God's promise.

What's that picture? For the foundation of the world, God chose his son to be the savior of his people. He elected a people in his son who God purposed to save, to glorify his name, his righteousness, His holy character in the salvation of sinners. So when Adam fell in the garden, that was all according to God's purpose. It didn't take God by surprise. God had purposed it because through that fall, God's gonna send forth his son and he's gonna save his people.

God set Adam up as a head to picture Christ the last Adam. He's the figure of Christ to come in headship. Just as we fell in Adam, Adam didn't make it possible for you to be a sinner. Adam made you a sinner, a guilty sinner. Christ didn't make it possible for his people to be saved. He justified his people. He saved his people. He redeemed his people. That's what we're gonna see in this Passover.

All right, next, I want you to see here, I want you to see Christ typified in the Passover lamb. Verse three, Exodus 12, verse three. Speaking unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, in the 10th day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house.

Now this lamb pictures the Lord Jesus. When the Lord Jesus, Walked up that day and John the Baptist was preaching. John the Baptist pointed at him and said, behold the Lamb of God. That's who this Lamb pictures, Christ Jesus. He sent his son, the Lord Jesus, to be the Lamb, the substitute to take the place of God's elect Israel.

You notice here, The Lord didn't provide a lamb for anybody but the children of Israel. There was actually human beings in Egypt, but he provided the lamb for Israel. That doesn't mean everybody in Israel was his elect. God chooses who his people are by grace, but the point is the Lord sent his son to die for God's chosen Israel, his people. That's who Christ came to die for. And he redeemed the exact number. The Lord provided here a lamb for each house. And we read in verse four, and if the house shall be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls. Every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. In other words, there was a lamb for every man in Israel. Every man without exception, there was a lamb for every man in Israel.

And our Lord Jesus Christ has been provided by God. God gave His only begotten Son to be the lamb to take the place of His elect people according to the number of the souls, according to the exact number of His people. Our Lord said this in John 6.39, This is the Father's will which hath sent me. that of all which he hath given me, I should lose none, but raise it up again as the last day. See, all that the Father gave to Christ, Christ laid down his life for, and that's who he shall save.

All right, the Lord Jesus is the spotless lamb of God. Look at verse five. Your lamb shall be without blemish. a male of the first year, you shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats. The Lord Jesus is the lamb without spot. When Adam fell, Adam's nature became corrupt. When he produced a son, he produced that son through corrupt seed, and that son had a nature that was corrupt. And in the corrupt nature of a man, you can't know God, you can't believe God. You can know the God of your imagination, but you can't know the true God. You have to be born of God and taught of God.

But when our Lord Jesus was in the womb, the body was prepared for him by the Holy Spirit. He wasn't born of a man, so he's holy from the womb. Did you know you have to be holy in your mother's womb? If you're gonna come to God trusting in anything you've done, You had to be holy in your mother's womb. And the scripture says we were conceived in sin. When we were formed in our mother's womb, that was sin. So when we came out of our mother's womb, we did what sinners do, we sin. We did not become sinners by sinning. We sinned because we were already sinners.

But our Lord Jesus was not because he's representing his people. He was holy from the womb and all his days. Perfect heart, looking to his father, serving God perfectly under the law for his people. And when he went to that cross, he was the only man who could go to that cross. He's the God-man, he's God in human flesh, but as a man, he's the only man who could go to the cross and suffer and lay down his life in place for his people, because he's the only one since Adam was created before the fall. Adam was perfect. But after the fall, Christ was the only one that ever walked this earth holy. And therefore all his thoughts, all his words, all his deeds were righteous in perfect accordance with God's law.

And he went to that cross and he's the only one who could take the sin of his people because he's spotless. and He could bear our sin and bear the curse that we deserve, that His people deserve. See, this thing's about God declaring His righteousness. God, the whole purpose of the cross is not just to save people from hell. It's not just to give you a better life in this world. It's to glorify God and show what a holy and just God He is. He would not clear the guilty, and He will not clear the guilty. Every soul that sins shall die under God's justice. But God provided a lamb for his people, and Christ is that spotless lamb. Peter said, you know you were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold from the vain conversation, the vain teachings received by tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without spot and without blemish. without blemish and without spot. That's Christ.

All right. And the Lord appointed the hour. Everything was determined in Christ going to the cross. The Lord appointed the hour. It says here in verse six, you shall keep it up until the 14th day of the same month and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. Just like God set the time right here take of this feast. Christ came to this world at the set time that God set.

Galatians 4.4 says, when the fullness of thee time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law. Throughout his life, they tried to kill him. Several times men wanted to kill him. Natural man hates the true God. We did too. and they tried to kill our Savior. The Scripture says, they sought to take Him, but no man laid hands on Him because His hour was not yet come.

You see, men did what they wanted to do to the Savior. The wicked, sinful hearts of men wanted to kill Him and get Him out of the way so they could go on with their false religion looking to their ceremonies and their works. They wanted to get him out of the way. But everything they did, God determined before to be done. They only did what God purposed to be done. No man does anything in this world but what God has purposed to be done.

Next time you see some evil happen, take this comfort right here. The only reason that's coming to pass is God's gonna use it to glorify his name and work good for his people. Scripture says, the wrath of man shall praise God, and the remainder, God restrains it. If it doesn't glorify Him, He's not gonna permit it to come to pass. Just so with the cross. Wicked men did what was in their heart, but they only did what He determined before to be done.

Our Lord Jesus was in full control. He said, no man takes my life, I lay it down of myself. Even on the cross, He wasn't, he didn't just die like we do. He gave up his spirit to the father. The whole congregation here, it said, shall kill the lamb. Brethren, every single elect child of God, it was because of our sin that Christ was on that cross. We killed him. It was our sins that put him there. He bore the sins of his people.

On the cross, you see God's justice. God would not spare his son when he laid the sins of his people on him. God wouldn't spare his son. That's justice. God poured out the curse on him instead of on his people. But by that, the Lord Jesus put away the sins of his people forever. He justified his people. He redeemed his people from the curse of the law.

All right, but here's the problem. We not only became guilty under the law in Adam, we became corrupt in our nature. And by nature, we can't know God. By nature, we can't just pick up this book and read it and know who God is. We can't just come into a church house and hear the gospel and just, of our own will, believe God. We can't. Romans 8 says that a carnal mind is enmity against God, hates God. That's what the carnal nature is. Cannot submit to the word of God. Won't and can't. 1 Corinthians 2 says the natural man will not receive the things of God. He cannot know them. They're spiritually discerned. So who applied this blood? When this lamb died in the Passover, who applied the blood? Look at verse seven. and they shall take of the blood and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it. Now look down at verse 21 and we're gonna see who applied this blood. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said unto them, draw out and take you a lamb according to your families and kill the Passover and you The elders, the head of the house, you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that's in the basin and strike the lentil and the two side posts with the blood that's in the basin and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.

The head of the family applied the blood, the elder. You know why Christ was sent forth? God sent him forth that he might be the firstborn among many brethren, the elder. God raised him from the dead and gave him all power in heaven and earth, gave him a name above every name, and made him the head over all things to the church.

You know who gets the glory for applying his blood in our heart? You know who gets the glory for sending the spirit and giving us faith, life and faith to believe him? He does. Just like he gets the glory for redeeming us, he gets the glory for bringing us to believe him. He's given us a new heart for sanctifying us. He's our righteousness who justified us, our Redeemer who redeemed us from the curse, and He is our sanctifier who sanctifies us and makes us holy within.

Righteousness has to do with your standing before the law. Holiness has to do with the nature and the heart and what you are in yourself before God. The only way we're made holy is the Holy One sends this gospel, and just like the first time you were born of corruptible seed, so you have a sin nature, when he sends the gospel, you're born of the incorruptible seed, the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, which by the gospel is preached unto you. That's 1 Peter chapter two, I believe. And you're born again of him, and Christ enters, and he's the sanctification of our new man.

When that happens, You don't look to yourself for sanctification, for holiness. You look to him. Hebrews 10, he came down and said, Father, your law is in my heart. I came to do your will. He takes away that first covenant and establishes us under the covenant of grace. And Hebrews 10 says, by the witch will, we are sanctified through the one offering of our Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father sanctified us when he put us in Christ in divine election. Christ sanctified us when he laid down his life, because he served God with a holy heart, perfect.

Even when you have a new holy heart, you still have an old man of sin with you, so sin's mixed with everything you do. He was perfectly holy. And so when he enters in and creates a new man and really makes you holy in the new man, You don't look to yourself, you look to Him, because now you really behold Him. Now for the first time you see that your flesh is sinful, whereas you didn't see it before. Now you see it and know it. So you don't look to yourself, you look to him for righteousness and you look to him for holiness.

Listen, Hebrews 9.14, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? He purges your conscience from trying to make yourself righteous and holy, from looking at you acceptance with God, and he makes you look only to the Lord Jesus for all, for all. And when he applies the blood and purges your conscience from dead work, that's when he gives you faith, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. By grace are you saved through faith. That's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest we any man should boast. When he purges your conscience, he gives you faith in him.

Look at this verse 8. And they shall eat the flesh in the night, roast with fire and unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Christ declared that believing on him is eating his flesh and drinking his blood. That's how he described faith. John 6.53, the Lord Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. That's to say, except you believe on him, you do not have life in you. He said, whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. See, his flesh and his blood It's meat and drink indeed. You know what that means? It's life indeed. Truly life. When you believe on Christ, you have eternal life. I'm not waiting to have it. You have it now.

And listen, and the only reason you believe on him, the only reason you do it, he said, he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him. That's the only reason you believe. He took up his indwelling in you. and turned your new man to him to believe on him. So he gets the glory. And he said, listen now, and this is why I said we're not obligated to the old covenant law. We're looking to Christ and led of Christ and following Christ. Listen, as the living father hath sent me and I live by the father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. Our life is Christ. Even right now, Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. My old man's dead. Law killed him. He's been executed under law. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I. but Christ liveth in me. In the life I now live, in this flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. That's His faithfulness. That's Christ's faithfulness leading me and keeping me and preserving me and keeping me. He's gonna bring me to glory. You see, that's how we live now. Christ liveth in you.

So God commanded here that that lamb, it had to be roasted with fire. And that's the picture here. Faith really believes, I am crucified with Christ. I bore the fire of God's justice in Christ. I've already died. So when you see your sin and you're troubled by your sin, the only comfort from that is hearing the Lord Jesus declaring the gospel, that man's already died. He's already been crucified. God's justice has been poured out on him. Stop looking to your old man. Stop looking to your sin. See, the devil wants you to look to your sin and get troubled, then look to yourself to do something to make up for that. That's just more sin. That's self-righteousness. Don't do that. God will turn you and say, you eat this lamb. You trust him for all your acceptance with God.

And God commanded, he said, they must eat the lamb with unleavened bread. Levin pictures sin and self-righteousness. We believe on Christ, but we do not add any of our works to Christ. We do not add anything to Christ. And you eat it with bitter herbs. When he grants you repentance, you have sorrow and bitterness in your heart because you know it was for your sin that Christ died. Listen. He said, purge out therefore the old leaven that you may be a new law. Listen, as you are unleavened. You know how much sin, he said that in Corinth. Do you know how much those folks at Corinth were guilty of sin? They were just messed up, you know, exalting one preacher over another. They had one person that had committed incest with his stepmother. I mean, they just had all kind of sin going on. And did you know Paul called them brethren? Paul called them saints. He said, you are justified. You are sanctified. See, he wasn't looking on the outward. They had sinned.

But the only cure for a sinner, even once you believe, and you fall into sin like they did, the only cure is not the whip of the law, it's the gospel, the same gospel by which God first gave you life and faith and saved you, the same gospel. See, when he's entered in and done this work in your heart and made you see Christ has justified you and sanctified you, you are unleavened. That new man's a holy new man. God has robed you in the righteousness of Christ. If you have eternal life, you know what that is? Romans 8 says, the spirit is life because of righteousness. Life and righteousness are one and the same. When sin entered, death entered. Sin and death are the same. If you have life, you're righteous and you are leaven.

And so the gospel tells you, don't look to your works, purge out that leaven. Don't look to your works, don't look to yourself, He says, purge out that, because you are leaven, for even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep this feast, not with the old leaven of our works, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Look to Christ only.

And those bitter herbs, I said, we eat bitter herbs, We have sorrow because of when he grants you true repentance. Here's why. The Lord said, I'm gonna pour on the house of David, I'm gonna pour upon them the spirit of grace and supplication, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son and shall be in bitterness for him. as one is in bitterness for his firstborn.

You know what makes God's child not want to sin? You can preach rules and regulations, you can preach law all day. Paul said in Romans 7, the law made me sin. There's nothing wrong with the law, it's my sin nature. You tell a child, don't look in that room, and you turn around and walk away, that child's gonna go look in that room. If they know nobody's looking, they go, and if they don't do it outwardly, in their heart, they're looking in that room. And with God, that's sin.

But you see, what causes us bitterness is not rules and regulations. What causes us bitterness of heart over our sin is knowing my Savior already paid for this. He already died for me. The world hears that and says, if you tell a sinner that all their sin in the future has been paid for, they'll just sin all they want to, because that's what the world would do. That's how they look at it. But not God's child. God's child sees Christ bore all my sin. And so when you detect sin in yourself, or you say something you shouldn't, or do something you shouldn't, the conviction that causes you bitterness, that turns you from you to him, it's not law, it's grace, it's knowing Christ already bore this and put it away. That's what turns you to him and makes you mourn for him. Cry out to him, Lord, save me, please forgive me, please receive me in Christ only. And faith adds nothing to Christ. Verse nine says, they were to eat not of it raw, nor sodden it all with water, but roast with fire, the head with the legs, with the partners thereof, and you shall let nothing of it remain until the morning, that which remaineth of it until the morning you shall burn with fire.

When God gives you faith, you receive all Christ. Just like they would eat all the lamb, you receive all of Christ. All of his word, you rest all your hope in him. You have no confidence in you, everything's in him. And you don't leave anything to the morning. We live upon Christ day by day. He said, I'm giving you grace for today. Don't worry about tomorrow. You need to get through today. And he said, I'll give you grace for today.

And why did he tell them when they had some left over, why did he tell them to burn it? Don't leave it till tomorrow, burn it. You remember that serpent of brass that delivered them from being bitten by the snakes? Well, after a while, They started worshiping that serpent on a pole. They started bowing down to it. It pictured Christ. It wasn't Christ. Well, this ceremony was to remember Christ, but it wasn't Christ.

See, our coming in here to hear the gospel is like them going to that feast of the Passover. That was their form of worship then. Our form of worship is coming in here, hearing how Christ has fulfilled all these scriptures, how he is our life and his everything. But we don't worship the form. We don't worship the fact we attended. That's not gonna add to your righteousness. If you are sick and you can't come, that's not gonna subtract from your righteousness. If you show up, that's not adding to your righteousness. We're here because we want to be. We're here because we want to hear of our Redeemer, but we're not worshiping the form. We're not worshiping anything we do.

That's why he said, if they would have left that over, oh, they treated that just so special. Next thing you know, they're gonna be worshiping the ceremony rather than the Lord. In fact, when Christ came, that's what they were doing. That's why they rejected Christ. They were holding on to the picture. You ever, you know, if you're, spouse was over across the ocean, and you hadn't seen them in a long time, and you got a picture of them, like this ceremony's a picture of Christ. And you're looking at that picture of them, and every time you look at it, it just fills your heart with joy, and reminds you how much you love them. And then they come home. And you just keep hugging that picture, and holding on to that picture, and you just ignore them. Something's wrong with you.

Well, the ceremonies are just pictures. We're not worshipping the ceremony. We're not worshipping the form here. We're worshipping Christ. He's the express image of the things. He's the fulfilment. We're worshipping him.

And then so, last thing, verse 11. He said, you eat it with your loins girded, shoes on your feet, staff in your hand, eat it in haste, it's the Lord's Passover. They ate it as pilgrims, ready to leave Egypt. And we're worshiping the Lord, ready to leave. We're looking for him to come, we're ready to go home. This is not our home.

But I want you to see now, verse 12, the reason at the end he said, it's the Lord's Passover. For I'll pass through the land of Egypt this night, I will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord, and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt.

So he passed through, and all the firstborn of man and beast died in Egypt, but because the lamb died, see, all the firstborn in Israel died in the lamb, and so none of them died. They were under the blood.

Here's what I want to say to you that believe. Don't look anywhere but to Christ. Stay under the blood. God says, when I see the blood, he's looking to his son. He's not looking to you. He's looking to his son. When I see the blood, I'll pass over you.

And you that don't believe him, he's coming again. But when he comes a second time, he's coming to judge this world. And just like Egypt had the judgment poured out on them, He's poured out judgment on everybody that is not under the blood of Christ. Believe on Christ today and you'll be saved. But if you look to you, you lean to your own understanding, your own wisdom, you're gonna die. You're gonna die.

Now all of that, verse 14 says, was for a memorial. It was to keep them remembering it's God that saved them. God that redeemed them. This gospel's being preached for a memorial. This is the feast. to remember it's Christ who redeemed us. Look only to him.

And we observe that at the Lord's table. We're not using it as a mode of discipline. We're using it to remember the Lord. This do ye in remembrance of me. Remembering his broken body and his shed blood. Broken for his people, shed for his people. Christ is all our salvation. Trust him.

I'm gonna go shorter on the second message. It's usually reversed. I usually go shorter here and longer the second one, but I'm gonna go shorter the second message, I promise you.

But let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, pray that Christ is truly our teacher, our prophet, our priest, and our king, that you sovereignly call your people and make us look to you and you alone. Pray that you would apply the word however you've purposed. We know it won't return void. Thank you. Thank you for the gospel. Thank you for Christ. Thank you for every spiritual blessing you so freely given us through the blood of your son. Forgive us our sins, Lord. In Christ's name we ask it. Amen.