Let's go back to that scripture
that was read to us there from the book of Exodus. As Ron stated,
this is a very familiar passage, at least to most of us. And I
suspect those of you who are watching my way of the internet,
this is a portion of scripture that you have read many times
and you're quite acquainted with it. But as I, I thought about
a subject for today. After all, it is the first day
of the new year. I thought of this portion of
God's Word for it says in chapter 12, look at verse 2, this month,
chapter 12 in verse 2 of Exodus, this month shall be unto you
the beginning of months It shall be the first month of the year
to you. This was such a very important
event that every year Israel has been partaking of and they
had the festival of the Passover. And it's in early spring. And they still do it to this
day. Observe the Passover. Israel was in bondage in Egypt,
as you well know. And it got there, of course,
because Joseph had been sent by the Lord to provide for his
family. And so they were blessed of God
through the wisdom that God gave to Joseph to be fed and taken
well care of. God had told Joseph that there
was going to be seven years of famine throughout all the land. Of course, he had wound up in
Egypt through a series of various events and then was elevated
to position second in charge of everything, he was second
to Pharaoh. And the Lord revealed to him,
had revealed to him, there was going to be seven years of famine,
seven years of great harvest, and then seven years of famine.
And he told Pharaoh, he said, now we need to save up all of
the food we can over the next seven years because then there's
going to be an awful famine. And Pharaoh, of course, put him
in charge of everything, and he filled all their granaries. And sure enough, after seven
years of planting, then God stopped the harvest, God stopped the
rain. Tell you, you're not going to
have a harvest if God stops the rain from the sky. And if he
blisters through his sunshine, if he blisters the crops. And
that's what happened. And so for seven years, there
wasn't going to be any more harvest. People started getting hungry.
So they had to go to Joseph to get food. Well, his dad was in
the land of Canaan. Things got so bad through a series
of events that he sent for his dad and his brothers and all
the family to come into Egypt, where he was, in the land of
Goshen. And he said, I'll take care of
you. And he did. He took care of them. They were
there 400 years. But at the end of the 400 years,
the good pharaohs died off. And wicked men arose and they
got power and they hated the Israelites. Made life miserable
for them. They were in bondage. They were
in captivity and they couldn't get away. Oh, they had become
a massive, a massive nation, lots and lots of people, but
they were in a situation in which they were under the awful tyranny
of a very, very cruel king. And of course Joseph had died
off and his brethren, all of that generation was gone. And so now they're under this
heathen ruler who had no concern for their safety, their welfare. He just wanted to use them as
laborers or slaves to the Egyptians. But in their In their pitiful
condition, they cried out to God, the Lord hurt them. And he sent a deliverer, a man
by the name of Moses. We're studying that on Wednesday
nights, or we'll get back to studying it on Wednesday nights
here a week from this coming Wednesday. But God sent several
devastating things called plagues. to the Egyptians, watched over
his people, watched over the Jews over in the land of Goshen. They were okay. They were safe.
The Lord took care of them. But then God said, I'm going
to send one more, one more plague. And after this, that evil Pharaoh
will let them go. And the Lord, as we had read
to us a few moments ago. He says to Moses, I'm going to
pass through Egypt, and I'm going to take the life
of every firstborn of every family, even from Pharaoh's house all
the way down to his servants. I'll take the firstborn of them
too." And for the Israelites, in order
for the very firstborn person in that family to be spared,
he said, here's what you do. You take a lamb. It's got to
be a male of the first year. No blemishes, nothing wrong with
it. It's got to be a perfect animal.
And I want you to kill it. I want you to catch the blood.
I want dad, the dads of the house, to catch the blood in a basin
throughout all of Goshen, all the Israelites, and take a bunch
of hyssop and go outside. And once you get outside, outside
the door, take that hyssop and dip it in that bowl of blood. And then you just put that blood
on the side posts there, on the side posts over here, and put
it over top. And this is what God said. When
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. I won't take the firstborn
of that house. And he said to them, this is
the means I'm going to use to deliver you from your bondage. And the Lord said to Moses and
Aaron at the very beginning of this, before He gave them all
the instructions, He said, this is going to be the beginning
of the year for you. This is when you're really going to live. This will be that time when you're
removed from bondage, from captivity, this awful slavery from which
you cannot escape. This will be the beginning of
the year. It's a time of celebration. It's a time of rejoicing. Now
let me tell you something. Our Lord Jesus is the Lamb of
God. God sent him into this world,
and he died for sinners, that God might be just and justify
the ungodly. And in this way, God saves his
firstborn, because God calls all of his people his firstborn. We're His firstborn. So I don't
understand the need for the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hear
me. In Adam, we all have sinned. Adam was a representative man. And he rebelled against God.
God gave him a specific rule. He said, you obey this. As long
as you obey this, you're OK. You'll live. Things are fine
between you and me. And Adam, he wasn't a private
man. He represented everybody who
had ever lived on this globe. Everybody except the God-man. who came 2,000 years ago, but
he represented everybody. And as long as he stood before
God innocent, we stood before God innocent. But the moment he rebelled, the
moment he sinned against God, Not only did Adam die spiritually,
he lost that fellowship with God. He lost that communion with
God. He lost that life of God. He
lost that acceptance with God. But not only did he lose everything,
we all did. See, that's the problem. You
say, but God's a God of love. I know He is. God is love. God is life. God is light. And also remember, God is holy. And wherever God, this holy God,
sees sin, he's got to go after it in his vengeance. The wages of sin is death. That's what the scripture says,
Romans 6, 23. The wages of sin is death. And our Lord Jesus, in order
to save us, to save His people, to save His family, our Lord
Jesus, that Lamb of God, He died. He died. He shed His blood in
order to save His people. And all of the firstborn of God,
all of God's family, we were saved by the Blood of the crucified
one. And this is a picture, what was
read to us by Ron a few minutes ago, this is a picture of our
Lord Jesus who died. Whose blood was shed. And God said this blood, this
shedding of the blood, it will lead to your freedom. your liberation, your salvation,
your deliverance. And who did all of this? God
did all of this. And our Lord Jesus, He is pictured
by every lamb that died on that Passover day. You'll notice that
you'll never read in Exodus chapter 12, lambs. It's always Lamb singular. Because every Lamb pointed to
the Lamb of God. In fact, the Bible says He's
the Lamb of God before the world was ever made. And in the purpose of God, He
was the Lamb who was slain for sinners in God's mind, in God's
purpose, in God's will. God would put him to death because
sin has to be punished by death. Learn that. Sin has to be punished
by death. Somebody's got to die. You know,
on this night that the Lord told Moses and Aaron all about, the
Passover night, there was death in every home. Either the death of a suitable
lamb or the death of a firstborn child. But justice was exercised
in every house. No house went untouched by death. Either the death of God's appointed
substitute, a lamb, of the first year without blemish, a male, either a lamb died for that firstborn
child, or God said, I'm going to take that firstborn child. I'm going to take his life. I
don't care who it is. even Pharaoh's firstborn child. And his firstborn died. So while
that broke his heart, it sure did. It broke his will for a
little bit. But that's how serious God is
about punishing sin. And let me tell you something,
when our Lord Jesus came into this world, All of the sins of all of God's
family, they're called the elect. They're called the chosen ones.
All of the sins of God's people were made to meet on the Son
of God. Legally charged to Him. None of us have any idea of the
number of sins that we have committed. And it's more than just the sins
that we commit, it's the sin that we are. It's our nature. But God took all of that mass. In Isaiah chapter 53 and verse
6, I read this with Brady yesterday, we worshiped as we He and I did. I read to him Isaiah 53, and
we talked about that passage of Scripture. And verse 6 says,
All we like sheep have gone astray, and all of us have turned to
the wrong way. But God laid on Him the iniquity
of us all. That's why Christ died. That's why Christ died. Because
when our sins were made to meet on Him, God in His vengeance,
God in His holiness, God in His fury, He had to strike out against
His own Son. And the sword of God's justice
Zechariah 13 says it was plunged into the heart of the Son of
God. I know men treated Him brutally. But the main, the main part of
His sufferings, His soul suffered. And the scripture says it pleased
the Lord to bruise Him. That's what satisfied God. You
see, on this fateful night, as the Lord, some said, destroying
angel, the Lord said, I'm going to pass through. I suspect the destroying angel is the Son
of God Himself. But He said, I'm passing through. And that which will satisfy me
is blood." Ron read to us, the Lord said, the blood shall be
a token upon the door. The Lord passed through and there's
blood, there's blood smeared on this side and on this side.
You don't reckon they use Painter's tape, do you? I don't think it's,
I think it'd just smear that, if I go outside and our firstborn,
David, over in Japan, talked to him this morning, videotaped,
video with him this morning. I'll tell you what, if I had
lived back then, Lord told me to do that, I'd catch that blood
in the basin, and I'd tell Nancy and Susanna, y'all stay in here,
I'm going out there, I'd take that hyssop and dip it in blood
and boy, I'd paint it red, wouldn't you? Because it's a token. The Lord
said it's a token. It's the evidence that you've
done what I commanded you to do. You have killed a lamb. The blood's a token to us, but
it's what satisfied God. And I'm telling you, when our
Lord Jesus Christ died, God was satisfied. God demanded death
for sin. Don't let anybody tell you any
different. God demanded death for sin. And
he's going to get death. And there will be a death as
far as you're concerned. It'll either be the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God convinces you of
your neediness before God, of your lack of righteousness before
God, of your sinfulness before God. He'll convict you and lead
you and bring you and draw you to the Lord Jesus Christ and
in your heart you'll say, this is the Savior I must have because
I'm a sinner. And Christ died for sinners. And if God leads you to do that,
that's the evidence death's already taking place for you. The death of somebody else. But if God doesn't deal with
you in mercy and in grace, and you go through life marching
right along, say, well, I'm trying to be a good person, All that
sort of stuff. You get down to the end of life's
way. And you, as our sister Crystal
did, Friday morning you breathe your last. That'll be your death then. And
here's the thing of it, your death is gonna last forever.
It's an everlasting death. Are you interested in this? This
is such a powerful passage of Scripture. It's certainly interesting. It's certainly something to grab
our attention. But I want God the Spirit to
convince us of it because if we ever see If we ever see the
necessity of God's Lamb dying for us, being buried for us,
and raising for us, and ascending for us, and interceding for us,
if we ever see Christ as all, if the Spirit of God opens our
eyes, that becomes the beginning of our life. That's the beginning. That's the first of the month
right there. That's the first of the year.
And I'll tell you, you'll thank God for that the rest of your
life. From this time forth, Israel
said, because God commanded it, God said, this will start you. They called it the ecclesiastical
calendar, their religious calendar. This is the beginning of months.
Because you see, when you see you need Christ Jesus, when God
the Spirit overwhelms your soul by your great lack of righteousness,
everything that God demands you can't produce. And then you find
out Christ is made unto some people wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. This is the Savior I need. Oh,
Lord Jesus Christ, I believe you. I trust on you. That's the
beginning right there. That's when your calendar starts.
Not till then. So Israel reckoned its existence
on the day that God brought them out of Egyptian bondage. And I remind you, justice passed
by no house. Justice passed by no house. And
justice is not going to pass y'all's house by. It won't pass
by. There's either the blood that
God sees, or it's you. I sure don't want that for anybody
of my family, anybody I know. Well, Jim, you're just a religious
fanatic. Might as well be fanatic about
the truth is what I say. I'm rather excited about this
because you see, God the Spirit has, He has taken, He has applied
the blood of Christ to me. He's washed me in the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. We've seen that song, wash me
in the blood and I shall be clean. Wash me. I'll be whiter than
the snow. Well, let me give you several
things here. Here's a lamb demanded. And God
describes what this lamb got to be like. Look there in verse
4. He says, now, to every family
take a lamb. If you have a little family and
people beside of you, your next door neighbor, they got a little
family and the dads get together and say, hey, let's just go together
on this. It's like Bill. Bill, we're next-door
neighbors, so let's just go together. You've got a little family and
I've got a little family. If we live back then, okay, we'll
do that. And then we pick out a lamb.
It says in verse 5, your lamb shall be without blemish. Christ
was without blemish. Perfect. Leviticus 22, 21 says,
it shall be perfect to be accepted. That's the only kind of sacrifice
God's going to accept. Christ is the perfect lamb of
God. Your lamb should be without blemish.
A male, a male. Why not a female? Well, a man
got us in this mess. It's going to take another man
to get us out of it. And he's got to be the God man.
One week ago today, we celebrated Christmas. And people across
this land, in many countries, acknowledge the coming of Messiah
Jesus of Nazareth, born of a virgin, just a babe. has a real baby. But it was more than just a baby. That's God who's taken up residence
in that baby. And not merely taken up residence
in it, but joined Himself to that body. And as He came into
the world, read Hebrews 10, He said, A body thou hast prepared
Me. And He came to inhabit it. Gotta be a male. Gotta be a man. Because Adam, Adam sinned and
we became unrighteous. Christ came down here. The God-man,
he's called the last Adam. And he, by his obedience unto
death, brought in everlasting righteousness. See, we lost our
standing with God in that first Adam. We're restored to favor
with God through the last Adam. You see, as Adam, first Adam
represented all his generation, all of his seed, so Christ came
down here. He represented all his. And by
his obedience, we are legally before God made righteous, the
righteousness of God in him. So it's gotta be a male of the
first year. That's important, right there
in verse five. That is in the very, oh, the very strength of its life. Not a baby lamb and not an old
decrepit sheep or goat that's just Got hooves on a banana peel,
about ready to leave this world. I want one, God says, one in
the very strength of his life. Because that's the way Christ
was, you see. He said you can take it from
the sheep or the goats. Now look at verse 6. Keep it
up to the 14th day. Keep it up four days. What's
that for? Inspection. Our Lord Jesus, He
came down here. God manifest in the flesh. He
came down here and He entered into Jerusalem on Monday. And
then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday He died. Four
days He was examined. And you know what Pontius Pilate
said? I find no fault with this man.
But more importantly, God didn't find fault with him. And I mean,
God, he scrutinized every thought, every word, every motive. We forget that God sees everything. He knows everything. And I mean,
he just, he examined Jesus of Nazareth up one side, down another, his whole life. I find no fault with this man."
Then it says, "...and the whole assembly of the congregation
of Israel shall kill it in the evening." Who killed Jesus? Well, I know ultimately God did. But the reason He had to die
is because of the sins of the whole congregation of his people. That's why he had to die. And
you, my believing friend, you had a hand in his death. You're not faultless on this. When he came into this world
2,000 years ago, In the fourth day of creation,
as it were, 4,000 years after creation had taken place, 2,000
years ago, when He came, He was rejected and nobody wanted
Him. But He came for the congregation
of Israel. That's who He came for, His true
Israel. Our sins killed Him. My sins
nailed Him to the cross. Verse 7, He says, they shall
take the blood, strike it on the two side posts, on the upper
post of the houses wherein they shall eat it. Don't put it down
on the threshold. Don't put it down on the floor
where people trample all over it. It represents the blood of the
Savior. The blood of the Son of God. And then notice verse 8. And
they shall eat the flesh that night, roast with fire. They
put it on some kind of a spit, you know, and turned it over
a fire. They didn't just set it right
down in the flames. Turned it over a fire so that
the heat, the heat of that fire touched every portion of that
lamb outwardly. And our God put his son, as it
were, upon the spit over the fire of his wrath. And God turned it. And our Savior felt in his body
and in his soul the very fury of God's anger
against sin. God did that to him. Because he bore our sins. Let
me tell you something. He spared not his own son, and
he spared not the angels that fell to begin with. He's not
going to spare you if you die without a Savior. That's right,
isn't it? Not going to spare you. Notice verse 8, they shall eat
the flesh in that night, roast with fire. The door had been marked. The
family's inside. And mom said supper's ready. What are we having tonight? Roasted
lamb. Roasted lamb. Well, Dad, isn't
that the flesh of the lamb that you killed earlier today and
you put the blood outside? That's exactly right. And the firstborn said, Dad,
that lamb died for me, didn't he? You're right, son. And you don't have anything to
worry about because the substitute, according to God's purpose, died
in your stead. Let me tell you something. Those
who feast on the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, you have nothing to
fear from the wrath of God. God's already dealt with your
substitute. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus. He says, and eat it roasted with
fire and unleavened bread. If you look over in 1 Corinthians
chapter 5, you don't have to do it right now. I'm going to
talk about Christ. Our Passover is sacrifice for
us. It talks about unleavened bread,
sincerity and truth. Sincerity and truth. From the
heart, believe in the very truth of God. And you eat of it. This is nourishment
for them. Jim, I see that I'm a sinner
before a holy God. What shall I do? Pull up a chair
at the banquet of grace and feast on the Lord Jesus Christ. Feast on Him. with unleavened bread in sincerity
and according to the truth of God's Word now. And with bitter herbs shall ye
eat it. I tell you, Lord, God the Spirit makes sin to be bitter
to you. Eat it with bitter herbs. Watch
verse 9. Don't you eat of it raw. Don't eat of it raw. It's got
to be roasted. See, there are a lot of people
today who want to talk about Jesus as the example, Jesus as the
healer, Jesus as the friend of the friendless,
and those things are all true. But it's the judgment of God
that was satisfied. That's what we're interested
in. Yes, He's our example. Yes, He's the one who performed
miracles and all of those things. But the emphasis of the Word
of God is the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lamb had to die. This is the emphasis from Genesis
1 to Revelation chapter 22. It's all about the Lamb and His
death that satisfied God and saved His people. Put away our
sins and brought in for us everlasting righteousness. Ain't that something? And churches do this. They'll talk about, you know,
Be charitable. Treat everybody nice like Jesus
treated everybody nice. Their eating of the lamb raw. It's not the lamb raw that saves. It's the lamb who suffered the
wrath of God and the fire of God's vengeance that saved. The
roasted lamb. You with me? That's important.
Watch this, verse 9. Nor sodden at all with water. Don't boil it, because if you
boil it, water gets into the meat, and some of the meat gets
into the water. And all across this country today,
and you know if God's given you ears to hear and a mind to understand
the truth of the Gospel, all across this world today, people
are preaching a watered down Gospel that's no Gospel at all. The Gospel is about substitution. The Gospel is about satisfaction. The Gospel is about what God
must be, just and justifier through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. You watch that water business
because there are preachers all over the place. They want to
boil the lamb, water it down. I'll tell you what, those who
try to water down God's gospel, He'll deal with them one day.
It's the roasted lamb. And He says His head with His
legs and the pertinence thereof, it's the whole Christ. You don't
pick and choose what you want. It's prophet, priest, and king.
Christ in all of His offices. And the Lord said, let nothing
of it remain till the morning. Gonna have some bones left over,
because scripture says not a bone of him shall be broken, and it
says that concerning the lamb too, a little further over in
Exodus. But he says, eat it. Feast on
the lamb. Anybody hungry? Anybody hungry
in your heart? Pull up a chair. Come and dine. See, that's what we do every
time we come in here. We dine on the gospel of the
Christ of God. And God says, your loins girded. Girded with the garments of God's
salvation. Shoes on your feet. Our feet
shod with the gospel of peace. Staff in your hand. This is not
our dwelling place. Eat it in haste. It's the Lord's
Passover. God said, this night I'll pass
through Egypt. I'll smite all the firstborn
in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, against all the gods
of Egypt while I execute judgment. He says, verse 13, and I'll quit. And the blood shall be to you
for a token upon the houses where you are. And God said, when I
see the blood, when I see the blood. Sometimes
I don't see the blood so clearly. Sometimes my mind is somewhere
else. I am not even looking at the blood. But God's always looking
at the blood. God says, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. Death's not going to come to
you. There's already been a death for you. The death of the Son
of God. He said, this day is a day of
memorial. Well, what song do you reckon we're going to close
with? I had another one picked out till I landed on this subject,
and then I changed it. 232.