Now we'll be looking at that
passage that Brother Mark just read in Exodus chapter 12, but
I want us to start by going to Hebrews 11. That's the basis
of this series of messages concerning faith. Hebrews 11, the hall of
faith. And we're going to be looking
at basically one verse out of this passage and then go back
to the Old Testament there. in Exodus to try to see if the
Lord will be pleased to give us some understanding of this
passage. And it's talking about the Passover.
In Hebrews 11 and verse 28, talking about Moses, who was the deliverer,
God's appointed deliverer, who delivered the people, the Hebrew
people, the Hebrew children, Out of the bondage of Egypt,
you know the story of the Exodus. We're going to be talking about
next week, Lord willing, about the Red Sea, the Exodus, the
crossing of the Red Sea, and all of that. It's a wonderful
story, isn't it? It's impressive. And the thing about it is, you
know, I used to watch that movie, The Ten Commandments. You may
have seen it. Charlton Heston. I used to think Moses looked
like Charlton Heston. It was a wonderful movie, and
I was really impressed with that. Who was the director? Cecil B. DeMille, how he brought that
alive on the screen, and you saw all that. But you know what? All that, and if you had been
standing there in that day, watching all of that, and not even just
the movie that I saw, and probably just about all of you have seen,
nothing is more impressive about that whole thing than what I'm
preaching to you today. I mean, this right here, you
can watch that movie, or you could have been standing there
on the shore of the Red Sea, or back in Egypt before that
during the night of the Passover, and you could have still missed
the whole issue of salvation. That's something to think about,
isn't it? Listen to what he says here. Through faith. Verse 28
of Hebrews. Now that's by revelation from
God. Alright? Now Moses believed what
God revealed. This is God's word. But when
he says through faith, alright, that's God's revelation. That's
God's word. God came to Moses, and He said,
Moses, here's what I have for you. Here's what I'm saying to
you. Here's what I'm revealing to
you. All right? That's what through faith means.
Now, if you want to talk about the gift of faith, which God
gives His people so that we believe on Him and act accordingly, that's
in the next words, He kept the Passover. You understand what
I'm saying now? Through faith. Why did Moses believe this? Why did Moses do it? Because
God said it. So this faith of Moses has to
be based upon a proper authority. And a proper ground. And that's
the Word of God. Why do I believe what I believe? Well now, if I can't point you
to this Word, then it's empty. As far as salvation goes. It's
got to be based upon God's work. So it says, So he's talking about
Moses and the Hebrew children. they kept the Passover. Now the
significance, the miracle, the most impressive thing about this
whole issue of Passover, and we'll see next week about even
the Red Sea crossing. is that this thing is all about
salvation by the grace of God, which grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Now that's the real
miracle. And here's the thing too. I have
scripture to back that up. In fact, the Apostle Paul, he
made this statement when he was writing to the Corinthian church
about some issues that they were dealing with. He said, Christ,
our Passover is sacrificed for us. So I would ask you, believers,
are you keeping the Passover? Well, you are. But I don't think
you're going out here slaying a lamb or putting blood over
your door. Because you're not required to
do that. How do believers keep the Passover? We believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ. We rest in Him. We plead His
blood and His righteousness for our whole salvation. Now, this
is by revelation and commandment from God. When it says here that
Moses kept the Passover, that word kept literally means instituted. Moses instituted. started, even
though he wasn't the author of this, God is now. But he was
the human instrument that brought the word of God to the people
and he said, this is what God told me to tell us to do. This
is something we need to do annually. He said that later on. He said
forever, and we do keep it forever. We don't actually slay lambs
forever. We don't actually put blood over
it, but we keep it forever because Christ is our forever Passover.
That's it. We don't keep the Jewish Passover. We keep the Christian Passover.
And that's Christ. So that word kept means instant.
Moses inaugurated it. Moses established it unto the
Hebrew people, and later on Israel. The Passover, the sprinkling
of blood. God revealed this to Moses. Moses,
and he told Moses to establish this for the people. And Moses
believed God, and he did what God told him to do. And that's
basically it. Why did Moses do all that? Well,
it was because God gave him faith to believe two things. God's
threat of death, look at it, verse 28, lest he that destroyed
the firstborn should touch them. God said, I'm gonna kill all
the firstborn of Egypt. That's a threat. You ever made
a threat? I've made threats and I hadn't
followed through with it. God doesn't do that. He, number one, he believed God's
threat, but secondly, and most importantly, he believed God's
promise of life based on the blood of the Lamb. You ever made
a promise that you couldn't keep? I have. God doesn't do that. So he believed God's threat,
he believed God's promise, and isn't that the case with us who
believe the gospel of God's grace, of salvation? of mercy in Jesus
Christ. We believe that when we die and
when we stand before God at judgment, if we stand with Christ and in
Christ, washed in his blood, clothed in his righteousness,
we'll live forever with him. But if we stand before God at
judgment without Christ without a mediator, on our own, in our
best robes, pleading our best, we'll be condemned and we'll
perish forever. Eternal separation from God. That hymn that we just sang about
the Passover, do you notice in that third verse, hymn number
232, When I Seed the Blood, This verse, and you gotta, you
know, some people, they look at things like this and they
take it wrong. But it's a good verse, if you understand the
gospel. It says judgment is coming. All
will be there. That's the great white throne
judgment, Revelation, what, 20? And he says, each one receiving
justly his due. When we stand before God at judgment,
we will receive what is justly our due. Now here's the key. Based on what? What is my just
due? Whether God gave me what was
justly due to me, what I've earned and what I deserved, based on
my works, it would be eternal damnation. And I have to give an account.
But what if God gave me what was justly due me based upon
the righteousness of His Son? You see what I'm saying? And
that verse goes on to say, hide in the saving sin-cleansing blood. That's it. You see what I'm saying? Well, Moses believed that. This
is truly a matter of life and death, isn't it? We're not talking
about just religious opinions here. Why don't we in the New
Testament church keep the Passover like they did in the days of
Moses? Well, look back. Let's go back
to Exodus 12. Look at verse 13. We'll look
at some of these other verses briefly. He says, and the blood. the blood
of the lamb that he had described, this is Exodus 12, 13, and the
blood shall be to you for a what? A token. What is that? That's a sign. That's a picture. That's a foreshadowing. Now God
had already taught them and taught before this that the literal
animal blood of bulls and of goats can never take away sin. The physical blood of any animal
can never literally take away sin. Well, why did he have them
do it? It was a token. It was a sign.
It was a communication of truth. Something far greater than animal
blood. And whose blood did it point
to? Well, John the Baptist said it. Behold, the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sins of the world. God's people all over
the world. Jew and Gentile. And that's what
he says. That's why we don't slay lambs. I remember a good friend of ours
one time, he was talking about how he'd never read the Bible,
never been to church, and he decided he was going to read
the Bible. And he started at the book of Genesis. And when
he got up through Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus, he told
his wife, he said, well, according to this, we ought to be out here
sacrificing lambs. And he turned on the TV one Sunday
morning, her brother Henry Mahan, his TV broadcast, and the title
of the message that morning was, Behold the Lamb of God. And that's
when he first heard the gospel. This is about Christ. Here's
the miracle. If you're in Christ and you believe
in Him, you're as much a part of this as any Hebrew that was
in Egypt that night. You're more a part of it because
it's salvation for you forever and ever and ever, not just deliverance
from physical bondage. And any Hebrew who saw the reality
of that token, the sign, the truth, who look forward to the
Messiah coming as the Lamb, the sacrifice, the blood, the righteousness
of God, he's our brother or sister in
Christ. You see what I'm saying? All of this has been, it was
put in place for a time until the time of Reformation, until
the true Lamb would come. And now it's been abolished by
way of fulfillment. Now Jesus Christ is our Passover. And that's what Paul was trying
to tell the Corinthians. Listen, you know as believers,
sinners saved by grace, we're to do everything we can to fight
sin. And that's what Paul was talking
about in 1 Corinthians 5. He was admonishing and correcting
the Corinthian church because there was a scandal. Now my friend,
I know people say, well, you know, God doesn't make any difference
between sin, all sin is sin. Well, in a way that's true. All
sin deserves death. But every one of us here today,
we're all sinners. We're either sinners lost in
our sins or sinners saved by grace. But there are some things
that we do or say that can bring scandal publicly on the gospel. And you can't let that go. You
can't let that go unchecked. I mean, what would you do if
you saw me walking down the streets of Albany staggering drunk, you
know? I'd hope you'd come to me and say, Brother Parker, this
ain't the way to be. This is not a good testimony.
And that's what was happening in the Corinthian church. They
had a man there who was bringing scandal on the church. Now, we're
all sinners. We all need a righteousness we
cannot produce. Don't get me wrong. And any time
we have to deal with anything like this that brings public
scandal, we're not to do it self-righteously, we're to do it knowing that by
the grace of God, we're kept from it. But you can't let it
go unchecked. And that's what he meant when
he says, he says in, this is 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7,
you don't have to turn there, but he says, purge out therefore
the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you are unleavened.
And we'll talk about unleavened, what that means, unleavened is
a type of sin. He says, for even Christ, our
Passover, is sacrifice for us. Christ died to put away my sins. He didn't die so that I can excuse
it. Now again, I'm a sinner. And
sin contaminates everything I think, say, and do. But I'm going to
tell you something, there's no excuse for it. And we're certainly
not to promote it. He died to put it away. We're
too long to be like him. We're to fight sin. That's what
we're to do. But not in a self-righteous way.
We're to do it in a way of grace. So that's what he was talking
about there. But his point was that Christ died to put away
my sins. And look what he had to go through
to do that. Look at the agony. When sin was imputed to Christ,
Charged to Christ. When he was made sin in 2 Corinthians
5, look at what he had to suffer to put away my sins. And so then,
am I to relish in it? Promote it and execute? No. I'm
to fight it in a godly way. But let's get back to Exodus
here. You know, this Passover, was God's way of delivering the
Hebrew children out of the death of the last of the 10 plagues
that God brought upon Egypt for their sin. And you know that
was expressed through Pharaoh. He would not let the people go.
These 10 plagues, they began to be recorded in Exodus chapter
7. Remember the first one was water
into blood. The Nile River was turned into
blood. Water is an emblem of life in the Bible. Christ is
the water of life. Blood is an emblem of death.
God said, when I see the blood, that means the death of Christ.
That's what that means. Second plague was frogs. Remember
frogs? In the book of Revelation, frogs,
serpents, they're types of false prophets. Then lice, or some
people, you know, the third plague they say was lice, some people
say gnats. You know anything about gnats?
I used to, when I first moved here, I thought, is this the
state bird of Georgia? I shouldn't have said that. The fourth plague was flies,
and then the fifth plague was diseased animals. The animals
died, they were livestock. The sixth plague was boils. Everybody
got boils. The seventh was hail. The eighth
was locusts. And then the ninth plague was
the darkness of three days. And then the last one, the death
of the firstborn. That's the 10 plagues of Egypt.
And you know, all through those plagues, the Bible says that
Pharaoh's heart was hardened. He refused to let him go. And
there's a lot of things about that, you know, that kind of
boggle our minds in. You know, there are times it
says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Romans chapter 9 speaks of that.
And it even says this, it says that the reason God put Pharaoh
on earth and raised him up was for that reason. His glory. And then there are times it says
Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Somebody says, well, how do you
figure all that? Well, you go figure. I just know what the
book says. It's all I know. I know God is
God. He's good. He does what's right.
And I know Pharaoh deserved what he got. And I don't say that
self-righteously. I'm glad God doesn't give old
Bill Parker what he deserves. And you, too, if you're in him.
We're told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, we're told Pharaoh
hardened his own heart. Our minds need to focus on this,
God's judgment against sin, which we all deserve, and God's way
of redemption, which is by grace through Christ. Now that's where
our mind needs to go on this thing. The plagues were God's
judgment upon the Egyptians, but we're told, look back in
Exodus chapter eight, look at this, this is interesting. In
Exodus 8, we're told, in Exodus 8, look at verse 20. Let's just read this, he says, the
Lord said unto Moses, rise up early in the morning, this is
Exodus 8 and verse 20, stand before Pharaoh, lo, he cometh
forth to the water, and send him, thus saith the Lord, let
my people go that they may serve me. else if thou wilt not let
my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies." Now there's
one of the plagues. "...upon thee," I think that's
the fourth one, "...and upon thy servants, and upon thy people,
and into thy houses. And the houses of the Egyptians
shall be full of swarms of flies, and also to the ground wherein
they are on." Now look at verse 22. He says, and I will sever in
that day the land of Goshen in which my people dwell that no
swarms of flies shall be there to the end that thou mayest know
that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. God made a distinction
with his people in the land of Goshen. You know how they got to the
land of Goshen in the first place? There was a fellow named Joseph
who put them there. Joseph was a type of Christ.
You know what Goshen means? It means drawing near, they think. It probably has its roots in
an Egyptian word, but it means drawing near, drawing near to
God. Who put them there? Joseph did. We're in the land of Goshen spiritually. We draw near to God who put us
there, Christ. You see what I'm saying? You
see the picture there? Isn't that beautiful? Doesn't that
give you just, to me that just sends chills up my spine because
that's a whole lot better than knowing geography about Goshen.
That's what he's talking about and it says he severed them,
he separated them out. Now, when you look at the Hebrew
people, Do you suppose that God separated them out because they
were better than everybody else? They were less stubborn, less
rotten, less sinful. Is that what? Oh no. Remember
God told Moses about the people. He said, now let me tell you.
He says, you're going to go down. He said, they're a stiff necked
and rebellious people. Why did God sever them out? It
was because of an unconditional promise that he'd made around
400 years before to a guy named Abraham, a sinner saved by grace. An idolater when God found him. Justified based upon the righteousness
of Christ imputed. What the book of Romans chapter
four said. Isn't that amazing? So his severing them out had
nothing to do with their goodness, their number, their power, their
wisdom. It was just his sovereign will. That's it. But look on. He says in verse 23, this is
Exodus 8. He says, I will put a division
between my people and thy people. Tomorrow shall this be. Now,
if you've got a concordance in your Bible, look at that word,
a division. Anybody got a concordance that
says, what does it say? says redemption. That's what
that word means. A division. Severed them out
based on redemption. Now how did God redeem them?
By the blood. See all that? Far as we know,
none of these plagues fell upon the Hebrew people. Now somebody
said, well it doesn't say that about the first three. I don't
know what that means. The Bible doesn't say. But it
does say here that God made a division, a redemption. In fact, that same
Hebrew word, a division, is even translated in the English Bible
as redemption. For example, in Psalm 111 verse
9, He sent redemption unto His people. That's talking about
Christ. How did God send redemption to
His people? He sent Christ, the Redeemer. That's what the division means
there. This is all about Christ. Psalm 130, verse 7. Let Israel
hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with
Him is plenteous redemption. Same word. When God chose these people,
He didn't choose them because of their goodness or their seen
or foreseen. You know, people talk about God's
election where He looked down through a telescope of time and
He saw you and whether or not... My friend, that is so wicked. That is so self-righteous. And
every time somebody today looks at that Old Testament and reads
verses like 2 Chronicles 7 20, if my people who are called by
my name will humble themselves and think that they're going
to do that when the Hebrew people, the Israelites, didn't do it,
that's pride. What they're saying is God's
going to bless us because we're better people than they. We're
not. The scripture hath concluded all under sin, Jew and Gentile. Paul said, we're no better than
they and they're no better than us. We're all in need of salvation
by grace. Well, that's what this Passover
is about. So here's the final plague. Look
at Exodus chapter 11. Here's what he says. Verse one, the Lord said unto
Moses, yet I will bring one plague more upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt,
afterwards he will let you go hence, and when he shall let
you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. One
more plague. What was that plague? The death
of the firstborn. Now how would God save the Hebrews
from this plague? Exodus chapter 12. The Lord spoke
to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, verse 1, saying, this
month shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first
month of the year to you. You know, this thing is so important
that it changed the calendar. Your calendar is going to change
because everything that God has for his people begins and ends
right here in Christ. You know how we have our calendar,
they say B.C., before Christ, A.D., Anno Domini, the year of
our Lord. Of course, they've changed it
now, you know, because they don't want to give credence to just
one religion. Now it's B.C.E., that means before
the common era. What other era is there? I'm telling you. Right here's
where the calendar changed for me. How about you? This is when
my life began, when I saw Christ, when I saw the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ taking away my sin, and I could boldly say without
embarrassment, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputed
righteousness without works. And then I saw that God did this
for me before the foundation, let alone before I was born,
but before the foundation of the world, and then brought me
to faith in Christ. You know, God had this in mind
for the Hebrew people before they were ever born, before they
were ever brought down into Egypt? This was it. Look at it, verse
3. speaking in all the congregation
of Israel, saying, In the tenth 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. In other words, everything is
so specific here. Whatever is needed is what God
required and what God provided. No more than what they needed.
No more, no less. You see, Christ is all the righteousness
I need. To put away my sins, His blood
is all I need. I don't need anything more. It's
all unique. It's enough to put away the sins
of one person or a million, billion people. And it's not the amount of physical
blood that He shed on the cross. It's the quality of His death
which equals righteousness for His people. He's enough. Somebody said, well, Christ is
all you have. And I said, well, then I have
it all. I certainly have enough. For in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and you are what? Complete in him. Can you add anything to completeness?
If you have to add anything to completeness, it's incompleteness.
But I'm complete in Christ. That's what he means here, and
look on, he says in verse four, in the household, be too little
for the lamb. In other words, you got the lamb
and there's too much for one household. He said, let him and
his neighbor next to him, house, take it according to the number
of his souls. The souls, every man according to his eating shall
make your account for the lamb. In other words, everything is
specifically geared toward Christ being enough. That's what this
lamb represents. You don't need any more than
Christ, and you certainly don't need anything less. All you need
is Christ. That's what that's about. This
is God's choice of the sacrifice. In order to redeem us from our
sins, God had to appoint a mediator, a surety, a substitute, who was
willing to do what was required and able to do so, and that's
Christ. Verse five, he says, your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall
take it out from the sheep or from the goats. Christ was a
sinless sacrament. We're redeemed with the incorruptible
blood of Christ. He was made sin, but he knew
no sin. He wasn't made sin in any other
way but by imputation of our debt to him. That's it. Now he suffered because of that. He had to die. He had to suffer,
bleed, and die, be buried, and as a result, raised again the
third day. But sin was not transferred to
Him, or infused into Him, or imbued into Him, or any way imparted
into Him. Sin was imputed to Him. He was made sin. He was without
blemish. You remember in the book of Malachi,
One of the sins that God brings out through the prophet Malachi
of Judah in Malachi's day was they were bringing lame sacrifices,
sick, spotted sacrifices. No, God said, your lambs shall
be without the sinless substitute suffered on the cross justly
for our sins imputed to him. A male the first year. Christ,
you see, he was only 33, 33 and a half years old. Taken from
among the sheep, he came out of man. He had a humanity without
sin. He was made of the seed of David
according to the flesh. Verse 6, you shall keep it up
until the 14th day of the month. I think that most commentators
say that they had to watch the lamb to make sure that it wasn't
sick, didn't have any disease. The whole assembly of the congregation
of Israel shall kill it in the evening." That's when Christ
was cut down in the evening. He grew to that part of his life. In verse 7, they shall take up
the blood, strike it on the two doorposts and on the upper doorpost
of the houses wherein they shall eat it. That's a typical of our
faith in Christ. We believe in Him. We rest in
Him. Eating his flesh. Remember in
John chapter 6 he talked about that, he who drinks my blood
and eats my flesh. He's not talking about literal
eating and drinking there as if we're cannibals. No, he's
talking about faith in him. We feed upon him. We believe
in him, we rest in him, we feed upon him. He's our spiritual
nourishment. He's the water of life. He's
the bread of life. Verse 8, they shall eat the flesh
in that night, roast with fire, unleavened bread. There was to
be no leaven in the house during the Passover. And then they had
the feast of unleavened bread. Leaven was a type of sin. You
see, Christ was manifested to take away our sins. And He said,
eat with bitter herbs, they shall eat it, because that's the bittersweet
gospel. It is a bitter thing when we
consider our sinfulness and the sinfulness of this world. But
it's also a joyous thing as we look to Christ, joy and peace
in believing. Verse nine, eat not of it raw
or sodden it all with water. In other words, Christ had to
die completely, no part of him left living, and no mixture sodden
with water, couldn't be watered down. A watered down gospel will
do you no good. A watered down gospel is a false
gospel, another gospel. Roast with fire, Christ went
under the wrath of his father. Our God is a consuming fire.
The fire of God's wrath consumed him. For our sins imputed to
him. His head with his legs and the
pertinence, the inwards thereof. And verse 10, you shall let nothing
of it remain until the morning. That which remaineth of it until
the morning you shall burn with fire. In other words, he was
completely consumed. The whole Christ, the whole lamb
had to die. Verse 11, thus you'll eat of
it, your loins girded, your shoes fit. What that's talking about
is ready to leave. Have faith in God, he's bringing
you out. Have your bags packed. You're not a citizen of Egypt,
you're a citizen of the kingdom of God. We're not citizens of
this world. We're not to plant our feet so
firmly in this world as if it's the be-all and the end-all of
all things. And your staff in your hand,
and you shall eat in haste. This is going to happen quickly.
He said, it's the Lord's Passover. Well, he's coming through and
his judgment. And what did he say in verse
13? When I see the blood, I'll pass over you. Doesn't mean he
covers them over or passes them over without dealing with them
because there's got to be blood. It's based on redemption. It's
based on... Why is it when the Bible says God sees no sin in
his people, what does it mean? That's not talking about God's
omniscience. That's talking about God's justice.
And what does that mean? It means this. Blessed is the
man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God? God knows I'm a sinner. He saved
me by His grace. But He doesn't charge me with
my sin. He charges me with the righteousness
of His Son. That's what the Passover is all
about. That's what it means when He
says, when I see the blood. That's God's view of things,
and that's been His view of things from the beginning. You know,
when did God see the blood of Christ? Well, it says He chose
us in Christ before the foundation of the world. It says that He
gave us salvation in Christ before the world began. Does that mean
Christ didn't have to come and actually die? No, He had to come
and redeem us. He had to pay the price. He had
to die. under the wrath of his father,
be buried and raised again the third day because of our justification."
When it comes to God's people, he's always seen that blood.
He's always seen his son as surety. And then one day under the preaching
of the gospel, you know what he did? He caused us to see it. And that's when we, by faith,
put it over our doorpost. That's right, and we do it every
day. Forever. Because Christ is our Passover.
All right, let's turn in our hymnals too. Just a few pages
over from When I See the Blood. Hymn number 235, Pass Me Not.
In the first hymn, he said, when I see the blood, I'll pass over
it. We want God to pass over us there. But now here, he's
talking about the Holy Spirit's work in bringing us to see it.
And he says, pass me not.