The title of my message this
evening is, A New Beginning. He says in Exodus chapter 12
and verse 1, 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. This is the beginning. That's
what God tells me. This is the beginning. I don't
know what month it was on the Egyptian calendar. It's hard
to say what month it was on our calendar. We was going back and
talking about our Easter, which is what men, they go back and
tie that into this Passover. And sometimes it's in March.
And sometimes it's in April. It ain't always in the same month.
But whichever month it is, that's the start. That's what God told
Him. To you, He said, this is going to be the first month.
And He changed their calendar. He named that month Abib. We'll
get into that a little bit later on. But this was the beginning. And this marked the beginning
of Israel as a people. Marked their beginning. God was
about to deliver them as a nation, as a people, out of Egypt and
take them as one group all the way into that promised blessings
that He promised through Abraham. And the reason I mention those
things about the month, the only reason I would mention those
things, I wouldn't waste my time worrying about calendars and
all of this kind of thing. The spring is the beginning,
isn't it? That's what it is. And God picked this month to
be in the spring of the year. That marks the beginning of the
year. That marks the beginning. The winter's over and now it's
spring. It's time to plant. And you can go all down through. These seasons were incorporated
in the preaching of Christ and they were applied both to the
age of civilization. He's talking about what month
it is over the whole scope of things, whether it was winter,
summer, or spring, talking about that age. This is the last days
that we're living in. The last days. And then he also
applied that to the work of God on the heart. And he also applied
it even to natural Israel at their rejection of Christ. But
I do know this, I know that springs has to do with the sacrifice
of Christ. And all of these seasons do.
That's what we're told over in the book of Ecclesiastes, aren't
we? He said, to everything there
is a season and a time, to every purpose under heaven. And so
it is with the seasons. But I do know this. It's got
something to do with that sacrifice. Jeremiah said this. He said,
the harvest is past, Summer has ended and we're not saved. That's
what Jeremiah said about the seasons. He likened those seasons
unto Israel and this coming Redeemer. And he said, the summer's gone. It's gone. And harvest is past. And we ain't saved. We ain't
saved. Passover marked a new beginning
for Israel. They'd no more be treated as
servants and vagabonds, but as children of God. And what marked
this new beginning was the appearing of the Lamb. That's what I want
you to see. I've been laboring these past months to show you
the plagues of Egypt as the revelation of God that convinces us of sin. All of this convincing of sin
is leading up to the Lamb. It doesn't matter how much you
know about sin, if you don't know the Lamb, all that didn't
do you any good. But all of these things are leading
up to the climax of the Lamb. And as Israel was preserved by
the hand of grace over in Goshen, they were made to see the idolatry
and the deceitful power of Egypt exposed for what it was. That's
why God sent Him over there, and we've talked about these
things in the past month, as He sent plague after plague after
plague. Until at last they sat in God's
light in their house in Goshen, and beheld the whole nation held
in chains of darkness, unable to break free from the bondage
of sin." Now that's likened unto the experience of grace that
God causes us to see this world. Don't you see this world like
that? They're bound in chains. How do you know that? Because
we sit here in a house of light, and we look out and see those
things. If it wasn't for that, we'd be in the same chains they
are. We'd be held by the same chains. And those chains of darkness,
you can go on and on and on with these things, but I'm telling
you this, until you see these things in the light of that experience
of grace in your heart, according to the Word of God, as it's set
forth in the Word of God, then these churches and this world's
religion and all of these things are intimidating to you, aren't
they? But I tell you, once He exposes them for what they are,
they don't intimidate you anymore. I'm not intimidated by them.
I know they outnumber me a billion to one. But I'm not intimidated
by them. Because I know whom I have believed. But they sat there in that light,
and they beheld that whole nation in darkness. And then when the
fullness of time was come, God sent the Lamb. He set before
them the Lamb. When the time was come, there's
a time to set forth the Lamb. You don't set forth. He didn't
just come down there and set out the Lamb. He came down there
and convinced them of sin first and exposed the idolatry of that
Lamb. Now, sometimes you wonder, Pastor
Boyd, you just wearing the folks out up there talking about sin
and so on and they're mad and they hurt some of them and all
of these things. Well, it's necessary. It's necessary. God's going to have to convince
men of sin before you see anything about the Lamb. Otherwise, Lamb
don't mean nothing. When you see that idolatry and
you see all that darkness in Egypt, that darkness that can
even be felt in the death, my soul at the death that's went
on in these last three or four plagues, Can you imagine hail
balls, 135 pounds falling down enough to break trees and then
think everybody got out of that safe? Well, that place was covered
with corpses. You know it was. And the lightning,
the lightning that fell down and ran up on the ground. You
go through the scriptures and I don't have time tonight to
do it, but in my study, I went over and looked at several things
in Jeremiah and Isaiah and all these prophets. And you go over
there and you listen to them down in their history, go back
and refer to those things, and they give you a little bit more
detail on that hail and on that fire and on all that stuff. And
it's frightening, I'm telling you, at the death that went on
in Egypt before he ever got to the firstborn. But God now brings
all these plagues to a head and He exposes their evil in the
firstborn sons of every man from Pharaoh to the maidservant behind
the mill. That's that image and hope set
forth by Satan in natural men and that which must die at the
hand of God to His firstborn. You're not going to see His firstborn
until your firstborn die. And He's going to have the preeminence
in your heart. God will not reveal His firstborn
to you and let that other firstborn abide together. His firstborn
and Satan's firstborn ain't going to stay in the same house. God
wouldn't let Ishmael stay with Isaac, would He? Same reason.
Same reason. From this day forward, the Lamb
would have preeminence in Israel. The Lamb. Everything they did,
The preeminent thing about it was that Lamb. That Lamb. And
it's the Lamb that marks out the new beginning. When God sends
true deliverance to the soul, He does so by taking the things
of Christ and showing them unto us. That's how that deliverance
comes. Turn with me to John chapter 16. It's by faith that we hear the
message of the Prophet and the high priest of our faith, and
we select from all these others a spotless lamb. And then dying
at our own hands, we willingly apply this blood to our house
and reverently eat the flesh within. That's where God's brought
Israel. And this is how men are set free
from sin. Now, watch this here in John
16.8. This is so simple. What complicates these things
is religion. It's all these religious nonsense
that fills our head. And then when we read the Bible,
we start questioning, well, how can that be? What's that mean?
It's really not. If you blank those things out,
or as God did, he just destroyed them before the people made them,
exposed them, then what he tells you is pretty simple about the
lamb, wasn't it? It wasn't uncomplicated about that at all. Now, what's
this? Verse 8, John 16, 8. And when
He, that is the Holy Spirit, is come, He will reprove the
world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin, because
they believe not on Me. Only Israel had the blood on
the doorpost. Nobody else had. Just Israel. Only Israel ate the roasted flesh. Nobody else ate lamb that night.
It just is so. And then what's this? A righteousness
because I go to the Father, and you see me no more. He came to
accomplish and manifest God's righteousness, and having done
that, God declared His approval and satisfaction, and therefore,
He abides still with the Father. If He had not accomplished that
righteousness and redemption, He'd still be here, because that's
what He came to do. But having accomplished those
things, how he convinces us now, he ascended. God raised him from
the dead and he ascended up. He's seated at the right hand
of God. That was the message of the apostles. He's accepted
of God. And I have a righteousness because
he goes to the Father and I don't see him no more. On his neck, he said, they that
look for him shall he appear the second time without sin.
That is, he's not coming here as a sin bearer, but he's coming
here in righteousness and true holiness and coming here to wind
things up. And then he tells us in verse
11 of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. As Pharaoh's
pretense to deity was exposed and all his future denied, So
is Satan's Antichrist, son of perdition, slain by the hand
of God in Christ. He's exposed for what he is.
Is he powerful? Well, sure he is. Sure he is. But God pulled his fangs, didn't
he? He took his claws, exposed him
for what he was. Pharaoh, he might have been a
powerful man, and Egypt might have been a powerful nation until
God exposed them for what they were. Then they were at His mercy
entirely. What's this? Verse 13, Howbeit,
when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into
all truth. He shall not speak of Himself,
but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak. And He will
show you things to come. He's not talking about future
events and all that kind of nonsense, He's talking about the things
of God that are to come, His second coming. He's talking about
there. He's talking about the preaching
of the gospel and conversion of souls. He's going to show
you things that are surely going to come to pass according to
the will of God. And He'll glorify me, Christ
said in verse 14, for He shall receive of mine and show it unto
you. Now that's what's going on down
here in Egypt. God's taking the Spirit of God through His ambassador
Moses, is taking the things of Christ and showing them unto
them. That's what He's doing with the
Lamb. And that's its precedence. That's how it's tied in to what
we're doing here tonight. So it's the preeminence of the
Lamb that marked the new beginning. And it's the same thing in a
believer's life. It's that preeminence of the Lamb when it becomes Christ
only. When his whole life becomes Christ,
when he's born of God and he sees there is no other hope,
it's all Christ. In him dwells, here's the glory,
here's the answers. I don't care what the question
is, here's the answers. They're in Christ. I need this. No, you don't. Right here it
is. Right here is the fountain. This is the fountain. And all
these other things, you know, they come out of the heart. There's
no end to that. That's like sticking your finger
in the dock. You find these little things over here and you put
a little band-aid on them and this springs a leak over here
and you stick your finger in and here's another one. That's
the heart of man. It just bubbles and pours out.
But when a man finds Christ, when he finds Christ, oh, that's
a new beginning now. That's a whole other story, ain't
it? I can go back in my life and I can see a lot of things,
but I can tell you this, Christ marked the beginning. He marked
the beginning. He convinced me of sin and then
He revealed the glory of Christ to me, the same as He did to
them here. And then secondly, there are several things that
I didn't have time to show you last week that I want you to
see concerning the Lamb. Last week, I talked a little
bit about the unblemished lamb and the ordained lamb and the
lamb preached. This week, I want to add just
a little bit more information to that. First of all, he tells
us down here in Exodus 12, verse 6, that the whole congregation
of Israel shall kill to sacrifice in the evening. Now, I've read
a lot on this. Brother Don had the best comments
of anything that I've read, and I'll give them to you. He said
that this speaks prophetically of three things to come. First
of all, that the whole nation of Israel would fulfill their
typical design by slaughtering the Lamb of God. That's the first
thing this shows you. The whole nation of Israel, natural
Israel, is going to be guilty in the death of Christ. Every
last one of them. They were going to stand out
there. They were some pro and some con, but the elders and
chief priests went out among the multitudes and began to talk
and persuade them until everybody there was crying, crucify, crucify. The whole nation would fulfill. It tells you over in Luke 22,
verse 1, it says, at the approaching of the Passover. Now listen to
this. This is Luke 22. He said, at the approaching of
the Passover, the chief priests and scribes sought how they might
kill him. How fitting that was, on that
Passover. In Acts 2.22, he said, ye men
of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, the man approved
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which
God did by Him in the midst of you all, as you yourselves also
know, Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge
of God, you have taken and with wicked hands have crucified and
slain." So that's the first application of that verse. And then secondly,
is that all the congregation of spiritual Israel are the true
beneficiaries of that sacrifice. We reap all the benefits of that
crucified Christ, that natural Israel slayed on that cross.
That which was given to us in Christ Jesus, He said before
the world began, is now made manifest by the appearing of
our Savior Jesus Christ who has abolished death and brought life
and immortality to light through the gospel. We know that. We know what that lamb represents.
We know for whom it's blood we shed. We know all the details.
All the details. And then the third prophetic
thing this speaks of is the time of the dying of the substitute.
It was in the evening of time. It was to be done in the evening,
he said, in the evening. One time, Paul said, in the end
of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. He was to be killed by the whole
congregation of Israel. If we have no hand in his death,
we have no part in the benefits. God's going to have you. He's
going to have you to see that it's your sin for which he died. If we had no hand in it, we had
no part in its benefits. And then secondly, in Exodus
12, verse 8, he said, they shall eat the flesh that night, roast
with fire and unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. I want
to consider these one at a time. First of all, let me establish
this. True faith is eating the sacrifice. That's what that is.
That's what we eat. You know, you can talk all you
want to about this, that, the next thing, but the appetite
of the true believer is for the sacrifice. That's what he wants
to hear. That's the only thing that'll
hit his heart. It's the only thing that'll give him hope.
It's the only thing that'll give him peace. Only thing that'll
establish him and make him strong and make him able to resist. It's the eating of the sacrifice. And that's what it is. That's
what it is. Turn with me to John chapter
6. John chapter 6. In verse 51,
he said, I am the living bread which came down from heaven.
If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever. And the
bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for
the life of the world." Verse 53. Look down toward the end
of that verse. He said, "...except you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no
life in you. For My flesh is meat indeed,
and My blood is drink indeed." Now all these men, they heard
Christ saying these things. And they thought, he's talking
about cannibalism. He's a madman. He's finally been
exposed. He's a madman. And they turned
around and left. And left. And the Lord turned
around to the disciples. He said, you're going to go too.
They said, where are we going to go? You have the words of
life. What was he telling them here?
He was telling them to eat the sacrifice. That's what he's telling
them. Eat the sacrifice. And he tells
them down in verse 63, he said, it is the spirit that quickeneth.
The flesh profiteth nothing. If you eat my flesh, it'll profit
you nothing. That fleshly understanding and
fleshly ordinances and all those, that don't amount to nothing.
He said, it's the spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth
nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and
they are life. But he said, there are some of
you who don't believe. You don't believe. How do they know that?
Because they didn't eat the sacrifice. No hunger. This eating was an
eating of faith. And then secondly, they were
to eat the lamb roast in the fire. Now the old Jewish, I don't
pay a whole lot of attention to these old Jewish historians
and things, but you've got really, you've got nothing to go by as
far What did they do with that lamb? They just take it and throw
it on the fire? Well, it would just burn up to
a crisp if they did that. Well, did they put it on the
spit and turn it, or what did they do with this thing? Well,
the old historians say, those who lived in that day, say that
they took two skewers. There was one that went upright
from top to bottom, and one that went this way. How fitting. How fitting that was. The exact
stature that He would bear our sins and His own body on the
tree. And they didn't put Him on a
thing and turn Him. They put Him on a hook and hung
Him up. And He hung up like that over
that fire. Probably didn't have any idea
why they did that. And yet, what a fitting symbol
it was of how that the Lord would die. They were to eat the lamb roast
in the fire. And then watch this. They were
to eat this roasted flesh with unleavened bread. I've already
showed you in John 6 that the bread is His flesh. That's what
He's talking about there. And this bread that they eat
with the flesh, this is talking about faith. And it's talking
about Whenever he talks about leaven,
I read to you earlier, before I prayed this evening, I read
to you this account over here. And how many times did he specify
unleavened bread, unleavened bread, unleavened bread? When
he comes over into the New Testament, in the book of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, and so on, and you're reading about that, he
calls this leaven, beware the leaven of the Pharisees. He's
talking about their doctrine. He's talking about an understanding.
How this sacrifice is to be eat, it's to be eat without that leaven.
It's to be eat as it's set forth of God. That's what he's telling
you. There is a way to eat the sacrifice
and there's a way not to eat the sacrifice. Ninety-nine percent
of religion today eats it the wrong way. They eat it with leavened
bread. We eat it with unleavened bread.
Faith is unleavened in the doctrine. It's true doctrine. It's true
doctrine. And it's true faith. Not just the lamb, it's the lamb
alone. The lamb alone. And we eat the
lamb as God has set him forth. That's what Paul and the rest
of these apostles just labored to point out. That God had set
him forth as a propitiation. And that's how he's to be eaten. And then he says, eat it with
bitter herbs. What's that mean? Well, I think
there he's talking about a penitent heart, don't you? When we eat,
the true believer in true worship, when he eats, that faith eats
the lamb, he eats it with a bitter heart, knowing what he is, what
he's done, and why that lamb's dying on that tree. That lamb's
dying. He's bearing our sins in his
own body on the tree. That's bitter. And that's the
way he sets it forth. We eat these things with bitter. In 2 Corinthians 7 verse 9, I'll
just read this to you. You won't have to turn over there.
But Paul said, I rejoice not that you were made sorry, but
that you sorrowed to repentance. For you were made sorry after
a godly manner that you might receive damage by us and nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented
of. But the sorrow of this world
worketh death. This sorrow, these bitter herbs
that he's talking about, is to be eaten with the sacrifice.
There's a big difference. They didn't just eat bitter herbs
and walk around. They ate bitter herbs in the
light of that sacrifice. As they ate the sacrifice, they
ate it with bitter herbs. You know, not very much further
in the book of Matthew where we're at in our Sunday school
lesson, he gets into the Beatitudes. Do you remember what the first
two was? He said, blessed are the poor in spirit, the poor
in spirit, and blessed are they that mourn. That's in bitter
earth. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,
and they shall be comforted. And then consider this, the lamb
was to be eaten. Now, I'm going to go against
the grain here a little bit tonight. I know Israel was commanded to
eat the flesh of the lamb, and I said this last week that they're
to eat the whole lamb, but you better read that again real careful.
They're not commanded to eat the whole lamb. That's not what
that says. This lamb was to be roasted whole. But God didn't command them,
Nathan, to eat the bones, and to eat its brains, and to eat
its eyes, and its nerves, and muscle, and hoofs, and all that. And you read what it tells you
there. It says to put him in that fire,
his head and his legs, he was whole. Not a bone of him should
be broken. He's beset in that fire hole.
But God didn't command him to eat its bones and all that kind
of nonsense. He didn't do it. He didn't do
it. But He commanded him to eat this. He says in verse 9, eat not of
it raw, nor sodden it all with water, but roast with fire. his
head with his legs and the pertinence thereof." Now, that's how he
used to go into fire. That's how he used to go into
fire. And I believe, as I said earlier, that this eating pictured
a spiritual eating of the lamb. All that is typified in the sacrificial
lamb is his flesh and his blood. That's what he pictures, his
flesh and his blood. And his flesh represents that
spiritual body that he took to himself as God's mediator of
grace. And he said, take, eat, this
is my body. Ain't that what he tells us when
we keep the ordinance? This is my body which was broken
for you. And everything else in the sacrifice
of the lamb that could not be eaten was made provision to throw
back in the fire. If God intended them to eat all
of these things, He wouldn't have told them whatever's left
to throw back in the fire. He'd have said, eat all of it.
God doesn't tell you to eat something and say, well, it's all right.
You really don't want it, though. God wouldn't tell you that. He's
making provision here for those things which were not to be eaten
and there to be and put back into the fire. Turn with me to
2 Corinthians 5. I'll see if I can give you a
little bit more light on it. When I really got to looking
at this, I'm having a hard time trying to imagine the Lord commanding
them to eat all of these things, the sinews and all these things. Listen here to what Paul, how
he describes the faith of God's elect. In 2 Corinthians 5.14,
he said, for the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus
judge. That is, we understand. That
if one died for all, then we're all dead. And that he died for
all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves,
but unto him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore, because
this is my understanding of it, this is my, of the sacrifice
of Christ, of His appearing in this world by the foreknowledge
of God and His existence here, this is my understanding of it.
Wherefore, verse 16, henceforth know we no man after the flesh,
yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we Him no more. That is, we don't know Him that
way anymore. Is that how you pray? Do you try to vision a
picture that you saw on the wall one time of Jesus? Is that how
you pray? We don't pray that way. I used
to. When I was little, I did. I tried
to imagine that picture, because they told me that Jesus had his
picture up there on the wall. We don't eat that. And that cross
that stands up there, we don't eat that. Those are natural things. We don't eat those natural things
that they made a big fuss over. You know, we know him. We know
his mom and dad. We know his sister. And they
made a big deal out of it. Or seeing him. Seeing him in
the flesh. What did that amount to? That ain't going to save
anybody. Thousands of them seen him in
the flesh that went off and went to hell. It's the spirit of what
he wants them to eat. in this sacrifice is what's being
set forth of Christ. He's wanting them to take those
things of the flesh, the body in which we're represented. We
eat that. And that blood, we take that
blood and catch it in a basin and go out there and strike it
on the door, on the outside. But the rest of that sacrifice
that remained till the morning, they go over there and throw
it back in the fire. Throw it back in the fire. There's nothing in that natural
body of Christ to be eaten. It's what that body was given
Him to do, and that's what we eat. And I'm telling you, the
man that eats that, eats the whole lamb. I was trying to think
earlier of a passage that I could give you, and perhaps the best
one is one that everybody in here will know, is when Paul
was about to be martyred. And he left that church, and
he said, I had not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel
of God. If you go back and see what he
says before that, that amounts to the whole counsel of God,
it's everything that I just told you here about this lamb. Now,
that's what Paul calls the whole. You eat that, you eat the whole
lamb. You see what I'm laboring hard to try to get this point
across, but it's so important. We don't eat all this foolishness. We don't eat all these other
things. You know, you set a cross up here on the wall, that empty
nail up there, or you hang one on your tie clip or something,
that's an idol. That's what that is. That's as
much idolatry as that old serpent, that brazen serpent was back
there in the wilderness. Israel was saved by the brazen
serpent. Well, they took that thing and
gave it some kind of value. And they started worshiping the
brazen serpent. That's idolatry. God come down
and killed a mess of them all. And then I think, didn't they
grind it up or burn it in a fire or something? They got rid of
it. Had to get rid of it. All right, here's the third thing. He tells us how the Lamb is to
be And he does this by telling us what not to do. He said, don't
eat it raw. Don't eat it raw. I looked at that for a long time.
Here's what I come up with. I won't fight with you if you
don't like it, but this is what I come up with. Carnivores eat
it raw, don't they? Huh? Beasts, they eat the prey
while they're still alive. Eating the lamb raw to me symbolizes
those who would take the lamb by their own will, who would ambush him, take him
by surprise, pounce on him, take advantage of the circumstance
and eat that sacrifice, eat it while it's still alive, eat it
raw. The beast has no reasoning, it has no understanding, no spiritual
enlightenment. He sees what he wants and sees
what he desires and he just goes and takes it. He got no constraints,
no laws, no rules, he just acts on impulse and his beastly nature. And religion is set forth for
us in this book as a beast. It's called the beast. Over and
over he calls it the beast. He says, Satan as a roaring lion,
that's a carnivore, isn't it? Paces up and down seeking whom
he may devour. And in John's prophecy, he said
the great red dragon, talking about Satan, stood before the
woman ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as
he be born. Don't you get the picture of
a of a carnivore standing there ready for his baby and just jump
on it, grab it, and just start shaking it. You know, he said,
don't eat it raw. Don't eat it raw. It mattered
how they ate the sacrifice. Don't eat it raw. It's not to
be done that way. This sacrifice was prepared. And this sacrifice was roasted.
This sacrifice was anointed of God. And it was to be done exactly
how he said it was to be done. We're not left to our old nature
to eat according to our nature, but we're to receive what God
has righteously prepared. Don't eat it raw. And then he
said, don't eat it sodden at all. And I looked that up. I
don't know a great deal about the language here, but the word
sodden, according to Strong's Concordance, means to boil up.
That's what it means. I looked it up. It says to boil
up. Now there's two things that happen
when you boil meat. First of all, it makes it easy
to chew. Don't it? Makes it easy to chew. You can take them old ribs and
throw them out there on the grill for about 30 minutes and you
can't get the meat off of them. But you can take them and boil
them in water for a little bit or put them in a pressure cooker.
Man, that meat just falls off the bone. God will have His lamb Chewed. He wants you to chew on it. He
doesn't want you to swallow it whole. He wants you to chew on
it. He wants you to savor the lamb. To savor the lamb. As newborn babes, Peter said,
we desire the sincere milk of the Word. But now watch this. He said, if so be that you've
tasted. He wants you to taste the sacrifice.
taste of the Lord and see that He'd be gracious. God will have
all those He delivers to taste what they eat and know how it
was prepared. And then the second thing that
happens when you boil meat is it gets watered down. You take meat and put it in water
and cook it for a while, all the flavor goes into the water.
So if you ain't making soup, it ain't a good idea. You eat
the meat itself, take the meat out and boil it in water and
eat it, it ain't got no taste. What happens? It's all in the water.
Watered down. Roasting seals the meat, locks
in the flavor, and boiling ruins the taste. And I don't want or
need a watered down gospel. I just don't need that. I need
a substitute, ordained of God to hang in the fire. Hang in
the fire of His justice and wrath to deliver me from the same.
Let me just very briefly, I'm going to give you four more things
and I'll quit. The first thing, it was to be eaten. Those who
did not eat the lamb were not delivered. You put the blood
on the doorpost and you eat the lamb. That's what God said. True faith eats the sacrifice.
And the man who discerns the sacrifice and plainly displays
the blood on his house, he's got an appetite for the lamb.
He says that. He wouldn't put the blood out
there if he didn't. And then he says, in the second place,
he said, they're to eat their sacrifice with their loins girded. Now, I'd go to the book of Ephesians
to get a little light on this, but he tells us over in Ephesians
6, verse 14, he said that this true faith is girt about with
truth. That's what he said. We're girt
about with truth. He said put the girdle on. And then he said they're to eat
the lamb with their feet shod. And there again in Ephesians
6, he said having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel.
It's the gospel lamb they ate. It's the lamb of deliverance
they ate. And when they ate it, they expected to walk. How are
they going to walk? They're going to walk the same
way they received the lamb. They're going to walk in the
lamb. As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in
Him. Your feet shod with the preparation
of the gospel. And then they were to eat with
the staff in their hand. Now, only free men need a staff. You didn't need a staff to make
bricks. I don't know a great deal about making bricks, but
I know it don't require a staff. That's what they were doing in
Egypt was making bricks. They didn't have any use for
a staff. They wasn't going anywhere. They leaving. So he said, you
get the staff. Get the staff. What David say
about that staff? He said, thy rod and thy staff.
He said, they comfort me. Only free men need a staff. And
God's rod and God's staff, they comfort us. I hope that's been
a blessing to you. If we'll move on next week, maybe
get into some of the other things. But I wanted you to see these
various things about the Lamb. There's so much there in these
things. And when you stop and consider,
you can preach on any one of them. Any one of those things,
you can stop and preach on. Father, bless the message tonight. Teach us something of the glory
of the Lamb. Use these plain and simple and
mentally visual pictures that you've laid out for us here in
your Word, and let us see those things in the light of the true
Lamb and His cross. We ask it for Christ's sake.