chapter 23, Leviticus chapter 23, and I'm
going to read the first five verses. And the Lord spake unto
Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto
them concerning the feast of the Lord. which you shall proclaim
to be holy convocations, even these are my feast. Six days
shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest and
holy convocation. You shall do no work therein.
It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. These
are the feasts of the Lord, even the holy convocations, which
you shall proclaim in their seasons. And the 14th day of the first
month at even is the Lord's Passover. Now, you and I know, I believe
everyone here, are convinced of this, that there's only one
gospel of salvation. There's only one message of good
news, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that same gospel
is taught in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and it goes
all the way through to the last book, the book of Revelation. I reminded us last week, we looked
at at some of these verses I just read last time, and I reminded
us of two New Testament scriptures, one in Hebrews chapter 10 and
verse 1, which says, for the law having a shadow of good things
to come. And that's what these feasts,
these holy convocations were. They were given in this chapter,
and they were part of the law, part of the ceremonial law. or part of the law, the ceremonial
part of the law, I should say. And tonight, last time we looked
at the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath, and we saw that the day is a
day of physical rest that God instituted in the week of creation,
but it was put into the law that he gave at Mount Sinai to the
Israelites, just like circumcision. Circumcision was given to Abraham
early in the book of Genesis as a sign between him and God,
but it was incorporated into the law that God gave. You know, we wouldn't try to
keep a weekly Sabbath today like they were commanded to keep,
no more than we would teach that a man must be circumcised in
order to be saved. We've been made free from the
law. The Lord Jesus Christ, he fulfilled
the law. But that Sabbath, that weekly
Sabbath, as I said last time, was a shadow. The law had a shadow,
was a shadow, rather, of good things to come. And that rest,
that weekly rest, shadowed or pictured the spiritual rest that
we have in Jesus Christ our Lord. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You'll never find
rest for a guilty conscience anywhere other than in Jesus
Christ. He's the only one who gives rest
through his blood and by his righteousness imputed unto those
who believe. I want us to look at this second
feast, which is mentioned. It is the first of the yearly
feasts. Now, that feast of the Sabbath
was a weekly feast, but now we begin looking at these feasts
that are mentioned in this chapter, which were observed only once
in the year. And the first one that is mentioned
is the Lord's Passover. The Feast of the Passover. Now I said last week in the message
that the Jews had two calendars. They had two calendars. Well,
we would be confused, wouldn't we, if we had to have two calendars. But they had lived, they had
lived for 400 and some years under the Egyptian rule and bondage
and observed their calendar, the calendar which the Egyptians
used. And then, as we're going to see
tonight, the Lord gives them a new calendar. A new first month
of the year. Look with me, if you will, now
to Exodus. Turn back to the book of Exodus
chapter 12, and I'm going to read this law concerning the
Passover. Exodus chapter 12. And the Lord spake unto Moses
and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto
you the beginning of months. Now, you see, it wasn't the first
month in the year of the calendar under which they had lived. But
now God tells them this is going to be the first month, the month
that they were now in. And this month shall be unto
you the beginning of months. Your first month, first month
in the year, is going to be this month. It shall be the first
month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation
of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall
take to them every man a lamb, And if you have a marginal reading,
you see their little marginal number there, a kid, a lamb or
a kid. according to the house of their
fathers. A lamb, again, a lamb or a kid
for an house. And if the household 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. Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall
take it out from the sheep or From the goats, there's the kid,
are from the goats. And 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. 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. And they shall eat the flesh,
and that night roast with fire, and unleavened bread, and with
bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden
at all with water, but roast with fire his head with his legs,
and with the pertinence thereof. And you shall let nothing of
it remain until the morning, and that which remaineth of it
until the morning you shall burn with fire. And thus shall you
eat it with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, your
staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's
Passover. For I will pass through the land
of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt, both man and beast, and 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. And this day shall be unto you
for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast, keep it a feast
to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it a feast by
ordinance forever. So this is one of the feasts,
the feast of Passover that is mentioned there in the law recorded
in Leviticus 23. Now I just want to point out
some things to us about this Passover. First of all, it is
the Lord's Passover. You see that in verse 11, it's
the Lord's Passover. In verse one, we see that the
Lord is the one who spoke and gave these instructions unto
Aaron and unto Moses. The point I'm making is this
was all instituted according to God, His instructions. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ, as
the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse
7, is our Passover. The scripture there says, for
even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. You see, this
Passover was a shadow, a picture of good things to come, of Christ. Our Passover, this lamb that
they were to offer was a picture, is a picture of Christ, and there's
several things we're going to see here that pictures to us
the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way the gospel was
revealed in the Old Testament. I said there's only been one
gospel. There's only ever been one gospel,
and it was revealed in the book of Genesis and all the way through
the message of Christ. No doubt we live in a day when
it's more fully revealed, but it was revealed unto these Israelites
in the days of Moses and Aaron and following through the law,
through the shadows and types and pictures that were given
in the law. But my point, first of all, is
it is the Lord's Passover. Salvation is of the Lord. Everything about this, everything
about this Passover, God purposed it. God revealed it. It wasn't
that they got together Aaron and Moses and some of the elders
of Israel and said, let's come up with a plan how we can be
saved from a plague that God is going to send. No, God purposed
this. The same is true of salvation.
God purposed salvation. Christ, our Passover from before
the foundation of the world. Scripture says, whom God has
set forth to be the propitiation for our sins. Who set him forth? God did. God did. The message of salvation, the
gospel, it's God's message. It's God's gospel. group of people that came to
the Lord is recorded in John chapter 4. They had seen the
Lord feed thousands of people, and so they came seeking Him.
He had crossed over the lake and come to Capernaum. And He
told them, Seek that meat which endureth. And they asked Him,
What is the work of God that we can do? And the Lord said,
This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom the Father
hath sent, whom the Father hath appointed, whom the Father hath
sealed. Salvation, the message of Christ,
this is God's word, God's message to man. Now, as I said, we're
going to look at several truths about this Passover lamb and
Passover feast that picture to us Christ. Several of them are
in verse six. The first thing I point out is
the Lamb's strength. The Lamb's strength must be a
male of the first year, a male in the prime of life for this
sheep, must be a male to show forth the strength of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Psalm 89 and verse 19, God said,
I have laid help upon one that is mighty, mighty. The Lord Jesus Christ, just as
this lamb was in that first year, one year of age showed its strength,
its vitality. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
is the lamb of God, our Passover, who was who was a help or God
laid help upon him who was mighty. Think about this, how mighty
Christ is. He had, in order to save sinners,
he had to be able to bear the weight of every chosen sinner, the weight
of the sins of every chosen sinner. You know, at one place there,
I think in Matthew, when he went into the garden that night before
his crucifixion, he said, my soul is exceeding sorrowful,
even unto death. the weight, how he was weighted
down. He had to be strong, had to have
strength, had to be strengthened even by an angel we read in the
Gospel of Luke for this work. He had to be so strong, listen
to this, not only to bear the weight of the sins, but he had
to be so mighty, so strong that he could close the mouth of hell
and open the door of heaven so that none of his chosen people
could possibly be sent to hell or somehow miss heaven. He had
to be strong, mighty, mighty savior. And that's featured to
us in the age of this lamb that was chosen to be the Lord's Passover. The second thing we also see
there in verse six, the lamb's purity, not only the lamb's strength,
but the lamb's purity. Your lamb shall be without blemish. Now, this is one of the reasons
that we read there that the lamb was taken on the 10th day, but
he was not sacrificed until the 14th day. They would take a lamb
from their flock and they would take it into their homes, into
their houses where they lived, and they would examine that lamb.
And they had four days in which to examine that lamb to make
sure there wasn't a blemish in the lamb. They couldn't find
a blemish. And we know that God, the scripture
says, is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. When he looked
upon Christ, our Passover, our lamb, He was able to say, this
is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Satan tempted Christ. We know that. We read about that
in the Gospels. He tempted Christ. But there
was nothing in Christ to respond to the temptation. You know,
being tempted is not a sin. You're tempted, I'm tempted from
various ways, but if we don't give in to the temptation, the
temptation itself is not a sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, he was
tempted, but there was nothing in him. The problem with you
and I is there's plenty in us to respond to the temptation. We used to sing that hymn, yield
not to temptation, for yielding is sin. I don't know if we've
sung that hymn in a long time, but the yielding, that's the
sin, not being tempted. The Lord was tempted, but he
had no sin, did no sin, knew no sin, the scripture says in
2 Corinthians 5, 21, for he who knew no sin. It doesn't mean that he was not
aware, that he had no knowledge of what sin is, but he knew,
he did not know sin by experience. He had never committed sin, was
never guilty of sin. The third thing that we see in
this, still in verse six, the Lamb's condemnation. You notice,
let's read that verse. And 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. The condemnation, the Lamb's
condemnation, the whole assembly of the congregation shall kill
it. When the Lord Jesus Christ was
condemned, not one voice, not one voice, spoke out, every voice
was silent, every voice was crying out, crucify him, crucify him. And notice it says the congregation
of Israel shall kill it. One lamb, it, as singular as
it. There were thousands of lambs
that were killed that night. There were thousands, but it
speaks of these thousands as one lamb, it. We know that many
lambs were slain over the years, and yet the blood of those lambs
could never take away sin. It's not possible. The apostle
tells us in Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats should
take away sin. The fourth thing, the lamb's
time of death. Kill it in the evening. Do you have a marginal reading
in your Bible there? My number is five. And right
before in, we have a little number five. We look in the margin between
the two evenings. The lamb was killed between the
two evenings. Now, what does that mean? Well,
at noon, the sun begins to go down, but not until six o'clock
in the afternoon is the sun fully set. So what we have here is
between the two evenings, between when the sun first begins to
go down till it is finally set at three o'clock from 12, 6 o'clock,
3 o'clock in the afternoon, that's when the lamb was to be slain. And isn't it amazing that that's
exactly the time the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, at 3 o'clock
in the afternoon. The fifth thing we see in verse
9 is that the lamb had to be roasted. It must be roasted with fire.
No doubt this was to picture the wrath of God that the Lord
Jesus Christ suffered for our sins. John Gill quoted a man
by the name of Justin Martyr. If you read much in church history,
you'll see this man's name. He lived from 100 to 165 AD,
and he was a Christian apologist during that time. And John Gill pointed out that
in a conversation that he had, and it's recorded with a Jew,
a man who wasn't a believer, and this Justin Martyr was not
a Jew, he was a Samaritan, but he pointed out to this Jew that
the way this lamb was roasted, They would take the spit, what
we would call a spit today. It wasn't like a rotisserie or
anything like that. But they would take a rod and
put it from the mouth down through the end and then across the arms
and the shoulder. And Justin Martyr pointed out
to this Jew, it was a very picture of a cross, the way this lamb,
this Passover lamb was roasted, they would hang it up on a rack
that made it look like it was on a cross above the fire. And what Giel pointed out is
that this Jew to whom this man was speaking, and he didn't object
to that, he didn't disagree in any manner from that. That's
the way the Passover lamb was roasted. And it was a perfect
picture of Christ as he was crucified upon the cross. And that fire
there, remember one of the words that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke
from the cross was, I thirst. I thirst. In Psalms 22. It speaks
of how his mouth was dry. The fire, the fire, the lamb,
the Passover lamb was literal fire, but the fire that roasted
the Lord Jesus Christ that he suffered from was the wrath of
Almighty God. It could not be sodden. This
lamb, it says here, could not be sodden in water at all. He couldn't boil it. Had to be
roasted, had to be roasted. And then the sixth thing that
we see here, the lamb's blood must be applied in verse seven. It wasn't enough just to slay
the lamb and roast the lamb. No, the blood of the lamb had
to be caught in a bowl and then taken to their house Wherever
they killed the lamb, the blood was caught. They carried it to
their homes and with hyssop into the bowl and sprinkled it on
the doorpost and the lentil of their house. The blood has to
be applied. It has to be applied. This is a picture of how by faith
The Lord Jesus Christ said, except a man eat my flesh and drink
my blood, he hath no life in him. How do we do that? How do
we eat his flesh? How do we drink his blood? By
faith. Not literally, physically, by
eating the Lord's supper. No, no, it doesn't. That's not
what it means at all. It's by faith. It was by faith,
these people, symbolized by striking the doorpost with the blood.
of the Lamb. And think about this. Those people
gathered in the house, they couldn't see the blood. You can't see
the blood, can you? You can't see the blood of Christ
that's been sprinkled on your conscience. That's not the important thing.
God saw the blood. Look down in verse 13, Exodus
12 and verse 13. He didn't tell them, now you
run outside every once in a while and look up there and make sure
that blood's still there. No, you apply it. And when I
see the blood, verse 13, And the blood shall be to you for
a token upon the houses where you are. And when I see the blood,
when God saw the blood, he passed over. And so the plague did not
enter into that house where the blood was applied. The seventh thing, the lamb must
be eaten in verse eight. They shall eat the flesh in that
night. And they had to feed upon a whole
lamb, a whole lamb. They took it down from off the
spit it was placed on and it was, not a bone could be broken. It was placed on the table and
they had to eat the flesh that night. and they feasted upon
a whole lamb. And that's so important today.
Many people think, well, I want to take Christ as my Savior.
Well, that's good. But remember this, He's Lord
also. It must be Lord and Savior, must
feast on a whole Christ, not just a half Christ, but a whole
Christ. Above in verse four, we read,
if the house be too little for the lamb, Now, what does that
mean? Well, you notice the lamb had
to be eaten. If it was not eaten that night,
then the next morning it was all to be burned. The flesh and
the bones, everything was to be burned. So if, let's say,
a family of five, they couldn't eat a whole lamb. They couldn't
eat a whole lamb. So families would come together
so there would be enough. And the Jewish teaching was there
had to be at least 10 people in the house. There could be
more, but there had to be at least 10 people in the house
so that the lamb would be eaten that night. And what wasn't eaten,
of course, had to be burned the next day. We feed upon a whole
Christ, his person, his offices, his words, and especially we
feed upon his sacrifice, his death, and his resurrection. And the last thing I want to
mention here, number eight, the lamb was to be eaten with unleavened
bread, verse eight. And this will only tonight serve
to introduce us to the next feast. The next feast the Lord willing
we'll look at next time is the feast of unleavened bread. Now,
one last thing, the keeping of the feast. It was a type to be
kept, a memorial, a type to be kept every year until it was
fulfilled, until the Passover lamb came and died as a substitute
for his people. Look with me in Luke, just a
moment, Luke chapter 22. Luke chapter 22 and verse one
reads, now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called
the Passover. They were first the Passover
feast, but the feast of unleavened bread, they were, the feast of
unleavened bread followed the feast of the Passover. In other
words, the feast of Passover was on the 14th day of the month,
and then that night, Remember the Jews, the way they had their
days and nights, or days, rather, the day began at sundown and
went through till sundown of the next day. So the Lord, think
about this, the Lord Jesus Christ, look in verse 15. And he said unto them, with desire,
I have desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Now
he ate the Passover on the 14th day of that first month, just
as the law said. Remember, he kept the law perfectly. He died on the same day. And you say, well, how is that
possible if he ate it at night? Because of the way the Jews registered
their days from evening to evening. He ate the Passover feast. Let's
say it would be at eight o'clock tonight. He ate. But still, what
we would call the next day is the same day. Am I making that
plain to everybody? It was still the fourth, they
ate the feast of the Passover on the 14th day, but he died
on the 14th day. Ate the feast on the night of
the 14th day and died on the cross on the day of the 14th. Our Passover lamb, because of
the way they reckoned their days. Our Passover is sacrifice for
us. As we look at this type, we know
that if we had lived in those days under that law and had observed
this, if there had been The teaching that should have gone along with
the Passover feast, they would have been taught to be looking
forward, looking for the true Passover, the Messiah to come,
who is the true Passover. And that's how they would have
heard the gospel in that dispensation we call the Old Testament. Well,
I pray the Lord would bless this word to all of us here tonight.
And there's several of these feasts.
I believe I counted seven of them, but two of them, like the
Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, are really connected together.
but they're called two separate feasts. I believe there's seven
of them in this chapter of Leviticus chapter 23.