PASSOVER
You are now listening to Mike Perl who happily brings to you the morning’s
message which has to do with this highly significant season in Jewish life, the Passover,
or as it is pronounced in Hebrew in Israel….or “pesach” as it is pronounced here in the
United States. Our discussion shall be based on the portion of sacred Scripture found in
the Book of Exodus, chapter twelve, beginning with verse one.
Israel’s history has this poignant peculiarity: its’ most important events have
occurred during the season of the Jewish Passover! It is said to have been the night of the
Jewish Passover that God revealed to Abraham the future of his race! It is supposed to
have been at the Jewish Passover time that the patriarch, Abraham, entertained three men
from heaven whom he fed with meat and milk, of whom it is said in the Jewish Bible,
“two departed and Abraham remained standing yet before the Lord; that Sodom was
destroyed and Lot escaped; that the walls of Jericho fell before the Lord when the Jews of
Jericho were observing Passover; and the captains of Sennacherib and the King of
Assyria were overtaken by the hand of God at the Passover season! It was at this same
season that the mysterious handwriting described in Daniel 5 appeared on the wall to
declare the doom of Babylon! Now listen that you might hear of the greatest event of all
in Israel’s history that took place at Passover time!
The Scripture portion that pertains to it and to the subject of this message which is
the Jewish Passover, or Pesach, will be read only in English for the sake of time. It
begins at verse one of chapter twelve in the Book of Exodus and reads as follows:
“Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: ‘Tell all the congregation of
Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb for a household.
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old, and you shall keep it until the
fourteenth day of this month when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall
kill their lambs in the evening. Then shall they take some of the blood and put it on the
two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. They shall eat the
flesh roasted that night; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not
eat any of it raw or boiled with water. You shall let none of it remain until the morning;
anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: a
belt around your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in 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 I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on
all the gods of Egypt will I execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign
for you upon the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you,
and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. This
day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord.
Throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance forever.” End of quote.
Now note these several stipulations: first, the period of the command: It is to be
heeded by all Jewish people throughout all of their generations. It is a perpetual statute!
It was commanded by God even before Moses was given the commandments! It is to be
literally performed today by the Jewish person in the exact manner given in the Jewish
Bible…in the land of Israel!
Secondly, note the penalty of the command: The holy Word of God, Tenach, the
Jewish Bible states: “The man that forbears to keep the Passover, even the same soul
shall be cut off from among His people”! The failure to keep the Passover in accordance
with the ordinance is to violate the commandment of God. The forfeiture is the cutting
off by God of the soul of the person from the congregation of Israel, and thus to be
severed form the Savior.
Thirdly, note the place of the sacrifice of the command: not only before all of the
congregation of Israel but also in a specific city for the Jewish Bible further states: “You
shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God at the place which the Lord
Jehovah will choose to make His name dwell there. You may not offer the Passover
sacrifice within any of your towns which the Lord Jehovah your God gives you but at the
place which the Lord Jehovah your God will choose to make His name dwell in it. In
Jerusalem will I put my name”! Hence, there is only one city in the entire world where
the sacrifice may be performed! If it is done at all! Is it any wonder that through the
years our Jewish people have ended the holiday with the hopeful expression, “Next year
in Jerusalem!” Even in Jerusalem of today, however, the Passover lamb is not sacrificed
for Israel has the temple area but there is no holy temple! How literally has been fulfilled
the prediction of our Jewish prophet Hosea, spoken some twenty-seven hundred years
ago, that the people of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without
sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim; without the altar and the sacrifice; without
the blood atonement and the Passover lamb!
The Passover, as we have seen, is a lamb to be sacrificed to God. The blood of it
is to be applied to the doorposts and lintel of the home. In Pharaoh’s time, the Angel of
Death passed over the Jewish homes so marked whereas the residents of the unmarked
Egyptian homes suffered the loss of their first-born children because of Pharaoh’s refusal
to release the Israelites from bondage. Today’s observance of the blood sacrifice is to be
a memorial of the deliverance of our Jewish people, and it should be performed according
to the Jewish sacred Scriptures if one would obey the teachings of Tenach, the Old
Testament.
Let us look at the way that the Passover is observed today insofar as the eating
part of the ceremony is concerned: present are the unleavened bread to depict that our
fathers were delivered out of Egypt in haste, and the bitter herbs to remind us that the
Egyptians made the lives of our fathers bitter. Tradition has added a roasted egg in the
stead of the additional sacrifices required; charoset to portray the mortar of the bricks
which our people were forced to make as slaves of Pharaoh; salt water to show the tears
of sorrow; sprig of parsley or leaf of lettuce, to recall agricultural blessings; in the place
of the Passover Lamb is a shankbone of a lamb, or even the neck of a chicken! By what
authority is there such a substitute in this last instance?? By what argument of the
imagination can it be thought that Jehovah God is pleased with such a substitute?? By
what annulment is the right of such a substitute?? It is thus to be seen that the Passover,
the “seder” as practiced today by the few of our people who do, is incorrect and
incomplete! imperfect and improper! unscriptural and unholy! The participants in them
are guilty of sin, the penalty thereof, according to the specific command itself is that the
soul of the person shall be cut off by God! Those who fail to observe the Passover at all
shall also be cut off (severed) by God!
What can be done to save one’s soul?? It is for every Jewish person to see that
along with the fact that the Holy One of Israel required the sacrifice of a lamb and the
blood of a lamb that He was also giving to every Jewish person living at the time as well
as who would ever live, a type, a figure, a picture of the true Lamb of God who would be
the sacrifice for all humankind and for all time! This True Lamb would be a person who
would pour out His sinless life’s blood to death! By the acceptance and the application of
that blood by faith, the believer will pass over from Eternal death unto Eternal life! He
does not come into judgment, but passes over from Eternal death to Eternal life!
The rabbis have rightly said, “Whoever does not explain three things in the
Passover has not fulfilled the duty incumbent upon him. These three things are: the
unleavened bread, the bitter herbs, and the Passover lamb. This message has contained
the explanation of the unleavened bread and of the bitter herbs, and now we further
explain the significance of the Passover lamb. It was a preview of the person who would
be called the Lamb of God! One day almost 2000 years ago, a godly Jewish man in
Israel called out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” He
pointed to the person known as Jesus the Nazarene. It was but a brief time following this
announcement of Jesus as the Lamb of God that Jesus was led as a lamb to the slaughter
to a cross on a hill in Zion, exactly at Passover time! There he, Jesus, the Lamb of God,
was cut off out of the land of the living on the very day that the Passover lamb was slain!
Here then is the highlight of highlights of the history of Israel at Passover time! Upon
that human Lamb of God, Jehovah laid the sins, violations, of us all! Jesus the Nazarene
was the Passover Lamb! He voluntarily sacrificed Himself that there might be sinless
blood – that you and I by faith in that blood might never die! Jesus Himself died that He
might taste death for every person, but on the third day after His burial, Jesus rose from
the dead that death might be conquered! It was He, Jesus the Lamb of God, who shortly
before His sacrifice in your stead and mine, shortly before Passover, spoke to our Jewish
people in Israel and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears my word and believes
Him – God – who sent Me has eternal life. He comes not into judgment, but passes,
crosses over from death to life eternal!
Herein Jesus identified Himself as the Passover Lamb! Deliverance in Egypt
from God’s judgment of death was effected solely by the blood of the slain lamb.
Deliverance today from God’s judgment of death – death being the penalty of sin – is
reflected solely by the blood of the slain Lamb of God, by the blood of Jesus! See that
the purpose of the Law was to point us to Jesus, the Lamb of God! The Passover Lamb
in Egypt typified the better Passover Lamb, and since he came and made the sacrifice, we
are delivered from the Law and its’ required sacrifices! By faith in the sacrifice of Jesus,
your soul shall not be cut off from the congregation of Israel, but rather you will be able
to say with King David, “You have delivered my soul from death!” If you do not
perform the Passover literally, exactly, perfectly as described in Tenach, our Jewish
Bible, your soul will be cut off from God and from His congregation!
The Passover cannot be observed today as the God of Israel commanded. God of
Israel has provided a better way – a new and living way!! Hear the words of Jesus who
also said, “I am the way”! Do see, Jewish friends, that Jesus is the Passover Lamb!
Being the very image of things of which the Law was a shadow, Jesus the Passover Lamb
of God, obtained Eternal redemption for us by the shedding of His blood as the eternal
sacrifice for our sins. Do see, then, that redemption is a gift – that redemption cannot be
earned – that redemption is not by gold or silver, church, sect or baptism! Do see that
redemption has been purchased for you by the blood of Jesus, and now that redemption is
a gift to you! A gift, however, is not yours until you receive it. How can you receive it?
By receiving Him, Jesus, who is redemption personified into your hearts! Listen further
to His words: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any person hear my voice, and
open the door, I will come in and will sup with Him.” It is the custom among our Jewish
people in the traditional observance of the Passover that during the seder after the third
cup of blessing has been drunk that the door of one’s home is opened with the hope that
Elijah, the forerunner of the Messiah, will enter. If you will open the door of your heart
and bid Jesus enter, He, who is both Messiah and Passover Lamb of God will enter your
heart, and you will know that he is the redeemer of Jewish, Jewtile and Gentile soul, of
all of the souls of all mankind! of your very own soul!
While it is yet today, the Holy Bible says, Harden not your hearts as your fathers
did, but instead receive Him, Jesus, now – right now – as your personal Passover lamb
that God – the One God – the One Triune God of Israel – might cross/pass over you in
judgment. Although the blood of Jesus was sacrificed centuries ago, in this moment it
will wash you white as snow from head to toe! Cleansed by the blood of the Passover
Lamb, you will have peace with God, and the God of Peace Himself will give you
freedom from sin, Satan, self and society; you will be delivered from World War III,
Judgment, death, hell and the grave. And Jesus Himself, the Passover Lamb of God, will
assure you in your heart and mind that heaven shall be your eternal home! That you have
passed/crossed over from Eternal death unto Eternal life! Bid Jesus, the Passover Lamb
of God, enter, even this very instant as we remember you in prayer!