Passover
Passover is the oldest, continually celebrated holiday, ordained by God, on the face of the earth.
This holy day has a 3000 year history of bringing people closer together and closer to God. Each celebration of this Holy Day was to be a memorial to the original Passover, when the Death Angel of the Lord passed over certain homes in Egypt that fateful night because those homes were protected by the blood of sacrificial lambs. Unlike most Holy days of Christianity that are observed in Church, since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70, Passover has been celebrated in the home with family and friends as they eat a meal together called a Seder. It is an occasion to teach each new generation the story’s value in Jewish history.
The Seder is filled with ritual and symbolism and follows a certain prescribed order, as laid out in a Haggadah, or prayer book. Haggadah is a Hebrew word meaning “the telling”. Passover is about preserving, teaching, and reenacting tradition. As a liturgical memorial of the exodus, the Seder would have been central to Jesus’ religious life. In fact, Jesus said these words to His disciples,
"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” // Luke 22:15
Passover is the occasion on which Christ Jesus established a new covenant with His people. The Apostle Paul wrote that the Passover of “the new covenant” has now became “the Lord’s Supper”. In typology, we now see that the paschal lamb of the Hebrew Passover was "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Christ (Messiah) our Passover Lamb sacrificed for us.” The stain of the lamb’s blood applied to the doorways of the Hebrew homes in Egypt, which redeemed all believers from the tenth plague of death, was a type of “the precious blood of Christ (Messiah), as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” wrote the Apostle Peter in I Peter 1:18-19. The “cup after supper” containing the unfermented “fruit of the vine,” was sanctified by the Lord Jesus as symbolic of His pure, unadulterated redeeming blood - as He said, “This is My blood of the new covenant.” “The blood of Jesus (Yeshua) the Messiah which cleanses us from all sin,” wrote the Apostle John in I John 1:7. At communion we drink this remembering that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself and that it is His grace that transforms us and brings us from darkness into His marvelous light.
As Christians, we not only remember salvation from the Egyptians but also redemption into the Kingdom of God. At the very first Seder Dinner, God’s people celebrated their return to the Promised Land, while communion celebrates our inclusion into the Kingdom of God.
"Thy Kingdom come" is not a wish but a fact to celebrate because the perfect Lamb of God, Messiah-Yeshua, shed His blood for us.
Pastor Neil Pitchel
