• Exodus 12:1-4
• Leviticus 23:44
• Numbers 28:16-25
• Deuteronomy 16:1-8
In each of these four passages we are given different important details about the Passover. In Exodus we learn the origin and how it was to be kept. In Leviticus we find that it is one of the offerings that God was pleased to call “My offerings.” In Numbers we are told what was to be offered when the people were in the promised land. And, finally, in Deuteronomy we are instructed where the Lord had chosen for the Passover to be kept.
The Passover is a memorial — a remembrance. It is a memorial of redemption. As the people of God, we are a redeemed people, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold ... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). This feast was a memorial of that, and the way in which this first Passover was kept is the way in which God’s people today begin. They were in the land of Egypt where the sword of judgment was about to fall. Egypt is a well-known type of the world in power and independence of God; it was not dependent upon the God of heaven for rain. They watered their fields by foot — irrigation. It tells of man’s independence of God.
There they were, and here we are — in the world as to our actual bodily presence, but not of it. We are secure from the stroke that is about to fall. The Israelites also were secure from the stroke of judgment that was about to fall. Their security depended on being under the shelter of the blood of the lamb. There was just one thing that secured them from judgment, and it was not just the shed blood, but the sprinkled blood. God gave the shed blood, but they had to apply the blood. Christ has died for all, and the death of Christ is God’s provision for all. “Who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6), but it is only those who avail themselves of the provision made who escape the stroke.
The memorial of the Passover is a picture given beforehand of Christ the Lamb, as the Lord’s supper is a memorial given afterward. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). The Christian says, “I am sheltered from the judgment that is coming upon this world by the blood of Christ.”
The Christian is here in this world, secure by the blood of Christ from the judgment that is coming. The Lord’s own word is, “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding. ... Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching” (Luke 12:35-37). That is a simple, happy picture of the Christian’s position.
Roast With Fire
There is another thing given us as to the Passover lamb which is equally solemn and precious: “They shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire” (vs. 8). What are we to learn from that? There is no redemption in a living Christ; our redemption was accomplished by the death, not the life, of Christ. “Nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire.” How solemnly blessed that is! What is typified by that is this: It is Christ our Passover bearing the judgment of God without the least mitigation — nothing coming between. “Roast with fire” — no water — nothing coming between. It is the consuming fire of the judgment of God. The soul meditates upon Christ as his Redeemer and upon the way in which He is his Redeemer.
His Head, Legs and Purtenance
“His head with his legs, and with the purtenance [inwards] thereof.” That is all the intelligence, all the ways and all the affections. Intelligence is the head; ways are the legs; affections are the inwards. All has been tried by the judgment of God and found perfect! It is instructive too that the Israelite was not left to his own mind or judgment as to how to keep this Passover: “Thus shall ye eat it.” Christ under those conditions was before them, or is before us when the memorial of the Passover is before us.
“The blood shall be to you for a token.” When God passed through the land with drawn sword, He did not look inside the houses at all. He took no notice of what was going on inside. That had its place. What He looked at was the outside — the two side posts and the lintel — and if they were sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, He passed them by. He did “not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.”
There is another thing about Exodus 12. Nothing was to be allowed to remain until the morning. If it were not eaten, it must be burned with fire. We find that all through Leviticus in different ways. After the set time, which was a little longer in connection with the peace offering or thanksgiving offering, it was not to be eaten, but burnt with fire. The peace offering was good for three days; the thanksgiving offering was not so long.
We are to learn a very solemn lesson from that space between the time when it was sacrificed and when that which was sacrificed could be accepted by God, really a sweet savor to Him, after which time to eat it was sin. Do not separate worship too far from the death of Christ, or it will lose its sweetness. Suppose we leave out the sacrifice of Christ in our praise, or it is too much separated from it. The hymns of praise should be connected with the sacrifice of Christ. We must keep the sense of our relationship in our souls founded upon the death of Christ and not separate our thanksgiving and praises from it, forgetting the ground of our relationship. The death of Christ is the ground of communion with God — peace with Him and communion with Him.
Leaven
As the saint is meditating upon the Lord as the One consumed under the fire of God’s judgment, he says, “It was for me.” That is the bitter herbs. The unleavened bread is separation from what is not agreeable to that truth. Leaven in Scripture is always evil. We read of the “leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy.” We get leaven morally in 1 Corinthians 5, doctrinally in Galatians 5, and then another kind of leaven of Herod. That was a mixture of the world and religion. The Herods were neither Jew nor Gentile. They were Idumaean; they came from Esau.
Where
Deuteronomy 16 tells us where the Passover was to be kept. It was to be kept in the place in which God had been pleased to place His name. That was in Jerusalem. All their males after a certain age had to go to Jerusalem three times a year. The first time was the Passover; the second, Pentecost; and the third, the feast of tabernacles. They all come in this chapter.
Deuteronomy 12:10-15 presents a most important principle as to the “where” as well as the “how.” It may be difficult to find the place in these days where one’s soul can be sure the Lord has been pleased to place His name, because there are many influences and many places, but there is that portion in John’s Gospel: “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” The first necessary thing is, Do I really want to know where the Lord has been pleased to place His name in order to do His will?
God chose to place His name in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not just the geographical center of the land. The tribe at the extreme north of the land was much farther from Jerusalem than those at the south of the land — not east and west, for that was comparatively short; the land of Palestine is a strip. Ephraim and Benjamin are right around the temple, but look up where Naphtali and Zebulon are! What a journey they have to make! But they have to make it; they cannot bring Jerusalem to their tribes. That is important. There is a cost for those at the extreme ends of the land to come, and God takes that into account. There might be a number of persons in a meeting, and for some of them it is quite easy to get there and for others it is very difficult. The Lord notes as each one comes, where he comes from, and what it cost him to get there.
Selected from W. Potter