CHRIST in the PASSOVER
The Old Passover
CHRIST IN THE PASSOVER #1 by Ceil and Moishe Rosen (a book puiblished in 1978) WHY PASSOVER? When Abraham, the first Hebrew, left Ur of the Chaldees to follow the call of the living God, he sacrificed a life of comfort and ease. Ur was no village. It was one of the oldest, most important cities of Mesopotamia, covering an area of about four square miles by the Euphrates River, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The citizens of Ur, numbering well over half a million, lived in walled safety. They enjoyed the advantages of the highest culture and civilization of their time. They took particular pride in the outstanding architecture of their temples, which they built in honor of their numerous deities, and in the fact that their city was the center of worship for: the popular moon-godreligion. From the comfort, advantages, and sophistication of Ur, Jehovah called Abraham and his family to a seminomadic way of life. They were not nomads in spirit, for they had God's promise of the land; but, in fact, they did not possess it. They wandered with the seasons, seeking pasture for their flocks, but they also tilled the ground. Tents were their only shelter from the scorching sun and cruel desert wind, but they buried their dead in permanent caves, an act of faith that showed they believed that one day the land really would be theirs. They trusted God for future stability and a permanent home, but they knew it was not yet time. Then a great drought and famine drove Jacob, a grandson of Abraham, to leave Canaan for the promise of food in Egypt. Once again the seed of Abraham dismantled their tents. Packing all that they had acquired and their scant remaining food and water supply, they headed south with their wives, their little ones, and their flocks. For Joseph's sake, Pharaoh welcomed Jacob and his sons as honored guests, laying Egypt's resources at their feet and giving them the land of Goshen for their dwelling place (Genesis 47:6). Goshen was a fertile area along the delta of the Nile River, lying in the northeast portion of an area between what is now Cairo to the southeast and Alexandria to the northwest. Here the Hebrews felt respected and secure. EGYPT IS OUR HOME-WHY BOTHER ABOUT CANAAN? Because of the devastating drought that drove Jacob to seek refuge in Egypt, most of the Egyptians were starving also. Many sold their cattle, their land, and finally themselves to Pharaoh in exchange for food. But Jacob's sons flourished and prospered. Because the pharaohs of that time were of Semitic descent, they favored the seed of Abraham, who also were Semites. For the first time since Abraham left Ur, the Hebrews enjoyed a feeling of permanence. They lived a quiet, secure, pastoral life in Goshen. The Nile overflowed its banks once a year, bringing life-giving water to the earth. There was lush, abundant pasture for the flocks, and rich soil to grow their food. Here the Hebrews watched their children grow tall and brown in the sun. At night they slept in safety, with no desert wind howling through the solid walls of their adobe homes. No longer did they awake to the distressed bleating of hungry flocks, a signal that once again they must move on. Their Egyptian neighbors were people of high morals and advanced culture. Not only did they produce literature and music, but they also knew mathematics and a degree of the healing arts, and many were skilled architects. They accepted the Hebrews as equals and even bestowed high honors on some of them. Life was pleasant indeed. In this situation the descendants of Abraham prospered for hundreds of years. Exodus 1:9 indicates that they multiplied so fast that a later pharaoh grew concerned that there were more Hebrews than Egyptians in the land. The children of Israel were so comfortable and secure that it was easy to forget that Egypt was not the land God had promised to their fathers. Maybe some of them even forgot God Himself. O LORD, FORGIVE OUR COMPLACENCY-GET US OUT OF HERE! For the seed of Abraham, Egypt had been a volcano threatening to erupt. For more than four hundred years they lived at the edge of that volcano without knowing it. Now the volcano erupted and its flames threatened to consume them, for there arose a new pharaoh who "knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:9). Fearing the strength and power of the vast multitude of Hebrew foreigners, he turned against them and made them his serfs. The children of Israel continued to live in Goshen, but the land no longer belonged to them. Now they belonged to the land, to Egypt, and to the pharaoh, who was Egypt. They had to serve him with backbreaking labor, sweating in the fields, building his treasure cities, without recompense or even dignity. There were no problems with labor relations, no labor-management arbitrations. Pharoah owned everything and everyone. He appointed taskmasters, foremen to make sure that the proper amount of work was done. When Pharaoh decided to oppress the Hebrews, he simply ordered the taskmasters to give them more work than they could do. Life was cheap in Egypt. If a man dropped from exhaustion, the taskmasters left him to die and quickly whipped another into line to take his place. Under the cruel pharaoh, the children of Israel toiled and suffered, but still they grew in numbers. Enraged, Pharaoh ordered the Hebrews' male babies murdered so that the entire nation would eventually die. Then the Israelites remembered the God of their fathers. At last they recognized their need to be rescued. They needed to be delivered, not only from Pharaoh, but from Egypt itself. They cried out to God in their bondage and distress, and He heard their anguished pleas. Now that they were ready for His help, He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Deliverance was near. Egypt to the Hebrews had become comfort and complacency outside God's providence. The covenant Jehovah made with Abraham was two-sided. On God's part, He promised the land (Genesis 15:18): on Abraham's part, he and his seed were to bear the physical marks of the covenant-circumcision (Genesis 17: 10). The Hebrews did remember to circumcise while they were in Egypt (Joshua 5:5), but they prevented God from fulfilling the covenant by not seeking the land He had promised. They broke the spirit of the covenant. They needed to be redeemed, to be "deemed again" the people of the covenant, the people of God. Jehovah could have slain the wicked pharaoh in an instant to alleviate the sufferings of His people. He could have brought about a new, more favorable order in Egypt. But that would not have been enough. The sons of Jacob had to forsake Egypt in order to serve the living God. Old things, old attitudes, old affections had to pass away - all things had to become new. The Bible teaches that a person cannot see the Kingdom of God until he is spiritually born again (John 3:3). So the nation of Israel also needed a new beginning, a new birth. Thus the redemption at Passover prepared the sons of Jacob for another covenant to be made at Sinai, which would reestablish and reaffirm them as the nation of God. The Passover redemption from Egypt changed Israel's reckoning of time. 1 God commanded the Hebrews to count the month of the deliverance from Egypt as the first month of the year. He was saying, in effect, "This event is so historic that you are to rearrange your calendar because of it." They were to count their existence as a people from the month of Nisan. (Even so, we of modern time mark our history B.C. and A.D., basing our calendar on Calvary, the pivot point of God's dealings with humanity through the Messiah.) And thus, with this new beginning to occur shortly, Israel, the great nation that God had promised to its father, Abraham, was about to become reality. ...... 1 By tradition, the Jewish people celebrate the fiscal New Year in the fall, in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar; but the religious calendar begins in Nisan, the first month. ...... In order to carry out His plan to redeem His people from Egypt, Jehovah chose a man who was, in many ways, as much an Egyptian as he was a Hebrew. Moses was born an Israelite. The blood of Abraham flowed in his veins, but he grew to manhood in the palace of Pharaoh's daughter. As an infant he was raised by his Hebrew mother, but he learned worldly wisdom from Egyptian schoolmasters. God chose him to deliver Israel, to show to all that "the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel" (Exodus 11:7b). As a young man, Moses fled Egypt in disgrace under penalty of death. When God called him to lead Israel out of bondage, he had been away from Egypt's culture and sophistication for forty years. Long ago he had given up his princely robes for the rough garb of a shepherd. Now he stood before the successor to the pharaoh who had sought his life. His eyes blazed from his weather-beaten face with the fire of the living God, whom he had encountered in the wilderness. His hand, calloused by the shepherd's crook, wielded a miraculous staff. His lips formed the syllables of the holy NAME as he confronted Pharaoh with the words of the Lord: "Let my people go'" When Pharaoh refused, the Lord demonstrated His might by bringing down judgment on Egypt's false gods. Through Moses, He turned the waters into blood, showing His power over the Nile, which the Egyptians worshiped as the sustainer of life. He darkened the sky, proclaiming His superiority over the sun-god, Ra. He made pests of the frogs, which the Egyptians respected as controllers of the undesirable insects that followed the annual overflow of the great river. The Lord poured out plague after plague; still Pharaoh hardened his heart. God ruined the Egyptians' crops with hail and locusts, killed their cattle with disease, and afflicted the people with painful boils, loathsome vermin, and thick darkness. Calamities threatened Egypt's prosperity on every side, but the Israelites were spared. Pharaoh hardened his heart even further, however, and now the cup of iniquity was full. God had said to Pharaoh through Moses: "Israel is my son.... Let my son go, that he may serve me; and if thou refuse.... I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn" (Exodus 4:22-23). Now He determined to break the iron will of Egypt with one last plague. The specter of death was to fly by night over the land, breaking the cycle of life, interrupting the line of inheritance, bringing tragedy to every home where Jehovah was not feared and obeyed. Although their redemption was at the door, the Israelites were not automatically exempt from this last plague. God tempered His final judgment on Egypt with mercy and perfect provision - the substitution of a life for a life. "In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb.... a lamb for an house.... and ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and.... kill it.... And ... take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses. For I will pass through the land of Egypt and will smite all the firstborn.... And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses.... and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you (Exodus 12:3-7,12-13). THE WORD "PASSOVER" The verb "pass over" has a deeper meaning here than the idea of stepping or leaping over something to avoid contact. It is not the common Hebrew verb, "a-bhar," or "gabhar," which is frequently used in that sense. The word used here is "pesah," from which comes the noun "pesah," which is translated Passover. These words have no connection with any other Hebrew word, but they do resemble the Egyptian word "pesh," which means "to spread wings over" in order to protect. Arthur W. Pink, in his book "Gleanings in Exodus," sheds further light on this. Quoting from Urquhart, he states: The word is used ... in this sense in Isa.31:5: 'As birds flying, so will the Lord of Hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also He will deliver it; and passing over ('pasoach,' participle of 'pesach') He will preserve it. The word has, consequently, the very meaning of the Egyptian term for 'spreading the wings over', and 'protecting'; and pesach, the Lord's Passover, means such sheltering and protection as is found under the outstretched wings of the Almighty. Does this not give a new fulness to those words ... 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen does gather her brood under her wings' (Luke 13:34) ? ... this term 'pesach' is applied (1) to the ceremony ... and (2) to the lamb.... The slain lamb, the sheltering behind its blood and the eating of its flesh, constituted the 'pesach,' the protection of God's chosen people beneath the sheltering wings of the Almighty ... It was not merely that the Lord passed by the houses of the Israelites, but that He stood on guard, 'protecting' each blood-sprinkled door! [The LORD ... will not suffer the destroyer to come in (Exodus 12:23b).] 1 God includes everyone in the death sentence in Exodus 11:5: "All the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die." God must do the right thing because He is God, but He balances His righteousness with His loving mercy. He decrees judgment for all sin and all sinners; then He provides a way of escape, a 'kiporah' or covering. When the rain falls from above, it falls on everyone. But those who have an umbrella do not become wet. For those who seek His way to satisfy the demands of His Law, God provides an umbrella of safety. In His judgment of Egypt, He provided the umbrella of the blood of the Passover lamb. Israe's redemption began that night behind the sanctuary of those blood-sprinkled doors. It was a night of horror and grief for anyone who had foolishly disregarded God's command; it was a long, dark night of awesome vigil mixed with hope for the obedient. Perhaps they heard wails of anguish from outside as the grim reaper went from house to house; perhaps there was only thick, ominous silence. They knew that terror and death lay outside that door, which they dared not open until morning. But within was safety. It was a night of judgment, but the substitutionary death of the Passover lamb brought forgiveness to God's people, Israel. It washed away 430 years of Egypt's contamination. The blood of the lamb protected them from the wrath of the Almighty. Its roasted flesh nourished their bodies with strength for the long, perilous journey ahead. They ate in haste, loins girded, staff in hand, shoes on their ...... 1 Arthur W. Pink, "Gleanings in Exodus," p.93. ...... feet, prepared to leave at any moment at God's command. In that awe-filled night of waiting, they experienced Jehovah's loving protection, even in the midst of the unleashing of His fierce judgment. They learned new trust, a trust that was deep enough to see them through another black night soon to come. They would stand at the edge of the churning waves of the Red Sea with the entire host of angry Egyptians at their backs, and they would trust the words of Moses: "Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD" (Exodus 14:13). The Lord often works on behalf of His people when things look darkest. In the words of the psalmist, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). And so the morning came, and with it abounding joy and freedom. Thus, out of His mercy, and because He would keep His covenant with the fathers, the Lord rescued Israel. It was a new birth, a new beginning. This time the seed of Abraham must not forget their commitment to the Holy One of Israel; they must not forget His promises. They must remember that He brought them out of Egypt with a strong hand and with His outstretched arm. ..................... To be continued |
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