03/24/2026
Easter is just over one week away. The Easter celebration has its roots in the Jewish festival called Passover. This festival is a celebration of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their birth as a nation. God commanded Moses to instruct the people to do certain things, to remember this significant event, and to teach its meaning to the next generation. The account of this is given in the Bible in the book of Exodus 12:21-27:
Then Moses called all the elders of Israel together and said to them, “Go, pick out a lamb or young goat for each of your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. Drain the blood into a basin. Then take a bundle of hyssop branches and dip it into the blood. Brush the hyssop across the top and sides of the doorframes of your houses. And no one may go out through the door until morning. For the LORD will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the LORD will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down.
“Remember, these instructions are a permanent law that you and your descendants must observe forever. When you enter the land the LORD has promised to give you, you will continue to observe this ceremony. Then your children will ask, ‘What does this ceremony mean?’ And you will reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt. And though he struck the Egyptians, he spared our families.’” When Moses had finished speaking, all the people bowed down to the ground and worshiped. (Exodus 12:21-27)
God was specific in His instructions. The reason for the detail was that the lamb or goat was a picture of a future event, when Jesus would give His life to rescue humanity from our slavery to sin. The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.”
Just as the Israelites were safe when they stayed in the house with the blood on the door, so we experience God’s forgiveness and His passing over us, and He does not judge us when we remain in Jesus. Our relationship with Jesus and His sacrifice is the means by which God passes over our sins. Well over 1,000 years before Jesus, God gave a picture of a coming Saviour to rescue all of humanity.
