Jesus As the Passover Lamb

Josh Elliott

Finding Jesus In The Old Testament • Sermon • Submitted a year ago

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Introduction: Christ Our Passover

Now when I decided that I would be doing a series on finding Jesus in the Old Testament I made a list of the different prophecies, types and christophanies and took a look at the calendar. I decided it made sense to take the ones related to the crucifixion and resurrection and put them close to Easter weekend so that they could build up to easter climactically. There are a lot of those. So Easter is still 5 weeks a way and here I am with the first of many sermons related to prophecy about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Remember that in this series we’ll be looking at three things in the old testament to find Jesus, prophecies, types and christophanies. Types specifically are people or things that in some way foreshadow Jesus and teach us about His character when we look back at them.

All along I’ve been careful to say people and things despite the fact that our first few types were men, Adam and Melchizedek. Today we get to our first type of Jesus that is not a person, the passover lamb.

The passover is one of the seven festivals that God gave to the Israelites to celebrate every year, and the origins of this festival are given to us in Exodus chapter 12. For context this chapter takes place at the end of the famous 10 plagues on Egypt. Moses has returned to Egypt on mission from God to free his people from their slavery to Pharoah, and God is accomplishing this through ten miraculous judgments on Egypt and their Gods. Does anyone have the ten plagues memorized? I didn’t, but here they are: water turning to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the killing of firstborn children.

The passover takes place during the last of the plagues. For most of the exodus account there is a straightforward progression directly from God pronouncing the plague to enacting the plague, but here in this chapter the account of the plague is interspersed with God’s commandment to the Israelites to observe a passover sacrifice and meal. Let’s read together Exodus 12:1-28

Exodus 12:1–28 ESV

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 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 at twilight. “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And 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: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike 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, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.” Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

I am struck by the symbolism embedded into Passover, and the family atmosphere of having it divided by homes and inviting households too small to eat a whole lamb join together with their neighbors. I'm also struck by how many times the text says that it will be "a statute forever," possibly to emphasize the importance of the feast for Israel.

To this day faithful Jewish people celebrate the passover, celebrating how God delivered them from slavery and made them a new nation set apart for Him to bless the world. It’s a beautiful picture. Yet it is incomplete as it stands, because it is also a prefigure of the deliverance that would one day come through the Messiah, who we now know is Jesus Christ.

The passover lamb specifically serves to foreshadow the sacrifice that Jesus would make on our behalf to save us from sin and death. See it’s no coincidence that Jesus was crucified during the passover festival. We read in Luke 22:7-8

Luke 22:7–8 ESV

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.”

This meal became “the last supper” which we now commemorate every sunday in communion. This was the last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples before He was betrayed and crucified. So He came to Jerusalem as the lambs were being selected and died as the lambs were being slaughtered to show that He is doing for us what the lamb did for Israel in the Exodus. This is just as God had always intended. I couldn’t say it better than Alexander MacLaren

Christ is not spoken of as ‘our Passover,’ because the Mosaic ritual had happened to have that ceremonial; but the Mosaic ritual had that ceremonial mainly because Christ is our Passover, and, by His blood shed on the Cross and sprinkled on our consciences, does in spiritual reality that which the Jewish Passover only did in outward form. All other questions about the Old Testament, however interesting and hotly contested, are of secondary importance compared with this. Is its chief purpose to prophesy of Christ, His atoning death, His kingdom and church, or is it not? The New Testament has no doubt of the answer. The Evangelist John finds in the singular swiftness of our Lord’s death, which secured the exemption of His sacred body from the violence inflicted on His fellow-sufferers, a fulfillment of the paschal injunction that not a bone should be broken; and so, by one passing allusion, shows that he recognized Christ as the true Passover. John the Baptist’s rapturous exclamation, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’ blends allusions to the Passover, the daily sacrifice, and Isaiah’s great prophecy. The day of the Crucifixion, regarded as fixed by divine Providence, may be taken as God’s own finger pointing to the Lamb whom He has provided. Paul’s language already referred to attests the same truth. And even the last lofty visions of the Apocalypse, where the old man in Patmos so touchingly recurs to the earliest words which brought him to Jesus, echo the same conviction, and disclose, amidst the glories of the throne, ‘a Lamb as it had been slain.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 41–42.

In other words I’m not making this up here, the lamb is definitely a type of Jesus. Hard to contest that one.

So the question then becomes what does the passover mean to us now in the new covenant? What does it teach us about ourselves and about Jesus? Well it was really hard to narrow it down to just three things to be honest. I saw one Youtube video where a man managed to find 24 parralels between Jesus and the passover lamb. His video was an hour and twenty minutes long, so to spare you guys the late lunch I did finally come down to three points that we learn from this story:

Judgment is coming

Jesus is our spotless lamb

Jesus’ blood covers us

1. Judgment is Coming

Now the first thing I want to establish is the need for the passover lamb in the first place, which teaches us some important lessons. There would have been no need at all to kill a perfectly good lamb if there was no destroyer coming. The Passover depends entirely on their being something coming which the Jewish people needed to have pass over them. In fact it would have been a huge waste. Killing a flock animal was costly, especially one that produced a good like wool. For the entire community to sacrifice a lamb for each household would have been incredibly extravagant.

Now it’s interesting here that with the other plagues in Exodus the Jewish people were often spared any of the suffering, and weren’t required to do anything to keep themselves saved. This is the only plague where God tells them in order to be saved that they must do something. Why is that? I would argue the reason is because this plague served two purposes, first to finally convince Pharoah to let God’s people go, but also to be a judgment on the sins and the idolatry of the people in Egypt. The Jewish people were no less sinners than the Israelites were.

So the Jewish people needed to kill a lamb and mark their doorposts as an act of faith and obedience to God. Now God could have chosen any act of faith to set the Jewish people apart. He could have had them all sing a song, or all bow down to the floor at midnight or some other such act. The important thing was their putting their faith and trust in Him. The lamb of course wasn’t completely arbitrary and we’ll see why later in ther sermon.

It’s important to remember that we too are subject to the judgment of God for our sins. The Scripture tells us that the day is eventually coming when all will be judged by God. The truth of the matter is that on our own we’re all doomed to fail that test. Romans 3:23

Romans 3:23 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

In modern times it becomes tempting to leave this pending judgment out of our gospel. We oh so easily shift toward a gospel that’s based on what Jesus can do to improve your life and the reward you get for following Him, not on the reality of the coming judgment. Yet Jesus didn’t avoid the coming judgment. He talked about it extensively. In fact Jesus says more about Hell than any other person in Scripture.

This is because just like there wouldn’t be any reason for the Israelites to kill a lamb if there was no “destroyer” coming, there would be no need for Jesus to die for us if there was no judgment coming. It would be needless suffering. It’s also ultimately deceptive to pitch people a gospel based on life improvement because that’s not the gospel at all, and it may not actually improve your life. Take this illustration from Ray Comfort:

Two men are seated in a plane. A stewardess gives the first man a parachute and instructs him to put it on as it will "improve his flight."

Not understanding how a parachute could possibly improve his flight, the first passenger is a little skeptical. Finally he decides to see if the claim is true. After strapping on the parachute, he notices its burdensome weight, and he has difficulty sitting upright. Consoling himself with the promise of a better flight, our first passenger decides to give it a little time.

Because he's the only one wearing a parachute, some of the other passengers begin smirking at him, which only adds to his humiliation. Unable to stand it any longer, our friend slumps in his seat, unstraps the parachute, and throws it to the floor. Disillusionment and bitterness fill his heart because, as far as he is concerned, he was told a lie.

Another stewardess gives the second man a parachute, but listen to her instructions. She tells him to put it on because at any moment he will be making an emergency exit out of the plane at 25,000 feet.

Our second passenger gratefully straps the parachute on. He doesn't notice its weight upon his shoulders or that he can't sit upright. His mind is consumed with the thought of what would happen to him if he jumped without it. When other passengers laugh at him, he thinks, "You won't be laughing when you're falling to the ground!"

Let's now analyze the motive and the result of each passenger's experience.

The first man's motive for putting on the parachute was solely to improve his flight. As a result, he was humiliated by the passengers, disillusioned by an unkept promise, and embittered against the stewardess who gave it to him. As far as he is concerned, he will never put one of those things on his back again.

The second man put on the parachute to escape the danger of the upcoming jump. Because he knew what would happen to him without it, he had a deep-rooted joy and peace in his heart. Knowing he was saved from certain death gave him the ability to withstand the mockery of the other passengers. His attitude toward the stewardess who gave him the parachute was one of heart-felt gratitude.

Now listen to what the contemporary gospel message says: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ; He will give you love, joy, peace, fulfillment." In other words, He will improve your flight. In an experimental fashion, the sinner puts on the Savior to see if these claims are so.

What does he get? Temptation, tribulation, and persecution. The other passengers mock his decision. So what does he do? He takes off the Lord Jesus Christ; he is offended for the Word's sake; he is disillusioned and embittered, and quite rightly so.

He was promised peace, joy, and fulfillment, and all he got were trials and humiliation. His bitterness is directed at those who gave him the "Good News." His latter end is worse than the first--another inoculated, bitter backslider!

So when we see our dire situation we see the need. The Jewish people saw the destroyer coming towards them and were no doubt glad to search out a lamb. So where will we find our spotless lamb to cover us with his blood?

2. Jesus is our Spotless Lamb

So in order for the Israelites to escape the destroyer they had to offer a lamb as a sacrifice, but not just any lamb. In Exodus 12:5

Exodus 12:5 ESV

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats,

Later on in Exodus 12:46

Exodus 12:46 ESV

It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.

So their sacrifice had to be perfect in other words. It had to have no blemishes or defects. It couldn’t even have its bones be broken.

None of this is arbitrary, but serves to be a foreshadowing of Jesus. The lamb is a type of Jesus and Jesus is like the lamb in several important ways. One of those ways had to do with the animal itself. Jesus, like the lamb, was meek and mild. The Jewish people wanted a Messiah who showed up with a sword in hand ready to destroy all the enemies of their nation, but instead they got Jesus, who in the words of prophecy in Isaiah 42:3

Isaiah 42:3a (ESV)

a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench...

And this made Him very much like a lamb, which is a quintessentially mild animal. In fact the scriptures make this comparison exactly when in Isaiah 53:7

Isaiah 53:7 (ESV)

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

So the very animal itself is a lesson in who the Messiah would be, but also the requirement that the lamb be “spotless and without blemish.” This is why Jesus is qualified to be our passover lamb like no other human being could possibly be. In the words of 1 Peter 2:22-23

1 Peter 2:22–23 (ESV)

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

And to complete the picture Jesus’ body and bones are left whole to fulfill the requirement that the passover lamb’s bones must not be broken. John 19:31-37

John 19:31–37 ESV

Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

So we see from the image or type of the lamb how uniquely qualified Jesus is to be our passover lamb. So now that we have our passover lamb what must we do with Him to avoid the coming judment?

3. Jesus' Blood Covers us

So with the judgment looming on the horizon we have found in Jesus our spotless lamb. Yet we cannot stop there. It wasn’t enough that they find a spotless lamb, God tells them in Exodus 12:6-9

Exodus 12:6–9 (ESV)

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 at twilight. “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts.

Why this bloodshed? Why does God require of the Israelites to kill their spotless lamb? Because in the words of Romans 6:23

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God had warned Adam and Eve in the garden that if they sinned the punishment for sin is death. Justice requires that God follow through with this punishment, and so He is owed a death. Through His abounding love and grace God allowed the people of Israel to atone for their sins by killing an animal on their behalf.

Yet how can a simple animal sacrifice atone for our grave and numerous sins? These sacrifices were at best limited in their efficacy for atoning for sins, hence why the Jewish people were required to give sacrifices constantly in the tabernacle and the temple. These were not a solution but a lesson that built towards the ultimate solution to come. Jesus did for all of us what a passover lamb never could. We read in Hebrews 9:12-14

Hebrews 9:12–14 ESV

he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Jesus is the only sacrifice that can truly atone for the sins of all mankind for two reasons, because He is Himself a man He is able to represent us in a way that an animal simply cannot. A lamb cannot truly represent a human being. Second as God He was the only one perfect and infinitely valuable enough to pay the massive debt of sin that we’ve accumulated.

This is why John the baptist says in Matthew John 1:29-31

John 1:29–31 ESV

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.”

And Peter says in 1 Peter 1:17-19

1 Peter 1:17–19 ESV

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

So we have a better redemption than even the Israelites had in our new and better passover.

Yet it is not even enough to have and then kill the passover lamb, but the blood of the lamb needed to be brushed onto the doorpost of every household. In the same way the sacrifice of Christ does nothing for any of us individually unless we apply His blood to the doorposts of our lives metaphorically. We need to be put under the blood of Christ so that when God looks at us He sees the sacrifice of His son instead of our sins and failures.

When the people in Acts ask the disciples what they must do in response to the death of Jesus they are told in Acts 2:38

Acts 2:38 ESV

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So we take the sacrifice of Jesus for ourselves and are given the benefit thereof. Jesus as our Passover lamb saves us from the justice we are due because of our trangressions and makes a way for us to be delivered by God and sets us on the path to the promise land, just as Israel in the time of the Exodus.

Conclusion: Staff in Hand

So if the first passover is a picture of the future salvation of Christ it becomes certainly relevant to ask where we fit in this picture. Are we in Egypt in slavery hoping for redemption? Are we out of Egypt and living in the promised land?

I would say that we are in the midst of our passover meal. Our lamb has been slain, Jesus already died for our sins, and we can now confidently place his blood on the doorframes of our houses and thus know that God will save us, but we aren’t yet out of Egypt. We still live in the world and still have to live with pain and under the looming shadow of death.

How does God ask the Israelites to eat of this passover meal? In Exodus 12:11

Exodus 12:11 ESV

In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.

He asks them to eat the passover dressed and ready to travel. So we also should live in this season of our lives ready for the exodus, which in our case is the coming of Jesus to judge the world. Remember the cautionary parable in Matthew 25:1-13

Matthew 25:1–13 ESV

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

So how do we live ready for Jesus’ return? By making sure that we are under His blood and getting the leaven out of our homes. See the leaven represents sin and corruption. Originally it was a matter of practicality that they didn’t have time to let the bread rise but more significance was given to what leaven represents. Paul uses this image in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 ESV

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So make precious use of every moment to live in an attitude of sincerity and truth in honor of the peace and freedom that Jesus the Passover lamb has secured for you.