This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're in Exodus chapter 12 together today. This is week three, day two of our
study through the book of Exodus. And in some ways these chapters of Exodus that
we're walking through right now, 10, 11, 12, they give you sort of a spiritual
whiplash.

You go straight from the horrible plagues to the holy ceremony of the Passover.
God's judgment and God's love are both revealed here. In fact, they're both a
part of God acting to set his people free.

And in some ways, that's true of my life and your life. God has to judge that
which is binding you, but he also has to show you his love so that you can be
drawn to him. And in their case, the way that God's love was revealed in their
life was by an action of faith.

We're going to see as we read through this chapter, God had them put some blood
on the doorposts of their houses. Why did he have them do that? The hand of God
in history is so clear at points like this chapter.

The blood on those doorposts look forward to a day one day when the blood of
Jesus would be given, would be shed on Calvary, would be given on a cross. They
look forward to that day when Jesus would give his blood for you and give his
blood for me. That's all through the Bible.

The blood of Christ is the power of God's sacrificial love. And you need God's
love in order to be set free. Human love has the power to make you feel, but
God's love alone has the power to set you free.

Human love has the power to make you feel, but God's love has the power to set
you free. And in Jesus' blood, we get this clear, unmistakable declaration of
God's love for you. He loves you so much that he's willing to send his son to
give his life for you.

And it's when you and I accept the meaning of that blood that was shed for us on
the cross, we trust in the one who loved us enough to do that, that we truly
understand the power behind being set free. So as we walk through this chapter
today, Exodus chapter 12, we're going to see in the pictures of Exodus chapter
12 what God is looking forward to and what he's going to do in Christ. God set
all this up.

He told them how to do the Passover, what to do in the Passover. First there
were the plagues that broke the heart of Egypt and now there's a Passover that
opens the heart of Israel to the God who loves them. The kingdom involves more
than just breaking the chains of Satan.

It also means taking up the purposes and the love of God in your life. It's not
enough just to remove the negative influences. You have to have a positive
faith, a positive experience with the love of God.

For the Israelites, this positive faith was expressed in a ceremony called the
Passover that recognized what happens in this chapter. For us, that positive
trust is found in the faith in the one who fulfilled the Passover. We're going
to see these verses as we walk through this chapter.

There are some pictures that I want us to look together at in Exodus chapter 12.
The Passover lamb, first picture, the blood that was put on the doorpost, the
second picture, and the unleavened bread. We could look at more pictures than
that but we don't have enough time.

We're going to look at those three today. First the Passover lamb, Exodus
chapter 12 verses 1 to 3 and then verse 5 and 10. The Lord said to Moses and
Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of
your year.

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man
is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. The animals you choose
must be year old males without any defect and you may take them from the sheep
or the goats. Do not leave," and later he's talking about eating the meal, he
says in verse 10, "Do not leave any of it until morning.

If some of it is left until morning, you must burn it. " God's giving them
directions for this meal there to take to recognize what happened with the
Passover lamb. You remember what happened.

God said put blood on the doorposts of your house and when that sign of faith
was seen, the angel of death that came over the land of Egypt passed over those
houses but if there was not blood on the doorpost, in those houses the firstborn
died. God says here, here's the kind of lamb that you're supposed to take the
life of in order to look forward to and look back to what I'm doing in your life
and look at what this lamb was like. It was to be unblemished.

In fact, it was to be proven to be unblemished by this four-day wait from the
tenth to the fourteenth of the month. It was unblemished because God didn't want
them offering to him that which was a leftover or good for nothing else. It was
to be valuable.

It was a male lamb, only one year old. It wasn't the oldest lamb. It was a young
lamb that was a strong lamb.

God didn't want them offering to him that which essentially cost them nothing or
was of no value. And third, we see they were to eat all of it in verse 10. It
wasn't like our Thanksgiving where we have turkey sandwiches for two weeks after
Thanksgiving.

They didn't have lamb sandwiches for two weeks after the Passover. The
celebration was to be fulfilled that night, all at once. Why were these
directions so clear?

Because God is looking forward to what he's going to do in Christ. One of the
first testimonies given about Jesus and all that he would do is right here in
this chapter. We see the testimony of what he would do for us on the cross.

When you think about the Lamb of God, and Jesus is called the Lamb of God,
that's what John the Baptist called him, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world. " That's what he's called in the book of Revelation. What
kind of a lamb is he to be?

Well, 1 Peter 1. 19 says he's to be unblemished, unblemished by sin. So just as
this lamb was unblemished, Jesus matches that.

He's a valuable lamb, obviously. He's the only Son of God. God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son.

The value of God himself coming to this earth, inestimable valuable. And when it
came to this lamb, there's also a picture in that they had to, in that day, eat
all of the lamb. It's a picture of how you and I receive Christ into our lives.

You receive him wholly or not at all. There's no in-between with Jesus. Oh, I'll
take part of Jesus.

He's either God or he's not. His blood is either shed for your forgiveness or
it's not. That's why eating all of it was stressed to the Jews, because God knew
that one day Jesus would fulfill this symbol.

And with Jesus, it is all or nothing in relationship with him, the Lamb of God.
You also see in the picture of this chapter of Exodus, the blood that spread on
the doorpost of the houses, the blood from this lamb. Listen to what happens in
verses 22 and 23.

Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, and put some of the
blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out
the door of his house until morning. When the Lord goes through the land to
strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and the sides of the
doorframe, and he will pass over that doorway.

He will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. Look
at what happened in this first Passover. They took some blood and they placed it
above the doorpost with a hyssop branch.

That was a sign of their faith. They were trusting God to keep his promise. And
God said, "I will pass over your homes based on that faith.

" Their faith resulted in grace. The calamity that came upon all the rest of
Egypt did not happen in these households. And beginning here and down through
Israel's history, God's going to use blood as a symbol again and again and again
as a symbol of his forgiveness.

Why? Because he's preparing the world to understand what's going to happen on
the cross. The blood of Christ is going to be shed, given for you and me.

That forgiveness comes through his blood. It's a picture of what's going to
happen with Christ. The blood of the Lamb, the blood of Christ.

His blood is mentioned over 50 times in the New Testament. We sing of his blood
in a lot of our hymns, a lot of our songs. Why is blood so important?

Well, in one sense, the blood of Christ is placed on the doorpost of your life.
Not with a hyssop branch, but by faith, by trust in Christ. And that blood is a
sign.

It's a spiritual sign. It's not actually placed. It's a spiritual sign for God
to pass over.

To pass over your sin, to pass over your guilt. That's the power that's in the
blood of Christ. It's the power of life.

It's the power of forgiveness. That's what was happening in this first Passover.
God's looking forward to what's going to happen in Christ.

That's why his directions are so exact. You have the Lamb of God. You have the
blood on the doorpost.

And there's a third picture that we want to look at today here in this chapter
of Exodus. And that is the bread that was given for eating, the unleavened
bread. Listen to verses 15 to 17.

For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove
the yeast from your houses. For whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the
first day to the seventh must be cut off from Israel.

On the first day hold a sacred assembly. And then another one on the seventh
day. Do no work at all on those days except to prepare food for everyone to eat.

That is all that you may do. Celebrate the feast of unleavened bread because it
was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this
day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.

So here you have unleavened bread, bread without yeast in it, an important part
of the Passover, a very important part of the Passover. Anyone who did not do
this was to be cut off from Israel. God's saying this is extremely important to
me.

Why is it so important? Not only did it remind them of their readiness to leave
Egypt, they didn't put leaven in the bread because they didn't have time for the
dough to rise. They had to flee from Egypt.

But it also, it also reminds us, God knew that one day it would remind us of
what He does in our lives through Christ. This isn't just about unleavened
bread. The New Testament says it's about in essence unleavened lives.

In 1 Corinthians 5 verse 8, listen to this verse. Therefore, let us keep the
festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with
bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. Here Paul's talking about
our lives, how this picture of the Passover then fits with our lives today.

The leaven of malice, of wickedness is to be taken out of our lives. Here's the
picture. After the Passover came this festival of unleavened bread.

And here Paul notes that the Lamb has already been sacrificed, the Passover's
already done. Jesus was sacrificed on the cross, so we're living in the time of
the festival. So now it's time for us to live unleavened lives because of what
Jesus has done for us.

What are unleavened lives? He says it's the bread of sincerity, of truth. You
live a life of sincerity, no outside motives in your relationship with God.

It's a motive of love, the influence of Christ's love in your life, a life of
truth, telling the truth, living the truth. That's the kind of life that he has
for us. So you see, as we walk through this chapter, this Passover has been
fulfilled in Christ.

It's fulfilled in Christ, but the question is, is it fulfilled in you? It took
faith for Israel to spread blood above the doorposts, faith in something that
they did not yet totally understand, and it takes faith to trust in Christ. Now
you say, I don't understand it all.

I still don't understand all that it means that God would love me that much, but
I do understand he died on a cross, and I do understand he's offering me the
gift of grace, of forgiveness. And the question is, what are you going to do
with what you do understand? The people of Israel, they did understand God was
saying put blood here, and they did it, and God gave them grace.

Jesus is offering you the gift of forgiveness. Have you accepted it? You may not
understand a lot of other things.

First, begin with what do you understand? Trust that gift of grace, and then let
God bring the rest of the understanding along with it. Right now as we pray, if
you're not sure you've ever prayed, or maybe you know you never really have
prayed for forgiveness, be sure today.

Say Jesus Christ, thank you for giving your life for me. I ask for forgiveness.
I thank you that you'll pass over my sins based on your gift of grace, based on
your sacrifice and blood.

I ask for forgiveness, and I want to live an unloving life. I want to live a
life of sincerity, of truth. Show me how to live that way.

Teach me how to live for you. In your name I pray, amen.