January 1, 2023: Luke 2:41-42 - The Passover Lamb

“His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.” - Luke 2:41-42

Both Joseph and Mary went to the Jewish festival of Passover every year. When Jesus was 12 years old, He also went with them. Here we have the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, without blemish - without sin, perfect in every way - who would soon have His own blood shed so that those who believe in Him would not die, going to His first Passover.

God had promised to redeem His people from the bondage of the Egyptian Pharaoh, where they had been enslaved for 430 years. God sent Moses to Egypt to free His people. When Moses and his brother Aaron went to Egypt and had their first encounter with Pharaoh, Moses told him, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’ “ Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, nor will I let Israel go.”

Pharaoh did not believe in the one true God, and made it even harder on God’s people to do the work he forced them to do. He had done evil to God’s people. Pharaoh’s heart was hard and refused to let God’s people go. Thus, God said to Moses and Aaron, “You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.” When God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh to show a miracle of casting down Aaron’s rod before Pharaoh and causing it become a servant, Pharaoh called his wise men and sorcerers and they did the same thing with their rods. However, Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods. “And Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the LORD had said.”

Consequently, God sent the first of ten plagues to Egypt. However, Pharaoh hardened his heart repeatedly against the one true God and kept believing in all of his false gods and would not free God’s people. Finally, God sent the tenth plague, which would cause the death of the firstborn of all people in Egypt as well as the firstborn of all their animals. However, God spoke to Moses and Aaron and He instituted the Passover in that month, which God said “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.’

‘Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.’

God then told Moses and Aaron about the requirements for the Passover Feast that would be kept every year, and the lamb must be roasted in fire and eaten that night with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. “It is the LORD’s Passover.”

‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. Now 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 the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.’ ”

Thus, Moses and Aaron did everything that God had told them to do. Then Moses told all the elders of Israel all that the Lord God had told him and Aaron. Moses then said to them, “And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. It will come to pass when you come to the land which the LORD will give you, just as He promised, that you shall keep this service. And it shall be, when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ that you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice of the LORD, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.’ ” “So the people bowed their heads and worshipped. Then the children of Israel went away and did so; just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.”

“And it came to pass at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.”

“Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the LORD as you have said.” (Exodus 12:1-31)

With the death of his own firstborn son, Pharaoh finally had relented and freed God’s people from their bondage in Egypt. Though much turmoil still lied ahead of them, the Israelites were free. It took the power of Almighty God and the blood of an unblemished male lamb to break their bondage of slavery.

John the Baptist would later proclaim when he saw Jesus Christ, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus breaks the bondage of all sins for all people who believe in Him, whom God the Father sent. Without redemption of our sins through Jesus Christ, we will be enslaved in our sin forever and ever in hell, making slavery in Egypt look like paradise. As with the Passover lamb in the book of Exodus, it took the blood of Jesus, who is without sin and perfect in every way, for the judgment of God to passover us who believe in Jesus, sparing us from not only death but eternal death in sin. Though the Jews were living their lives in Egypt in bondage prior to being freed, they were not experiencing true life, true life only comes from being freed by Jesus Christ.

At the age of twelve when Jesus went to the Feast of the Passover with His parents and saw with His eyes the sacrificing of an unblemished male Passover lamb, He would later become our Passover. Jesus would have His last supper with His apostles, and it was a Passover meal. He would be crucified and die on a cross and be resurrected three days later at Passover time. He is the final Passover Lamb.

Are you covered by His precious blood, forgiven of all your sins, or will you hold onto your sins, like Pharaoh and experience the heartache and consequences of your hardened heart?

“…knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” - 1 Peter 1:18-21 ✝️