The Passover celebration is the Jewish memorial of the Israelites’ deliverance out of slavery in Egypt. But at a deeper level, it’s a living parable of redemption, and a vivid picture of Jesus’ death on a cross and how it would deliver humanity out of slavery to sin and death.
Let’s set the historical stage. Abraham’s children through Isaac had become a great nation. Great in numbers, but not in circumstances, since they had been slaves in Egypt for over 400 years. Through Moses, God told the Egyptian pharaoh to let his people go. But Pharaoh refused, in spite of the miracles Moses performed. After God had brought nine plagues on Egypt, without Pharoah changing his mind, God told Moses that he was going to slay every first-born male in Egypt that night. But God also told the Israelites that if each family would sacrifice a lamb, and put its blood on their doorposts, he would pass over that home and spare his people.
God was specific about what they had to do in order for the Angel of Death to pass over their home. They were to sacrifice a lamb on the threshold of their entry doorway, pour the blood in a basin, and then paint the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the two doorposts and the lintel. If you connect these points, it forms the shape of a cross. That night, all the Egyptian first-born males died, but the Israelites were safe behind the cross of blood on their doors.
“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
Exodus 12:12-13 NIV
When the Bible calls the blood a “sign for you”, it is referring to us as well. It’s the sign of the cross – a symbolic picture that Jesus, God’s own first-born son, would pay the redemption price.
The next day Pharaoh set them free. God had passed over his people who demonstrated their faith in him by painting the sign of the cross on their door in lamb’s blood. And it also looked forward to the time when Jesus would free his people from slavery to sin and death. Just as it finally took the death of Pharoah’s son to free the children of Israel, it would take the death of God’s son to free mankind from sin.
Facets of Redemption Found in this Picture:
- Just as God freed his people from physical slavery in Egypt, our Redeemer will free us from slavery to sin and death.
- God used the symbolism of a cross of blood to indicate the death our redeemer would face.
| Sidebar: The Lamb of God Lambs and sacrifice figure prominently in the story of redemption woven through the Old Testament. In the Gospel of John, John the Baptist identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) When John used this phrase, it would have struck a chord with his listeners, and reminded them of two essential pictures of redemption found in the Old Testament, The story of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, and the Passover story in Exodus. In 1 Corinthians 5:7, the apostle Paul calls Jesus “our Passover lamb” who “has been sacrificed.” |