WEDNESDAY March 12th
Exodus 12:5
‘Your lamb shall be without blemish’
This was one of the important phrases which was given to the Children of Israel as they began to prepare for what we now call the ‘The Passover’, the night where God came and delivered them from out of Egypt—but not until a sacrifice had been made, and the blood of the lamb (or goat according to the size of the family) had been applied to the doorpost and lintels of their homes.
Well, Christ Jesus has become our Passover Lamb, and the scripture says that God had prepared a body for Jesus in readiness for him to come into this world and become the sinless and spotless Lamb of God who in going to Calvary would shed his blood which would be sufficient to cleanse us and wash us from our sin, to bring to us the salvation and deliverance that we need.
But we need to remind ourselves that Jesus wasn’t some last minute emergency measure that God decided to put into action when Adam and Eve failed in the garden, no, it was a plan that had been decided way before even the creation or foundation of the earth, for Paul tells us in Ephesians that God chose us to be in Christ even before the foundation of the world, (Ephesians 1:4) the Cross was no afterthought, God knew even before he created mankind what mankind would do through his action of disobedience and rebellion, and God was prepared for it and so in the fulness of time, he sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, (Galatians 4:4-5) and when John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him on one occasion he cried out to those around him, ‘Behold, look and see, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’
And the Lamb of God, offered himself, as an eternal sacrifice, the Hebrew writer puts it this way, ‘And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified’, Hebrews 10:11-14.
The exodus of the Children of Israel must have been incredible, to finally be delivered from the power and the stronghold of their enemy, and with the promised land ahead of them.
Well, In Christ our Passover Lamb, we have had an even more incredible deliverance from the power of sin and an incredible cleansing for there is power in the precious blood of Jesus. I am glad that God the Father had it all planned out and prepared, and I am glad that Jesus was willing to take up the body that had been prepared for him, and was willing to be the atoning sacrifice for my sin, and not just for mine, but for yours, and not just for ours, but for the sin of the world.