Good morning!
I love exploring faith issues and finding out more about the history of the beliefs I hold dear. This is a personal post about something I found mindblowing this morning! 
This morning I was reading about origins of the ancient Jewish festival of Passover. I was taken aback when I saw the message from God echoing through history in the words on the page and I thought I’d share it on here to provoke thought.
Why do Jews celebrate the festival of Passover?
Jews celebrate Passover as the miraculous time after the plagues of Egypt – the time they were just about to be freed from slavery and the evil reign of Pharaoh.
The Jews were living in Egypt as slaves, under intense oppression from Pharaoh. Their lives were miserable, and they’d been there for generations – 430 years to be exact.
Moses, the leader at the time had a great relationship with God – they were close and he was able to hear what God wanted him to do. I don’t know if this was like modern day prayer, or if he saw God in some other way – but in any case, when he heard from God he was really good at doing what was asked of him even when it was difficult – like standing up in front of Pharaoh (who the Egyptians considered as their own god – very important man!) to ask for their freedom!
God’s plan was to have His people (the Jews) come out from under oppression and eventually inherit the promised land, which would be a place set aside for them – full of good things – milk, honey, prosperity and no more slavery. But first how were they going to escape from such a nightmare situation?
God sent Moses to Pharaoh to request permission to leave many times – and each time Moses warned Pharaoh that there would be horrible plagues if he did not let God’s people go.
God did send all the plagues that Pharaoh was warned about. Pharaoh saw all the plagues and miracles come and go – locusts, frogs, hailstones, lice and darkness among others, the most disgusting things imaginable! But still he did not allow the Jews to leave!
God’s final step to convince Pharaoh to let His people leave Egypt was to send ‘The Destroyer’ – yup he doesn’t sound too nice, and he definitely wasn’t around to make friends. On the night assigned – as Pharaoh had been warned – the Angel of the Lord took the lives of each firstborn son of each family. The only way a family could avoid this (and this is what God asked the Jews to do) was to sacrifice a lamb which should be eaten for their dinner that evening, and to smear the blood from the sacrificial lamb over the doorpost to their house so that it would be a sign to the angel to ‘pass over’ their house. There were other conditions too – that the lamb should have no defect and that no bone should be broken during the sacrifice. Check out Exodus 13 and 14 (books in both the Jewish Torah and Christian bible) for all the info.
Initially this sounds not very nice, hey? But when I delved a bit deeper to find out why God would do this it took my breath away. I suddenly saw the stark parallels with God’s sacrifice of his first born son Jesus. (This may be obvious to many people, but hey I’m a bit slow sometimes!).
Jesus is known through history as the lamb of God : he was without blemish (he lived a sin free life) just like the perfect lamb that God had asked the Jews to sacrifice. When Jesus died at the cross with the other two men, the authorities told the guards to break all their legs to speed up their deaths as the next day was due to be a Sabbath. “So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs.” John 19:32-33
Suddenly I saw that it is by Jesus’ blood (his death on the cross) that death will ‘pass over’ us too. That through the mark of His blood we will also get to enjoy freedom from Pharaoh (oppression and slavery to sin) and that we will get to inherit the promised land (heaven). Woop yeah!
Want to know one more amazing thing which blows my mind? The bible tells us the time of year Jesus died : ”It was the day of preparation, and the Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies hanging there the next day, which was the Sabbath (and a very special Sabbath, because it was the Passover).” John 19:31
This has encouraged me so much this morning!
