The Passover

1 Corinthians 5:7 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

We are not Jewish, but each year we celebrate the Passover from a Christian perspective.  Tricia always cooks a big meal of roast lamb and potatoes, beets, sweet peas, wild rice, and cheesecake.  We have appetizers of olives, hummus, haroset and matzoh.  We feast!  But the main point of the night isn't the meal - it is the story.  What an amazing story it is!

Passover is a remembering.  The children of Israel were called to remember.  They were to mark this remembrance with a yearly feast in which they were to recall the LORD's goodness in delivering them from bondage of the Egyptians.  Moses led the people from slavery into a land flowing with milk and honey.  We go through a little book called the Haggadah "the telling" and read the story.  Each Jew was to tell his son about the Jews' liberation from slavery.

When the plagues struck Egypt, the firstborn son in every household of the Egyptians died.  However, the children of Israel were called to kill an unblemished lamb and put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their home.  If they did this, the Angel of Death would "pass over" their home.  Wailing could be heard across all of Egypt as the Egyptians awoke to find the dead in their household.  The Pharoah told Moses and his people to GO!

This night of Passover is very important to a Christian as well.  As the verse at the top of this blog post asserts, Jesus is our Passover Lamb.  He was a sinless sacrifice.  If we believe Him to be the Messiah, the Son of God, we have placed His Blood on the doorposts of our hearts and we are delivered from the bondage of sin and from the penalty of death.

We are called to Remember.  This Sunday we'll also celebrate Christ's Resurrection from the dead and His victory over sin and death.  Halleluhah!  Christ Is Risen!  PAt the end of our Passover meal, we took out an old hymnal and our family sang "Low in the Grave."  It is a song that starts off somber and melancholy and then erupts in victorious exultation!:

Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior, 
waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave he arose; 
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes; 
he arose a victor from the dark domain, 
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign. 
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Vainly they watch his bed, Jesus my Savior, 
vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord! [Refrain]

Up from the grave he arose; 
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes; 
he arose a victor from the dark domain, 
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign. 
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior; 
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave he arose; 
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes; 
he arose a victor from the dark domain, 
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign. 
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!