Last week we looked at the wilderness and the fact that all mankind is bitten with sin and it’s destined to perish apart from trusting God’s provision for salvation. Our passage was in the book of Numbers chapter 21, and Conner reminded us that all of the Old Testament points to Jesus.

This morning I want us to go back BEFORE the book of Numbers to the book of Exodus chapter 12 and the plagues of Egypt.

If you’re not familiar with this story, the Israelites had been in bondage for about 430 years. The beginning of their time in Egypt was when Joseph was serving in leadership. Eventually he died a new leadership to place in Egypt. That leadership felt threatened by the Israelites because there were so many of them so he treated them cruelly.

By the time we pick up in chapter 12, nine plagues have taken place. Each one of them a message to Pharaoh that he is NOT god, and that Yahweh God demands that his people be released from bondage to go and worship.

This last plague, #10, will be the final judgment on Pharaoh and will result in the imminent release of the Israelites from their bondage. God wanted his people to be able to be free from bondage and free to worship him, but Pharaoh wanted to be the one they recognized as god.

The tenth plague is a plague of death. Here is how it was described to Moses:

Exodus 12:1–14 CSB

¹ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is the first month of your year. ³ Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they must each select an animal of the flock according to their fathers’ families, one animal per family. ⁴ If the household is too small for a whole animal, that person and the neighbor nearest his house are to select one based on the combined number of people; you should apportion the animal according to what each will eat. ⁵ You must have an unblemished animal, a year-old male; you may take it from either the sheep or the goats. ⁶ You are to keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight. ⁷ They must take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses where they eat them. ⁸ They are to eat the meat that night; they should eat it, roasted over the fire along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or cooked in boiling water, but only roasted over fire—its head as well as its legs and inner organs. ¹⁰ You must not leave any of it until morning; any part of it left until morning you must burn. ¹¹ Here is how you must eat it: You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover. ¹² “I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, both people and animals. I am the Lord; I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt. ¹³ The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. ¹⁴ “This day is to be a memorial for you, and you must celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. You are to celebrate it throughout your generations as a permanent statute.

Exodus 12:21–28 CSB

²¹ Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. ²² Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning. ²³ When the Lord passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you. ²⁴ “Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants. ²⁵ When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony. ²⁶ When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ²⁷ you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’ ” So the people knelt low and worshiped. ²⁸ Then the Israelites went and did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

Exodus 12:29–36 CSB

²⁹ Now at midnight the Lord struck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock. ³⁰ During the night Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn’t a house without someone dead. ³¹ He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, “Get out immediately from among my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the Lord as you have said. ³² Take even your flocks and your herds as you asked and leave, and also bless me.” ³³ Now the Egyptians pressured the people in order to send them quickly out of the country, for they said, “We’re all going to die!” ³⁴ So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their clothes on their shoulders. ³⁵ The Israelites acted on Moses’s word and asked the Egyptians for silver and gold items and for clothing. ³⁶ And the Lord gave the people such favor with the Egyptians that they gave them what they requested. In this way they plundered the Egyptians.

This was to be a perpetual memorial. This is usually a sign of what is coming! When God sets up a reminder, it is not just the PAST that he is interested in, it is the future. Remembering this event keeps it in perspective when the thing it points to eventually arrives.

Exodus 12:43 “43 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner may eat it.”

Exodus 12:46–47 “46 It is to be eaten in one house. You may not take any of the meat outside the house, and you may not break any of its bones. 47 The whole community of Israel must celebrate it.”

Exodus 12:50–51 “50 Then all the Israelites did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. 51 On that same day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt according to their military divisions.”

OK, back to the story, what actually happened: After this there is the parting of the Red Sea, there is manna, water from a rock and eventually those serpents Conner talked about last week.

You might be wondering how this relates to Easter? Knowing that the Old Testament points to Jesus, this story directly points to the work of Jesus on the cross and the results of Easter for you and me.

Where the serpent in the wilderness showed the need for a savior, Passover shows the work of the savior.

How Jesus Represents the Passover

Many pastors and many commentators have given us an abundance of ways to connect the Passover to Jesus and to what we celebrate at Easter. But rather than just rattling off all the parallels that I can think if, I prefer to look at how the NT authors interpreted Jesus in light of the Passover.

While many passages connect Jesus to the Passover through word association, and we will look at a few shortly, there is only one explicit reference to Jesus as the Passover:

1 Corinthians 5:7 CSB

⁷ Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

1 Corinthians 5:7 directly identifies “Christ our Passover lamb” as having “been sacrificed.” This is the clearest and most direct statement equating Jesus with the Passover. Only 1 Corinthians 5:7 explicitly names Jesus as the Passover itself. However, the importance of this verse cannot be overstated.

Paul, a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures having formally studied them, was convinced that the Passover was more than just the story of a physical exodus from slavery, it pointed to a spiritual exodus from slavery. And both required an innocent, perfect sacrifice to be offered and blood applied.

With this in mind, we read other passages that connect Exodus 12 with Jesus:

The unblemished lamb.

1 Peter 1:18–19 CSB

¹⁸ For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, ¹⁹ but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

Christ is described as “an unblemished and spotless lamb,” directly mirroring the Passover requirement of “an unblemished animal, a year-old male.” This language appears across multiple epistles, establishing Jesus’s ritual purity as the essential qualification for his redemptive sacrifice.

Exodus 12:5 “You must have an unblemished animal, a year-old male; you may take it from either the sheep or the goats.”

It points to the need of a perfect sacrifice. Jesus was the perfect, sinless, righteous Son of God and is the only one who has ever truly been “unblemished” and “spotless”.

Sacrificial death.

That spotless lamb needed to be sacrificed.

Exodus 12:6 CSB

⁶ You are to keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight.

At dusk (which could mean between noon and sunset, the lamb was taken out and slaughtered and skinned.

The Israelites were to slaughter the animal. In a very real sense, you and I killed Jesus. Our sin drive him to that cross. He was slaughtered for our transgression and bruised for our sins is how Isaiah puts it.

However, what makes Easter different, is that Jesus didn’t have to die for us, he CHOSE to die for us.

Hebrews 9:12–14 CSB

[Jesus] entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God?

While the goat or lamb was sacrificed against its will, Christ “offered himself without blemish to God,” language that echoes Passover sacrifice language while emphasizing his singular, redemptive role.

Sprinkling of the Blood

Exodus 12:7 CSB

⁷ They must take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses where they eat them.

The blood of the animal that was slaughtered was collected in a bowl and then splattered on the doorpost (left and right) and on the lintel (either directly above the door or above the window that was above the door). They would use a collection of hyssop branches to for a crude brush and then mark the doorway.

1 Peter 1:1–2 CSB

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ: To those chosen… according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Just as the Passover blood marked houses so that God would “pass over” them, New Testament theology emphasizes Christ’s blood as the means of salvation. Christians are “sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ,” language evoking the hyssop-application ritual of the original Passover.

Bones unbroken.

John’s Gospel records the crucifixion of Jesus that we remember at Easter. At twilight, the soldiers were looking to speed things up so they broke the bones of the thieves who hung next to Jesus. But Jesus had already been sacrificed, so they did not break his bones, and Joh recorded that “not one of his bones will be broken,”

John 19:36 CSB

³⁶ For these things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: Not one of his bones will be broken.

Where was THAT mentioned in scripture? Most specifically, the Passover:

Numbers 9:12 “They may not leave any of it until morning or break any of its bones…”

Exodus 12:46 “46 It is to be eaten in one house. You may not take any of the meat outside the house, and you may not break any of its bones.”

This detail connects Jesus’s crucifixion directly to Passover sacrifice protocols.

What does this mean for us today?

There was the sacrifice of a young goat or lamb that was spotless and no bones were to be broken before, or during the process or sacrificing it.  It’s blood was to be totally spilled out and sprinkled on the doorpost and lintel. The animal was to be consumed, and the rest of it burnt because it was a offering to God (making the Israelites a “nation of priests” offering up sacrifices to God). Those that obeyed were spared from death and led out of bondage into freedom to worship.

The Passover is a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for all of mankind. At Easter we commemorate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Just as the Israelites remember the Passover each year, you and I get the opportunity to remember what Jesus did – as our Passover lamb.

JESUS was the perfect sacrifice without any sin that was slaughtered at twilight to buy our freedom. When he was sacrificed, no bones were broken.  When God sees the blood of Jesus applied to our lives, he relents from destroying us. Those that have the blood applied, that act in obedience, are not only spared from the punishment of death, but are led out of the slavery of sin into freedom of worship.

How Should we Respond?

The story of the redemption of Israel not only points to what Jesus would do, and has done, but also how we should respond.

Act in Faith.

Exodus 12:50 CSB

⁵⁰ Then all the Israelites did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

It was FAITH that protected the Israelites. Just like it was faith that would later save them from the venomous serpents.

Faith is belief with action. The phrase “faith in action” is really a misnomer. There is no other kind. You cannot have faith apart from action.

God provided a very specific way for the people to be saved from the Destroyer, and all that were willing to trust God and do what He said were spared from the plague of death. This is no different for us today.

Are you willing to do what GOD says you need to do to be saved?

Act in Haste

Exodus 12:11 CSB

¹¹ Here is how you must eat it: You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover.

It must be done in haste -> do NOT wait and anticipate that you will get right with God before you die. Make haste, be urgent to obey and experience the covering of Jesus.

Those that obeyed, that believed what God said and did it, were led into freedom that very night.

Act in Worship

Exodus 12:27–28 CSB

… So the people knelt low and worshiped. Then the Israelites went and did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

The people knelt low and worshiped. Kneeling is a sign of submission, and that is what worship is really all about. Worship is not a service you attend, it is service you render to the one who bought your freedom.

Act In Sincerity & Truth

Live a life free from sin. Do not go back into bondage.

Let’s go back to that one set of verses where Paul explicitly connects the Passover to Jesus:

1 Corinthians 5:7–8 CSB

⁷ Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. ⁸ Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

We are commanded to “clean out the old leaven” and become “a new unleavened batch” because “Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.”  This transforms the Passover’s dietary requirements into spiritual metaphors for Christian living.

The Israelites were saved from slavery… for a while. Eventually, they were enslaved to the Assyrians. Then to the Babylonians. Then to the Chaldeans.

The sacrifice of Jesus that we celebrate at Easter is a once for all time sacrifice that frees us from slavery to sin and death for all time.

Christ’s redemptive mission involves “redeem[ing] those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons,” transforming believers from slaves into heirs of God. This parallels the Exodus pattern: just as the Passover marked Israel’s transition from Egyptian slavery to freedom and covenant relationship with God, Christ’s death accomplishes spiritual liberation.

Romans 6:17–18 CSB

¹⁷ But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, ¹⁸ and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

This mirrors the Passover’s function: liberation from one master (Pharaoh/sin) for covenant service to another (God/righteousness).

Jesus teaches that “everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin,” but “if the Son sets you free, you really will be free,” (John 8:32–36) echoing the Passover’s promise of deliverance.

Pass it on.

Exodus 12:26–27 CSB

²⁶ When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ²⁷ you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’ ”

We are to pass our faith, our understanding of salvation, to our children. We are to teach our children and our grandchildren about the sacrifice that God made so that we, and they, could be made free from sin and death.

There are few stories in the OT that give us such detail into the work of the Messiah -what he came to do and how he would do it – like the Passover does.

JESUS, our spotless lamb was slaughtered for us. He shed his blood for us, willingly.  Those that have his blood applied, that act in obedience to God, are spared from the punishment of death, led out of the slavery of sin and death, and led into freedom of worship and relationship with God.

Exodus 12:2 CSB

² “This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is the first month of your year.

The day you choose to follow God with your whole heart is the beginning of days for you. Just as the Passover marked a totally new way of tracking time. It was to be the beginning of the new year. For those of us that believe it is the beginning of your new life, your freedom, your adoption, your redemption.