Next Tuesday, on March 26, Jews will celebrate the feast of Passover. The Passover feast, enshrined by God into the Calendar, should be an important time of remembrance for Christians as well.
The first Passover Christians should remember is the original Passover which occurred during the time God was setting Israel free from Egyptian slavery. God had humbled the gods of Egypt through the plagues, saving the final humiliation for last as the Angel of Death struck down the Horus God-King son of Pharaoh and the first born of Egypt. But God spared His people by having them sprinkle the blood of the Passover lamb on their doorposts, and the Angel of Death passed over them. This deliverance through the Blood of the Lamb has been celebrated in the Passover and the Seder meal from generation to generation ever since.
A second Passover Christians should remember is the Passover Seder Jesus celebrated with His Disciples the night before He was crucified. Using a portion of the Seder meal, Jesus explained that his body must be broken and His Blood become the new covenant to set people free from slavery to sin and death. Jesus fulfilled the promise of Passover, shedding His Blood be the perfect Passover Lamb and providing through His Blood the way to reconcile God and man. Christians remember Jesus, the Lamb of God, by taking the portion of the Seder meal Jesus used, the broken bread and the wine, in communion with Him.
The third Passover Christians should remember occurred 40 years after Jesus was crucified, when a Roman army surrounded Jerusalem. The city Jesus wept over had crucified Him and persecuted His followers, and now the prophesied Abomination of Desolation had come. But Jesus warned Christians to flee from Jerusalem when it was surrounded by armies, and there were no Christians among the dead or those put in slavery after the city was destroyed. Those who had followed the Lord where again passed over, while those who rejected Him entered a worse slavery than their ancestors had endured in Egypt. This third Passover is symbolic of the deliverance of God’s people from the Judgment to come, as the Angel of Death passes over those sprinkled with the Blood of the Lamb. It will be celebrated in Jerusalem by both Jews and Gentiles, united into the Church, after Jesus returns.
So on this Passover we join in celebrating the first Passover with the Jews and the second Passover with the Christians. We look forward to the celebration of the third Passover when all God’s people are united again.
And we pray for the peace of Jerusalem