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Exodus 12:1–4
“Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb” (vv. 3–4).
We noted in our last study that the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, provides the context in which the festival of the Passover was instituted (see Ex. 11). In today’s passage, we begin to read the instructions for celebrating the Passover, one of the most significant feasts for old covenant Israel.
The Passover is associated with the last plague because it memorializes what happened in the plague’s aftermath—the exodus of Israel from Egypt (Ex. 12:1–42), an event so momentous that it marks a new beginning for Israel. God tells His people that the month in which they leave Egypt and eat the Passover meal will be the first month of the year for them from that point on (vv. 1–2). The Lord is instituting a new religious calendar. Israel will also celebrate an agricultural calendar that associates the end of the year and the beginning of the next with the wheat harvest, which took place in the fall (23:16; 34:22). The Passover, however, occurs in the spring in March or April, depending on the fluctuations of the lunar calendar. While the agricultural calendar will not fall entirely out of use, God clearly wants His people to see the month of Passover (Abib, later renamed Nisan) as the true start of the year, and this because it is the month in which the Lord accomplished their salvation from Egypt. The year starts with Passover because the most important thing that can ever happen to God’s people—their redemption from bondage—took place in the spring. In Passover, the people are given something that will keep them from forgetting God’s salvation and render them without excuse should they disregard the Lord who rescued them from slavery. John Calvin comments, “The Passover taught the Israelites that it was not lawful for them to have regard to any other God besides their Redeemer; and also that it was just and right for them to consecrate themselves to His service, since He had restored them from death to life; and thus, as in a glass or picture, He represented to their eyes His grace; and desired that they should on every succeeding year recognize what they had formerly experienced, lest it should ever depart from their memory.”
God in His grace gives His people the Passover to remember His salvation and recommit themselves to His service. This is true even in the new covenant, in which the Passover we keep is the Lord’s Supper, wherein we are reminded that Christ died to purchase us out of slavery to sin, death, and Satan (Luke 22:7–20; Rom. 6:1–7:6).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
We do not celebrate Passover in the same way that the old covenant people did because Christ put an end to sacrifices once and for all (Heb. 10:1–18). Nevertheless, the Lord’s Supper serves essentially as the new covenant Passover wherein we commemorate the death of the Lamb of God, who takes away our sins. When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, let us remember this great work of salvation and ask God to help us never take it for granted.
For Further Study
- Numbers 9:1–14
- Deuteronomy 16:1–8
- Joshua 5:10–12
- Mark 14:12–25