The Passover Lamb
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 05 April 2026
How good and how pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity.
Knowing what I deserve for my children, how much anger and bitterness and ugliness I've poured into my family from the time they were born until now. I know what I deserve. And to see them gathering together, worshiping together, preaching to each other as a group of brothers for the last couple weeks has been mind blowing, astonishing to me. Jeshurun, if you just continue to remember to pray for him, we are looking forward. We kind of solidifying times with Marie.
Also. Paul and Marie have been coming here, and she expressed a desire to be baptized. We're going to try to get a baptismal tank, a portable one that we can put up here, because not everyone wanted to be baptized in the ocean at this time of year. And so for that, for Jeshurun, but also Jeshurin and I are planning a trip tomorrow to Bellingham, Washington. And there is a missionary organization called mata, Missionary Aviation Training association or something like this.
And they train pilots to become missionary pilots. And I, you know, encourage Jeshurun to see if the doors open. And there's a possibility that this is a $40,000 program. But it is strange. So we're going there with the pot, or I'm going there with the possibility of thinking they have a job that needs to be done and a commercial, you know, contractor may be able to bid on that job, and then the money possibly could go back to Jeshurun's flight.
So we might be praying for that, that, that that could be met, that, you know, big chunk of money. So just be praying for Jesh and also for all the young men that are meeting together. Okay. So if anyone else has any desire to be baptized, you've made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ and want to make that public. We are planning a baptism in about four or five weeks.
So that is. Anything else I was supposed to mention? Stacey? Okay, okay, that's it. So we're going to go into the message today, and today is the day that we call in America, we call Easter.
Jason.
Okay. Is that okay with everyone? Just quickly, right after church. Jeremy.
This is the day that we call Easter. Out of all the Latin languages, it is German and English that use a word Easter or Austern in German, that is not associated with the Passover. So in Spanish, it's Pascua. In French, it's pasches. And it brings a remembrance that the day, the resurrection day, is a day that is closely associated with the Jewish Passover.
Easter kind of gives us an idea that it's a day that's about eggs and bunnies or some sort. And while I'm not here to condemn whatever people do in celebrating, it is important to recognize that, that the day that we celebrate as Easter or Resurrection Day is very much tied to the Jewish Passover. The reason now this year is a bit unique because we are celebrating Easter in the same week that the Jewish people are celebrating their Passover. They have aligned. They don't always align, but whatever happened this year, they are aligned.
The reason is different. If you remember, we celebrate the day of Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox. That happens to be today. Right. Of course, the Eastern and Western churches celebrate it differently because they are on different calendars, the Gregorian versus Julian calendar.
But the Jews celebrate Passover on the first month of their spiritual year, which is Nisan Nissan. And so if you remember, Moses said this will be at the beginning of the year for you, the first day. Theirs is a lunar calendar. And that calendar, the first day of the month is the new moon. As soon as you cite the new moon, that becomes number one day.
So every month of their year has 29 or 30 days in it, because that depending on exactly when the new moon is sighted and when it goes down, it could be 29 or 30 days. Now that we make up, we try to keep our calendar aligned with the solar. Theirs doesn't align with the solar year very, very well. So every 19 years, every 19 years, there are seven years that have 13 months in them. Interesting.
And that kind of sets them back in line with the solar calendar. So it's a lunar calendar, but tries to keep Track. So every seven years out of 19, you have ADAR 1 and then you have ADAR 2.
But what I wanted to point out today is the close association that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has with the Passover. It is very important to know that Jesus, Jesus is the Passover lamb. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If you remember from when his public ministry started, after he was baptized in the River Jordan, he began his public ministry with the calling of disciples. He had interaction.
That first interaction he had with was with being viewed by John the Baptist. And John the Baptist said to his disciples, who later became some of Jesus 12 disciples, behold the Lamb of God. John recognized that this Jesus was the Lamb of God. When the disciples of John heard that, they left the teacher, John the Baptist, and they went to the Messiah and, and they stuck with him and continued in ministry with him for those three years. Of difficulty, of hardship, of a very persevering experience emotionally, physically and spiritually.
And they later became those the individuals, the foundation stones of the Christian church as they spread Christ, Christ's ministry all over the world. Well, the Passover starts even before that. If you remember, God spoke to Abraham and he said, you know, take your son, your only son, the son whom you love, and sacrifice him on the mountain. I will show you. It says, early the next morning, Abraham took his son Isaac and some servants and wood and fire, and.
And went towards the mountain that God showed him. On the way, the son asked him, what about the sacrifice? We have everything needed to sacrifice, but we have no sacrifice. That must have been a painful question for a father to answer who had just been instructed to take his only son and kill him on a mountain. But his answer, and we see later that he believed that God was even able to raise his son from the dead.
He said, God himself will provide a sacrifice. He will provide a lamb. And there on the mountain we see a picture as Moses took his son, his only son, his beloved son, and went to sacrifice him on that mountain. The Lord stayed his hand. And Abraham received, as it says in New Testament, the.
That he received his son back from the dead. And then they saw the animal, the ram, caught in the thicket. And Abraham took that ram and sacrificed that ram on the mountain. It is commonly thought that that is the same mountain that Jesus was sacrificed on, that Jesus became the lamb of God. So I want to go over this Passover lamb for a minute, this Passover lamb, because if we just take Resurrection day independently, we miss much of the significance of the Passover.
Now, in the month of Nisan, it says at the full moon. So the full moon is at the middle of each month. So at the 15th day of Nisan, the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed. But the process started on the 10th day of day of the month of Nisan, the first month of the year of the Jewish New Year. And they were to take a lamb and they were to separate that lamb to make sure that it was a spotless lamb.
And so we see Jesus at that time of the year, in the preparation for the Passover, he begins to set his sights on Jerusalem and begins to. Even though he's staying in Bethany, he goes to spend time in. In Jerusalem. And there he's questioned by the high priest. They put hard questions before him and they are testing him.
He is being tested to see if there is any spot in him. And he comes out. They can find nothing in him and do not ask him any more questions.
This leads to the Passover. On the 15th month of the or the 15th day of the month at twilight, the Israelites in being told that they're going to come out of the land of Egypt, that slavery that they had been under, think of it, for 400 years, Moses had told them, this is the night you are going to come out from this slavery. Take yourself a lamb and kill the lamb at twilight. Take the blood and put it on the lintels and the doorposts of your house. And it shall be that when the angel of death comes and crosses over the land of Egypt, all who are in houses which have the blood on the lintels and the door posts, the.
The angel of death will pass over that house and all who are inside, the firstborn in that house will live. That night, as they were sacrificing that lamb and they were painting the door post with the blood from that lamb, the angel of death crossed over and killed the first born of every family and in the nation of Israel who did not have the blood painted on their doorposts. And there was a great mourning cry, a horrendous sound of weeping that came from every house, as the angel of death visited the house upon every house where that blood was applied. It says that Jesus is our Passover lamb. It is interesting to note that the Synoptic Gospels have an account that I think should be carefully looked at.
It appears maybe at first sight to be different than the Gospel of John. And so in the Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see that Jesus disciples are told to go to a house and there prepare the Passover. A lot of times it's assumed that that meal that they are having there, that they had been prepared for, was the Passover meal, that the 15th had already happened and the Passover lambs had already been slaughtered. But if we see in John, we see that there might be a different perspective, that the Passover has not yet been killed. It is days off or a day off, that it is the preparation meal for the Passover.
It is taking the time to prepare for it. Now. It is interesting that Jesus up to this moment had said that his time had not come, that individuals had attempted to kill Jesus many times. They had wanted to throw him over the cliff. They had attempted to stone him multiple times.
They sent out soldiers to arrest him. But all of the efforts to killed Jesus were fruitless because his hour had not yet come. There was a specific time. And Jesus, in his prayer, he called to the Father, he said, the time has come. He said to the Jews, this is your hour, the hour of darkness.
And so they came out to him to arrest him, having been led to that garden where he had gone secretly with his own disciples by Judas Iscariot. They arrested him with clubs and swords and torches. And they took him. That evening they did something unlawful. They took him to a private person's house and there they spent the entire night.
They knew their time was short. They had one hour. They had tried to put him to death multiple times. But now they. This was their time.
And so they harangue. They made this happen throughout the night. They put Jesus to all sorts of questions. Finally they said to him, I jury you by the living God. Are you the Son of God?
He said, I am. They said, we have no further need of testimony. What do you say? The religious leaders said to themselves, they said, he is deserving of death. They had sentenced.
The religious leaders sentenced Jesus to death. All this happened right as the sun began to rise. This was happening at the same time when Peter was denying Jesus for the third time, a rooster crowed and the work was finished. They had sentenced the Lamb of God to death. Now their work had to be done.
So at the dawning of light, after the whole night spent in this sham court, they brought Jesus to the civil authorities and they said, and they condemned him to death and they gave him to the civil authorities to put him to death. They could not do it, but they needed to do it quickly because that day was the preparation day. That day, it appears from John, was the day in which their Passover lambs, which had been set aside, they had to kill them that night. And so they could not risk being unclean because they were looking forward to their own Passover. So these individuals missed and condemned the Passover lamb because the Lamb of God, because they wanted to keep their own Passover with their own lambs.
That day, that full day was spent in the civil authorities giving legal jurisdiction to put Jesus to death. Are you the King of the Jews? Back to Herod and then back to Pilate, his wife saying, don't do it, He's a righteous man. Don't get involved in that case. But the pressure upon him was so great and he condemned Jesus to death, having been beaten, having been mocked and ridiculed.
Now, at twilight, as the day was going down, the time came for the Passover lambs to be slaughtered. Thousands, maybe even hundreds of lambs haven't been proven to be clean at the same, possibly the very Same hour, Jesus was being led out outside the city. The blood of the Passover lambs was being spilt and put on the altar, flowing through channels and tumbling, staining the Kidron brook that ran through the valley, red with the multitude of blood. And so Jesus was put on a cross, maybe about the same time. It says in Hebrews.
In Hebrews chapter nine it says, but Christ came as a high priest of the good things to come with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, in Hebrews 9:12, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood. He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. These Jewish leaders were trusting in the blood to put on the lintel and the doorposts of their house. But Jesus Christ came with his own blood, and as a priest over his own house. And he put his own blood on his own house, that whoever would come into that house would be safe from the wrath to come.
He came directly into the holy place and put his blood there. And the father was satisfied with that blood. That of course, it appears, if I'm looking correctly, that he did not spend much time upon that cross. Because the Jews wanting to make sure that the bodies were not defiling that high holy day, they instructed and asked if the civil authorities would please just come and break their legs so they would strangle quickly. They were surprised to find that Jesus had already died.
He had come so close to death before the cross that it did not take much time to die on the cross. He had given up that last great cry, cried out, lama, Lama Savarkani, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He gave up one great last shout and he died. That is the first picture of this Passover story, but is not the last one. You see in the Passover story.
The children of Israel, after having put the blood on the lintels and the doorpost, were instructed to get ready to ask of their neighbors for possessions of gold and silver and clothing. And the Egyptians gave them willing to the Israelites. And they left in a haste before they could add leaven to their bread. And they went out into the desert. In their haste to get away, the Egyptians loaded them with things and they plundered the Egyptians.
It is interesting note, there is possibly a time in which that worldwide power of Egypt becomes for a season tremendously weakened. There is some thought they became weakened because they were plundered by the Israelites. They lost their labor force and they lost their possessions. As the Israelites went out into the desert for three days. And so we see another picture of Jesus being in the grave.
They took him down off of the cross and laid him in a tomb. Because it was the preparation day. They couldn't bring him far. So they found the tomb of a rich man and they put him in and rolled a stone over the top of that tomb. But Jesus wasn't sitting idly in that tomb.
It says he went and preached to the spirits who were in prison. Now, preaching is a good thing. Now, sometimes I wish I were a better preacher for sure. But that was one message I probably wouldn't have wanted to be in the audience. In preaching, I think, is a very mild term to what he did to those spirits.
I think if I preached that way, there wouldn't be many people left. I think he took them to task. I think it was something like what he did to the tax collectors in the temple. He took them hand and foot and he thrashed them. It says that he in First Peter.
I'll go ahead and read it in. In Ephesians. Excuse me.
In Ephesians 4, 7, it says, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. Now this he ascended. What does it mean? But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth.
He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and some teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. You see, our ancestors, unfortunately, in the Garden of Eden, had lost, had willingly relinquished, had given over, had accepted something inferior for what they had before they lost what God had given them. They had worked side by side with God in the garden, but had relinquished that and come under the curse. They had become mundane.
Their lives had become fruitless and wearisome. It was a burden to be alive. Their toil was with thorns and thistles. But Christ came and he took back what the devil had stolen. And it says he gave gifts to men.
He gave them the opportunity once again to work with the Master to take up that ministry which they had lost at one time. It says he gave gifts to men. And so in the wilderness, the Israelites came, plundered. The Egyptians took back what they were owed. You say, well, it was wrong to steal.
Well, it was wrong to enslave them for 400 years. Also, they took what Acre actually belonged to them. And so they plundered the Egyptians. And so Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights as Jonah was in the belly of the whale. But that's not it.
On the third day before daybreak, we see that Jesus. The last part of the Passover story is that Jesus rose from the dead. This is a picture of that Israelite group, that nation of 600,000 men. And they had become concerned. And they were pushed to the edge of the sea, with the sea before the mountains on their sides and the Egyptian army pursuing them hot behind.
It says that a wall of fire came between these all night and a strong wind pushed the waters apart. And Moses said. The Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand and move into the sea. And so the Israelites moved into the sea and began to cross the Red Sea. The Egyptians, for whatever reason, were motivated so covetous of returning the Israelites to slavery, to recovering what they had lost, wanting to still have dominion over them, that they pursued the Israelites into the sea with walls of water.
The Israelites made it to the other side. And the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand over the sea. The Lord had caused difficulty to come upon the Egyptians. Their chariot wheels fell off and the waters covered the Egyptian army. And all of them were destroyed in the sea, while the nation of Israel passed on to the other side.
Saved. Here we see that the Lord has bought for himself a special people. He has purchased them. He has purchased them through a great conflict with the strongman. He has rescued them out of the hands of the one who had dominion over them.
And he put that person to death. Jesus came as a stronger person. And through a great conflict in his flesh, he put to death the devil and his authority over humankind that no longer were human beings the property of the devil. No longer did they have to to be in terror of the taskmaster's lash. And so God in the Passover story, claims for himself a special people to walk with him again, like they did in the.
In the Garden of Eden. In a similar way, Jesus rose from the dead.
It says in Romans, chapter six.
Romans, chapter six. We'll start in verse one. It says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not.
How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ's death were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united together in his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
That we, if Christ has risen from the dead, that he rose again, taking his people with Him. Now, the goal of his resurrection is to purchase his own special people, to adopt them into his family, that they might walk with him in the same way that our ancestors did, working with Him. Now, if you look at the kind of walk that those Israelites had in the desert, Stacy and I drove through there. We couldn't fly out of Tel Aviv, so we had to drive from up in Syria all the way through the nation of Israel, all the way down to the very point of a lot, and then get a bus all the way through the Sinai, almost to the very, very tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Sharm el Shekh, right. And this is a dry, barren, huge mountains kind of place.
You think, how in the world can anyone live there? But people do live there. They're called Bedouins, and they live there and seemingly have lived there that way for lots and lots of years. But in this place, maybe it's not a place that feels very nice.
I think they would say that for sure. But you and I, having been freed from the authority of the devil, having been rescued and adopted into Christ's family, are given the opportunity now, as being purchased by him, to walk with him. To walk with Him. This is not necessarily an easy walk. It is one that has a narrow gate and a hard road.
It is one where many are called, but few are chosen. But individuals are given the opportunity to use spiritual gifts that God has given them to work alongside of the Creator of the universe. There are several things that are enjoyable on this earth. There were several things on this earth that give temporal satisfaction that make you feel good for a little while. Wiser people choose to sacrifice larger amounts of time for greater degrees of satisfaction.
Fools tend to trade lots for a little. But there's nothing on earth that approaches the satisfaction that an individual has when working with their Creator. I hope in this Passover story to say three things that you would at least recognize. Number one, there is the angel of Death that is going to pass over your life eventually.
There are certain things that people do to try to prepare for that eventuality. They heap up for themselves things and trinkets and stuff. They talk about how good of A person they are, how much they punished you are. But let me tell you, the only people were saved were the individuals who were under the blood of the Passover lamb. And here we see Jesus Christ offering his blood for a sacrifice that you and I might have a house that we can escape to when the wrath passes over.
Number two. That in that three days the Lord provided spiritual gifts for his believers to be used for the benefit of the church. That he has robbed the treasuries of the devil. That you might have something that. That the baseless, dreary life that is just selfishly oriented, that we might escape from it and have something real.
He robbed it for you and I. And number two, three, he raised from the dead that he might call people, has his own children and allow them to walk with the him in the newness of life that he. He has also.
As we remember Easter, this current generation wants to tell you that as I go on to Google, the reminder is Easter is about Easter eggs. Easter is about bunnies. But Easter is not about Easter eggs and bunnies. Easter is about the Passover lamb, his crucifixion and death, the momentous victory that he accomplished over the devil, and his astonishing resurrection of the dead that gives visible proof to you and I today that he is alive and still calling people out of our culture to serve Him. My hope to you for you is you would ask yourself, what do I trust in to save me from the wrath?
Really, what do I trust in? As most people, they will not have the Passover lamb in their mind. Number two, what do you want for your life? What do you hope to gain? You could fill your bucket list with stuff and do things.
You could go places, you could eat things, you could meet people. You could see things. That's beautiful. But if you don't have the opportunity to partake in the spiritual gifts that God intended for people, you lose. And number three is your hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That as he rose from the dead, that he gives new life to people. He is an individual that welcomes all who come to him, but he especially loves those who don't deserve it. He especially likes people that come to him who are sinners and recognize it, that do not deserve it. Those are the people he likes the best. If you're a candidate, I hope that you will consider and you'll say in your heart, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
And your heart will be motivated to say, that's where I'm going. And you leave your path behind you and begin following Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we do come to you. Thank you for this Passover season.
Thank you for the beauty of it and the power of it. Thank you for the promise the future gives to us from it. Lord. Here we are, Lord, in a small town. Lord, do something good here.
O Lord, restore your work to your people. I ask in Jesus name, amen.