The Eternal Universal Passover

Luke 22:19

“Do this in remembrance of me."

While enslaved in Egypt, our fathers may have felt victim of a gross injustice. They hadn’t done anything wrong, yet they were persecuted. They were persecuted solely because of man’s fear and vanity; because of man’s innate and perverted desire to control the fate of others. As they finally enacted God requirements for freedom, as they killed the lamb and applied its blood to their doorposts, little did they know that they were part of a plan that would bring freedom not just to them, but eventually to the whole world.

Jewish Chassidic sages believed that the suffering of a righteous person accounted as atonement for the sins of the world. Couldn’t it be that when we go through negative experiences that seem totally random, we are actually going through something for the sake of others? It is certainly true that the suffering the Righteous One, of He who is called the ‘only begotten of the Father’ serves as an atonement for our sins.

About height hundreds later, Jeremiah the prophet spoke of the return from the Babylonian captivity in these terms, "Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,' but 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.' (Jeremiah 16:14). The return from dispersion has been a long-held Messianic promise and Cyrus the Persian king did allow all tribes to return to Israel. In the days of the Master, there were representatives of all tribes in the Land, but like today, many remain in the dispersion.

Six hundreds years after Jeremiah, Yeshua was born. God gave the care of Him to another righteous man: Joseph. The last time Yeshua enacted the long-held tradition of the Seder meal which reminded the Jewish nation of the events of Egypt, as a shadow picture He put Himself the element of the Seder (Luke 22:19-20), thus helping the disciples to understand the teaching of the sages who taught them that ‘eating the Passover represents the suffering of the Messiah’ (Tractate Pesachim). In Egypt he who splashed the blood of the Passover lamb on his doorposts (Jew and non-Jew) was freed from Pharaoh to go and serve the God of Israel. In Jerusalem he who follows Yeshua (Jew and non-Jew) is freed from a greater Pharaoh. He is freed from the Prince of the Power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) who like Pharaoh refuses to let us go and worship our God.

The work of redemption has been done from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). All the elements are in place. The only thing needed is our own free will to be freed from the seeming secure shackles of this world to go into the seemingly insecure spiritual wilderness of His service.

It can be a hot, a cold, a lonely windy scary place out there; but none other is more secure when following the footsteps of the Master.