SUNDAY APRIL 25TH, 2021

MEMORY VERSE: - “And Thus shall ye eat it; with your loins guarded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and ye shall eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover” (Exodus 12:11).

INTRODUCTION: -Since the time the Israelites left Egypt about 1445 B.C, they have been celebrating the Passover feast each year in the spring around the time Easter is celebrated.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Israelites went down to Egypt when Joseph was the Prime Minister in search of food (Gen.46:26-27). Then, there arose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph (Exd.1:8). The Israelites served in Egypt as slaves for more than four hundred years. Afterwards, God began the process that will eventually lead to freedom for descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

He chose and prepared Moses, then commissioned him to lead Israelites exodus, from Egypt. Moses did exactly what God told him and confronted Pharaoh with God’s mandate. “Let my people go” (Exd.5:1 – 4). But Pharaoh refused to let Israel go. So, God showed him how serious the message was by sending various plagues and unimaginable, unbelievable diseases upon Egypt through Moses. During each plague Pharaoh became remorseful and desperate for relief and agreed to let the Israelites go. But every time Pharaoh saw the plague coming to an end, he changed his mind and refused to let the Israelites go.

Thus, the Egyptians suffered nine different plagues from the hands of God.

When God sent the tenth and final plague upon Egypt in which God sent an angel one unforgettable night that went throughout the land of Egypt to destroy all the first born both man and beast” (Ex.12:12).

And since the Israelites were also in the land of Egypt, God gave them specific instructions on how to avoid and escape the mass destruction coming upon the land. Each household was to take a year old male lamb without blemish and kill it just before sun set on the fourteenth day of the first month (month Abib). Smaller house hold could share with another household a lamb (Ex.12:4). God told each household to put some of the blood of the slaughtered lamb on the two sides and the top of the door post of their house. When the LORD went through the land executing judgment on the Egyptians. He could “pass over” those houses that had blood on their door posts.

This is Passover (Hebrew; Pesah, meaning “to jump and pass” or “to spare”).

The Israelites were thus saved from the judgment of death brought upon all Egyptians’ first born both man and animals. Although God could certainly recognize the Israelites and could have kept them from the plague as He did in the other nine plagues, He gave the command to sacrifice a lamb and apply the blood on their houses to teach His people the importance of obeying Him and being in covenant with Him.

Through the ordinance established as the Israelites were to leave Egypt finally, God began to reveal how His mercy and forgiveness would come at the expense of a blood sacrifice. This ultimately was culminated in the sacrifice of His Son; Jesus Christ – “The Lamb of God” – and pay the price for the world’s sins through His sacrificial death (John 1:29).

QUESTIONS

1. How were the Israelites delivered from Egypt?

2. Why was the sacrifice of the blood?