to simply bring greetings from our family. Someplace in the church, there may be a picture like this on the missions display board. My wife and son are doing well back in Jersey. My wife is very involved in a local church where she has an obligation actually this morning, otherwise she would have been here. But appreciate the many years that you have supported us and have prayed for us. The ministry has, in my view, paid great dividends in the lives of people who've come to know Messiah. We've seen a number of Jewish individuals, particularly Jewish men, who've made professions of faith and have gone on with the Lord and are continuing to serve and have taken leadership positions, a number of them teaching Bible studies. And so we are very grateful for those years of support and prayer that have come from this place and are delighted to see the Lord growing the community here and just trust that as we go through this week that is typically called Holy Week. It's called that for a reason because it focuses back on the events between the time of the last Passover, the presentation of Jesus the Messiah on that day of Palm Sunday and his ultimate ascension. And so we rejoice in those things, and we want to understand better the context of Jesus and the apostles. As you saw in the video clip, I grew up imagining that Jesus was the same race as all of my friends who believed in him, and they were Italian Catholic. And I felt that, well, then I wasn't allowed to believe in Jesus. But then I became wise. I was 11 or so. And I realized, oh, somebody said, oh, he was Jewish. Of course, when you're 11, you know everything. So you say, of course, he was Jewish. Then he converted. No. He never converted. He didn't have to. He was the Messiah. And so when we open up the scriptures, here's what we recognize. Jesus didn't suddenly drop into history 2,000 years ago. to start a new religion. It wasn't something that was brand new, but rather something that people were anticipating. They were waiting for the coming of Moshiach, of the Messiah. The entire Jewish community had been hearing about this for so long, that for many of them, they had given up on the hope the Messiah would actually appear. And so when Jesus finally does appear in that first century country of Judea, a Jewish nation, there is a division. Some people accept him as Messiah, other people reject him. And that choice is still before us today. Each time you partake of communion, you are taking two central elements. that are part of what was originally a much larger sort of ceremony. Passover is going to be celebrated in the Jewish community in just a few weeks. Downstairs we were having a discussion on why it seems that some years Passover is before Easter, like it was in the year 30 AD, when Jesus celebrated Passover in the middle of the week. Scholars differ on what day of the week it was. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are the candidates. And then he went to the cross and was resurrected and rose on what is today called Easter Sunday morning. That's how it should be, Passover before Easter. Why is it that this year is so different from other years, with Passover coming almost three weeks later? Very simply, not to get into too much science and technology, of which I was brought up in Brooklyn, so I don't know much of that anyway. But the lunar and the solar calendars are different. A solar year is 365 days. This is the first day of spring. But a lunar month is only 28 days. 12 times 28 leaves you short 11 days a year. That means that in the Jewish calendar, you just don't have leap days, you have leap months. And this year actually is a leap month year, which pushes all of the holidays later in the year. And so that it's not just a trivia question, the answer to some trivia question. That is the reason why the calendar seems so odd. But God is not taken by surprise by any of this. And he said very clearly to the Jewish people, On the 10th day of Nisan, the Hebrew month of Nisan, which roughly kind of corresponds with March or April, from the late March to early April, on the 10th day of Nisan, you are to set aside a young male lamb. In the year 30 AD, it was the 10th day of Nisan, that was what today we call Palm Sunday. Today is Palm Sunday. And on that day, the Lamb was to be set aside. On that day, Jesus rode triumphant into Ha'i HaKodesh, the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City. They had heard that He was going to proclaim Himself to be Mashiach. They thought that this is the coming of the Messiah. What do you do when the Messiah comes? The Kingdom is coming. In Jewish thought, the kingdom of the Messiah is connected with the final holiday in the Jewish calendar, and that holiday is the Feast of Tabernacles. The imagery for the Feast of Tabernacles are palm branches. In the Jewish community today, to this very day, the Orthodox Jewish community, on the Feast of Tabernacles, they will have what is called a lulav and an etrog. The etrog is the fruit. A lulav contains myrtle, willow, and palm branches. And Jewish people use those today in the fall. That is the imagery associated with the holiday of the Feast of Tabernacles. They had the idea that Jesus was about to be revealed as the Messiah. So they're all thinking, let's just immediately bring him in with the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, which is in the fall. And here they are in the spring. That's why they grabbed the palm branches. They were trying to usher in the messianic kingdom. They were trying to rush the kingdom in and say, he must be Messiah. Let's grab the palm branches. Let's bring in the kingdom. And that's why they laid the palm branches down and they said, Hosienu ben David, save us, son of David. He presented himself as the king to the people of the kingdom. Within a few days, the people of the kingdom would then say, we have no king but Caesar. Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews. At his birth, the wise men came and they said, where is he who was born? King of the Jews. For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. At his birth, he is called King of the Jews. And at his death, they nailed him to the cross, and they put a plaque above his head. Yeshua ha-Notzri, Melchah Yehudim, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, at birth and at death. And yet only a small number of people in the kingdom accepted him as king. And so the king went away. But before the king went away, he said to the people, I will not return until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The same people who sent away the king need to ask for the king to return. And the precipitating event that initiates the second coming is the recognition by my own Jewish people that Yeshua HaMelech HaYisrael, that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. There is no Christian gospel apart from the Jewish roots of the faith. You can be saved, you can love the Lord, but if you're unaware of these things, it's like you're unaware of the entire context of your faith. We want to be, as scripture says, workmen, able to handle the Word of God. So let's explore that holy week. The story of Passover is one that is very familiar to folks, at least a small part of it. It's obviously seen as a Jewish holy day. And yet, of all the Passovers ever celebrated, the most famous one is recorded not in literature we normally think of as Jewish, but in Christian literature. It's recorded in the New Testament. That part of the Bible that my grandparents forbade me to look at, that part of the Bible where they said if you touched it, your fingers would burn in the place where you touched it. That was the old folktale they told me. But the most famous Jewish Passover celebration ever held is recorded in that section. And it's in Luke chapter 22. In Luke chapter 22, I'm going to be reading a small portion to you. Luke chapter 22. Jesus, every single year of his earthly life, celebrated Passover. And yet that last Passover in that earthly life was to be different from all the others. Luke 22, verse 7 says this, Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. And Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat of it. And they said to him, Where do you want us to prepare it? And he replied, Behold, When you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house as he enters. And you shall say to the owner of the house, the rabbi says to you, where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large furnished upper room, prepare it there. And they departed and found everything just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour had come, he reclined at the table, and the apostles were with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I shall never again eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And having taken a cup, when he had given thanks, he said, take this and share it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. And having taken some bread, when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this now in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood." Every year in the earthly life of Messiah Jesus, he would have celebrated the Passover. In early years, he would have watched with eyes wide open as his stepfather, Joseph, officiated over the Passover for the family there in Nazareth. In later years, Joseph seems to be out of the picture. Most likely, he was a number of years older than Mary and had already passed away. In that instance, then, it would have been Jesus himself as the eldest son in that Jewish family who would have officiated the Passover for his mother, Miriam, for his half-brothers and half-sisters. Then we come to the last, final year in the earthly life of Messiah, where once again, as was his custom, as was his tradition, he celebrated the Passover. But this year it would be with the members of that new family that he had gathered around him, the apostles and the entourage who were with them. To them, he said, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you. It really was for that Passover that Jesus was born into the world. He was born for that Passover. He was born to fulfill the weeks of that Passover. In order for us to understand why Passover was so important to the people here in the New Testament, and really why it is in many ways the foundation of our faith today, Now, that's not a typo. It really is the foundation of our faith, once you understand what Messiah accomplished. To really understand that, we need to go back to the original story of Passover, the very first Passover, which, of course, is back in ancient Egypt. So I'm going to be turning to Exodus chapter 12, and the background of the story is well known to many of you. We know that God had called a man named Avram, and he called him out of a pagan background. Avram was neither Jewish nor was he Gentile, because God had not yet made a division. The word Gentile is simply a term of convenience, meaning someone who is not Jewish. So you don't have Gentiles until you have Jews. Once you have a Jew, anyone else who's not Jewish is simply called a Gentile. So very simply, by the way, a Jew is a person who is descended from first Abraham, but then Abraham had several sons. He had Isaac and Ishmael as the most famous of those two sons. Isaac is the one son through whom the line goes. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau, but scripture says Jacob have I loved. Jacob in turn had 12 sons. A Jew is someone who is a physical, ethnic, biological descendant of one of those 12 tribes. It's an unchanging definition. Theologians have tried to pull a fast one. Theologians have tried to change it. Certain Christian fringe groups have tried to rearrange that. If I go to Utah today, they'll call me a Gentile, and they, the Mormons, are Jews. That's not correct, but it's their state. You just simply allow people delusion for a while, because ultimately God's going to clear up all these delusions. So this story of Abraham being Jewish, the rabbis have a very interesting story to go along with this. Understand that whenever it comes to anything in the Bible, the rabbis have all kinds of stories to go along with it. And so the rabbis would sometimes ask the question, how is it that Abraham and his family, living in a pagan land, Ur of the Chaldees, are like All of a sudden worshippers are the one true God. They tell a story and the story goes like this. It says that one day Abram's father was very successful at making idols. They lived in Ur of the Chaldees. Making idols was like a big money making opportunity. And so business was so good, the rabbis say, that Abram's father looks around the store and he says, you know, we have almost no idols left to sell. We've got to make some more. So I'm going to go out in the forest and cut down some trees and carve some more idols. You, Avram, you watch the store. And so Abram wasn't happy about this. He's a teenager. He has better things to do. But according to the story, he watches the story. He's sitting there. He's looking around at all the idols. And he knows his father is out in the forest cutting down trees for more wood. And he's looking at these idols. He said, this is really not smart. This is really dumb that we worship these idols. So in a moment of kind of like teenage angst or wanting to right all the wrongs of the world, the rabbi says that, Avram took an axe and he started chopping up all of these wooden idols, chopped them all up except this one very large Baal idol that had stood there with its arms outstretched. He was the largest idol in the room. So Abram chops up all the other idols, takes the axe and then places it across the outstretched arms of this largest idol and he waits for his father to come home. So his father opens the door, looks, he says, oy, Gevalt, what happened here? Who made this mess? And Avram says, oh, you see that large idol, the only one that's left standing? He had an argument with all the other idols. And they were booping and bopping, and the dust was flying, and the arms were. And at the end, he was the only one left standing. So Avram's father says, you expect me to believe that bubameisah, that foolish story? Idols can't talk, they can't argue, they can't fight. And so Avram says, you're right, Pop. So why are we worshipping and bowing down to them? And the rabbis say from that moment on, Abram's family became worshippers of the one true God. Don't go looking for that story in this book. It's not there. But most of what the rabbis say is not in this book either. You know, for every story you have in the book, they embellish it with 20 other stories. Nevertheless, God calls Abram out of a pagan background, that we know. And he calls him to be a follower of the one true God. To the people of Israel, to the descendants of the 12 tribes, God gives the land of Israel. Let me tell you something from my kishkers, as we say in Yiddish, from the bottom of my heart. I truly believe that both Jew and Arab are equally loved in the sight of God. It was my privilege many years ago to have done some study and to have lived in Jerusalem. While living in Jerusalem, we were members of, well actually not members, we regularly attended a small evangelical brethren sort of congregation. And in that congregation, which all the services were fully in Hebrew, and at the beginning of our time, We were doing language study. We were there for intensive language study. We needed to use the earpiece for translation. By the end of our months there, we no longer needed to use the earpiece, so we had made progress. But in that congregation, there were Jewish people who were native to Israel, Israelis who were elders. There were one or two Americans and Canadians, Gentiles, who were elders. And there were two Arab men who were elders, all in one congregation, as a brethren congregation. And so it was a marvelous example to me that God is no respecter of persons, yet at the same time to the two progenitors of the Jewish and Arab race to Isaac and Ishmael, God gives separate pieces of land to the people of Ishmael, the great Arab nations. He says, I will give you the land to the east of your brother. His brother is Isaac. So he was to live to the east of Isaac. Those are the lands today known as Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, they live there. But the land that was to the west, what is today called the West Bank and those lands, that was the land he gave to Israel. And so even modern day current events, the origin of that conflict goes back into the pages of scripture. It's very, very clear that God gave this very small sliver of land The land of Israel he gave to the people of Israel. Everything was fine for a short time, but then there arose a drought in the land of Israel. There was no food. There was no water. They sent out an expedition party. Let's find another place to live temporarily. They went down to Egypt. And things were great in Egypt. There was food. There was water. And a strangely familiar looking prime minister who turned out to be Joseph, their brother. You remember how Joseph was sold into slavery? I know we're racing through Old Testament history. I'm throwing lots of Old Testament stories at you. But originally, there were 12 brothers. There was a little one who was Rome. But brother number 11, Joseph was sold into slavery. When the 10 brothers go down looking for water and grain, they run head on into Joseph. There's a reconciliation, and he invites the Jewish people to come down into Egypt. So far, so good. The Jewish people are now in Egypt. They're given a very nice zip code, the land of Goshen. Things are well. They're setting up family life. And for several hundred, about 200 years actually, things go well for them. But then the scripture says there arose a pharaoh who knew not Joseph. Literally there was a change of dynasty. The different Egyptian dynasty took over and were now fearful of the Hebrew people. All of a sudden, the Hebrew people went from being favored to being enslaved. They were tossed into slavery. They were totally, the years in Egypt were totally 400 years. They were probably in slavery for at least a hundred of those years. It wasn't until the end of that period that they cried out to God. God heard their cry and sent to them a deliverer in the form of a manly call in Hebrew, Moshe Rabbeinu, or literally Moses our teacher. And we all know the very, very famous story about how Moses goes to Pharaoh with orders from God to let my people go. It's actually far easier if you simply close your eyes and you picture Charlton Heston going to Yul Brynner. Everyone who laughed is now, you've shown how old you are. because I've seen 20 year olds say what what is he talking about it's an old movie where the Ten Commandments where Charlton Heston is going to Yul Brynner because he's playing Pharaoh Yul Brynner is playing Pharaoh and Charlton Heston is Moses and he says through his spokesman Aaron thus saith the Lord God of Israel let my people go and old bald Yul Brynner is strutting up and down the the soundstage there, and finally he says, I do not know your Hebrew people, and I will not let them go. What is happening in that moment of confrontation? Well, very clearly, God had given his command to let the Jewish people go out from slavery. And just as clearly, Pharaoh and the rest of the leaders of Egypt said, sure, we've heard what God has said, but we're going to do what we want to do. We prefer our way to God's way. Now, that confrontation is as old as the scripture, where people prefer their way to God's way, where people imagine that doing things their way is going to have a better result than doing things God's way. And so God allows people in that situation, by the way, a little bit of rope. He allows them a little leeway, a little slack to try out their way. And so Pharaoh and the leaders of Egypt are given an opportunity to try out their way. They're given some time. They refuse to let the Jewish people go. And so finally the Lord says, well, let me show you what's going to happen if you continue to do things your way. There were an initial set of nine plagues on Egypt, these initial Nine plagues, one by one, hit the gods of Egypt. If you go into, and even if you just Google it now, you'll see online, if you look at the headpiece of the Egyptian priestess, there was a little sun rise on it. They worshipped the sun. Ra was one of their gods. They worshipped the sun as a literal god. And so what happened? Aaron raises his staff. both in the Bible and in the movie. And he raises his staff and at noon, you know what the sun is like in the Middle East at noon? That's why they say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. That phrase was coined for the British expeditionary forces in the Middle East who would march at noon because they marched at noon back in Britain where it was overcast. So they're going to march at noon in the Middle East and they drop like flies. In the middle of the blazing sun, Aaron raises his staff, and all of a sudden, within minutes, the entire sky becomes pitch black. People are shaking, people are screaming. Why? Because their god, the sun, is gone. The Egyptians worshipped the river Nile. And so, if you remember the movie, Aaron raises his staff, And the best special effects of 1956, the River Nile turned to blood. It turned red. One by one, the God of Israel demonstrated his superiority over those false gods of Egypt. You would have imagined that after a while, Pharaoh would have recognized that, you know, The God of Moses is the God of creation, but he hardened his heart. He saw the evidence and he hardens his heart. But many of us have done the same thing. We're like Pharaoh sometimes. We see the evidence of God all around us and yet we still harden our heart. So God allowed Pharaoh to harden his heart and God further hardened his heart and brought on a final tenth plague. This was to be the worst of all the plagues because The other plagues were, you know, they were inconvenient. There was disease. There was unpleasant conditions. But this plague was to result in the death of the firstborn child. Every firstborn child was to die. But just as he had done before each of the other plagues, he would give an opportunity for people to escape. Whenever God brings a judgment, he always offers an escape plan. For instance, during the time of Noah, we're told that the world was in a terrible state of sin and rebellion against the things of God. God first gave a warning, but ultimately brought a judgment on that generation in the form of a global flood. We're told that during the time of Lot and Abraham that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were in a terrible state of rebellion against God's basic morality, the basic family home structure of a man and woman. They wanted to turn that upside down. They were in the same sort of rebellion that so many in our own country are in today. And God warned them about this, showed them what that course of action leads to, but ultimately would bring judgment upon that course of action. And those cities were destroyed. So God is going to judge sin, but he's always going to provide a means of escape in the midst of the coming judgment. Egypt is about to be judged. The firstborn child of every single family is about to die. But Moses is going to give them in here in Genesis and then ultimately in Exodus chapter 12, he's going to give them the one means of instruction, the one set of instructions for how to escape that coming judgment. Just curious, just by a show of hands, how many of you here are the firstborn in your family? Would you raise your hand? You folks would have been listening very carefully to Moses. as he shared what I'm about to share with you in Exodus chapter 12. So let me read that portion to you, Exodus chapter 12. Verse three, speak to the congregation of Israel and say to them, on the 10th of this month, they are to each one, take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them. According to what each person should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts, and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. And they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Verse 12 For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live. For when I see the blood, I will pass over you. And no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." The plan was very, very simple. On the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which again in the year 30 was what we today call Palm Sunday. So on the 10th day of Nisan, They were to go to their flocks and select a young male lamb approaching its physical prime of life. Select a lamb that was without spot or blemish, perfect in every way, just as Moses had laid out. Set the lamb aside on the 10th day of the month. And for the next three and a half days, examine that lamb. Make sure that it indeed is without physical spot or blemish. Then on the 14th day, you were to then slaughter this lamb, The blood from this Passover lamb would then be taken, put on the doorways of the homes, because then that night the angel of the Lord would come over Egypt in judgment for their rebellion. Come to the first home and judge that home for its sin and rebellion. And a cry would have gone up as the firstborn died. Come to the second home and judge that home for its sin and rebellion. And in the morning, as parents discover their firstborn dead, a horrible cry again envelops all of Egypt. But then the angel of the Lord comes to your home, and if you had applied the blood of the Passover lamb on your doorway, in the specific way that Moses had laid out here, only then would the angel of the Lord pass over your house. and your house would be passed over in judgment, but only because you identified your home to the Lord by the one and only means that He had called for. And that was the blood of a Passover lamb on your doorway. That is the core part of the Passover story. If you go to a Passover seder today, sometimes they're as long as two or three hours of liturgy. they'll talk about it being a freedom festival that's the main thing today it's a freedom festival we were in bondage in egypt but we're now free and they'll talk about other sorts of of people who are in bondage and we should help them so it's become a freedom festival and there's nothing wrong with that that's a that's a valid point but you see the point of the passover lamb has been pushed out and out and out and finally out the door that it needed to be the blood of the passover lamb was the central part of the Passover story. That's what's happened in the last few hundred years. 2,000 years ago, however, it was different. Thinking of a Jewish man who lived 2,000 years ago, very godly Jewish teacher, who was only known by the name Yochanan ben Zacharia. Yochanan ben Zacharia. Scriptures talk about him and say that he was a tzaddik. A tzaddik is a righteous person. You know the name from a melech tzaddik, Melchizedek. is how it's mispronounced in English. But Melech Tzaddik was the King of Righteousness. Well, Yochanan ben Zechariah was called a Tzaddik. And one day the scriptures tell us that he was officiating in a Jewish ritual. The ritual was called a mikvah. If today you would look in the Jewish community, you would find a small little building, nondescript building, in an Orthodox Jewish community. And on the front, it would simply have a very vague word. It would say, Ritualarium, sometimes it might actually even say mikvah. Inside is a small room, looks like a mini spa because it has a pool in the middle. But it's strange because it doesn't look like a typical spa. It's just like a small, tiny swimming pool. And if you could be a fly on the wall, for instance, you would see that throughout the day, Orthodox Jewish people might go and immerse themselves. particularly just before some new part of life, some new ritual, there would be a ritual immersion. 2,000 years ago, Yochanan ben Zechariah was officiating at such a Jewish ritual, which had already, was already a 500-year-old ritual before he started it, started officiating. His was not indoors, however. His ritualarium, his mikveh was outdoors. It was the Jordan River. And he was calling upon people to come and be immersed, as per Jewish tradition, a total full immersion, a baptizo, as you say in the Greek, in order to demonstrate that they were presenting themselves to God for some new thing that the Lord was about to do. Messianic expectation was at an all-time high, because people were expecting the arrival of the Mashiach. One day, as Yohanan ben Zachariah was officiating at this outdoor ritual, the River Jordan, he sees his cousin Yeshua coming out of the hills of Judea and he points to Yeshua and thinking back to the ancient Passover lamb, Yochanan says, Hinei HaSeh HaElohim, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Well now you understand that Yochanan ben Zechariah is John the Baptist. He was officiating this Jewish ritual. And when he sees Yeshua, Jesus, coming out of the hills of Judea, although he didn't understand the whole thing, he recognized that here was the greater Passover lamb. Just as the ancient Passover lamb would take away the sins of a household in some way that even John could not understand at that moment, Messiah, Jesus, would take away the sins of the world. Let's think along with John for a second and understand why he made those comparisons. The ancient Passover lamb was set aside on the 10th day of Nisan, examined for three and a half days, if you do the amount of hours, and then the beginning of the 14th day, slaughtered. Jesus the Messiah rode into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday. What was the date on the calendar? The 10th day of Nisan. He presented himself to the Jewish community. They could find no spot or blemish. And when did he go to his death? On the 14th. That wasn't a coincidence. That wasn't an accident. But literally, it was the way that God foreshadowed the coming of Messiah. That even in his arrival and activities during that holy week, it mirrored what had gone on with the Passover lamb. Interestingly, we see here that the ancient Passover lamb had to be without physical spot or blemish, the most perfect lamb that you could find in your flock. More importantly, Jesus the Messiah, as the scriptures say here, was the young male lamb in his physical prime of life, but more importantly, without the spot and the blemish of sin. He walked among us as a man for over 30 years, yet fully without the spot and the blemish of sin. In every way, we can start to see how the thinking of John the Baptist was aligning with this whole idea that Jesus was the greater Passover lamb, that Jesus was the one who was sent into the world to bring salvation. In the Exodus passage, It not only tells us that the blood had to be applied to the doorways of the homes, but very specifically it gives a ritual for the way that that blood had to be applied. If you go back to Exodus chapter 12 and look with me at verse 21. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. And none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning, for the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you." So not only did the blood have to be applied to the doorway, but it actually gives a certain pattern for it to be applied. Here's what they had to do. They were told to take a bunch of hyssop. Hyssop is kind of a leafy weed that grows in the Nile Delta, but it has a thick wooden stalk. So you can actually grab it by the stalk and use the top almost as a brush. If you've ever seen some of the homes of the poor people there in the Nile Delta, they're simply adobe mud brick homes. To keep them together, they'll actually whitewash them and they'll use these vegetable brushes. They'll dip them in a certain calcium solution and they will cover the outside of the building with this whitewash. And it helps for the noonday sun, it helps to keep the building intact. In this instance, they were told, take this bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin of the doorway. This is not any old basin. And the Hebrew text is very particular about that because it gives it the definite article I don't want to get into a Hebrew lesson here, but it refers to the nearest antecedent noun, which is the door. Literally, it's the basin of the door. What's the basin of the door? The home of a poor person was a very simple affair. The same mud ground outside your house was the same floor that was inside your house. Archaeologists have discovered that it was common for them to dig a trench from one side to the other in the entrance door, where we would today have our threshold, like a raised threshold. They would have a trench they would dig several inches deep to prevent the rain from coming in off the street into the home. In the middle of the trench, they'd scoop out a deeper area, take a clay basin, sink that just below ground level. It's a catch basin. Water comes toward the home, hits that trench, fills the basin, then the basin would be lifted out and the water disposed of. That's the basin in view here. It was on the ground in the middle of the doorway. Why is that important? because they were told to take the bunch of hyssop, dip it in the basin, and then apply, strike literally, strike the lintel of the doorway. The lintel is that top horizontal crossbeam. It would have been like a thick 4x4, a very rough, full 4x4 going across the top. In the Hebrew text, it doesn't say painted on. I've seen some of the school material that shows them covering the lintel with the blood. It's not it. There's a separate Hebrew word to color something, the word seva. There's another Hebrew word, kippah, which is to cover. Neither word is used. It's the word to strike it, and it's in the singular. Strike it once with the blood. Then it says, strike the two doorposts, is what your English translations say. Except that in the original Hebrew text, there's only one word there. And it's the Hebrew word mezuzot, mezuzot. Mizuzot is the plural of the word mezuzah. I'm holding in my hand a mezuzah. This is a small box. It could be made out of wood like this one. It could be made out of metal, glass, almost anything nowadays. The mezuzah is put on a Jewish home in obedience to a passage in Deuteronomy 6. If you would ask any educated Jewish person in the world, what's the most important verse in the Jewish Bible? Every single one of them, without exception. Anyone who's educated is going to say, The most important verse is, Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4. The passage goes on to say, and you shall write these words as testimony on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates. Write those words as a testimony, Shema Yisrael. How would you do that? Well, in most Jewish places today, they have a scribe take a quill pen, and in a very carefully described manner, they will take a piece of parchment, literally animal skin, and with a quill pen, write out those words, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad, V'ahavta et Adonai Elohecha, V'chol Vavcha, V'chol Nafshicha, V'chol Me'odecha. And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might. They write out the rest of the passage. That's then rolled up in a tight little scroll like this. It's placed into the hollowed out back of the mezuzah case. That's then sealed. And this is then always placed on the right-hand doorpost. If you're approaching a Jewish home, you're coming there from the outside. If you're approaching the home here, it's always going to be properly affixed. It's going to be on the right-hand doorpost at eye level with the top in just like this, tilted in. So this is how it's going to be. Except in this instance, in Exodus 12, it says, put the blood on the mezuzot, feminine plural word. both parts of the door frame at eye level on both sides. So here's what you had to do. Take the bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is on the ground in the basin, strike once the lintel of the doorway, come across, strike one mezuzah, strike the other mezuzah. You've gone from the basin to the lintel to one mezuzah to the other mezuzah. What have you done? You have made the symbol of the cross. The year is 1,300 BC. 1,300 years before Jesus went to a Roman cross, God is telling the people of Israel, the one and only way for you to identify yourselves to me there in slavery in Egypt is to take the blood of a perfect Passover lamb Apply it to the entrance of your homes in the shape of a cross because when my judgment angel comes over that night, that's the one and only thing I'm going to be interested in seeing. You have to understand that for so many Jewish people today, the image of the cross is the image of violent persecution. My grandparents were beaten by people who wore crosses. They weren't Christians. They were churchgoers. There's a big difference. As true as that is, yet in the year 1300, before any of this nonsense had happened in Europe, God was saying to the Jewish people that the one means of salvation The one and only way to be saved that night in Egypt is to take the blood of a lamb. It needs to die in your place. Because sin leads to death. If not your death, then the death of a substitute. The lamb is the substitute. Take the blood of the lamb, demonstrate it in the shape of a cross. Only that way will I be saved. Passover your home that night. That is why in 1 Corinthians we read, for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. And that's why, as I said at the outset, Passover becomes the foundational principle for Christianity because Jesus died as the Passover lamb. As you go on from that passage, it then tells the Jewish people in Exodus 12, each and every year you are to observe this ceremony as a reminder. You are to tell your children. And so Passover has become a very popular holiday celebration. In fact, in the last 20 to 30 years, it has become the most celebrated of all the Jewish holidays. That's because Passover is a home-based holiday. You don't have to be a member of a synagogue to participate in it. It can be done in the home. So as a result, in Jewish homes around the world, Jewish families will gather together and It almost looks like Thanksgiving in your typical American home. There are several different generations there. People have come in from various places. And it's a very festive atmosphere. A plate like this one will be sitting there at the table, will be on the table. And in each one of these areas here, there will be a little glass bowl. And in that glass bowl would be the different food items, the ritual food items of the Passover. We had mentioned that you take carpus. The carpus is the Hebrew word there that was what was dipped into the blood. In this instance, however, in a modern Passover, you take parsley and you dip that into salt water. You are reenacting the blood being sprinkled on the homes, but in this case, you're simply taking parsley. You're dipping it into salt water. You're tasting the salt water. And in that way the rabbis say you are tasting the salt water tears that were shed in Egypt. There are other ritual items here as well. In addition there is the shank bone of a lamb. that would also sit right there. So all of these items were those which were on the Passover plate that Jesus would have utilized during his time there at the Last Supper. There was one particular instance where John leaned over to Jesus and said, Lord, who is the one who will betray you? Jesus said, he who dips with me in the sop. The sop is a mixture of apples and honey that are used at a certain part in the Seder. At that point, Jesus went to dip in that mixture, and Judas, the son of Iscariot, went to dip in that mixture as well. Their hands met, their eyes met, and Judas was identified as the one who was to betray him. So even though the ancient Passover only calls for the use of Passover lamb, of bitter herbs, and unleavened bread, 1,000 years later, when Jesus celebrates Passover, there are many more items that have been added with Jesus fully participating in those. But for most people, the two central elements of the Passover meal are the fruit of the vine, the grape juice, presented in a cup just like this, and the unleavened bread. This is a holder for the unleavened bread. It says at the top there, in Hebrew, it says, likvod chag hamatzot, in honor of the holiday of unleavened bread. Passover matzah holders can be large, they can be small, round, square, but all of them are constructed the same in that they have two sewn in dividers which give us three compartments. In each of the three compartments is a sheet of unleavened bread. At the beginning of the seder, the rabbi or whoever else is officiating will enter the matzah tash. He bypasses the first matzah. He doesn't go all the way to the third, but he will reach in and withdraw from the unity of the three. He takes out the middle matzah. The body of the middle matzah is withdrawn from the unity of the three. He then shows the matzah to all the tables so they can see that it's a matzah that is suitable for Passover use. He then takes this matzah and breaks it. He'll then take a white cotton cloth, and as per Jewish tradition, he takes one half of the broken body of the middle matzah and wraps it in the white cotton cloth. So you now have a white cotton shroud covering the broken body of this middle matzah. According to Jewish tradition, this must now be buried under something out of sight. Typically they'll often put it right there on the table, and it must be completely out of sight. For our purposes, however, we need to discuss what makes Passover matzah unique. Passover matzah can be large, it can be small, it can be round, it can be square. I have ones at home that are round shmora matzah, that are hand-baked matzah, or they can be simple machine-baked matzah from Israel, like this one is. However, here are the four requirements. Here are the four things which all matzo must have. Number one, it must be pierced through all the way. It must have visible gouges or stripes along its surface. By the way, the reason for those two things are when you gouge it and you stripe it, when it's baked, it allows all the moisture to be baked out. If this comes out of the oven and it's still moist inside, that moisture ferments and becomes leaven. In order for this to be unleavened bread, which is what scripture commands, you need to bake the bread in haste. It's unleavened. It's the bread of affliction. In order for it to be unleavened, it has to be baked dry. And so this is a dry cracker. It's baked hot and all the way. And so it's pierced. It's striped. It's baked long enough and hot enough so that it blisters and bruises in places. So again, it must be pierced, it must be, first of all, it must be unleavened is the first one, it must be pierced, it must be striped and baked long enough and hot enough so that it blisters and bruises open. It was matzo virtually identical to this that Messiah Jesus took at the Last Supper. And he said, take and eat, this picture is my body. You see, everything on the Passover plate is symbolic of something else. The carpus is symbolic of the vegetable that was used to dip in the blood. Everything here is symbolic. So when he said, this is my body, he doesn't mean it's literally his body. Everything on the table there had a symbolic meaning pointing to something else. So in what way was the matzo symbolic of his body? Well, first of all, we said the matzah is unleavened. In the scripture, the word leaven and the word sin are used interchangeably. The matzah contains no leaven because the body of Jesus contained no sin. And that's why it was only unleavened bread that could properly represent his body. Additionally, we said that the matzah is pierced, that the matzah is striped, and that the matzah is blistered and bruised. Those are the other three and only requirements. In the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, written over 600 years before Jesus was born, this is the prediction, this is the prophecy about the coming Messiah. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Yet we looked upon him to be stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment for our well-being fell upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to our own way, but the Lord has caused the sin of us all to fall upon him." Why is the matzah pierced? Because the body of Jesus was pierced by the spikes that held him to that Roman cross, that Roman execution stake. Why is the body of the Matzah striped? Because the body of Jesus was striped by the Roman whip that came down upon him over 39 times. And why is the body of the Matzah blistered and bruised? Ultimately because the body of Messiah Jesus was blistered and bruised by the pummeling, the beating he received at the hands of his Roman guards. He was pierced He was striped and he was bruised for us. Really, it should have been us hanging up on that Roman cross. But the scriptures say that while you and I were still yet sinners, the Messiah died in our place. Can you imagine the human emotions that must have shot through Jesus as he broke off pieces and he said to them, take and eat this picture of my body when he knew that within a few short hours after they left that upper room it would literally be true. During the Passover Seder there are four cups of the fruit of the vine that are consumed. First is called the cup of blessing, nothing unusual about it. Second is the cup of plagues. It's poured out and then Parts are dipped out as you recite the 10 plagues. The third cup is most interesting. The Rabbis call the third cup Kos Yeshuot, the cup of salvation. The word salvation in Hebrew is Yeshua. Yeshuot is salvations in plural. What was the name of Jesus, the only name by which he was known? Yeshua, the salvation of Jehovah. The third cup is poured out, the cup of salvation, and then it's set aside. At the third cup in the Seder, the broken body of the middle matzah, which had been buried, is brought up. The white cotton shroud, which had covered it, is set aside. Pieces are broken off in that Jewish Seder to give to each person. And they'll say the same blessing. The blessing over the bread has not changed in over 2,000 years. The same words that Jesus said 2,000 years ago in the upper room. Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu melech ha-aram ha-motzi lachem min ha-aretz. Blessed art thou O Lord our God who brings forth bread from the earth. And they'll partake there in that Jewish home of the unleavened bread. And then they'll raise the third cup, the cup of salvation. and they'll chant the blessing. We don't know the melody that Jesus might have used, but the words are the same. Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam bar rei purri hagafen. Amen. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth the fruit of the vine. And then the third cup is consumed. In that Jewish home that has just gone through this ritual, what have they done? Let me submit to you that they have just demonstrated the ministry, they've demonstrated the death, they've demonstrated the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus without knowing it. I'm not saying this is my devotional application. This is the reason that it's there. That's why 1 Corinthians says, for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. The connection between Passover and the Lord Jesus could not be stronger. This is the reason for these things, not simply or only a devotional pleasant thought for us as evangelicals to have. There's no other plausible thought. You say to the rabbi, Rabbi, why are there three matzahs? Up until 300 years ago there was no answer. About 300 years ago the rabbi started to write down answers. They'll say, well, maybe it's Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but those didn't exist even 500 years ago. Let me suggest why there were three and why it's the middle one. Because they represent God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, which is a Jewish idea of God. The idea of the triunity first shows up in the Old Testament. in Isaiah 48, verse 16, all three members of the Trinity are there. Jewish people don't believe in the Trinity. So what does God say? You don't believe in the Trinity. Every year, here it is on the table. There it is. It's for this reason that the Scriptures say, for Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Paul says in Romans 10, brethren, my heart's desire, my prayer to God for Israel, is that they might be saved. He recognized that God was calling out a remnant from among them. We thank God for the remnant that God is calling out from among the Jewish people and thank you for your part in that.