Welcome to Pathway. I am so glad you're here today, because we are on the ground floor of our new Fall Series. This will take us all the way to Christmas.

Let's get right into the Word:
"Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." (Exodus 12:13)

"These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD's Passover." (Leviticus 23:4-5)

Egypt
Travel back to ancient Egypt in its glory days. The empire covers the known world and the pyramids define the horizons.

On this particular night a darkness has settled across the land, heavy and deep.

Every Israelite home is silent, and in that silence, a terrifying promise hangs in the air: before the sun rises, Death itself will walk the streets of Egypt, and in every house, the firstborn son will die.

Imagine you are a father in one of those homes.

Your firstborn son, six years old, plays with his big sister across your tiny home. And you have been given the strangest, most unnerving instructions.

You were told to take a perfect lamb, a lamb without spot or blemish, and you were told to sacrifice it.

You were told to collect its blood in a bowl.

Then, with a branch of the hyssop plant for a brush, you were told to paint the blood over your doorposts—across the top, and down both sides.

Vertical line of blood. A horizontal line of blood. Not unlike the Cross to which Jesus will be nailed a millennium and a half later.

Now, you are inside. The door is shut. That sacrificial lamb has been roasted over the fire, and your family is eating it.

But this is an unusual meeting. In this meal, you are all standing. Your sandals are on your feet, and your walking stick is in your hand. You are dressed to leave, even though you have nowhere to go. You are eating in haste, because at any moment, everything could change. In that moment, you have no idea how gigantically epic that change will be.

Series
We are winding way back to the third book in the Bible. The strange and wonderful book called Leviticus. This is one of the five books of Moses, collectively called in the Law.

Leviticus especially is the book of the religious laws of God's people. The offerings. The sacrifices. The priesthood. The civil regulations. And, the thing we are most interested in: the Festivals.

Leviticus chapter 23 outlines 7+1 annual festivals across the calendar of the Jews:

The Festivals
Passover (Leviticus 23:4-5)
Unleavened Bread (23:6-8)
Firstfruits (23:9-14)
Pentecost (23:15-21)
Trumpets (23:23-25)
Atonement (23:26-32)
Tabernacles (23:33-44)

Each festival is detailed and explained. And together they add up to a cycle of reminders that God's people have special privileges before him.
This is the Grace Calendar!

God's people have rights. God's people have blessings. God's people have powers, and privileges and an inheritance that nobody else has.

And if you want one word to add it all up, that word is:

This is my title for the series.

Our focus for today is PASSOVER - Your Glorious STATUS

And because the festivals cover the entire calendar, the idea is that life with God is one festival after another. I'm not saying it's always a party, because it isn't. Life is very hard. It's brutal.

But even so, there's always a fresh way to look at the good news of God's grace just around the corner.

Together, the festivals make us ask a very big question. A life-changing question if you think about it.

The Bible describes 8 key elements for Passover.

Each Israelite household was to choose a lamb on the tenth day of the month. If a family was too small, they could share with a nearby household. The lamb had to be a male, one year old, and without blemish.

SACRIFICE: The lamb was kept until the fourteenth day, when it was sacrificed. (Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:5)
The family kept the lamb until the fourteenth day of the month. Then the whole assembly of Israel was to sacrifice the lamb at twilight.

BLOOD: The blood was placed on the doorframe. (Exodus 12:7, 22)
They were to take some of the lamb's blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel, the top beam of the doorway, of the house where they ate the meal.

MEAL: The lamb was roasted and eaten. (Exodus 12:8–9)
They were to eat the lamb that night, roasted with fire. The meal also included unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They were not to eat it raw or boiled.

NO LEFTOVERS: Nothing was saved for later. (Exodus 12:10)
They were to eat the meal that night. Anything left until morning had to be burned with fire.

HURRY: They ate dressed for departure. (Exodus 12:11)
They were to eat with their belt fastened, sandals on their feet, and staff in hand. They were to eat it in haste.

JUDGEMENT DAY: The meal happened on a night of judgment. (Exodus 12:12–13, 23, 27)
That night, God would pass through Egypt in judgment. But when He saw the blood, He would pass over that house.

MEMORIAL: The meal became a memorial. (Exodus 12:14, 24–27; Leviticus 23:4–5)
God commanded Israel to remember this day and keep it as a feast throughout their generations.

For four hundred years Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They made bricks for Egypt's cities, buried their daughters and sons in Egypt's mud, and called on the God of their fathers in a language Egypt never bothered to learn.

Then God sent a deliverer. Moses said to Pharaoh — Let My people go — and Pharaoh said no.

So God sent the famous 10 plagues to Egypt... each plague designed to show that the gods of Egypt were no match for the God—the invisible Creator God—of the Jews.

This night of passover was plague number 10 out of ten. It didn't have to happen. It should not have come to this. But the Pharaoh of Egypt hardened his heart toward the Lord.

So finally the night of the Passover has arrived...

That night, God in his Justice—God in his role as Judge—passed through Egypt.

The Bible says that around midnight, a cry went up from every house in the land — from Pharaoh's palace to the prison to the livestock in the fields.

The firstborn of Egypt died. But every house marked with the blood was passed over.

Before morning, Pharaoh summoned Moses and told him to go — take the people and leave.

Four hundred years of slavery ended in a single night. They went out not as escaped slaves but as a redeemed people, bought with blood.

Death was literally transformed to life by the blood of the Lamb.

And to keep them from forgetting it, God instituted this Passover meal as a permanent reminder of their brand new status as the redeemed people of God.

Redemption
Fifteen hundred years later, when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples, that was the Passover meal.

When Jesus broke bread and said, this is my body which is broken for you, that was literally at a Passover meal.

When he took wine and said, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood," that was the Passover meal.

Jesus was saying that everything the Passover symbolized, Jesus Christ actualized.

The Bible says:
"For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us." (1 Corinthians 5:7b)

Which brings up this:
"So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." (Colossians 2:16-17)

This is the reason why we don't do Passover meals, and all the festivals, today. It's the reason why we don't do sacrifices. Why we don't have priests or priestly vestments. It's the reason why we don't eat kosher. It's the reason we can eat bbq ribs and bacon.

It is because all of these regulations and rituals were shadows of Christ, and Jesus Christ was, is, and always will be the point. And since we have the substance in Christ, the shadow rituals and regulations have been declared "obsolete" (Hebrews 8:13).

He is the main thing.
The festivals are living object lessons to proclaim Jesus Christ in the centuries before he came.

Today, the festivals — and all the other rituals of the law — are object lessons to give us a fuller, deeper, richer understanding of Jesus Christ in the centuries since he came.

Jesus actually said so to two men on a long walk to a city called Emmaus:
"And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (Luke 24:27)

That is exactly the Bible study we're doing right now!