Few types in Scripture are so plainly interpreted by the inspired Word itself as the Jewish Passover:"For our passover, even Christ, hath been sacrificed," writes Paul to the Corinthians. As the blood of the slain lamb sprinkled on the lintel and door-posts of the Israelite's house was the symbol of redemption to him, so the shed blood of the Lamb of God is that which shelters us who trust in Christ from judgment for our sins, and faith in that sacrifice makes the grace of God operative on the heart and conscience. The Lord Himself affirms that the believer has "passed from death unto life." "Justice its victim slew," and a righteous God is able to say of believers, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more " (Heb. 10:17).

It was this " passing over," and the consequent deliverance of Israel from Egypt by Jehovah's mighty hand, that was the outstanding event in the history of Israel. It was an event which Jehovah solemnly urged His people to call to mind from year to year:"This day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations ; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever" (Ex. 12 :14). Israel's sorrowful history in the land – failing to keep the ordained feasts of the Lord, and following after the abominations of the heathen in the land, provoking chastisements at the hands of Jehovah – is but a repetition of man's constant failure when entrusted with divine things.

Note that in two revivals, all too brief, in Israel's history (in the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah), we have notable accounts of the restoration of the Passover feast (see 2 Chron. chaps. 30 and 35). Each recovery, however, was followed by greater departure from God and a total neglect of the Passover, until, finally "the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy " (2 Chron. 36 :16) ; then He allowed Nebuchadnezzar to take their city, put to the sword thousands of inhabitants, and carry a multitude captive to Babylon. The times of the Gentiles then began, and the land lay desolate, to fulfil the seventy years appointed.

At the end of that period, a remnant of the people returned to the land under the patronage of Cyrus, and the feast of the Passover was resumed in connection with the reestablishment of the house of God (Ezra 6 :14-22).

According to Jewish tradition that feast has been celebrated year after year without interruption from that time to the present. This, of course, is now but an empty form with no real sacrifice, as they are away from their land and the place where God had appointed to keep the Passover.

Joyful as the people were in the reestablishment of the Passover upon their return to the land, the reality of that observance soon waned, and corruption ensued, as we see in Malachi, the last of the Prophets.

Great outward religiousness prevailed with the Pharisees in the times of Christ; their scrupulous observances of the Mosaic rituals (to which they had added many traditions of their own-see Matt. 15 :1-6; Mark 7 :2-8), had become but a dead form. It is just one more commentary on the melancholy tendency of the human heart to lose sight of the substance and the reality by observances of external forms and ceremonies, the life of them having departed. The Feast of Tabernacles, which was one of the "feasts of the Lord" appointed to the children of Israel (Lev. 23:44), is significantly called "the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles " in John 7:2. It shows how completely they had lost the original divine conception of it.

Here is a moral lesson of weighty import:blessed, God-appointed ordinances may become mere empty forms. To the pious Jew the annual recurrence of the Passover was a real memorial. As he ate of the flesh "roast with fire" and of the unleavened bread, he was reminded of the wonderful grace of God in passing over the Israelite houses. His thoughts were directed back to the deliverance of his nation from the taskmasters of Egypt. In all this there was surely for the Jew who penetrated beyond the mere outward form, much cause for worship and holy joy; but failure to penetrate the externals of the feast would certainly result in lifeless ceremony.

The Passover, and other ordinances, have been superseded by the great reality which they represented; but all that Scripture tells us about the feast and the circumstance of its observance, becomes luminous with meaning when we remind ourselves that the death of our Lord stands in the same relation to us as the Passover did to Israel of old. To be sure, the Christian feast is infinitely
deeper in significance. The Passover meant an escape from physical death; it spoke of physical deliverance to Israel; of how much greater import therefore is the feast which memorializes the victory of Christ our Saviour over sin, death, and the grave! Yes, the consequences of Christ's victory are spiritual and eternal. The Passover was a memorial looking backward only, but our remembrance of the Lord's death is both memorial and anticipatory-it is "till He come!"

The Passover indeed falls far short of the New Testament feast, yet many of the circumstances attendant upon its observance will be found, on examination, to have typical significance of the most heart-searching character.

Ezra 6 :21 is beautifully suggestive of the characteristics which the participants in the memorial feast of the Lord are to show. "And the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the heathen of the land, to seek the Lord God of Israel, did eat, and kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy." They who kept the Passover were to show by the records that they were Israelites. Those who could not show it had no part in the joyous scenes associated with the reestablishment of the Passover. Those who gather around the table of the Lord trace their spiritual pedigree, their birth into the family of God, through faith in the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; for "as many as received Him (Jesus, the Son of God, our Saviour), to them gave He power [title] to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name" (John i :12). These are sons of God and joint heirs with Christ. And this is a matter of individual faith. "The faith of our fathers " will not save nor entitle one to a place at the Lord's table. If an Israelite were challenged as to his right to partake of the Passover, he was to refer to the genealogical records to silence all question. The Christian points to Christ and God's record for his title to a place in God's family-not to experiences or an emotional state. Blessed be God, He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father-the witness that He "hath given to us eternal life."

The Israelites who remained in Babylon had no share in the celebration of the Passover. Possibly many of them had acquired business interests in Babylon. Perchance they and their children had formed relations of one kind or another with their conquerors. Others, still, may have stayed in Babylon because they did not care to incur the wearisome difficulties attendant upon the long journey back to the land, or the trials they might meet there. Whatever the reason, the fact was that those who remained in Babylon, children of Israel though they were, had no part in the Passover.

And how trivial are the reasons of one kind and another which sometimes keep the children of God from the full enjoyment of the inheritance which Christ has won for them by His death! Is there lack of spiritual joy? If so, let faith arise to sever every tie that holds captive to the world, or to religious forms that stand in the way of giving Christ the unique place which is His due. Our joy and blessing in remembering our Lord in His death will be unhindered then, and be to His praise as the very center of Christian fellowship and communion.

Together with the Israelites who had returned from the captivity there were others who shared in the Passover-" all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land to seek the Lord God of Israel." These may have been Israelites who remained in the land and who had not been carried captive into Babylon; or they may have been "strangers" who, like Ruth and Rahab, found a part in Israel by God's grace. In any case, they were characterized by the fact that they sought the Lord God of Israel, and "had separated themselves from the filthiness of the heathen of the land." How this reminds us of the Thessalonian saints who "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven." "The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved," we read of apostolic times; and the doors of God's house are still open for those who separate themselves to the Lord and from the filthiness in the land. Let us not talk glibly of " separation truth," with the emphasis on separation rather than on the truth, which, received in the heart, separates from unhallowed associations.

A most important feature of the law, with regard to the Passover, is the emphasis put upon the plaice where it was to be sacrificed. "Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name there. . .Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee; but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name in" (Deut. 16:2, 5, 6). The Israelite might not consult his own convenience or predilections as to the place where the Passover was to be celebrated. Some inconvenience might be incurred in getting there, but he was simply to obey Jehovah's command, to sacrifice the Passover in "the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name."

Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple (2 Chron. 6) indicates how well he understood that the temple, with all its magnificence, had value only in that it was a "house for the name of the Lord God of Israel." "Since the day that I brought forth my people out of the land of Egypt," Jehovah had said to David, " I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel to build a house in, that my name might be there . . . but I have chosen Jerusalem that my name might be there." Therefore it was in Jerusalem alone, where God's holy temple was, that the Passover might be sacrificed.

The application of this to the New Testament feast is evident. That feast must needs be celebrated at the place, spiritually discerned, where the name of Jesus Christ (all that His name represents) forms the center of fellowship and communion. Wherever the Christ of God does not form the center of gathering, there is bound to be corresponding formalism, and failure to apprehend the blessed and holy simplicity of the Christian memorial feast. But where there is a true gathering to that Name, what joy, worship, and praise the Spirit awakes in the hearts of the redeemed!
Another injunction, always found in connection with the Passover, was to eat " no leavened bread with it." Throughout Scripture, leaven is the type of evil, and it is to be excluded in any connection with the table of our Lord, as the apostle says, '' Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth " (i Cor. 5 :7, 8).

In the feast of Pentecost, the Church is typified under the symbol of two wave loaves of fine flour "baked with leaven" (Lev. 23 :17). It is the recognition of sin in our nature. That leaven, however (as we see from the next two verses) is perfectly met by the sacrifices presented "with the bread." All this challenges our admiration of the accuracy of Scripture. The leaven of the old nature in the people of God is not eradicated, as some would have it, but perfectly met by the sacrifice of Christ.

Fleshly activities are to have no place at the Lord's table. This is again beautifully set forth in the type. " In the first day ye shall have a holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days" (Lev. 23:7, 8). No servile work was permitted in connection with the Passover, and our memorial feast proclaims that it is "not by any works that we have done," but by the blood of Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son, that we are cleansed from all sin and given title to take our place as children of God at His table. C. G. Reigner