Experiencing Passover

Joshua 5:1-7:15; Psalm 81; Proverbs 13:1

 

Everyone must personally experience the Passover, and not just as a symbolic meal. The symbolic meal of the Passover ought to point to something real in our lives. The Passover is not just something that happened once, long ago. It happens every year and is more fully realized through some events than through others. Have you experienced it? Even the Israelites’ descendants experienced it for themselves, in some ways:

 

The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan. – Joshua 5:11-12

 

The actual Passover event, when God went through Egypt and killed the firstborn of all men and animals in homes that had no blood on their doors, had happened forty years earlier. The Israelites children had been passed over by the destroying angel.

 

But forty years later, the first generation of Israelites had died in the desert. For their disobedience, they had not been passed over. And a new generation of Israelites had just crossed the river to take the promised land. When they celebrated the Passover, they were remembering what God had done for their parents. But their parents were not with them. This new generation must have realized that they themselves had personally been passed over. They had not been destroyed in the desert. God had preserved them for life. Life in the promised land. And they were beginning to get a taste of that life. After celebrating the Passover, the manna stopped coming and they ate some of the produce of Canaan, the place where God had brought them to live.

 

But even they have not yet fully experienced the Passover. They eventually died. The full experience of the Passover comes only through Jesus Christ, who shed His blood on the cross for all who call Him Lord and King. His blood protects us all from death. And yet we all die. So the full experience of Passover still awaits the day when Jesus comes again and it becomes evident to the whole world that God’s people have been freed from death. On that day, we will be raised to eternal life while others are raised to experience a second death, far worse than the physical death we face now. And the whole world will know that the Passover is forever effective. God’s people will live forever in His new promised land, tasting the fruit of that land and enjoying abundant life! Have you begun to experience the Passover? Do you expect to experience its fullness?

 

Father, thank You for applying Christ’s blood to me so that I am being passed over by your destroying angel. I am so excited to see what life looks like when You fulfill the Passover completely, never allowing decay and death to touch Your children again!