Lessons From Seven Passovers

Not going on the extension to fight ISIS, by the way. Not sure what the problem was with our pianists this morning. Some pianists just need an extra cup of coffee, I guess, in the morning to get going.

And sometimes those situations are a bit unpredictable.

So good to see all of you here again. The Passover, as I mentioned, is coming up in a little less than four weeks. It'll be four weeks from this last Thursday night.

Here we are commanded, as we realize, not to take this occasion lightly, but to examine ourselves and to see that we are in a proper frame of mind for taking the Passover every year. What does Passover mean to you? And what does it signify? And how well do we understand the significance of it? And how does it fit into God's overall plan for mankind, for the salvation of the human race?

Actually, something else needs another cup of coffee here. My computer's acting up a little bit.

These are all important questions. And today we will take a look at the Passover by going through seven different Passovers that are mentioned in Scripture. We know that the examples from Romans 15 verse 4, we know that the examples of incidents that are recorded in the Scriptures were written for our admonition or for our learning, as the New King James put it. So let's go through here, through these seven different Passovers that are listed in the Scripture in the Bible, and see a specific lesson that we can learn from each of these examples. By no means are there only seven lessons, and by no means are there only seven Passovers that are listed in the Bible.

But there are these seven ones specifically that I want to cover, and that's why I've titled this sermon, Lessons from Seven Passovers. Lessons from Seven Passovers. And as we go through this, I hope this will give you not only some help in your individual preparation for the Passover, but also help give us an overall perspective of how the Passover fits into God's plan as a whole as well. The first Passover that we'll talk about is the first Passover, the first Passover recorded in the Bible in Exodus 12. That's a story that we're quite familiar with. This is where the Passover is instituted for the first time. So let's go back through this account and pick up on several things that were written down for us. So, beginning in Exodus 12 and verse 1, it says, Now the Eternal spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginning of months, and shall be the first month of the year to you.

So we see here that God, when He instituted the Passover command here, He instituted something else as well. And that was the counting of time, a calendar, you might say. There aren't a lot of details spelled out in the Bible, but we do see here that in the spring of the year is the beginning of months, when the land is starting to come alive again in the springtime after winter, when everything's been dormant and dead. But God also here instituted something else, and that is the counting of religious time for His festivals, for His holy days, when the nation of Israel was together before Him for His festivals and annual holy days. And this is why we keep God's festivals according to the Hebrew calendar and not according to our modern Roman calendar, which does not synchronize all that well with the Hebrew calendar. And the Passover is the first of these annual festivals of the Bible. It's not a holy day in the sense that no work is to be done on the Passover, but it is a very important day festival on God's calendar.

And continuing in verse 3 here, He says, Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.

So we see here from this command to prepare ahead of time to take a lamb here on the tenth day of this month, that God instituted something very important, and that was the principle of preparation for the Passover. It wasn't something you just came up on the 14th and did what you needed to do on that day. You had to begin specifically thinking about it a minimum of several days ahead of time and selecting a lamb there. So the nation of Israel had to do some personal preparation for the Passover. They had to make certain that a lamb was available so that they wouldn't be caught short. And it also had to be a perfect lamb, as we know. So God always told them to go out on the tenth day of the month, well ahead of the actual Passover day, and to make sure that a lamb was available, that they had that. They could buy the lamb, they could raise the lamb on their own. So there were different alternatives there, but they had to prepare ahead of time. Continuing in verse 4, And if the household is too small for the lamb, say it's just a husband and wife, maybe one child, where they couldn't eat an entire lamb, there were lances for that. So God said, Let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of persons.

According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb.

And then he says, Your lamb shall be without blemish a male of the first year.

And of course, this was a type of Jesus Christ. That wasn't revealed at that time, but we do know that from many other prophecies and fulfilled prophecies and the words of the Gospels.

And he goes on to say, You may take it from the sheep or the goats.

So if they could not afford to buy a lamb of the first year, they were allowed to use a goat rather than a sheep. Or they could combine resources with a neighboring household and pool their resources to buy a lamb. So we see here that God instituted immediately, again, the principle of preparation for what was to soon become a very important time in these people's lives. Because he was going to do something on this particular evening that had never been done before.

Continuing in verse 6, Now you shall keep it the lamb until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And then God gives some specific commands. They are told when to kill it. They were also then told what to do with the blood to smear it on the doorposts of the house. Because it was during this night that God was going to pass through the land of Egypt and slay the firstborn of those who weren't protected by the blood of the lamb in this way. Skipping down a bit to verse 12, God then says, For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.

I am the LORD. So they are told to carry out these instructions exactly. And specifically, because if the people wanted to survive this night without losing their firstborn, they were going to have to follow these instructions exactly, knowing what to do, when to do it, how to eat the meat. They're even told how to cook the meal. So God is very specific about these things. It's not something you just come up and do on your own, however you want to do it.

There are specific instructions for that. Verse 13, Now the blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, the blood that's smeared on the doorpost, I will pass over you. This is where Passover gets its name. I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. And verse 14, So this day shall be to you a memorial. And you shall keep it as a feast to the Eternal throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. So this day is to be a memorial. A lot of people, there's been a lot of confusion in the religious world about this, but how often do you keep a memorial of something? You keep it once, once a year, on the anniversary of the event that you're commemorating. You don't keep it every week, as many churches do in the form of communion. You don't keep it quarterly, as some churches do. And you don't do it whenever you feel like it, as some churches do. God said it is to be a memorial, something you keep once a year on the date of the Hebrew calendar. So what are we to learn then from this first Passover? I mentioned a number of different things here. But primarily, God pronounced a death sentence throughout the land of Egypt to kill the firstborn of both man and beast or animal. And the important thing we need to focus in on, as Passover draws near, is the fact that we are separated from this death sentence today by the Passover. We are separated from the death sentence today by the Passover.

When God passed over the house of Israel and Egypt, he passed over a people, the Israelites, who were in many ways just as guilty, just as sinful, as the Egyptians were. Because they had been in slavery for a number of generations at that point. They weren't any great spiritual people.

They weren't keeping God's laws. What little they may have remembered, they weren't keeping. We find that just a short time after the exodus from Egypt, what did they do? They built a golden calf, calves, bulls, heifers being symbols of some of the greatest of the Egyptian gods. So they were just as carnal, just as selfish, just as as guilty as the Egyptians were there. And yet God chose to separate them out and to make them a special people for himself. As he separated them, the physical nation of Israel, so has he separated us to be his spiritual people, his spiritual nation, his spiritual Israel. There's nothing that we have done or can do to deserve that calling, because we too, before our calling, were just as guilty as those around us, just like Israel was in the middle of the Egyptians there.

Let's turn to 1 Corinthians, or notice 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7 here.

Notice part of Paul's instruction to the church there in Corinth. And he tells them there, therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.

Now, it's quite remarkable words here, because Paul is obviously referring to the days of unleavened bread. Corinth is a church in Greece, predominantly Gentile. There may have been a few Jews or Israelites in there, but it's predominantly Gentile. And what does he say? He says, since you truly are unleavened. Why would Paul write this if the church in Corinth there were not observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread? And then he makes another connection with Passover right there after that, for indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. So just as the blood of the lambs at that first Passover spared the Israelites from that death penalty, so has the blood of Christ spared us from that death penalty. And as long as we have the Spirit of God working in our lives, we won't have that death sentence, that eternal death sentence executed on us or exacted on us. Not if we continue to rely on God to come to Passover, to renew that covenant agreement we have with him and with Jesus Christ. Because when we do that, we are then separated from having that death sentence applied to us. We have our sentence commuted, you might say. So if we did not have the Passover, if we did not have the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we would not have any hope or forgiveness of sin. There would be no hope for anything beyond this life. We would simply die and we would be dead, eternally dead, without that sacrifice. There's no way for us to attain sacrifice without having that death penalty applied for us by Jesus Christ. There would be nothing beyond the grave, no hope for salvation, no hope of eternal life or anything beyond this physical life. But with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are separated from having to go through that death sentence ourselves. Because when Jesus Christ became our Passover, as we see here being sacrificed for us, he applied that death sentence that we had earned. The wages of sin, what we earn is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. So we have earned the death sentence for our sins. But God's gift is eternal life because Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. So to sum up, the first lesson here from this first Passover is that we have been spared from the death penalty by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Passover. We have been spared from the death penalty by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Passover. The second Passover that we'll talk about is the second Passover. I'm going through these in chronological order, by the way. But this is found in Numbers chapter 9.

And this is the second Passover that takes place one year after the Exodus from Egypt. And this is the first Passover that takes place in the wilderness. They were wandering for 40 years in the wilderness. And let's pick up the story here in Numbers 9 and verses 1 through 13. We'll read through and pick up on some of the verses. Now, the Eternal spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. Notice what is to be kept at its appointed time. Again, it is a specific date to keep the Passover. Not weekly, not quarterly, not whenever we want to. Continuing verse 3, On the fourteenth day of this month at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and ceremonies, you shall keep it. So again, there were specific instructions for how it was to be kept.

So Moses told the children of Israel that they should keep the Passover. And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight in the wilderness of Sinai, according to all that the Eternal commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did. But there is something that is a little bit different about this Passover that we'll bring out because it will come up again in a much greater way at another Passover. And it's also something that happens periodically today.

So let's read about this. Beginning in verse 6, Now there were certain men who were defiled by a human corpse, so that they could not keep the Passover on that day. And they came before Moses and Aaron that day. So here then we see a number of men, that's plural, two or more, doesn't say, but they knew that as a result of their ritual uncleanness, having touched a dead body, that they would be unable to participate in the Passover service because they were ceremonially unclean. What does this mean? Well, it's pretty self-evident to me, I think, that probably someone close to them, probably a family member, had died. And these men were likely the ones responsible for taking the corpse out of the camp and burying it out in the desert. Somebody had to. And any time you touched a corpse, you were ritually or lawfully, legally, unclean there. This, of course, we understand was a disease prevention measure at a time when people didn't understand the origins and transmission of disease. Today we don't go out handling dead bodies because we know that's a dangerous thing because of the spread of disease. So God instituted laws to accommodate or allow for that. And people were not too, they were considered unclean, having touched a dead body. So continuing on in verse 7, and those men said to him, we became defiled by a human corpse. Why are we kept from presenting the offering of the Eternal at its appointed time among the children of Israel? And Moses said to them, Stand still, that I may hear what the Eternal will command concerning you. So this is an unprecedented situation. They know they need to keep the Passover there on the 14th. And what do they do? They're not in a wrong attitude. They obviously had good reasons for touching, handling, disposing of this corpse. So they go to Moses. What do we do? We're commanded to keep the Passover, but we're also virtually unclean. How do we deal with this? Verse 9, Then the Eternal spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, If any one of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse or is far away on a journey, there's another allowable exception, he may still keep the Lord's Passover on the 14th day of the second month, not the first month, but the second month, so 30 days later, at twilight, they may keep it. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. So notice here that what to resolve this situation where some people are not able to take the first Passover because of circumstances beyond their control, you might say, God allows the or institutes a second Passover a month later. It is kept one month or 30 days after the first Passover. So what we see here is the Passover is so important that God actually instituted what you might call a backup plan for the Passover. It's interesting he doesn't do that for any of the other festivals of the Bible, just Passover. Just that one that emphasizes again helps us to see how much of an emphasis God places on this, that he does allow a backup plan for that. So God allowed and instituted the second Passover here because the people were in an attitude worthy to take the Passover. It was a result of, in this case, a necessity with a body that likely needed to be buried. It's not spelled out, but presumably that's what was going on. There may be cases of accidents or things like that.

In this case, someone had died and presumably they were the ones, again, taking the corpse out and burying it and becoming ceremonially unclean in the process. Regardless of what the circumstances were, the key point is that God made allowance for them to take the Passover at a month later because it is something that is that important to him. And sometimes that happens today. Circumstances beyond people's control can make it impossible for someone to take up the Passover on the first, on the 14th of the first month at different times. Perhaps someone is sick or maybe a child is sick or a relative or something like that. Maybe someone's involved in a car accident that may be hospitalized. Perhaps a close relative or a spouse is sick. They need to take care of that person during that time. So sometimes things do come up that are beyond our control. And we need that backup plan to have that second Passover a month later. And in that case, the ministry either does that with the person or we give them instruction so they can do it in their own homes. There have been times like last year. Remember what happened last year? We had a snowstorm and actually cancelled Passover all along the front range. I sent out instructions to everyone for how you could download a video to go through the Passover in your own home. So we do allow that. We do make that option available to people in circumstances like that. So there are occasions where that needs to be done.

Back east, I remember several years ago, there was a massive ice storm in Indiana and Ohio. And again, this was kind of pre-internet days where we didn't have that video to download. And they cancelled Passover services and had everyone come back a month later and take the second Passover collectively as a group. So those are different options that we have decided are suitable for occasions like this. But notice something else here. Let's turn to verse 16. Because there is no allowance for a wrong attitude or someone who is just neglected to take the Passover seriously.

This is important. Circumstances beyond our control are one thing, but to neglect or to not examine yourself is not an allowable exception. We see this spelled out here in verse 13.

But the man who is clean, ceremonially clean, and is not on a journey and ceases to keep the Passover, that same person shall be cut off from among his people, because he did not bring the offering of the Lord. The Passover was an offering. At its appointed time, that man shall bear or be guilty for his sin, his sin of neglect, his sin of disobedience. So if someone says, I just didn't want to keep the Passover, I just I was too distracted, I just wasn't in a right attitude, that is not an allowable exception. And God's side, as we see here, they are not allowed to take the second Passover. There's no way that someone who is in a wrong attitude, who doesn't take it seriously, who neglects preparing himself or herself for keeping the Passover with the other brethren, there's no way that they should feel that they can take the second Passover. It's a very serious matter. And God's side. So the second Passover, so the Passover is so important that he did institute a backup plan for a second time for it to be kept if there are valid reasons for a person not to be able to take make it to the first Passover. But there is another lesson that I want to focus in on here, and that is the fact that this is the first Passover the nation of Israel had kept after they escaped or were released from slavery. They have now been freed from slavery for a year. And in spite of everything that happened leading up to that first Passover, they were still slaves until that happened. And Pharaoh finally relented and agreed to allow them to leave. So the second Passover is the first time that they were keeping the Passover after being freed from slavery. They were still slaves at the time of that first Passover.

So as they had been removed from their slavery in Egypt, so we today are removed from our slavery to spiritual Egypt, to this world, to its system there. And we have instead become servants of a new master, slaves and servants of Jesus Christ. We are either slaves to sin or we are slaves to God.

We have to make a choice as to who we're going to serve. Let's notice Romans 6, what Paul has to say here. Romans 6 beginning in verse 16 through 18. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God may think that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So what's Paul saying here? He's saying here that we are all slaves. It's just a matter of who are we going to obey. Who are we slaves to?

Who is our master? Is our master Satan the god of this world? Or is our master Jesus Christ?

That's the bottom line. There are really only two choices, one or the other. You can't serve two masters. You're either a part of the world and a slave to the world, or you are part of God's world. You either remain as you are, called out and separated from the death penalty, to become a slave of Jesus Christ, or after having been removed and spared from that death penalty, you might return to the ways of Egypt and the ways of the world. There is no other choice. You can't have it both ways. Christ said again, no man can serve two masters. So who's our master?

Who are we going to serve? In John 13, let's take a glimpse here, and what kind of master it is that we serve in Jesus Christ. This helps put in proper perspective several principles that we need to understand before taking of the Passover. John 13 in verse 3 through 17, we'll read some excerpts from this, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God. We read about that in John 1, how he came from God. He was in heaven with God, came to earth to become a man, and now he's going to God, as he says here. He rose from supper and laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself, or wrapped it around himself. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel with which he was girded. Then he came to Simon Peter, and Peter said to him, Lord, are you washing my feet?

And Jesus answered and said to him, what I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this. So Peter just did not have the spiritual capacity, your understanding, was not converted at that point, had not received God's Spirit until Pentecost. He just didn't understand what is going on, what Jesus is doing here by washing the feet of the disciples.

He didn't realize that Jesus Christ was the greatest servant, the greatest servant who ever lived. Skipping down a few verses to verse 12. So when he, Jesus, had washed their feet, taken his garments, and sat down again, he said to them, do you know what I have done to you?

You call me teacher and Lord, and you say, well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do, as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. And of course, we do follow that instruction that it gave on the night of the Passover when we have the foot washing ceremony. We've done that for years, and we'll do that again this year. It is so important that Jesus Christ gave us this explicit example and instruction to do that every year to teach us this lesson, this lesson of humility. And that's the attitude that Jesus Christ shows that we have to have.

To be removed from the world, we have to be a servant or a slave. His servant, his slave. And what kind of master is it that we serve? We serve the greatest servant who has ever lived. So to sum up a bit here, I've covered a several different topics, but lesson two from this second Passover is that we have been freed from slavery to sin and have become slaves to Jesus Christ. We have been freed from slavery to sin and have become slaves to Jesus Christ.

The third Passover that we'll take note of is in Joshua chapter 5. And this is the first Passover to be kept in the Promised Land. This is after the 40 years of the wilderness there. It was kept at Gilgal. It's important that we note what this is important for because although the house of Israel maintained a certain degree of repentance and respect toward God and his laws during the time of the wandering in the wilderness, there was one thing that they had neglected for all those years. And let's see what it was. I will begin in Joshua 5 and verses 2 through 10.

At that time the Eternal said to Joshua, Make flint knives for yourself and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time.

That doesn't mean they're circumcising them a second time. See a few men cringing out there, and rightfully so. That's not what it's talking about. It goes on to explain what's going on.

So Joshua made flint knives for himself and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the four skins. And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised him. All the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt. For all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness on the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised. So for 40 years, as the generation that had been circumcised, while slaves in Egypt, as they died out, new sons were born, the new sons had not been circumcised during this period.

So to keep the covenant with God under the terms of the old covenant, physical circumcision of the males was a requirement. Something had to be done, and they had neglected that. So in order for them to properly keep the Passover as they came into the Promised Land, they had to, first of all, circumcise all of the males that had been born during this 40 years. So some of them are up to age 40 who had not been circumcised. Continuing verse 6, For the children of Israel walked 40 years in the wilderness, till all the people who were men of war, who came out of Egypt, were consumed or died, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord. To whom the Eternal swore that he would not show them the land which the Eternal had sworn to their fathers, that he would give us a land flowing with milk and honey. I won't go into that story how they were afraid to send the scouts and the spies into the land, and they were afraid there so they didn't have the faith to enter the Promised Land. So God had them wander for 40 years in the wilderness. Verse 7, Then Joshua circumcised their sons, whom he raised up in their place. For they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way. So it was, when they had finished circumcising all the people, that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed.

Then the Eternal said to Joshua, This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.

Therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day. And Gilgal means rolling, because, as it says here, God rolled away their reproach, their lack of the results of the lack of their obedience to his command. So Gilgal was the place, down, we don't know exactly where, somewhere in the Jordan Valley. So this was the place where 40 years of wandering had produced many thousands of males. And God commanded that they must be circumcised before they could keep the passover as part of their covenant with God. Now the lesson we learn from this is that we must have an attitude of a circumcised heart to keep the passover. We must have an attitude of a circumcised heart to keep the passover. He goes, What does God look at? He doesn't look at our appearance. He looks at the heart. He looks at the attitude. It's not a matter of whether or not we change. It is a matter of whether or not we change what we are. And the passover symbolizes our spiritual covenant with Jesus Christ and God the Father. And to maintain that covenant relationship, we have to have an attitude that we want to have a circumcised heart.

Not a fleshly heart, not a heart that is oriented toward ourselves or what we want, our needs and that sort of thing. Not a stony and hard heart that's not receptive to God, but a heart that is spiritually oriented. A heart that is soft toward God. A heart that is oriented toward God and receptive to Him and to the leading of His Spirit.

Let's notice... Let's see, I skipped over a verse, but let's notice Romans 2 and verses 28 and 29. Paul talks about this principle here. He says, For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew, a spiritual Jew, is what he's talking about, who is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. So we see here the kind of circumcision that God is really, truly interested in, circumcising our fleshly heart and replacing it with a heart that wants to serve God. God warrants spiritual circumcision. That's why we're told very plainly here. And oddly enough, this isn't just a New Testament concept. We actually find the exact same thing spelled out back in Deuteronomy 10 in verse 16, where God commands them, Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. In other words, God says, Be receptive to me. Don't be stiff-necked. Don't be stubborn. Don't be rebellious.

Circumcise your heart. Have a heart that is receptive to me. Even in the giving of the law by Moses, which this is a part of, God made it clear that the heart should be changed as a result of keeping God's law. And there were some scattered throughout that period who did understand that aspect of what God's law was to produce. Some of the prophets wrote and spoke of that repeatedly. They understood what God's law was supposed to produce and what God wanted, what He hoped for in giving that law a heart that was converted, that was receptive and would become just like God. That's the whole point of the law. So again, the third lesson here is that we need to be spiritually circumcised to keep the Passover. We need to be spiritually circumcised to keep the Passover. Under the Old Covenant, what was the sign of one's commitment to or belonging to God?

Oh, we just talked about it here. Circumcision. It was a sign that you belonged to God and were committed to Him. Under the New Covenant, what is the sign of one's commitment to or belonging to God?

Baptism. Baptism is. That is why those who are not baptized should not partake of the Passover, of the symbols of the bread and the wine. Those who are interested can, and we encourage them, to come and to observe, to see what the Passover is about. We welcome that. But the model from Scripture, as we see from these passages here, is that one needs to be spiritually circumcised.

One needs to have a new heart. How do we get that new heart? We get that new heart through God's Spirit. How do we get God's Spirit? We get God's Spirit by repenting, by being baptized, by having His hands laid on us by a minister of God. That's how we receive that. And that's what we need to participate in the Passover. So if you'd like to talk about that, be baptized, come and talk with me. See me or email me there. Let's discuss that. It is a very serious commitment, as we've seen already. It's a deadly serious commitment. Very serious. And physical circumcision is a commitment too. But the spiritual circumcision, the circumcision of the heart that comes through baptism and receiving God's Spirit, is a far greater, far more important commitment to us here.

So let's move on to the next Passover, the Fourth Commandment. This is found in 2 Chronicles 29 and 30. This is commonly called the Great Passover of Hezekiah. We'll see why it's called a Great Passover as we read through this. It was a Passover that went down in Jewish history as one of the greatest events in the entire history of the nation of Israel.

One of the purposes of this Great Passover, that Hezekiah plan, was to restore national worship of the true God, to turn people back from their idols, the idolatry that they had gotten away into, and to start serving the true God once again. So when Hezekiah came to the throne, as part of his... one of the first things that he determined was that the Passover should be kept.

Excuse me just a minute here. My computer needs its second cup of coffee here.

Okay, when all this fails, unplug and replug.

Okay, here we go. Okay, so one of the purposes of this Great Passover, one of the reasons it's called this, is because again Hezekiah planned to restore national worship of the true God to Israel. So when he came to the throne, in his first year, he determined that the Passover should be kept by the entire nation. And this is a very tumultuous and unusual time. Hezekiah came to be king over the kingdom of Judah at the very time when the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel, it had split into two kingdoms after the death of Solomon. And the northern ten tribes were on the verge of being carried away into exile at the hands of the Assyrian Empire. So Hezekiah, in order to keep the Passover properly, wanted to give the opportunity not only to those in the southern kingdom of Judah to keep the Passover, but he also wanted to offer keeping the Passover to their cousins in the northern kingdom of Israel, those who were still around there, those who wanted to come down and keep the Passover with them in Jerusalem. So let's read about that here with that background. In the first year of his reign, this is 2 Chronicles 29 verse 3, in the first month he opened the doors of the house of the Eternal and repaired them. This is talking about the temple. The temple had been neglected, there fallen into disrepair. Hezekiah starts out reforming and reinstituting true worship of God. Then he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them in the east square and said to them, Hear me, Levites, now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house or the temple of the eternal God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place. So note what is taking place here. What's the time frame? The first month, as we see there in verse 3. So he has only until the 14th day of the month to get the nation prepared for Passover. The temple had been very much neglected. It had been abused with different idols and idolatrous worship taking place there. And the priests and the Levites needed to sanctify themselves before the Passover could be taken by anybody. And notice what happens then. Hezekiah continues with his instruction, For our fathers or our ancestors have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the eternal our God. They have forsaken him, have turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the eternal, and turned their backs on him.

They have also shut up the doors of the vestibule of the temple, put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.

Therefore the wrath of the eternal fell upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he has given them up to trouble, to desolation, and to jeering, as you see with your eyes. For indeed, because of this, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons, our daughters, and our wives are in captivity.

So what he's describing here is the Assyrians were invading Israel. They were also starting incursions into Judah as well. This is a very dangerous time. Assyria is the superpower of its day, and it is intent on conquering anything that stands in its way. Indeed, within a few years, would totally destroy the northern kingdom of Israel and take them away into exile. But Judah suffered alongside Israel. Not to that extent. We know that God miraculously delivered them when Hezekiah was surrounded in Jerusalem by an army of 180,000 Assyrians, and God killed them in one evening and delivered them. So that is the context of what is going on here. So the people had neglected those laws of God, and God had given them, and the priests and the Levites, who had become unclean and were not able to take care of the physical responsibilities of the Passover. So Hezekiah sends out the order to to clean things up. Get yourselves prepared.

Verse 10, Hezekiah says, Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the eternal God of Israel that his fierce wrath may turn away from us. Incidentally, those of you who have heard about Hezekiah's tunnel, this is during this period when that tunnel is constructed to establish a secure water source because they know the Assyrians are coming. The common way they captured a city was to besiege it, surround it, cut it off from all of its food and water sources so the people would starve into submission. And so this is part of the context of what is going on here. Very, very dangerous, threatening time. So Hezekiah's intent is to return the people to God's way of life, to turn them back to obedience in this time of grave national threat there.

So they began to clean up the temple there, the priests and Levites, but it takes them longer than the date of the Passover. So let's skip down to verse 17.

Now they began to sanctify on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month, they came to the vestibule of the eternal in the temple. Then they sanctified the house of the eternal in eight days, and on the sixteenth day of the first month, they finished. So we see here that it took them a little over two weeks, 14 days, to clean up the temple and to finish that.

It took a little over two weeks for the priesthood and the Levites to come around.

In some cases, literally, because the priests and the Levites didn't all live in Jerusalem. They were scattered out among some of the towns in the countryside there. So they took that time to send out word to get them into Jerusalem, too, to start this restoration process of the temple, the cleansing of the temple. But we also have a different problem here. Hezekiah recognizes this problem because he sees the priest dragging their feet, not being as diligent as they should have been. So let's skip down to verse 34 and notice what it says here. But the priests were too few.

Perhaps some of them are still out, haven't gotten the word, haven't made it back there in time, or some just neglect it because, again, the nation as a whole had turned from worship of God.

But it says, the priests were too few so that they could not skin all the burnt offerings.

Therefore their brethren the Levites helped them until the work was ended, and until the other priests had sanctified themselves. For the Levites were more diligent in sanctifying themselves than the priests. That's not a good reflection on the priests.

They should have been the ones leading the way to prepare themselves and get the nation prepared for the Passover. But they're dragging their feet. They have to call on the Levites, or the Levites have to be brought in to assist with that. So what we see here is a failure on the part of individuals to properly prepare themselves in order for the people of God to be prepared, to take the Passover. So we see here then that it is a responsibility of the ministry to properly prepare the people of God for taking the Passover.

That is why every year we'll give usually several different sermons about Passover, about the meaning, the significance of this event, and what it means.

So what we see here is that the Levites had to pitch in and help until the rest of the priests could sanctify themselves and get their act together. Some, again, are just dragging their feet about getting the job done. But it was in the heart of Hezekiah to really prepare the people for the Passover. Notice then, skipping down to verse 36, then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced that God had prepared the people since the events took place so suddenly. Again, he started on the first day of the first month, and now it's up to the 16th day before everything is in place to take the Passover. But now there's a problem, because it's two days past the Passover. So, maybe it obviously Hezekiah thought it could and should have been done in time to take the Passover on the 14th, but they didn't make that because people were dragging their feet or weren't there in time. But what we have here is two key things. Not only the great religious reform of Hezekiah and the wanting to keep this great Passover, but what we see as the story continues is this is the first time the entire nation takes the second Passover, because it's too late. The 14th is already past. As we covered earlier in the institution of the second Passover, back with the second Passover, there were several men who had touched a dead body and had become ceremonial and unclean. But here, as Hezekiah is trying to re-establish the worship of the true God, we see that it took too long. After conferring what should be done, they decided that the entire nation should take the Passover in the second month.

So we read about that, 2 Chronicles 30, the next chapter, beginning in verse 1.

And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah and also wrote letters to Ephraim and Manasseh. So notice something different here. Hezekiah is the king of Judah, but he sends letters, and messengers will see, up into the remnants of the northern kingdom to Israel, to Ephraim and Manasseh, who are the two leading tribes of the northern kingdom. And what does he do? He invites him to come to the house of the Eternal at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the eternal God of Israel. So again, notice the context. The northern kingdom was in its last days.

The Assyrians are on the verge of destroying and enslaving the northern kingdom of Israel, taking them away into exile. So Hezekiah extends an invitation to come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover. It's interesting from an archaeological standpoint, too. Archaeologists know that the city of Jerusalem expanded enormously right during this same period. Why did they do that? Well, the obvious answer is they are being filled by refugees fleeing from the Assyrians, who don't want to be killed or face a life of slavery. So Jerusalem enormously expanded during that time. They know that because the city walls expanded outward to accommodate all these new people coming to Jerusalem for protection during this period. It's just a confirmation of what we read about here in the Bible. Verse 2, For the king and his leaders, and all the assembly in Jerusalem, had agreed to keep the Passover in the second month. For they could not keep it at the regular time, because a sufficient number of priests had not consecrated themselves, nor had the people gathered together at Jerusalem. And the matter pleased the king and all the assembly. So they resolved to make a proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba to Dan.

Let's see. So Dan, let's look at this geographically here, Dan is in the far northern part of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, to the north. Beersheba is to the far south in the southern kingdom of Judah.

He's basically sending a proclamation throughout the entire land as far as they can reach to invite people to come to Jerusalem for the Passover.

Israel, the northern ten tribes, are going to be taken into captivity a little more than a hundred years before the southern kingdom of Judah. One of the reasons that the southern kingdom of Judah was spared the turmoil during this period is because of good kings, like Hezekiah kings, who were, did have a heart, a spiritually circumcised heart, to follow God, to do their best, to worship God, the true God, and to follow Him and to obey Him. The Passover being one of those laws, one of those commands. So what we see here is the message that went out. Runners went out. They didn't have the internet in those days. They sent out runners and horsemen with letters, inviting everyone to come to Jerusalem for this second Passover in the next month. And they went all the way up to Dan, and the far north of the kingdom, and far to the south, to Beersheba, and all points east and west as well. But what reception did they get? Let's notice that in verse 10. So the runners passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, that's in the northern kingdom of Israel, as far as Zebulun, the tribe of Zebulun. But they laughed at them and mocked them.

Rather sad commentary. Here are people who are in mortal danger, and they choose to ignore God.

Mind us a lot of what's going on in the nation today. I can't help but notice the parallels here.

We sent out a message, hundreds of thousands of copies of the Good News, Beyond Today program, and most people laugh it off. Ignore it. It's rather sad, the state of mankind.

But, verse 11, nevertheless, some from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun, humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. And again, this is probably some of those refugees I mentioned a few minutes ago that led to the expansion of the city of Jerusalem during that time. So, what we see here is the northern kingdom as a whole had generally lost all respect and all regard for God's laws and His holy days to the point that they mocked the messengers that Hezekiah sent out. As a result, they would soon experience a devastating national calamity.

But some of them did listen there. Continuing verse 18, For a multitude of the people, many from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves. So these are some of the people who were among these refugees coming to Jerusalem. They had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover contrary to what was written. So what's this telling us here? Well, they were not ceremonially clean, in other words.

They had come down, perhaps, at the last minute, because it is a fairly short time when you have to travel by foot, as was done in those days, and they had not gone through the proper, ritually cleansing process. But they went ahead and took the Passover anyway, and it was brought to Hezekiah's attention. So what does Hezekiah do then? Continuing, But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. So we see here again that, how does God look on this? He looks on the heart.

These people had come many miles to keep the Passover. According to the law of Moses, there were certain cleanliness laws that had to be kept. And apparently, these people either didn't know about those laws or had just been so long ago they had neglected, forgotten about them, whatever. Or maybe they were just never taught them, because that split had happened a number of generations before. But what was their heart? God looked on their heart, and He saw that their intent was to come and to keep the Passover as God intended. And God heard, and He honored that.

As it says in verse 20, And the Eternal listened to Hezekiah and healed the people.

Verse 21, So the children of Israel who were present at Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread, seven days with great gladness. And the Levites and the priests praised the Eternal, day by day, singing to the Eternal, accompanied by loud instruments. And Hezekiah gave encouragement to all the Levites who taught the good knowledge of the Eternal. And they ate throughout the feast seven days, offering peace offerings and making confession to the Eternal God of their fathers. And verse 23, Notice this, They are having such a good time, Then the whole assembly agreed to keep the feast another seven days, And they kept it another seven days with gladness.

So skipping down then to verse 26, So there was great joy in Jerusalem.

For since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. Then the priests, the Levites, arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place, to heaven. So in the end, despite the foot dragging by the priests, the difficulties of cleaning, repairing, restoring the temple, despite the reception some of the messengers received from some in Israel, despite all of these problems, it turned out to be a wonderful, wonderful, inspiring, and encouraging event. So much so that they kept it another seven days there in celebration of God. So a lot of things to notice on there, but I'd like to pick up a few key points here. One, notice that there is no mention of a third Passover here. Now, if there ever was an occasion when a third Passover might be warranted, you'd think this would be it.

Because again, you've got people traveling long distances, people who haven't properly prepared, people are ceremonially unclean. You would think if there was ever an occasion for a third Passover another month later, this would be it. But there's no mention of that. So the obvious implication is there's only the second one. There's not any options beyond that. There are only two, so if you could not keep the Passover when everybody else did, you had to wait another entire year for the Passover to come around the next time and take it then. But there's also a deeper and much more important lesson here. Remember what Hezekiah was faced with. He was faced with a last-minute decision when he learned about the need to keep the Passover. It was a last-minute decision on his part to prepare himself and prepare the people for Passover.

And even then, when word went out, priests dragged their feet as we've talked about it. It took them too long to cleanse the temple. It took them 16 days. Two days passed the time of the Passover.

So Hezekiah realized the Passover wasn't going to be kept on the 14th and it wasn't going to be met properly, that deadline, and the people were not going to be properly prepared.

They wouldn't have enough time to come to keep the Passover because they either didn't know about it or had forgotten about it, and they needed to be told about it and educated about it.

So they decided the entire nation would keep the Passover in the second month there.

So all in all, to sum up all of this, a lesson we can draw from this is don't wait too late.

Don't wait too late to prepare yourself for the Passover. Don't wait too late to prepare yourself for the Passover. It's that simple. As we've seen by now, Passover is a very serious ceremony. It is a most important part of being a part of the body of God's Church. It is not something that we enter into hastily or at the last minute or without proper preparation. How often do you get to the point shortly before Passover where it's like you get just bombarded with distractions or things that distract your time, distract your thoughts, take time away from you so that you don't have time to sit down and think about it, to examine yourself, to meditate, to pray, to study, to take stock of where you are in your life spiritually.

How often does that happen? It seems like it happens more and more as life gets busier, more frustrating. It's very easy to let that happen if we're not careful. But we can't afford to let that happen. So let ourselves be distracted in that way. Notice 1 Corinthians 11 verses 27 through 29, some of the instructions from Paul regarding the Passover. Notice what he says here.

We read this every time about this time of year, every year about this time, because it is very important. He says here, "...Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord," referring to the Passover symbols of bread and wine, "...in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Now, in Old Testament times, as we've talked about, if somebody touched a dead body, became defiled, they couldn't take the Passover. They would take the second Passover.

And in Hezekiah's times, we just read, they missed the first Passover completely because of the circumstances there. They had to put things together in a hurry to even keep the second Passover. So this is a case of people doing what is right, but waiting until it was almost too late to do it. So we ought to take note of this. And remind ourselves that we better not wait too late to examine ourselves, as Paul tells us here. Continuing in verse 28, "...but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body, not discerning the sacrifice of the Lord." That's the case that was made for us.

Or not discerning the body that is the Church and the importance of this. So it does take time to properly examine ourselves. It takes thought. It takes serious Bible study, prayer, and meditation to properly prepare ourselves for the Passover. There's no shortcut. There's no shortcut for that. So again, don't take too long to prepare yourself for the Passover. The fifth Passover is described in 2 Kings 23. And here we have another kind of Passover.

There are some similarities here to the one of Hezekiah. But this is the Passover during Josiah's reign. This takes place about 95 years after the events we just read about concerning Hezekiah. During the interim, the Northern Kingdom has been ravaged, demolished, taken away into exile by the Assyrians. So keep this in mind as we read about what Josiah does. He makes the first move by a king to re-establish the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

Because not all of the Israelites were taken away. The poor of the land, the homeless, you might say, the people who couldn't do the Assyrians any good. They left there. They weren't of any real value to them. So some were left there in the Northern Kingdom after that invasion. But like in Hezekiah's time, the people of Judah had again drifted away from keeping God's laws.

And the worship of God and the temple had been neglected. Again, the priests and Levites weren't doing their job. Hezekiah had been a good king, but then he was followed by several bad kings. Manasseh was himself taken away into captivity. And others, who had been a number of years, maybe decades, probably since the temple had been properly used and God properly worshipped there. So Josiah begins a house cleaning of the temple. And when he does, he discovers a scroll of the law of God. Probably a scroll of one or more of the five books of Moses to Pentateuch.

It had apparently been lost for years, or perhaps during the periods of idolatry, it had been hidden away for safekeeping when the people started turning away from God. And this tends to indicate just how far things had degenerated. At this point, as the temple is being cleaned up and the idols are removed from it, they find this book of the law. It's found by Hezekiah the high priest.

And as a result of that, they look in the law and they see, hey, the fixed-up Passover is coming up. We've got to keep it. We've got to prepare ourselves. So the entire nation, as in Hezekiah's day, is unclean again. So with that background, we pick up the story here. 2 Kings 23, verse 5.

Then he, Josiah, removed the idolatrous priest, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places all around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. Skipping down to verse 10, this is Josiah's energy and vigor and desire to eliminate idolatry from the land. So he defiled Tophat, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, the Hinnom Valley south of Jerusalem, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech. So they're actually burning their children alive to the god Molech there in the valley of Hinnom. Then he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance to the house of the Lord, to the temple, in other words, by the chamber of Nathan and Molech, the officer who was in the court, and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire.

So here are these idolatrous accoutrements there in the temple itself that he cleans out and burns.

Moreover, verse 15, skipping down to there, the altar that was at Bethel, about 10-12 miles north of Jerusalem. So this is actually in the territory of the northern kingdom. This is in Judah's territory. He's actually expanding his reforms into the kingdom of Israel, and what's left of it.

So the altar that was at Bethel in the high place, which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel's sin, had made both that altar in the high place. He broke down and burned the high place and crushed it to powder and burned the wooden image. So he's just going through and cleaning house, and skipping down now to verse 19. Now, Josiah also took away all the shrines of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria. Again, this is the northern kingdom of Israel, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the eternal to anger, and he did to them according to all the deeds he had done and Bethel. He executed all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars and burned men's bones on them to defile them, as he had done, and he returned to Jerusalem. Then the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the Passover to the eternal your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. So we see here that he cleaned house in Jerusalem, cleaned house in Judah, and then he started cleaning house in the land of Israel, the kingdom of Israel. So he obviously wanted to spread the keeping of God's laws to all of God's people, not just those of Judah, but the remnant that was left up in Israel, too. This is his purpose. Continuing on, after the instructions to keep the Passover, it's summarized here, such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, during all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. But in the 18th year of King Josiah, he's 18 years old. This is an 18 year old. In the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was held before the Eternal in Jerusalem. The parallel account in 2 Chronicles, we won't turn there, but it's 2 Chronicles chapter 35, specifically states that its Passover did include, as in Hezekiah's time, some of the people, some of the remnant from the northern kingdom of Israel, that he had turned to keeping God's laws again. So we see here, this is apparently even a greater Passover than the one of Hezekiah's time. Continuing, let's see, I'll skip ahead a little bit of this for lack of time. He put away those who consulted mediums and spiritists and household gods and idols. And skipping down to verse 25, what a wonderful epitaph we see here for Josiah. Now before him there was no king like him who turned to the Eternal with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, nor after him did any arise like him. So a truly, truly remarkable example of zeal for God and His way of life.

No king in the history of Israel or Judah had made such a clean sweep of getting rid of all the idolatry and worship of false gods, false priests and all of that kind of thing in Judah and Israel.

He wanted to unite the kingdom again under one king with its civil and religious headquarters there at Jerusalem. This had been done in the days of David and Solomon. And he wanted to establish God's law as the law of the land and spread it throughout Judah and Israel. He made a remarkable start, but the rest of the story is that Josiah died not long after that. He died in battle.

He wasn't allowed to finish because it wasn't yet time. It wasn't yet time. God did not want that done yet. However, we are in a time period when we should see ourselves as a people being prepared for God. We've talked quite a bit about what the Passover should mean to us personally, but we should look at the Passover also not just from a personal individual standpoint, but to see ourselves as Josiah saw himself as a leader of a nation being prepared by God. As a leader of a nation being prepared by God. Because what is our calling? Our calling is to be rulers, and we need to focus our minds on the big picture of Passover and how it fits into God's overall plan.

Let's pick up this theme a little bit here in 1 Peter 2 verses 9 and 10. Very familiar passage here, but notice how God describes us through the Apostle Peter. He says, but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

So we should see ourselves then the way that God sees us as described in this passage here.

For what God's church is becoming, which is a holy people, a holy nation, and we are being prepared to be priests and kings in the coming kingdom of God.

So we need to keep Passover every year in its overall perspective too. Josiah wanted to lead a nation that would live by and keep and spread God's laws and God's ways. God is now preparing a people to finish the job that Josiah started, preparing a people who are called to live by and to keep and to spread and to teach God's ways. And God's laws ultimately to the entire world, not just the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as Josiah tried, but to the entire world.

We are called to destroy the false idols, the false religions of this world, the systems that only bring confusion and chaos and death and destruction. And we're called to spread and to teach God's laws and God's ways throughout the nations. We are called to be kings and priests in God's coming kingdom. So the fifth lesson, the lesson we learned from this Passover, is that we are part of a holy spiritual nation being prepared by God for rulership in His Kingdom.

We are part of a holy spiritual nation being prepared by God for rulership in His Kingdom.

The sixth Passover that we'll cover is the Passover of Zerubbabel's time, after the return of the exiles from Babylon, the kingdom of Judah after Josiah had another series of unrighteous kings. And eventually that kingdom, like the kingdom of Israel before it fell, to the kingdom of Babylon, and were taken away into exile. And then they spent 70 years and were brought back from exile. This is described in Ezra 6. And this is the first Passover to be kept by these exiles after they have returned. So there's about a 70-year period there that Judah, the kingdom of Judah, was in exile until people came back from Babylon under Zerubbabel. The temple was rebuilt, was reconstructed. We'll pick up the story here in Ezra 6 and verse 14 where they are preparing to dedicate the temple, the rebuilt temple, after the one had been destroyed by the Babylonians when they captured Jerusalem. So picking up the story here, so the elders of the Jews built and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Ido. These are the two prophets of the minor prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. And they built and finished it according to the commandment of the god of Israel, according to the command of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. These are the rulers who had allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem. Now the temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. Now Adar is the twelfth month of the Jewish calendar, so the temple is completed and dedicated on the third day of the last month of the Hebrew calendar.

The next month is the first month in which Passover is to be kept. So it's getting close, very close, to the time of Passover. Verse 16. Then the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites and the rest of the descendants of the captivity, celebrated the dedication of this house of God, this temple, with joy. And the offered sacrifice is at the dedication of this house of God, 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel, 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. You can go back and compare this to the dedication of the temple in Solomon's time. It's just a drop in the bucket. This shows how far the nation had fallen from the time of Solomon. There were tens of thousands of animals sacrificed at the dedication of Solomon's temple. But regardless, the people are very happy to be back in the land that God had given them. Verse 18. They assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites to their divisions over the service of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses. The descendants of the captivity kept the passover on the 14th day of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves. All of them were ritually clean, and they slaughtered the passover lambs for all the descendants of the captivity, for their brethren, the priests, and for themselves.

The children of Israel, who had returned from the captivity, ate together with all who had separated themselves from the filth of the nations of the land in order to seek the eternal God of Israel. And they kept the feast of unleavened bread, seven days with joy, for the eternal made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. This passover is kept by the exiles returning, and it is a time of tremendous joy because they are now again established in the land that God had given them. And what's the lesson we learned from this? Well, there is a future time that this is, you might say, a type of or a model of. There's a future time when God's people, physical descendants of Israel, will return from exile and once more be brought to Jerusalem to worship the true God. And this will be also a time of great joy. So notice a couple of prophecies of that. Isaiah 27, verse 13, it says, "...so it shall be in that day, the great trumpet," what great trumpet? The great trumpet announcing the return of Jesus Christ.

"...the great trumpet will be blown. They will come who are about to perish in the land of Assyria, and they who are outcast in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Eternal and the holy Mount at Jerusalem." So there will again be a time, as we read about there, under Zerubbabel, when the egg-sales will return and worship God in Jerusalem. And when they come, they will be refugees, people who are battered, who are bruised, who are taken away into captivity, who will have lived through the utterly awful events at the time of the end of this age of mankind. There will be people in many ways without help, people who are traumatized, people who are humbled, and repentant, and looking for forgiveness for what they have done wrong. These are people who have learned their lesson the hard way, the brutally hard way. Let's notice another prophecy, Isaiah 35, verse 3. "...strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are fearful-hearted, Be strong, do not fear. Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With the recompense of God, He will come and save you." Talking about the same people that we just read about. And verse 10, and notice this, "...and the ransomed of the Eternal will return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing, shuffling away." So just imagine what this first Passover is going to be like after Jesus Christ is returned and the Kingdom of God is established on earth. It will be a time of tremendous joy, of rejoicing, of happiness, of gladness, and an incredible thing to see. So the sixth lesson here is that a joyous future Passover will be kept by a remnant of God's people returning from a future captivity. A joyous future Passover will be kept by a remnant of God's people returning from a future captivity, as happened in the time of Zorababel that we read about. The last Passover we'll cover, and quite briefly, is Jesus Christ's last Passover with the disciples. We'll read a few verses from Luke 22. This is His last Passover as a physical human being on earth and the first Passover with the symbols of the bread and the wine, the symbols of His death. There's something tremendously encouraging that is given to us in Luke's account of the Passover here. Here Jesus talks about not just the Passover He was keeping with Him at that time, but also about a future Passover when He will be present. Not that He's not present with us now, because He is present in spirit as we take the Passover as well. He is fulfilling His role as High Priest as we take the bread and the wine. And we acknowledge that we have sinned when we take those symbols, that we do sin and that our sins caused Him to be put to death as our Passover to pay the penalty for us. God knows that we still have human nature, that we do still have parts of our lives that need to be cleaned up and dealt with, but He is ready, always ready and willing to forgive us, so long as we maintain that covenant with Him every year as the Passover. And as we take that bread and wine, we remind ourselves not just of our forgiveness, but also of a time when He is coming and returning.

And we'll sit down with us and literally be there so that the people can see His very presence.

Let's read about that in Luke 22, verses 14-18.

When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him.

Then He said to them, With fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

And this is Christ's attitude toward keeping the Passover with us.

It is something He looks forward to with fervent desire to do this with His people, His brothers and sisters. It was with fervent desire that He took that last Passover with His apostles while He was on earth in human form. But notice verse 16. For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

For I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then He took the cup and gave thanks and said, Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

So we look forward, brethren, to the Passover and to God's holy days. We should look forward to this coming Passover in a few weeks. And we should even look more forward to this Passover that He promises. This Passover in the kingdom of God. So the seventh lesson is that we have a date.

We have a date with Jesus Christ to keep the Passover with Him in the kingdom of God.

He will be there. And we will be there too, so long as we remain faithful to the covenant, to the commitment that we have made through Him.

He is represented by the Passover symbols. He is eagerly anticipating that time, and so should we.

Eagerly anticipate that time too, because it is with desire that He yearns to fulfill what He promised He would do here in Luke 22, verse 18, when He will once again drink of the fruit of the vine when the kingdom of God is here on earth. So in conclusion, let's not take lightly what God is doing with us individually or collectively as a group of people. Because as we covered earlier, He sees in us a holy priesthood, a holy nation of people being prepared to be kings and priests in His kingdom. And as you prepare and think about and meditate on these things in preparation for Passover, consider its overall part in God's plan as well. Look at yourself and realize that if we are to be the kind of servants, the kind of kings and priests and leaders, that He wants us to be in the kingdom of God, that if we are to be the kind of individuals whom these refugees and exiles will look to for hope, as we just read about here, that we really need to change. We need to to narrow the gap between what we know and what we are and what we do. We need to see ourselves for what we are, as God sees us, a holy nation being prepared for the kingdom of God. So keep these things in perspective and look at this on not just the personal level, but on the level of the kingdom of God, realizing that it is a crucial step toward becoming a member of the family of God.

So