Pictures of Passover

We second what Arthur said about having the live accompanist here. Thank you very much, Cheryl, for doing that. Really adds a great deal to our services here. Just sounds so happy, so cheerful. And let's see, let's hope our technology is going to work for us. We switch back and forth between a computer back at the back, the air projects the hymns, and so on to the laptop up here. So, here we go.

Okay, to begin the sermon today, I'd like you to do a little exercise here with me. This will be a word association exercise. Very short, very simple, but just to illustrate a point, what I'd like you to do, I'm going to project something up here and I want you to fill in the blank. When I say the words, God is, what comes to your mind? I'd like you to just write down three words that come to your mind. When I say the words, God is, or when you hear the phrase, God is, just three words. Don't overthink it. It's not complicated. Just to illustrate a point here, so just write down the first three words that come to your mind when you hear the phrase, God is. I'll give you just a minute to do that. God is what? What comes to your mind? How would you fill in the blank here with that exercise? Just three words. Very short, very simple.

Okay, so what did you write down? Let's hear what some of you wrote down. And, Tony? Good. Good. Pam? God is love. God is good. God is love. Let's see. Bill? God is eternal. Tess? God is holy. Dave? God is forgiving. Betsy? God is merciful. Let's see. I saw a hand over here. God is faithful. Arthur? God is almighty. Althea? Oh, same thing. God is almighty. Larry? God is all-knowing. Okay, very good. Yes, a lot of good answers there.

Certainly true. God is eternal. God is almighty. God is love. God is faithful. But I wanted to do that exercise to illustrate a point. And the point is that all of us here are used to thinking like Greeks. Thinking like Greeks. Now, what does that mean? By that I mean that Western civilization, the way we have been educated, our educational systems, our schools, our university systems, college systems, that sort of thing, the way we think, the way we process thoughts, is Greek.

It goes back to the Roman Empire and beyond that to the Greek civilization, the great thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, people like that. That's where our Western thought processes came from. And it's illustrated by the answers that were just given here, because when I say that we tend to think like Greeks, we think in terms like the words that were mentioned.

God is love. God is faithful. God is merciful. God is great. God is almighty. That sort of thing. But what I mean by saying this is Greek thinking, these are all abstract concepts. They're abstract concepts. You can't reach out and touch faithful. You can't taste merciful. You can't feel almighty. By contrast, and this will help us understand what I'm seeing here a little bit better, if you were in Israel and you ask a Jew this same exercise, you would get answers like, God is my rock. Or God is my fortress.

Or God is my shepherd. And that is a difference between Eastern thinking, or Hebrew, or Biblical thinking, and the way we are used to thinking in the West, in abstract terms. They tend to think in very concrete terms. God is my rock. God is my fortress. God is my shepherd. Things that, yes, you can reach out and touch. You can experience. You can taste. You can see with your eyes. These concepts, very physical concepts here. And that is a big difference between Eastern thinking and Western thinking. And this impacts and affects how we read the Bible and how we understand some aspects of God's Word as well.

Because a lot of the Bible and a lot of Hebrew thinking is about pictures. And about Word pictures. And the Bible is full of pictures. Full of Word pictures. Five weeks from tomorrow night, we will be gathering to observe a ceremony that in many ways is all about pictures. All about pictures. And that ceremony is, of course, the Passover. What comes to your mind when you think about Passover?

Probably a lot of pictures. Pictures like these. Pictures of lambs. Pictures of Passover, the Israelites splashing the blood over the lentils, the sides of their houses. Things like the foot washing. Things like the wine. Things like the bread. All of these are pictures. These are all things that we can feel, we can touch, we can taste. These are all symbols and important lessons for us with important lessons to teach us. Let's see, Connie, would you get my pointer out of my bag there or bring it up?

I forgot to stick it in my pocket here. But in today's sermon, what I would like to do is to explore this concept of pictures that teach us about the Passover and about the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That's why I'm titling today's sermon, Pictures of Passover. I've already mentioned a few of these pictures of Passover and we're familiar with what they represent. Things like, again, the blood on the doorpost that God commanded the Israelites to do so that they would be spared from the death penalty that came on the Egyptian firstborn when the death angel passed over them.

This was part of one of the plagues, this was the final, the culminating plague that freed the Israelites from slavery there in Egypt. We're familiar with other aspects, pictures of Passover, like the lambs, the Passover lambs that were slain, there to provide the blood to be splashed on the doorpost and the lentils there. We're familiar with things like the foot-washing, which we do every year in accordance with Christ's command, showing us the need to have a humble attitude and a serving and a giving attitude toward others. We're familiar with symbols like the unleavened bread that we partake of at the Passover, symbolic of the beaten and bruised body of Jesus Christ.

And we're familiar also with the cup of wine that we take at Passover, symbolizing his bloodshed for us. Again, these are all pictures. Pictures. Not abstract things like God is faithful, God is merciful, and so on. Certainly he is. But today I want to focus in on these pictures that God gives us in His Word as teaching tools. And again, God uses these pictures as teaching tools for us to help us understand a number of very important concepts.

We've all heard the saying that a picture is worth what? A thousand words. And it's true. It's true. And it's also true. And God knows that it's true. Because, again, of a lot of the pictures that He uses for us in His words. That's why we see so many pictures and symbols in God's Word.

Another important aspect of pictures is that pictures are often far better at reaching the heart. At reaching the heart. Because in our Western thinking we are, again, used to abstract thought, I abstract concepts, and so on. And using a lot of words that reach the head first and then to the heart. In Western thinking we try to reach the heart through the head.

But in Scripture, in Hebrew thinking, in Eastern thinking, they try to reach the head through the heart first. And then to the head. And that's an important distinction. So in today's sermon what we'll do is go through some of the other pictures of Passover that we're probably not so familiar with. We already covered a number of these here.

We won't go through those because, again, we're familiar with those. But I'd like to cover other pictures of Passover that we don't necessarily hear about every year before the Passover or may not have ever heard about, period. May not have ever connected those with Passover and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

These pictures, in many cases, would have been very easily understood in the culture of the day. But now we're, in the examples I'll be giving, up to 4,000 years removed from that culture, a very different culture, and we don't know what those symbols mean. We don't know how to interpret the pictures that God has given there to teach us lessons.

So what we'll be doing today is covering some of those pictures and pointing out some of these lessons for us. By going through these today, I hope that it will help us all to better understand the significance of Passover and Christ's sacrifice and what that means for all of us.

I'd like to start first, though, with a picture, not a very ancient one, but a very up-to-date. Well, actually it is ancient. Come to think of it here. But it's found in the last book of the Bible in Revelation 13 and verse 8.

Breaking into the story flow, I won't go into it. I just want to mention this phrase, this picture that God provides for us here. And that picture is of, quote, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Here's an important picture for us. This is a major, if not perhaps the major theme of the Bible, that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who was God and who was with God, as we read about in John 1, came to earth to give his life as a sacrifice for our sins so that we might be forgiven and reconciled to the Father and inherit the kingdom that was prepared for us as part of a plan that was formulated before the world, before the first human beings, Adam and Eve, were ever created.

It all revolves around the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And we'll see this theme, or parts of this theme, repeated as we go through these other pictures that we'll be covering today. So we see that this theme of a sacrifice for our sins actually begins before the world and before Adam and Eve were ever created. God already knew that a sacrifice would be needed because he knew that in creating human beings with free choice, freedom of choice, that human beings being what we are would make a lot of wrong choices.

That we would choose the wrong ways. We would choose ways that lead to sin and to suffering and to bringing the death penalty on us. And if we are going to be reconciled to God, if we are going to be forgiven, a Savior would be needed. Thus the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. So we would need to have a Savior, in other words. We see this theme very early on in Scripture after Adam and Eve had sinned. We find that God said that he would send a promised one who would, this is addressed to the serpent directly, but also to Adam and Eve, but one who would bruise Satan's head, but whom Satan would bruise his heel.

So even that far back, in Genesis with our first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, we have the promise of a Savior who would die by crucifixion, by having his heel bruised. And archeologists have, I've shown this photo a few times before, but archeologists have actually found the skeleton of a crucified man in Jerusalem.

It was crucified in the first century there. And this photo illustrates part of how he was crucified. The object there on the left-hand side of the screen is actually the man's heel bone with an iron nail driven through it. And it hit a knot in the wood, and that's why the iron nail curved and bent back around. Normally the Romans would have recycled the nails, but because it hit and embedded in that knot in the wood, they weren't able to retrieve the nail to reuse it later on.

And then the large illustration of the bones of his foot there shows how his foot was attached to the wooden beam there. It wasn't the way it's traditionally depicted in movies of them laying one foot onto another and trying to drive a nail through that. Just try to think of the logistics of having two feet on top of each other and trying to drive a nail through it. It's going to be a very, very difficult choice, a very difficult task to do it that way. So no, actually what the Romans did, we have the archaeological evidence for it.

They put the man's feet on either side of the post and nailed them in from the sides like that, through the heels, exactly as was prophesied in the time of Adam and Eve, that the serpent would bruise the heel of the coming Savior. And here's powerful archaeological evidence that that is exactly what happened. But we find this theme of sacrifice, we tend to think of the theme of sacrifice as beginning in the book of Exodus, but no, it actually begins, as we see here, back with Adam and Eve. And we find it well before the book of Exodus, in that first Passover that we're so familiar with.

We find it again mentioned during the time of Abraham, which is about 400 years before the Exodus. Let's notice this in Genesis 12, beginning in verse 1. We'll read verses 1 through 3.

So this is the first promise that God gives to Abraham when He calls him out of his homeland here. And we see that Abraham is promised three things. He's promised land, an inheritance of land. He's promised many descendants. And he's promised, although it's not explicitly stated here, that a Messiah would come from him, that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed, through the Messiah who would be a descendant of Abraham. But what does Abraham have to do to receive these promises? We don't find that spelled out here. We find it spelled out a bit later in Genesis 17 and verses 1 and 2. This is what God has promised to Abraham, but here's what Abraham has to do to receive those promises.

What's another word for blameless? Perfect. Abraham is called to do the same thing, to be the same as we are. What are we called to be? Matthew 5.48 tells us, Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. God tells Abraham, Walk before me and be perfect. Same condition that God wants of us, to be perfect here. So these are the terms of the covenant. Abraham has to be perfect. God is going to give him land, descendants and a promised Messiah to come through his lineage there. But how and when is this covenant formalized? We're probably familiar reading through the story that actually God gives promises to Abraham several times through the book of Genesis. When exactly is this covenant formalized? It's actually formalized in Genesis 15 and verse 18 when we see it spelled out here. On the same day, the Eternal made a covenant with Abraham. But actually the terms or formalization of this ceremony or of this covenant is in the verses leading up to verse 18. So let's read about that and see what it says. Let's turn back then to verse 1 and read that, verse 1 of Genesis 15. And it says here, What does he say? What is he going to be at Abraham? He's going to be his shield and his great reward. Now if we were expressing that in English, we would say, God would it be saying to us, I'm going to be your protector. I'm going to be your...well, I'll cover that in just a minute. But God says, I'm going to be your shield. Abraham could immediately identify with that. It's a picture. A shield was something that protected a person from his enemies, from harm, from danger there. Very valuable piece of equipment to have in times of warfare, violence, that sort of thing. So God is telling Abraham through a picture here that he's going to be Abraham's protector. The one who will protect him and watch over him, keep him safe from any enemies, in other words. And God also tells Abraham, I am your exceedingly great reward. Now, that's a little awkward in Hebrew, or translated Hebrew into English, but in modern terms, God is essentially telling Abraham that he just won the lottery.

And some commentators I've heard say that's essentially what it means. I'm your prize money. I'm your great reward. I'm something you didn't have to do a lot of effort to put into it, but I'm going to give you great blessings. I'm going to be your lottery ticket there. You have just won the lottery with me because I'm going to give you everything, great blessings, that you can't imagine. It's another picture. Again, it's Hebrew thinking. It's Eastern thinking, not our Western Greek thinking there. Skipping down to verse 5, I'll skip over some irrelevant parts here for lack of time, because they don't directly pertain to what we're covering, but skipping down to verse 5, we see another picture. Then God brought Abraham outside, outside of his tent, and said, Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them. And God said to him, So shall your descendants be. It's a picture. God doesn't tell Abraham, Well, Abraham, you're going to have, let's see, 2,593,447,003 descendants. No, he says, Abraham, go out, look up at the sky. That's how many descendants you're going to have. It's a picture. It's a picture that Abraham can easily identify with and understand. He's going to have so many descendants, he can't begin to count them.

There's another place that isn't included in here, but he also tells Abraham, Your descendants are going to be like the dust of the earth. How many particles of dust are there in the earth? Abraham lives in a desert. He's very familiar with dust. He's very familiar with sand.

And God says, See all this sand of this desert around you? That's how many descendants you're going to have. It's a picture. It's a picture of God's promises to Abraham. So we see God communicating with Abraham with picture and picture and picture and picture there. And now, skipping down to verse 9, we see another picture.

It's a picture that we've probably read about and wondered about and puzzled over and said to ourselves, What in the world is going on here? I know I did many years until I came across an explanation of this a few years ago. It's a picture that we wonder about and don't understand because we don't understand the culture. We don't understand the picture that God is giving to Abraham here. But Abraham did understand the picture and God understood the picture. But we don't. So let's read about this picture and see what it has to teach us. Genesis 15, beginning in verse 9, So God said to Abraham, Bring me a three-year-old heifer. What's a heifer? It's a female cow who hasn't given birth. A three-year-old female goat. A three-year-old ram, which in this case would be referring to a sheep, a male sheep, in other words, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

Then Abraham brought all these to God. Now notice something here. God just told Abraham to go get the animals. He didn't tell Abraham what to do with them. Abraham knows what to do with them because of the culture. So notice, then Abraham brought all these to God and cut them into down the middle, splits the animals in half, and placed each piece opposite the other. He cut the birds in two, presumably because they're so small that it wouldn't make that much of a difference. When the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away because it's the desert. There are buzzards and vultures and things like that, crows, ravens that would come down to feed on this bloody mess to be blunt. Verse 12, continuing on with the story. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold horror and great darkness fell upon him. Skipping down to verse 17. And it came to pass when the sun went down, and it was dark, that behold there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

Strange story! Any of you know the answer to this? What's going on? Again, I puzzled over this for years before I finally came to understand it. But what do we notice about what is described here? Let's go back here, skip back up a few verses to verse 9. Let's start with the animals that are mentioned here. What do they have in common? A heifer, which is a cow, a goat, a sheep, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon? What do these animals have in common? Well, for one thing, they're all clean. They're all clean animals, which we would expect since they're associated with God here. What else do they have in common?

They are the animals that were the sacrificial system, instituted under Moses.

Some Jews look at this and say, this is the origins of the sacrificial system. And I wouldn't necessarily dispute that. It's not explicitly stated, but it's a fact. Those are the same animals that would be a part of the sacrificial system instituted about four centuries later.

Same animals, cattle, goats, sheep, doves, and pigeons. Notice something else here. I mentioned it earlier, but notice that God just tells Abram to bring the animals to him. He doesn't tell him what to do because Abram already knows. Abram gets the animals together, cuts them in half, splits them in half, down the spines, lays the two halves out, and then we see what happens next. Abram, well, what's going on? Let's look at an illustration of this that will help us understand.

Here's an illustration of what is being described here. We have the animals, the two halves of the heifer, the goat, the ram, and the dove and the pigeon here, spread apart, and any of you who have ever butchered an animal, an elk, deer, cow, cattle, sheep, whatever, there's a lot of blood involved. In this case, the two halves are laying apart from each other, and the blood is draining down and pooling in the middle here. It's a gory mess. No wonder the carrion birds come down and Abraham has to drive them away there. It's a gory scene. As we read, the sun is going down and Abram goes into a deep sleep. As we read, horror and great darkness fell upon him. This is Hebrew colloquialism, which means he was scared to death.

Scared to death, terrified in this horror and great darkness that comes upon him here.

So again, what is going on here? Again, God knows, Abraham knows, but we don't have a clue because this is something out of the culture of the desert 4000 years ago. And we have no idea what's going on because we don't know what the customs were and we don't understand the picture. So what is the picture? What is going on here? I learned what this meant from a teacher who has studied a great deal in the Jewish history, Jewish culture. He's made many trips to Israel, leads teaching trips back there several times a year. He's been doing this for decades. And as part of his early training and education in this, he spent time years ago living with a Bedouin family in the desert near the, you should call it, the Negev Desert, southern part of Israel, and the Sinai Desert of Egypt there. What is Abraham's culture? He's a Bedouin. He's a desert dweller. Where does the word Bedouin come from? It's Arabic for desert. Badu. Bedouin. Bedouin is somebody who lives in the desert. Abraham and Sarah are Bedouin. They travel around the desert in a tent with their flocks, their herds, their servants, and so on. This is the culture. You can go there to this day to Jordan or to Israel or to Egypt and you can see the Bedouin living in the desert just as they did 4,000 years ago.

The only difference is today you drive by that in the night and they've got generators going in a color TV set up in their tent. There's a little bit of difference there, but essentially they live just as they did 4,000 years ago. They still have a lot of the same customs, the same practices that have been in existence for 4,000 years.

The teacher who told this story told how he witnessed a covenant ceremony like this being carried out. Again, 4,000 years after what we read about here in Genesis with Abraham. He described it this way. He was living with this large Bedouin family as part of his education there. One day he knew something unusual was going on. He didn't speak Arabic, knew some Hebrew, but didn't speak...knew only a few words of Arabic. He didn't really know what was going on, so he's watching this unfold before his eyes there as he's living with this Bedouin family for several weeks there in the desert. He noticed again that on this particular afternoon that all of the family members, this extended family, there that he's living with start cleaning up. They get the tent all nice and neat. They put on their finest clothing there. Late in the afternoon, off on the horizon, they see another family approaching. A fairly large family. They meet, they obviously know each other. They meet, they greet, they hug, they kiss, they just having a very good time there. They have a big meal together and everybody's enjoying it, having a great time, excitedly talking to one another, enjoying themselves. But then after the sun had set and it started growing dark, the mood changed and it became very sober. The two fathers, or patriarchs, Shakes, Colin and Arabic of the two families, the heads of the families, sat down beside each other there before the fire. It's nighttime again. It's dark outside, so the scene is illuminated by the firelight there. So the two heads of the family sat down and began talking very earnestly to each other in very, very serious tones. The teenage son of one of the men and the daughter of the other men were nearby and the two men are gesturing pointing toward the son and the daughter there. It soon became obvious that they are negotiating a marriage covenant, a marriage agreement, between the teenage boy of one and the daughter of the other there. They're negotiating a covenant for their children. So the men talk very seriously, very soberly, and then things get quiet. They stop talking and from out of the darkness another man comes dragging a goat.

And they bring the goat up between the two men and they cut its throat. And the goat's blood pours out there on the rocks and the sand before the two men.

First one man gets up, pulls off his sandals, and walks through the blood.

And he stands at the other side waiting. Then the other father gets up, pulls off his sandals, and walks through the blood. The blood is splashing all over the ground, all over the robes. It's a picture. But what's it a picture of? It's great symbolism in what they are saying by their actions in this picture.

What one father is saying is, if my son, whom I'm giving to Mary your daughter, doesn't keep up his end of the covenant, if he doesn't prove to be a good husband, a good father, a good provider for his bride, you may do this to me. You may cut my throat and walk in my blood.

And the other father, the father of the daughter, splashes through the blood. And he is saying through his actions, if my daughter is not pure, if she is not a virgin, if she is not a good wife and mother, you may do this to me. You may cut my throat and walk through my blood. Think how that would change a lot of engagements these days, if the parents agreed to that. But it's an incredibly powerful picture. It seems very obsolete, very out of date to us today, but it's actually still being practiced to this day. They'll still occasionally find out in the desert at the bottom of a wadi of gully, the body of an Arab father with his throat cut and footprints, and his blood in the sand. It's a picture. It's a picture.

With that background, let's reread this episode we've covered here in Genesis. Verse 17. And let's see what this tells us. What is the picture God is giving us here? Verse 17, back up to where we were a minute ago. And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. The animal halves there. First, a smoking oven, as it says here, passed between the animal halves. I don't think oven is a good translation here. The Hebrew basically means something that contains or holds fire or coals.

Could be an oven, could be a furnace. It's translated both those ways. My feeling is it's probably talking about a fire pot. A fire pot was a little clay jar with a lid on it, with holes punched in it. Before you went to bed each night, you would gather up some of the coals from the fire there, outside your tent, and put them in this pot. They would stay lit. They wouldn't go out because they were enclosed in there that night. Then when you woke up in the morning to start your fire, you would gather together some sticks and straw and brush and things like that, dump these coals on it and stir it up, and you'd have your fire ready to go for the day. This is long before they had big lighters and things like that. Matches, that sort of thing. So they use this fire pot. But what is significant about the fire pot is it would smoke all night because the coals are still burning slowly in there through the night. I think this is probably when it talks about the smoke. This is probably not an oven because it sounds so odd for an oven to be moving between these animal halves. It's probably talking about a fire pot here that puts out a lot of smoke, as we read about here. So what is smoke associated with? A brahm sees this fire pot, this smoking pot, travel between the animal halves. What's the picture? What is this telling us? What is it telling Abraham? Again, Abraham knew. But what do we know? What does smoke symbolize in the Bible? Let's notice a few scriptures here. I won't spend a lot of time on these, but you may just jot them down. You can look them up later. But what does smoke represent in Scripture? Exodus 19, verse 18, Mount Sinai, we read there, was covered with smoke when God descended to it at the giving of the Ten Commandments. Isaiah 6, 4 describes how the temple was filled with smoke when God descends to it. Revelation 15 and verse 8, the temple in heaven is filled with smoke from the glory of God. Joel 2, 2, verse 30, Acts 2, verse 19, pillars of smoke are a sign of the day of the Lord at the time of the end. So what do we see that smoke is representing here? It's obviously representing God. It's representing God. So when the smoking fire pot travels between the two halves of the animal spread out there, it's representing God, walking through the blood of these animals.

What is he saying? Again, this is the confirmation of the covenant. This is the formal agreement that is made here. And God is saying to Abraham, essentially, I love you, Abraham. I'm going to give you vast lands. I'm going to give you descendants far beyond anything you can number. And more than that, I'm going to give a Messiah who will come as one of your descendants. And all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And if I don't live up to my part of the agreement, this is what you can do to me. You can cut my throat and walk through my blood. It's an incredibly powerful statement without a word. It's a picture. It's a picture. Now it's Abraham's turn as the second party to the covenant.

First, the smoking fire pot moves through. And what happens next? As we read a burning torch then passes through.

We saw what the smoke represented. What does fire represent in Scripture? Again, a few scriptures. You can jot these down. Exodus 3, verse 2. God appears to Moses through what? A burning bush. A bush that's on fire but doesn't burn up. Exodus 13, verse 21. God leads the Israelites by what? As he's leading them out of Egypt. A pillar of fire. Exodus 24, verse 17. How does God appear on Mount Sinai? As a consuming fire. Hebrews 12, verse 29. It says directly, our God is a consuming fire. So the fire very clearly also represents God. So what's going on here? What's going on? So we have God represented by a smoking fire pot. First, who went through walking through this blood path and normally Abraham being the second party to the agreement to the covenant would have walked through the blood next to signify his agreement to the terms of the covenant. But put yourself and Abraham sandals at this moment. What is his obligation under this covenant? We read about it earlier. What does he have to do to receive these promises? He has to be perfect. He has to be blameless. But he can't be perfect. He can't be blameless because he's human. And he knows that he will sin. And he knows that as soon as he sets foot in that blood that he's as good as dead. He's a dead man walking. To set foot in that blood would have been to say and symbol there, if I don't keep my part of this covenant to be perfect, God, you may cut my throat and walk in my blood.

That was the obligation he would have taken on himself by walking, setting foot in that blood. And to do that meant that as soon as he set his foot in that blood, he would not live to see those promises fulfilled. He would not live to see descendants. He would not live to see the land. He would inherit. He would not live to see a Messiah who would come from his descendants because he's not going to have any descendants. He's going to die if he sets foot in that blood because there's no way he can be perfect as a human being. The promise of the Messiah won't come to pass. Christianity won't come to pass. None of us would be here because we would have. There would be no Christianity. There would be no Messiah. There would be no Savior under those conditions. It's about to all be over as far as Abraham is concerned. And then as Abraham is ready to step forward into that blood and assign his own death warrant, something completely unexpected happens. A burning torch comes in front of him and goes through the blood path. There before of him. What has happened? What has happened here? Going back to the story I told you earlier of the two fathers walking through the blood. To symbolize their agreement to that, what is happening here? Well, first we know from the first smoking fire pot that God the Father symbolically walked through the blood. First, to affirm the covenant, the conditions that he had promised, the promises he had made to Abraham, and that he would carry out his promises. And then Abraham himself should have walked through the blood next to signify his agreement to the terms of the covenant to keep his end of the agreement. But how can he do that? He knows that he can't be perfect. He knows that he's a dead man. If he sets foot in that blood. But then the unexpected happens. God, symbolically, in this case, the God who would become Jesus Christ, takes Abraham's place and walks through the blood for him. He walks through the blood knowing that Abraham cannot be perfect. There's no way. As a human being, Abraham will ever be perfect. But what he is saying, this being by participating in this picture, by walking through the blood in place of Abraham, he is saying, Abraham, if you and your descendants are not perfect, you may do this to me.

You may kill me and walk in my blood.

And there's no question, of course, that Abraham and his descendants would sin, being human as they are. So at that point, the one who would later become Jesus Christ as we know him, was sentenced to death by walking through the blood in Abraham's place. Again, no words, just a picture. A very profound picture. A very deeply meaningful picture. A picture of a God who loves us so much that he's willing to walk through the blood for us so that we don't have to die.

Let that sink in. Could God die? No. God is eternal. God is almighty. God is all-merciful. God is all-faithful. God is love. Could God die? No. Unless he became a human being. And then he did. And then he did carry out that promise 900 years later, from what we read about here. Again, a profound picture that we don't understand because we don't understand the culture. That's why it's so important. That's why we spend so much time in our studies of the Bible going through so we can help, so we can understand what is going on. So we can see the type of pictures that God has placed there in his Word for us to understand. To pick up on these lessons. To learn from them. To grow from them. To understand a lot of things that God just doesn't spell out for us in Scripture. But he reveals them to us in pictures like this. In the life of Abraham, moving forward, we find another important picture of Passover and Christ's sacrifice. We won't spend nearly as much time on this one because it's one that we are familiar with. And there's not a great deal of background to understand and figure out. It's a pretty straightforward picture is. But nevertheless, we can't overlook that. And we find this picture a few chapters later in Genesis 22 and verses 1-14. Familiar story.

So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son, and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey, the lad Isaac and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you. Verse 6, So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took the fire in his hand, again, probably one of these pots like we've just talked about. He's not going to carry a torch around with him here under those circumstances. So he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and the two of them went together. But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, My father. And Abraham said, Here I am, my son. Then Isaac said, Look, the fire in the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Have you ever noticed the words that are used here?

Not, Where is the cow for the burnt offering? Where is the goat for the burnt offering? Where is the lamb?

Where's the lamb? It's pointing forward to the lamb of God sacrificed from the foundation of the world. And notice also Abraham's response, verse 8. And Abraham said, My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. So the two of them went together.

Verse 9. Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there, and placed the wood in order. And he bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand, and he holds up the knife, ready to plunge it down onto Isaac, probably to cut his throat. It would have been the way to do it for offerings. Verse 11. But the angel of the eternal called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! So Abraham said, Here I am. And he said, Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son.

So again, there's a picture here. What is the picture?

On the one hand, it's a picture not so much to teach Abraham something, but to teach us something. Four thousand years later. We know this was the greatest test of Abraham's faith. So, yes, there are important lessons there for Abraham. No question. But actually what we see here is a picture for us, and a picture for all humankind to teach us something. So what is the picture? On the surface, it's a picture of a father being willing to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. And it's also a picture of the beloved son, Isaac, being willing to submit perfectly to the father's will. He means losing his own life. Being willing to submit to the will of his father, Abraham. Think about it. Abraham is an old man by now. Isaac's a strapping young lad who could easily overpower his father or just simply get up off the altar and run away. But there's no evidence he does anything like that. He is waiting for his father to slay him. And he's in perfect submission to that.

So it reminds you of another story. Of a father who would sacrifice his son, and of a son in perfect submission to the father, even if it means losing his life. That's the picture. That's the picture for us. A picture of a loving God willing to give up the thing that he treasures most in the entire universe. His only beloved son. His most valuable prize possession. And also a picture of that son being willing to give up his life in perfect submission to his father's will. Again, it's a picture. A picture of sacrifice on the part of the father being willing to give up his son. And of the son being willing to sacrifice himself to carry out the will and the purpose and the plan of the father.

Notice also this interesting little PS to the story in verse 14. And Abraham called the name of the place, The Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, in the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. What specifically did God provide? In the story here, he provided the necessary sacrifice. He provided the substitute sacrifice. There's actually considerably more to the story here that would play out in prophetic symbolism over the following years. The story takes place on a mountain in a land called what? We read earlier. Moriah. Moriah. In Jewish teaching and tradition, and I believe this is correct, this took place on Mount Moriah. What is Mount Moriah more commonly known as, or for?

It's the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Abraham was told to go and to sacrifice his son. It's the same spot where Solomon would build his great temple, which would later be destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt and then expanded into the glorious, magnificent temple of Jesus Christ Day, as we see here.

This would be the temple where millions of lambs, goats, sheep, heifers, bulls, would die foreshadowing the great sacrifice of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. This is where God would provide the name of the place God will provide. This is where God would provide the ultimate substitute sacrifice for the world, fulfilling the name that Abraham had given to this location.

Again, it's a picture. It's not spelled out. God doesn't have to use words. It's a picture, a picture of the Father's love for us, that he would provide a substitute sacrifice in this very place, a place where millions of animals would be killed over the years, pointing forward to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah.

Moving forward about four centuries from Abraham's time, we come to the picture of the Passover that we're most familiar with during the period of the Exodus. We, again, won't spend a lot of time here because it's something we are much more familiar with, but we do need to include it today. We find this picture in Exodus 12, verses 1-14. I'll just cover this briefly and skip through different parts of it for lack of time. The Eternal spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, On the tenth day of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. We saw some illustration of that earlier. Verse 11, skipping down, it is the Lord's Passover. 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 Eternal. 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. 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.

And again, what is it? It's a picture. It's a picture, a very powerful picture, the picture of a lamb by whose shed blood we are spared the death penalty, and not condemned to death like those in the world all around us, like the Egyptians, has happened to them. And by accepting that sacrifice, and by obeying God's instruction regarding that sacrifice, we are spared from death, as the Israelites were. The picture of the symbolism of the Passover lamb, is that death passes over us, passes by us, by the lamb that was slain in our place, just as the lambs that were slain for the Israelites, so that they would be spared from that death penalty. The lesson is the same. The picture is the same.

Not long after this, we come to another picture. After the Exodus, under the leadership of Moses, God instituted the sacrificial system, that we talked about earlier, that pointed to the ultimate sacrifice to come. That's a huge subject we don't have time to cover today. But I will just mention a few points. One is that we tend to have a misconception about that. We tend to...we need to understand that the sacrificial system wasn't to forgive sin, and even the Jews understand this. Rather, it was a reminder of God's promises that He would pay the penalty for their sins. And we find this spelled out for us in Hebrews, Hebrews 10 verses 1-4. It says, "...for the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices which they offer continually, year by year, make those who approach perfect." This is talking about the sacrificial system of the tabernacle first and then the temple. The sacrifices that are offered day after day and year after year. And the sacrifices could never make those coming to the tabernacle and temple to offer those sacrifices perfect. They could never remove sin. They were a reminder of sin. As we read about, verse 2, "...for then would they not have ceased to be offered. For the worshippers, once purified, if the sacrifices removed sin, would have had no more consciousness of sins." This is what is being said here. Verse 3, "...but in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins." Again, the point wasn't to remove sins. The point was a reminder of sins and of God's promise to remove those sins.

Verse 4, "...for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins." It just simply couldn't be done. The sacrifices were not to remove sins, but were a reminder of God's promise to take away sins. And as a reminder of God's promise to take away sins, what does that necessitate? It necessitates a Savior who will take away those sins. There is a reminder that we need a Savior to take away those sins so that we can be forgiven. And this is what those millions and millions of heifers and sheep and lambs and goats and doves and pigeons represented as they were slain there over the centuries. The fact that we need a Savior to take away God's sins so that we can receive God's forgiveness. Again, it's a picture. A picture that was repeated day after day after day for fifteen centuries. Fifteen hundred years. Not counting the time that they were in exile or the temple apostate and not continuing the worship. This took place over fifteen centuries, covering the time from the tabernacle through the temple to Christ Day and its destruction in 70 AD. Let's now look at another aspect of the sacrificial system that we read about. Here we find this over in Numbers 28. Again, I'm not going to cover the whole sacrificial system. That's probably several sermons worth of material. But I want to focus in on one particular aspect of it, and that is the morning and evening sacrifices, as they are called in Scripture. We read about it in Numbers 28, verses 1-6.

Day by day, day after day, as a regular burnt offering. And then the timing. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, the other lamb you shall offer in the evening, or the Hebrew word afternoon, would be what is being talked about here. Skipping down to verse 6, it is a regular burnt offering, which was ordained at Mount Sinai for a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire, to the Eternal.

Either by instruction, or interpretation, or tradition, the Jews came to carry out these morning and afternoon sacrifices at 9 in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And they were, as it spells out here, day by day, they had to be done every day. Sabbath didn't matter. Carry out the morning and evening sacrifices. Week day didn't matter. Every day. Holy day doesn't matter. It's to be done every day. If it's raining, doesn't matter. If it's snowing, doesn't matter. Sunny, bright, good weather, bad weather. Every day they had to carry out the morning and the afternoon sacrifice at 9 o'clock and at 3 o'clock. And to this day, many Jews even have watches that have a little alarm on them that will beep at 9 and at 3 to remind them of the sacrifices. The morning and evening sacrifices haven't been done since the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. But it's a reminder of that and a reminder of God's promise to take away sin. Now by Christ's day, these morning and afternoon sacrifices had evolved into quite an elaborate ceremony. Every day, again, this was to be done. Week day, Sabbath day, holy day, every day, no exceptions. And the ceremony went like this. At 9 o'clock in the morning, or as 9 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon approached, the priest would stand by the altar, the large altar in front of the temple with the Lamb, the male Lamb. Perfect male Lamb there. And would have a knife to the Lamb's throat.

Another priest with a shofar, which a shofar is an animal horn made out of a desert ram, kind of like our big horn sheep or an ibex or some other animal with spectacular horns like that, would stand at the corner of the temple complex overlooking the city of Jerusalem. This is a reproduction of what the city would have looked like. So to orient ourselves, here's the temple here in the middle of Herod's massive platform. The altar was right in front. This is really too small to make out. So the priest with the Lamb would stand right by the altar. The priest with a shofar would be over in this corner here of the temple overlooking most of the city of Jerusalem. And to help us better understand or visualize this, get a picture of this, this is what it looked like from ground level. This is the corner of the temple. You can see a tiny corner of the top of the temple itself up here, as high as a 15-story building. And the priest would stand right here on this corner, which many people think was the pinnacle of the temple when Christ was tempted by Satan to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple. Because this is about a hundred-foot drop, probably more than that, from up here. And this looked out all over these shops and main streets here and across the Tyropian Valley to the city of Jerusalem. And from this particular spot, virtually everyone in the entire city of about 80,000 people could look up and see the priest there with his shofar as a time for the morning and the afternoon services or sacrifice would take place. So the priest would be up there and ready for this. And meanwhile, down in the temple courts, another individual would be there with a sundial. They didn't have our watches like we do today. They would track the sun, the time, by sundials there. They actually found a sundial in the rubble of the temple after it was destroyed. So he would be watching the sundial and he would count down the time toward nine o'clock and three o'clock. And then he would signal the priest with a shofar and the priest with the lamb and the knife. And the one priest up there on the corner of the temple would sound the shofar over the city to signal the sacrifice. And at that moment the priest, by the altar, would take his knife to the throat of the lamb and draw it across as a reminder to the people of God's promise that he would remove their sins. And at that moment, the entire city, 80,000 or so people, the city would fall deathly quiet. And the shofar would blow.

And the people would be reminded of God's promise to remove their sins. Now let's step back into the first century. It's the middle of the week. It's a Wednesday. The city is packed not with 80,000 people, but perhaps as many as two or three million. From what Josephus says, thousands of people are packed into the city for the Passover and for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, according to God's command. In all the hustle and the bustle and the packed crowds around the city, most people hadn't noticed it. But that morning, three men had been nailed to crucifixion beams outside the city walls alongside one of the main roads, leading into the city. We see this in Mark 15 and verse 25. Now it was the third hour, and they crucified him. What was the third hour? The canid time, then, from sunrise. And they're reckoning. So the third hour, sunrise, about 6 a.m. Third hour is 9 a.m. What happens at 9 a.m.? The morning sacrifice. Jesus, with two other men, is nailed to the wooden beams at the time of the morning sacrifice. But crucifixion isn't sudden. It takes some time. Now it's approaching 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Outside the city walls, life is draining away from the men being crucified. The one in the middle is much worse off than the other two because he has been scourged, brutalized, suffering greatly from pain, from blood loss, from thirst. He's minutes away from the inevitable.

In the temple courtyard is the shadow of the sundial moves closer to 3 o'clock. The man diligently watches. It's three minutes till 3 o'clock. The ninth hour, as Luke tells us in his Gospel.

Then it's two minutes to 3 o'clock. Then one minute. Then it's time. The man at the sundial gives the signal.

The man with the priest with the shofar looks out over the crowded city of Jerusalem. Takes a deep breath and blows.

The whole city falls silent. And by the altar, the priest takes his knife and draws it across the throat of the lamb. Outside the city walls, where the three men are being crucified, the man in the middle raises his head to the skies. And with his dying breath, looks up to his Abba in heaven.

And shouts with all the strength he can muster, It is finished!

It is finished. Just like his father promised. What was finished? Yes, his pain was finished, his suffering was finished, the suffering that he endured for many hours now. And yes, his life was finished. But it was more than that. Much more was finished than just that. He was saying, it's over! It's done! It's all finished! I paid the price in blood that was promised 1900 years earlier.

And with those words, and with that sacrifice, he tied together the entire Bible in one picture.

You could write books about it. You could write millions of words about it. You could write hundreds or thousands of songs about it. But no amount of words can begin to describe the picture of the blood of God dripping into the ground to pay the penalties for my sins.

And for your sins, the sins for all of us. And for almost 1500 years, that had been done. Every morning at 9 o'clock, the same time Christ was crucified, and every evening at 3 o'clock, the time when he shouted, it is finished. It was over! It was done! He had finished his work. And on this particular day, with the Passover lambs, Josephus tells us this.

The Passover is that evening by the reckoning there. Not only was the 3 o'clock afternoon sacrifice sacrificed at 3 o'clock, something else happened at 3 o'clock on that particular day. And that is, all of the Passover lambs started to be sacrificed, thousands of them, at the temple in a mass production there of sacrifices.

God is a God of pictures.

God is a God of pictures. Pictures that speak to the heart. And he wants to teach us and to touch our hearts through pictures like this.

It's the pictures that speak to the heart and he wants to touch our hearts. Hopefully, he's done that today. Hopefully, he has touched your heart with these pictures. Hopefully, this will help you to better understand the profound pictures, in God's Word, of Passover. Passover.