The Eighteenth Day of Advent

The Eighteenth Day of Advent

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

For Christ, our Paschal Lamb, 

has been sacrificed.

I Corinthians 5:7b

We Christians are often uninformed about the Bible and all the messages that it holds for us – both explicit and implicit. The Christian faith is built on Scripture, yet if we know our Bibles at all, we probably only know the New Testament. Sometimes we even say, “We are New Testament people.” And that is true. We are a people whom God has called through his marvelous grace, and that theme resounds over and over in the books of Matthew through Jude. However, much of that message is built on truth from the Old Testament. This is one of those verses.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the story of the exodus of the Jewish nation from Egypt, of that cruel ruler who punished the people mercilessly, of their miraculous escape in the dead of night, driven out because God had made his great power known to the Egyptian government in a dreadful way. But let’s remember afresh the final moments of their sojourn there.

Moses, under God’s direction, told the people to kill a lamb, to drain its blood, and to smear the blood on the sides and over the top of the doors to their homes. Somehow, in God’s great plan, the sight of the blood was going to cause the “angel of death” to pass over the homes of the Jews. Death would come to the first-born in every Egyptian household, but no death would occur to the first born children of families with blood-coated thresholds. Can’t you just imagine first-born Jewish children saying, “Dad, are you sure you got it all the way over and all the way around? You didn’t forget anything, did you?” That rite became the Jews’ great Feast of the Passover, the remembrance of their being miraculously saved from death.

In the New Testament we are told that Jesus is our “Paschal Lamb.” He is the one whose blood spares us from the great and dreaded death! A lot of lambs died to spare the Jewish people on that dreadful night in Egypt. Our baby-Jesus-grown-to-be-a-man died to bring that same gift to us! Their bondage was gone; our bandage is gone! Though we die, yet shall we live! (John 11:25) All because of God’s Paschal Lamb!

Father, thank you for sending us a lamb in the form of a tiny baby. Don’t let us forget during this Christmas celebration just how expensive that gift was! Cause our gratitude to move us to love and serve you. Amen.

The Light of the World
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, 2008,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator.