Exodus: A Group StudySample

What is this passage saying?

Yahweh gives instructions for the final plague – the Passover. The celebration of the Passover and Feast of Unleavened bread every year serve as a reminder of Yahweh’s power and providence that delivered Israel from slavery.

What is this passage teaching?

The event of the Passover and its eventual celebration every year is a shadow pointing towards the greater Person and work of Jesus Christ. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist declared, “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). And three years later, in His final Passover celebration, Jesus would come to Jerusalem to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time on the tenth day of the first month of the year, just as all the Passover lambs were being selected for slaughter (Exodus 12:3). This year, the shadow became the reality, God had chosen His final sacrifice.

On the fourteenth day of the month, Jesus would celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem with his disciples (Exodus 12:6). Like generation after generation before them, they would recite Yahweh’s power and providence that delivered them from slavery and death into the land of promise (Exodus 12:24-27). They would remember the Passover lamb that shielded the people from the angel of death and the hasty exodus from Egypt. But soon after the feast, celebration would turn to mourning and fellowship into betrayal. Just like the Passover lamb was bound and prepared for death, Jesus too was arrested and bound in the Garden of Gethsemane.

At the same time the priests slit the throats of hundreds of thousands of bound sacrifices, the bound hands and feet of the King of kings and the Lord of lords would be nailed to the cross. As the blood of Passover sacrifices ran through the streets of Jerusalem, the blood of Jesus would run down the rocks at Golgotha. As Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for the sins of His people, He walked through a new blood path (Genesis 15), forging a new covenant with His people.

As Jesus shouted, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he was declaring that the wrath of God had been absorbed and the enemies of God had been defeated. Jesus did what thousands of years and millions of animal sacrifices could not do. He was declaring the serpent's head was crushed (Genesis 3:15), the final Exodus was complete, and His people are finally free from true spiritual slavery. The angel of death, sin, and hell would always pass over those who believed in the redemption of God through the resurrection of Jesus.

How do I respond?

When the people received the instructions for the Passover from Moses, they “bowed their heads and worshiped” (Exodus 12:28). Yahweh had kept His promises. He heard the cries of Israel, remembered His covenant, saw their suffering, and acted at the right time (Exodus 2:23-24). In the same way, spend some time today in worship. Remember when you too were “dead in your trespasses and sins…but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us…made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5). The blood that saved you from sin is still enough to cover every sinful struggle and bind you to Christ in every difficult season.