The feasts of the Lord are inexhaustible in the truths they teach us. Think of the Passover and what it meant: God’s miracle deliverance for His people, to go forth out of slavery and accomplish His will, through the wilderness and on into the land of Canaan.
The Passover speaks also of our experience of salvation and deliverance. The blood of the Lamb of God, our Lord, applied to our hearts, averts judgment, and as we eat of Him, we receive strength to leave all slavery and bondage behind and to move forward into what the Lord has for us.
The Passover is an experience of salvation, of deliverance, and of launching. The Hebrews were thrust out of the land of Egypt. They had to make haste because the Egyptians strongly urged them to get out; this was literally a launching forth. They scarcely had time to think about it before they were saved, delivered, and launched into a whole new life. And I believe this becomes our Passover experience too.
Notice that our salvation is not only an experience, but a process. I think I am getting a little bit of Passover every day. I have seen a lot of Egyptians drown lately, haven’t you?
Every day that process is going on. I have been delivered, I am being delivered, and I thank God that He shall yet deliver me. The experience is very real and it becomes a process of deliverance, a process of salvation, and a process of launching.
Today God is thrusting us forward. We are like the two buzzards that were flying along as fast as they could. Suddenly a jet zoomed along, with fire streaming out of the engine. One buzzard said, “Wow! did you see him go?” The other one replied, “Yeah, you’d fly like that too, if your tail were on fire!”
God is trying to get you to move out, and He is liable to put the fire to you if you do not get moving fast. I am continually amazed at the number of times the word “haste” is used in the context of the Exodus. Make haste. Leave Egypt behind. Move into the thing that God has for your life.
Whatever He has done for you, consider it an expanding reality. My salvation is real, and I praise the Lord for it; but it is also something that is constantly expanding. If I receive a deliverance, that deliverance expands as I go on.
Some people are disappointed when they receive an experience because it was not what they thought it would be. When they received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, they may have expected more. Perhaps they looked for visions of angels, and they did not even get goose bumps.
We receive experiences in God which are expanding and growing all the time. Every time I wait on the Lord, I am again filled with the Spirit and it was even more wonderful.
Oh God, give us a Passover experience—deliverance, salvation, launching—something that does not diminish with time.
All experiences in God are capable of infinite expansion and growth, because that is the way God is. He does not do things that fade away. They can grow and grow and grow until we are literally filled to overflowing. All of us ought to go hack and face what the Passover experience is. You may say, “I am already saved.” But would you not like to follow Hebrews 7:25 and be saved to the uttermost? We can go back and have a Passover that expands and becomes even greater.
You may remember old-order services, when an evangelist came in several times a year. When he finished preaching, he had made a sinner out of you, if you were not one already.
He preached your salvation right down the drain until you went down to the altar, wringing your hands and praying, “Oh God, save me, save me!” I can recall people who were saved every spring and every fall, regularly.
That process of making unbelievers out of people has to go. You cannot go back and be saved over again, but you can expand your salvation experience.
If there is a discontent in your heart because you are hungering for something you lack, you need not be disappointed.
What God has begun in you, He is able to bring to perfection. He has not started something that He intends to be only half finished, half completed, half saved. Let God expand that basic hunger you have within your heart for Him.
Sometimes you tend to become lukewarm. Sometimes your heart begins to lust after the fleshpots of Egypt, and you turn your eye away from the beauty and the wonder of the walk that God has given you.
Then what should you do? Go back. Seek once again for the initial experience to become fresh in your heart. That is why the Jews kept the Passover every year—not that they were going back into Egypt and escaping all over again, but they were remembering what had happened and building upon it. It had to become a process, instead of remaining a stale experience that had stagnated, that didn’t help them grow or develop, that never loosed them into anything more.
You need that in the Feast of Passover too. You are going to have a meeting with the Lord. Begin by going back to that basic deliverance and saying, “Lord, is there something yet that needs to be done, that needs to be expanded? Is there something more that must be placed under the blood of Jesus Christ? Is there some release that I must have from the bondage of Egypt? Has part of my soul still remained under that servitude? Is there still a hungering and a lusting after the fleshpots of Egypt?”
How tragic it is to live amid God’s blessings and yet be miserable because you lack the measure of the Spirit you really need to walk with God. I see too many of the young people in their walk who have had a marvelous deliverance, but as they go along, they do not continue to work on the thing God is doing in their lives. And before very long, they have too much of the Lord to enjoy the world, and not enough of the Lord to enjoy the Lord.
What a miserable situation: no good for the devil and out of place with God. But God is able to save you to the uttermost. Not one hoof will be left behind. That means you and your kinfolk and your money and everything else will be saved and delivered.
Exodus 12:8–9 speaks of the Passover Feast: And they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails.
Notice what is said here. They did not roast the firstborn son who was to be delivered; they did not roast the father. They roasted the lamb. That lamb had to be slain. This was difficult to understand. There was no venom in their hearts; they did not hate that little lamb. In fact, it may even have been the children’s little pet. Imagine them standing by and crying when its throat was cut. The firstborn son who cried because his lamb was being slaughtered did not realize that this operation was saving his own life.
Notice also that the lamb had to be roasted with fire. They could not eat it raw or boil it or prepare it in any other way. They had to roast this lamb with fire. Why?
Judgment must come because of sin, and fire is the symbol of judgment. The judgments of God were heaped upon our Lord in order that we might be made the righteousness of God. It is time to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, because judgments are about to come upon the earth. And the Lord is ready to take all of your burden and give you an immunity in the hour of judgment.
Now we come right down to this matter of sin. Let us face it. You came into Christ by recognizing that Jesus died for you. And you will have to go back over that again. Is there a habit or a sin creeping into your heart? Is there something wrong in your spirit that is causing you to drag your feet when you should be marching forth in the name of the Lord? Come on back, and let the Lord give you that immunity as He did at the first. I am not making an unbeliever out of you. I am not saying that you have to be saved, for you have already accepted Christ as your Savior and your Lord. Just go back and build upon that experience.
People who believe in eternal security will argue, “I have been saved and I will always be saved!” Yet they often look and act like hypocrites. Instead of arguing that they have something they can never lose, they should recognize that salvation ought to be built upon and expanded until it fills the whole heart. That would make a real believer of them.
When you go to the altar of the Lord and partake of your Passover Lamb, remember these words: …Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I Corinthians 5:6–8.
What is the leaven? Malice and wickedness—that is the leaven which creeps into people’s lives. The first thing the Israelites had to do was to get the broom and sweep out the corners, to be sure there was no leaven in the house. If any man were to partake of leaven, the Scripture says he was to be cut off from Israel. He lost his standing.
This teaches us that we partake of Jesus Christ in order that we will be unleavened. We are not going to be a mixture of good and evil. When we partake of Christ, we are going to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Malice and wickedness will have to go.
It is the time for the sweeping out the leaven, and it is surprising how much leaven we may find. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. It does not take much to defile and ruin this whole walk with God, so that suddenly you are not making those fantastic strides in God.
You realize, “I don’t know what happened to me; I was doing so well. Now the Word has gone sour. I can’t pray. I’m not singing. It’s not a walk with God; it has become an oppressive burden. I’m carrying Jesus Christ on my shoulders instead of Him carrying me. What has happened to me?” The leaven of this world tends to creep in.
Sweep out some leaven and you will find out. Then begin to keep the feast with joy and rejoicing again. Find out what is the matter with you. Search your heart. You are out for a meeting with God. We are believing for it.
Personal ministry should not deal with trivial things so much as with the spiritual walk of an individual, his relationship to God above his relationship to anyone else. Let us be concerned about the way he walks with the Lord and get rid of the leaven. Above everything else we want that hunger burning in our hearts to walk with the Lord and to serve Him.
They were to eat the lamb not only with unleavened bread, but also with bitter herbs. If anyone has had bitterness in his heart, it is probably because he has refused the bitter herbs.
Resign yourself to the fact that when you partake of Christ, you will also partake of the bitter herbs. What was the significance of the bitter herbs?
The Israelites refused to forget the days of bondage. Likewise, when we eat of Christ, we will always remember the days of oppression and bondage. We will not forget the pit from which we were dug, but we don’t focus upon it.
Know, my dear brother and sister, the arrogance of the human heart, how quickly one can take the righteousness of God and assume that he did it all by himself. He forgets that God clothed him with His righteousness, and he begins to look upon himself with an arrogance and a pride.
He forgets the pit that he was brought out of, and he thinks of the flesh as though it really is not quite so bad—especially his flesh. Other people’s flesh may be filthy, but not his. He almost assumes that God made him out of some special kind of mud that even Adam did not partake of.
The way to overcome many of the things of bitterness is to keep your heart humble before God. Eat the Lamb with bitter herbs. Keep a broken spirit before the Lord.
We must always remember “I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Now I shall feed upon the Lord and eat the bitter herbs. I know it is better that I obey God and take the humbling way as a portion of my diet.
Do not expect God to humble you; you had better do the humbling. When God does it, it is a little too thorough. It is good to say, “Lord, make me pray.” But it is better if you just decide to pray because by the time you have learned the lesson, you will be praying another prayer: “Oh, that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.”
May the Lord help us to make the humbling process our portion every day of our lives, lest, because of some arrogance, God decides to humble us.
We will have joyful services during the Passover, but I am praying that there will also be a lot of tears flowing because that is what God is speaking. How long are we supposed to cry? How long shall we grieve before God?
A passage of Scripture answers that question. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them, and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes…” Revelation 21:3, 4.
That is when you can stop crying. Until then, keep it up. Be broken, be afflicted, mourn and weep. Humble yourself before the Lord. Weep between the porch and the altar. The Lord will come with a blessing in His hand and pour out His Spirit upon all flesh.
But it begins with that brokenness. We read in Joel 2 about the outpouring, but we do not often linger in Joel 1, which talks about the brokenness and the weeping before the Lord, the confessing and rooting out of our sin.
It is true, you confessed your sins once when you became a Christian, but what about the sins that are even more obnoxious—the sins that you let remain in your life after you accepted Christ?
Those are the sins that trouble you. They are like the Canaanites that Israel let dwell in the land, when God had said to annihilate them. They rose up as a thorn in their side, year after year, decade after decade, for hundreds of years.
The sin you allow to stay in your life as a believer will come back to plague and torment you, to defeat you and crush you down.
You will rise up in victory over it, but the same thing will happen again and again until you put to death the Amorite, the Hivite, the Hittite, the Philistine, the Canaanite. Get rid of them all.
Every kind of thing that rises up to plague you, get rid of it. Let God sanctify you wholly; your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it (I Thessalonians 5:23–24).
And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. Exodus 12:10.
It is as though God is saying that not only is this message true, but it is true for only a period of time. It is like an ad that you see in the paper saying, “This offer is valid until a certain day.” You go there the next day and they say, “Sorry, the sale is over.”
“Well, I would like to buy it anyway.”
“Sorry, we’re all out. We sold them all during the sale.” “When are you going to get some more?”
“We were selling that line out; we’re not getting any more.”
That is how some of these blessings are. You might think, “Oh, that was a good sermon; I’m going to work on it.” But you do not work on it, and before long the thing passes and you wonder where the opportunity disappeared. There seems to be such a time limit in these days. As we reach the end time we suddenly realize that the free flow of grace which went on century after century is giving out. Many parables speak prophetically, “Then shall the Kingdom of heaven be likened unto….” The five virgins got in and the other five virgins did not get in, and the door was shut. That did it; there was no more opportunity. Passage after passage speaks of the end time, showing that there is a certain day and hour, and beyond that time it is too late. The door is shut.
When celebrating the Feast of Passover the door is wide open—wide open to change, wide open for God to empty you out, to make your salvation most marvelous, to give you a Passover experience that you have never had before, to expand your experience into a living thing in your life, right now.
But I would strongly urge you: do not leave anything over until the morning. If you are going to partake of it, do it now. Another day is coming. The dawn of a whole Kingdom age is coming, and you want to be ready for it.
What shall we do then? Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord’s Passover. Exodus 12:11.
Make haste! Hurry; do it right now. Do not say, “I will do it tomorrow.” Do it today. Be prepared to move.
Exodus 12:40 tells us that it was 430 years to the very day until God led them out. One sometimes gets the idea, “I’ve been praying, praying, and praying. It is too late. God is late.” God was not late at Passover; He was right on the minute and He delivered them with a high hand. It is time for you to believe, too. It is not too late!