As we keep the Feast of Passover in its spiritual significance, we live through experiences similar to the way the Israelites lived. Paul said those experiences happened to them by way of examples; and were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come (I Corinthians 10:11). We are those on whom the ends of the ages are come.
The Feast of Passover basically was a release from the bondage and servitude of Egypt. It was bringing what God had promised Abraham over four hundred years before; it was not just a religious observance. The Feast of Passover marked the most drastic change that has ever happened to so many people at one time. There is no place in history, not even on the day of Pentecost when five thousand people were born into the Kingdom of God, that so many people’s lives were absolutely changed as during this great exodus. In one night’s time, approximately three million slaves changed their entire status: their way of life, the place they lived in, and their circumstances. Everything changed, including the potentials of their life and the limitations that they had. There was never a people that faced such great possibilities, as the children of Israel did in that one night’s time.
The things that the Lord has prophesied to the spiritual Israel today have often been like this. He has said that a nation would be born in a day (Isaiah 66:8), and this is what God is preparing us for. In effect, we’re going through the plagues of Egypt now, and we’ll be going through more of them in the days ahead. We’ll find immunities building up and judgments all around us. A time came when the children of Israel wouldn’t listen to Moses, because of the anguish of spirit that was upon them. We have felt that anguish—a yearning to come into the glorious liberation which belongs to the sons of God. Romans eight tells of all creation being under bondage, and although that is true now, we will find the Lion of the tribe of Judah as a Lamb that has been slain, and He will loose us into that glorious liberty. Then we will know freedom even as Israel of old knew it.
Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto Jehovah thy God; for in the month of Abib Jehovah thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. And thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which Jehovah shall choose, to cause his name to dwell there.
Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. And there shall be no leaven seen with thee in all thy borders seven days; neither shall any of the flesh, which thou sacrificest the first day at even, remain all night until the morning.
Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee; but at the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose, to cause his name to dwell in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.
And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents. Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread; and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to Jehovah thy God; thou shalt do no work therein. Deuteronomy 16:1–8. This is a simple account of what the Passover was to be and how it was to be observed.
“Act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God (I Peter 2:16). The children of Israel were not brought forth out of Egypt only to set them free; that’s a half truth, they were brought out to become servants of God. The Scriptures say, …ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. I Peter 2:9a. The Israelites were brought out so that they could become a people that God could possess. He didn’t want Pharaoh to be their master. He wanted to be their master. We need to consider what liberty and freedom is all about.
When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they were ready to serve something. They had been set free, but they weren’t in the wilderness very long before Moses went up on the mountain to pray and they decided that they needed something else to serve, so they melted down their earrings and made themselves a golden calf. The high priest who was to lead them in the worship of the Lord made the excuse, “I threw it in the fire and it came out a calf.” That was the day judgments began. They would either serve the flesh and its lusts, or the Lord. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom for a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God (I Peter 2:16).
For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage…For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another. Galatians 5:1, 13. In this walk you have greater freedom and less freedom at the same time than you’ve ever had before. The Lordship of Jesus Christ is a growing thing in your life, and you’re finding that you’re anxious to please Him, to do His will, and to serve Him exactly as He wants to be served. That is why God is delivering you—so that you may be free to serve Him and do the things that you were restricted or hindered from doing before. You’re being set free into the glorious bond-servant ministry of Jesus Christ.
The great principle all through eternity is not that we are going to be free and independent individuals, but that His name will be written upon our foreheads (the mark of a slave). We will be branded as slaves, as servants of the Most High God. The Lord is demanding a total commitment because we are voluntarily changing our allegiance from the devil, flesh, and sin; and we are developing a tremendous allegiance to God by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can say, “Jesus is Lord.” No man can say, “Jesus is Lord,” but by the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:3). The Holy Spirit is working a deep Passover experience in our lives to bring us out of one thing, and into another. Everything in our lives: everything we say and do must proclaim one thing—Jesus is Lord.
We are being freed from bondage because we can’t serve God if we’re bound. The greatest thing that is happening in this walk is that a whole new realm of life is opening up to each individual. We do not think about our abilities or our capacities in a limited sense because we’re throwing off our fears and doubts, and we’re entering into that place where all things are possible to him that believeth (Mark 9:23). It’s a liberation from limitations. We’re entering into the days of the fantastic, in which we don’t hesitate to do the things we would have backed off from years ago. Because of the prophecies that the Lord has given, we are set to shake the world.
This walk is the groundwork of the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. The Lord is going to take a Remnant, a handful of corn to scatter on the tops of the mountains, and the harvest thereof will shake like Lebanon (Psalm 72:16). This is referring to the mighty cedar trees of Lebanon. In the natural, a handful of grain on the tops of mountains will not produce forests, but God is saying, “This is what you will become—what I’ll make you as I scatter you forth—these forests are the product of the word and the ministry you’ll bring.
We’re being freed, like the children of Israel, from circumstances. Like Samson, going ‘round and ‘round at the mill pressing out grain for the Philistines, and seeing his efforts go in the wrong direction, we want to give everything to God, but there are other demands upon us that cannot be denied, which take our energy, money, and thought, goading us on. How we chafe under that bondage, yearning to be free from our circumstances. That yearning was also upon the children of Israel, until the day came that they put the precious blood over their doorposts and ate the lamb, roast with fire, which was a symbol of judgment. Then they felt something warm and glowing within them and began to lift their bowed, scarred backs. They girded themselves, took their staffs in hand, put their sandals on their feet, and started out. The children of Israel were leaving circumstances to which there was no answer. They would have died as slaves if it were not for the change that came at the midnight hour.
We are being brought into a new day of liberty and a freedom from circumstances, from what’s around us, and from what has been binding us. We are being freed from the things within us. We’re anticipating something that the Israelites didn’t receive: they left Egypt, but they didn’t get all of Egypt out of them. We’re determined to forsake anything that God tells us to. We want to be reconditioned and to have new responses. We want to be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2). We are coming into that transformation of mind and spirit so that the limitations within us will go. We’re going to be set free from what we are in the flesh, and from what we have been.
Our need is to get out of ourselves and into Christ; that’s what the Passover is all about. It’s a vicarious substitution. The Lamb took our place so we could take His place. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich. II Corinthians 8:9. He came down so far and was so completely our substitute, that we might be transformed and become His righteousness. We must be free from every inability and restriction and lack, including the poverty of spirit, resources and ability which make us so poor that we hang our heads when we look upon ourselves. We’re not sufficient in ourselves to think anything as of ourselves (II Corinthians 3:5), but in the midst of our insufficiency God begins to move, and we say, “Our sufficiency is of God who has also made us able ministries of a new covenant” (II Corinthians 3:5–6).
In the Passover of freedom, we not only leave the things within and around us, as they were and are; but we also face the new, though there may be problems; but who wants to stay in bondage? Some of the Israelites wanted to return to Egypt when they got out in the wilderness and looked at that desert. They turned from their freedom when they lusted after the leeks, melons, garlic and onions, and the fleshpots of Egypt and said, “Our soul loatheth this light bread” (Numbers 21:5). It takes a while to get accustomed to an appetite on a new realm, where we’re not able to pamper the flesh, but through the Passover Lamb we say good-bye to old appetites, old ways of thinking, fears and compromise, and move into something new.
We’re going to come into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We’re being set free to worship like we’ve never worshiped before. When the Israelites sat in Egypt making secret prayers to the Lord, they wouldn’t have dared to offer a lamb or a bull in sacrifice, because these were Egyptian gods. The Israelites had to get three days journey out of Egypt, before they had the freedom to worship and to give the Lord that which was offensive in the sight of others.
The worship that we give to the Lord is offensive to other people, who may look down on the principles of worship we stand for, but we do not defend this walk, we gloriously lift it up; it doesn’t need any defense—it’s perfect. Everything is justified in the freedom to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord. Though we may not be wealthy after the natural in this walk, “having food and raiment, therewith let us be content. Godliness with contentment is great gain” (I Timothy 6:6, 8). If you are concerned about saving up for your children’s college education, let them get all the school they can, but be more concerned about laying up a rich treasure in the Spirit for them and ministering to them; building up something that they can really have. We’re free, and we’re just beginning to taste the extent of the freedom that’s supposed to be ours.
It was a freedom through sacrifice that the true Israel faced. The lamb made it possible for them to be free, but that lamb also opened the door to judgment. They were free through judgment. We find something happening that will run a close parallel with what we are experiencing in the spirit. The more free we become, the more judgment will rest upon the world. Soon it will mean light and darkness. Malachi brought the word of the Lord that in that day we will know the difference between him that serves the Lord and him that serves him not (Malachi 3:18). We will see how God makes this distinction. There hasn’t been much distinction in the past between the man who served God and the man who didn’t serve; but now God will bless His people with freedom and liberation, and you will see the awfulness of an end-time closing door upon those who have not prepared their hearts.
An eagle that had been captured for quite a while, just stayed in his cage on a perch. Though the door of the cage was often open, and he ate the food brought to him, he would not leave the cage. A wild bird, made to soar up above the mountain tops until he could be out of sight, was really free, but he didn’t want his freedom. What he really wanted was that food he was given everyday.
People would rather have a cage and live on a government subsidy that would guarantee their security than to get out and work for it. We have the privilege of starting a business and flopping, then starting another one and making it—of that struggle, struggle, struggle. That’s the way life should be, but now people are so bored they don’t know what to do with themselves and they don’t know why. We were made to get into the battle of life and overcome circumstances. The miracle is what we become in the process.
We’re free, but what are we free to do? We’re coming into a freedom to become. I can define what I’m free from, but I can’t tell you what I’m free to be because my imagination can’t fathom it. I know though, that at each horizon I can catch a glimpse of a new peak and say, “I’m a free man to attain it,” and when I get there, there will be another higher one and I’m free to attain that one. I’m free to become, free to grow in grace and knowledge, free to come up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). I can’t tell you all that means, but I know that’s the purpose of the restoration of apostles and prophets and evangelists, pastors and teachers; that you be no more children, but grow up into Him in all things (Ephesians 4:14–15). Come up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; be free to be that. I don’t know how to tell you what you can be, because eye hasn’t seen or ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love Him. But He hath revealed and will continue to reveal it through His Spirit (I Corinthians 2:9–10), and there will be a glory. This is what the Passover means.
Are our goals too great? Must we settle for less? No—they are not big enough. Other generations have lived and died and obtained only a little deliverance, but it need not be so with us.
When I came into this walk, whatever ministry I had then was taken away from me: so that I couldn’t even preach or do anything. I was stripped down to nothing, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Then the Lord began to give me a word to speak to the people: not just to one church; the word has already sounded forth; I don’t think there is a country that hasn’t been touched. We’ve been pioneers—sowing. It is happening, not after the natural; this is God. This is a freedom to become in an unlimited sense, and God will lead us into it—it’s a freedom to possess.
Get out of Egypt. You can have as big a chunk of Canaan as you want to take. How much do you want? “Well, just give a little plot here six feet deep.” God doesn’t want you to be as Joseph, “Pack up my bones, and bring them to Canaan and bury them there, and sing soft and low over them.” You’re going there, and if there are any graves, there will be Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Amorites, and Jebusites in them. You say, “It’s such a big struggle. I try and try and I can’t get the thing I’m after.” Keep trying. Keep going after it. Do you want to give up? That wilderness is a good place to get buried. Try for as big a life as you can get. According to your faith be it unto you (Matthew 9:29). It’s a freedom to possess and to obey.
The doctrine of the free will says that every man has his own choice. “To will is present with me but how to perform it I find not” (Romans 7:18). A man isn’t a free moral agent—he may be taught what’s right and make a choice toward it and still find that there’s no ability within him to perform it. But God set us free and now it’s the Lord that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). We’re free to do the will of the Lord. The Jewish people called Passover the festival of freedom through the years. It’s a freedom to obey.
As we partake of the glorious passover Lamb at the Holy Communion table, the Lord says “this is My blood” (Mark 14:24), and when He sees the blood He’ll pass over us. He says “This is My body” (Mark 14:22)—that unleavened bread in all purity, without guile, given for us. We’re being given a freedom in God to create and to take on a divine nature and divine abilities. The old nature is not being pepped up so that you could be something in yourself that you weren’t before; that isn’t reformation. This isn’t onward and upward forever. All the religions of the world have failed to meet people’s needs because they take man as he is and try to refine him and process him, to challenge and teach him, and make him some spiritual being. They perfume up a hog and think they have a saint but they still have a hog.
We start with the precious blood of the Lamb that brings forth a new nature, a new man. That new man then is given a potential—the divine nature coming forth within him. Things that have never been wrought in the history of the world are going to be wrought in this generation by the Remnant of God. It’s a day of victory, of liberty and freedom—a freedom to leave so much and to enter into so much that it staggers the imagination.