Have you ever wondered why God seems to repeat the accounts of certain events in the Bible? The story of the first Passover is recorded in Exodus 12. We find the second account of a Passover in Leviticus 23; it describes the various feasts and the directions concerning their observance. The ninth chapter of Numbers repeats the story of Passover and all of the law concerning its observance in the second year of the wilderness wanderings. Deuteronomy 16 again repeats the Passover account. That may seem to be very repetitious. However, when you read the account in each book carefully, you understand what is being said, and you notice the differences in each account. It is not that there are any contradictions, but there is a progressive unfolding of its truths.
As we read a portion of the account in Deuteronomy 16, we will find some simple keys that will help us to better understand the Passover.
Verses 1–8: “Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. And you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name. You shall not eat leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), in order that you may remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. For seven days no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.
“You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you; but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name, you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening at sunset, at the time that you came out of Egypt. And you shall cook and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. And in the morning you are to return to your tents. Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God; you shall do no work on it.”
Verses 9–17 give a beautiful picture of the three major festivals—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles—which symbolize our salvation, the Holy Spirit, and the glory, respectively.
The book of Exodus describes the Passover that was observed in Egypt. Numbers tells of another experience in another location—a Passover that was conducted in the wilderness. In Deuteronomy we read about the Passover that was to be kept in the land of promise and the specifications for its observance. They had to eat it exactly in the place that the Lord chose. That did not apply to the Passover in Egypt or in the wilderness, but it did apply when they were positioned in the land of their inheritance. There they looked upon the Passover in another way.
The fifth chapter of Joshua also illustrates the observance of the Passover in the land of Canaan. The Israelites were instructed to do certain things. They had to be circumcised and prepare their hearts, for they were going into Canaan to inherit. There was one approach to having a Passover in Egypt when they were getting ready to leave bondage; there was another approach to the Passover in the land which they were going to possess. Two completely different approaches were required. The blood of Jesus Christ, the Passover Lamb, opens the door for quite a different experience for us too.
The book of Leviticus does not give us much of a story. It is the handbook of the priests. Leviticus 23 tells exactly what they were going to do, and gives the exact date. The book of Deuteronomy is the people’s book. “Deuteronomy” means “the second law.” Actually, it did not present a second law; rather, it presented a fresh application of the law as it would apply to them in the land of their inheritance. Exodus gave rules that were binding at that particular time, and they continued to be binding as the people wandered through the wilderness and on into Canaan. But it did not include as much as the book of Deuteronomy in explanations. In Exodus the emphasis is on the process of getting them out of the bondage, whereas Deuteronomy tells the purpose of getting them out of the bondage. He brought us out in order that he might bring us in (Deuteronomy 6:23). Likewise, we do not come out of old Babylon systems just to wander around and rejoice that we are free of Babylon. We are brought out of Babylon so that we can go in and receive the promises that God gave for our lives.
Some of the young people today are thankful when God delivers them from habits and other problems. But if they wander around in a wilderness, they need to get out of that wilderness and keep the Feast of Passover, by the blood of the Lamb, in order to possess the new life that they will inherit from the Lord.
Notice that the Israelites were to keep the feast in the place where the Lord chose. This is stated repeatedly in Deuteronomy 16. Verse 2: “… in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name.” Verse 5: “You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you.” Verse 6: “ ‘But at the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name, you shall sacrifice the Passover.…” Verse 7: “And you shall cook and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. And in the morning you are to return to your tents.”
The Passover in Egypt brought them out of bondage. The Passover described in Deuteronomy was to bring them under divine order. It is one thing to get out from under Pharaoh; it is another thing to get right into the groove where the Lord of lords and the King of kings is ruling. Many a man becomes disgusted with the old denominational order and leaves it. Then he sits at home and reads the newspaper on Sunday. He thinks he has come out of Babylon; perhaps he is still a Babylon to himself.
The Lord has something better for us. He wants to loose us from bondage, but He also wants to bring us under His divine order. Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” What are we to do? By love we should serve one another. We are going to serve something, so we might as well decide not to serve Babylon, but instead serve the Lord.
Joshua was a great liberator who spoke much about freedom. For instance, he said, “How long will you be slack to possess the land which the Lord has given you? Let us send men to spy out the remaining inheritance” (Joshua 18:3–4). But what did he finally say at the end? He talked like a general who had never lost a battle, like the mighty conqueror, like a George Washington of his time. We can visualize him thumping his chest before the people and saying, “Well now, you are going to serve something. Choose what it will be. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). They had been set free so that they could decide what they were going to serve. Like Joshua, we have decided that we are going to serve the Lord and do His will. We will keep the Passover for one glorious reason: to be free to go in and become God’s people, to do His will. Let us not just be free from the past; that is the negative aspect. Let us positively possess the will of God and do it. To possess the will of God means to be totally possessed by God.
2 Chronicles 30 and 35 record the stories of Hezekiah and Josiah, telling of a priesthood that was dedicated to serve in the temple. They killed the Passover lamb and served it to the people. The priests did not do that in the Exodus account; each man caught a lamb, killed it, skinned it, and prepared it for roasting. Later on the preparation of the lamb became an exact science. In fact, that was the origin of kosher food. Kosher meat comes from an animal that has been slaughtered and inspected under the supervision of a rabbi to make sure that it is pure and unadulterated.
This is symbolical of what God is speaking now. We are not receiving just some hodgepodge that we used to have in the fleshpots of Egypt; now we are under the King. And the King wants us to partake of the Lamb in its purity. It will be served to us in its purity, not by everyone’s personal interpretations. God is restoring the apostle, the prophet, the teacher to the Church. He is restoring the ministers who will open the Word and feed us with the purity of the Lamb—kosher, unadulterated food.
Do you grasp the difference between the first Passover and the Passovers that came in successive years and generations? This symbolizes our position too. As we come into the land of our inheritance, it is very necessary that we have a pure Word to follow and a pure Word to feed upon. First that Word seems to be ministered to us at a lesser stage; after we get out of Egypt we are sustained by manna. Then we come into the land of Canaan and keep the Passover there. The next day the manna ceases. The diet changes when we are in the land of our inheritance. From that time on, we do not eat the light bread which belongs to people who are wandering around under a cloud; we eat the food of men who are going in to conquer giants and to take a land that has been promised to them.
The fact that there was not to be any leaven was emphasized strongly. At the first Passover, they did not use any leaven in their bread because they left in haste. There was not time to wait for the bread to rise; therefore they did not put yeast in the dough. They carried the mixing bowls containing the dough on their shoulders, wrapped in their clothes. On the way, they baked the dough into unleavened bread, somewhat like a little flat cake, and this they ate along the way. In each succeeding observance of the Passover, they were instructed to eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, as a reminder that they had come out of the land of Egypt in haste. Their practice of sweeping out the corners, lest there be any leaven, also has special significance for us. It was God’s way of saying, “Do not allow the leaven of carnality to remain in your life, for that will always be a deathblow to your communion with the Lord and your appropriation of Christ.”
Do not allow any leaven to remain. Get rid of it. Do not willfully hold anything in your heart that is a corruption, that you know should not be there. If you would partake of the blood of Jesus Christ effectively, search your heart first. The admonition concerning the leaven is carried on over into the Communion with the instruction in 1 Corinthians 11:28–29: But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. This does not mean that you have to be perfect; however, there must be a repentance and a searching of heart, with the throwing aside of the leaven of corruption, in order that you can serve the Lord with purity of heart.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:8, Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Stevens, John Robert: Beyond Passover. North Hollywood, Calif. : Living Word Publications, 1977, S. 127