Leviticus 23:5 … “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover. “

“Passover” translates the Hebrew “pesah,” a noun with a verbal root meaning exactly what one would expect, “to pass over” or once in the Bible (King James Version), “to leap.” (As when the death angel passed over every home where the blood had been applied as God instructed!)

The Feast of Passover is intricately linked with the Feast of Unleavened Bread (as we shall see tomorrow morning). But for today, verse 5 is our Text.

“In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover. “

God has placed Passover at the first of the Jewish year. Their year begins in “April,” so to speak. Ours, in January! (You could just as well say their year begins around Easter! The Resurrection!)

Why?

The Passover is a dramatic Picture of Jesus and His Death of Calvary! It is to us Christians a symbol of our very salvation, the day we were confronted with the Blood of the Lamb of God! The Day we applied that Blood, when we were “washed” in that Blood!

And for any of us … THAT DAY was the beginning of life, eternal life! The first month of our years of living for Jesus!

Exodus 12 supplies us a lot of information (details) Leviticus 23 merely intimates. The Lamb that was slain that fateful night long ago (as the Jews left Egypt) was to be “without blemish!” (Exodus 12:5) Jesus too was sinless, spotless!

Then too, that lamb was chosen on the tenth day of the month and closely watched until the day he was to be slain, the fourteenth day of the month. (To prove it was perfect, qualified, spotless.) Just as Jesus was watched from His thirtieth year until His thirty-third year … proving to all that He too was “without blemish!” (1 Peter 1:19 speaks of … “The precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Amen!)

Pilate could find “no fault” in Jesus! God the Father was (still is) constantly “well pleased” with His Son! Judas come to declare that he had betrayed “innocent Blood.” Even the heathen Centurion who crucified Jesus said that the Lord was indeed “the Son of God!”

In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Jesus “knew no sin.” In 1 Peter 2:22 He “did no sin.” And in 1 John 3:5 we learn “In Him is no sin.”

Wow!

Here’s another “progression” in the Passover Accounts of Scripture.

In Exodus 12:3 every man is to get “a lamb.” By verse 4 it is “the lamb.” (More specific, a single lamb!) Then by verse 5 it is called “your lamb!” (Possessing and personalizing the little innocent lamb!)

Listen … is Jesus to you just “a lamb?” Or is He “the Lamb?” Better yet (if you want to go to Heaven) is Jesus “YOUR LAMB?”

Passover … God has invited “whosoever will” to come and eat!

Notice too (way back to Leviticus 23:5 now) … the lamb was to be eaten in the “evening.” When things for Israel were very dark (both literally and spiritually) … that’s when the Lamb was to be slain and eaten! And its blood applied!

I someone reading here this morning who is in the “dark?” Experiencing a particularly foreboding time of life? Come to the Lamb of God! Meet Jesus as Saviour … experience and personalize (and trust) His saving Death for you!

Then your darkness will turn to light!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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At least eight times in Leviticus 23 these special days are called “feasts of the Lord.” Or singularly, a “feast unto the Lord!”

One of the Hebrew nouns for “feast” is spelled “chag” and implies both a time of gathering together and a time of festivity, joyfulness! The other noun so used is “moed,” also indicating a time or season for man to meet and worship his God! For communion, fellowship, harmony! (The first noun emphasizing the activity itself, the second emphasizing the time of year itself.)

God is literally in Leviticus 23 instituting/ordaining the annual “calendar” for Israel. “Worship cycles” one might call these Events!

These annual Meetings are: “Passover,” then “Unleavened Bread,” then “Firstfruits” (all in the Spring of the year). Followed (after an interval of fifty days) by the “Feast of Weeks” also called “Pentecost”… then later (in the Fall of the year) come the Feasts of “Trumpets,” the revered “Day of Atonement” and the final feast of “Tabernacles!”

Each is heavily loaded with spiritual meaning, with much beautiful typology!

But back to the first Paragraph above … “the Feasts of the Lord.” Not man’s idea, any of these. The Lord’s “doings” totally!

Way back in the Garden of Eden this tendency of the Lord’s was apparent … going down in the “cool of the day” to fellowship with His creation, with Adam and Eve.

Now officially, God instructs Israel to seven times a year (that number being used purposely, very meaningfully) come together and spend time in His Presence! (At three of those Feasts attendance was mandatory, required of all Jewish men … Passover and Pentecost and Tabernacles. Involving for many of them a long trip to Jerusalem!)

Yes, these are the Lord’s Feasts!

Much as we now called Sunday, the first day of the week, “the Lord’s Day!”

But look at this please.

When Jesus came to earth (via the Virgin Birth) the leadership of Israel, priests and judges) had so polluted those feasts that the Gospels no longer call them the “Feasts of the Lord” … but rather “the Feasts of the Jews!” See John 5:1 and John 6:4, for examples.

Talk about digression, apostasy!

Wow!

Let’s (this week and next) study each of these seven Feasts of the Lord … in chronological order … and see what the Holy Spirit might teach us.

Sounds interesting.

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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This is one of the truly great chapters of Leviticus, of the Pentateuch! In fact, of the Old Testament! And I wouldn’t doubt, the entire Bible!

It gives an overview of “God’s Plan for the Ages!”

Seven Holy Days, seven “Feasts,” each of which deserves (and will receive) a full day’s Lesson, a complete Lesson.

And, the Lord willing, beginning Monday Morning, we will begin with “Passover,” that annual worship Celebration for Israel.

(I no longer write a Lesson on Sundays, as I did for years. Preaching two or three times every Lord’s Day keeps me plenty busy!)

There’s much to learn here.

Study with us each day next week … what a dispensational View we are about to see.

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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In Leviticus 22 the priests of Israel are again instructed as to “clean living.” But notice this important distinction, one which applies to us in the Age of Grace as well.

These men were already priests unto the Lord, and these stipulations did NOT qualify them for the priesthood. Rather these stipulations were to be followed … to insure fellowship with the Lord, much closer fellowship I might say.

They were priests by birth!

As we Christians are priests unto our Lord by new birth!

Hallelujah!

But they had to be careful not to mar their sweet, close communion with the Lord, their being able to draw near to Him again and again!

Thus … any leprous looking skin (a picture of unconfessed sin) or any touching of a filthy creeping insect or dead body (a picture of failing to abstain from the world) or a host of other prohibitions in the chapter … would bar/prohibit that priest from approaching God … until that sin had been atoned!

What a Lesson for us Believers today!

Sin dampens our sensitivity to the things of God!

Isaiah 59:1-2 at least illustrates this principle: “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but YOUR INIQUITIES have separated between you and your God, and YOUR SINS have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

And in the New Testament so does 1 John 1:7-9, I believe. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all SIN. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our SINS, he is faithful and just to forgive us our SINS, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And Paul helps the Thessalonians to see this truth. “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”

Wow!

Words to live by, indeed!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

Yes, you can quench your fellowship with God, according to 1 Thessalonians 5:19 anyway.

God can be “hurt” by our careless (tainted) living, Ephesians 4:30. “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”

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What an interesting chapter!

It’s about the priests, again.

All of which is, I think, in “type” or “symbol” picturesque of our “Great High Priest, Jesus Christ.”

In verse 7 for example … “They (the priests) shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane.” Now think about Jesus, His Bride, His Wife! Which would be the Church! A Church that, according to Paul, will be “without spot or wrinkle” and “holy and without blemish!” Ephesians 5:27, a “chaste virgin” in fact!

Another example, spoken unto Aaron … “Whosoever he be of thy seed (of the priests) in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.” Verse 17

Wow!

And Jesus our High Priest … indeed “without blemish!”

These Leviticus 21 laws are this exact, this specific, too. “For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken. No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.” Verses 18-21!

Still Jesus is ultimately in view, surely!

He was perfect, both in His Life and in His Death! Both in His Body and in His Spirit!

Our High Priest is not blind, He can see perfectly!

He is not lame, He can “walk” with us day by day!

He is not broken-handed, He has already touched me this morning!

His eyes are not imperfect, but Pure and Loving!

In fact, our dear Lord is, to use the language of the Song of Solomon … “altogether lovely!” Song of Solomon 5:16 specifically.

I’m not through with this “priest” idea yet. More will be written tomorrow, the Lord willing. (Leviticus chapter 22 is somewhat similar to chapter 21 here.)

Aaron, a picture of Jesus, in many ways.

Although Jesus has an even Higher Priesthood than that of Aaron!

What a Saviour!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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