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Shabbat Shalom. Passover is a holiday that commemorates the Lord’s physical deliverance from the land of Egypt for our people. The story is well-known and immortalized in such great classics as the Ten Commandments, the Prince of Egypt, and, of course, Nickelodeon’s A Rugrats Passover (it was nominated for a Primetime Emmy).

The Passover is a story filled with promises from the Lord. The Lord promised Moses and our people that He would free us from slavery in Egypt. The story reaches a high point when God informs Moses of the upcoming tenth plague. God promises we will finally be blessed and free when He brings death and judgment on the Egyptians. These promises of freedom and judgment will be through the killing of every firstborn male, animals, and people, in a single night.

The Lord tells our people that we must kill a spotless Lamb in the prime of its life and apply its blood to the doors of our houses. Every house that applies the blood of the lamb will be passed over. After this last plague, Pharaoh will finally let us leave, and we will leave Egypt rich with Gold and Silver. Then everyone will know that Adonai makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt.

The next day, everything happened the way God had said, and our people left Egypt exactly 430 years after they had arrived. We were also commanded to celebrate the Passover every year, identifying with that generation. This is to remind us how the Lord promised and accomplished deliverance for our people.

The Passover teaches us about the promises of God and what it means to have real faith. On that first Passover night, it was not enough to just intellectually believe what the Lord had said. It was not enough to pray, to sing a song, or donate. Our faith required action, obeying the command of the Lord, so that we could experience His promised deliverance.

So Passover teaches us that genuine faith isn’t just intellectual belief; it is applying the blood of the Lamb through obediently trusting God’s promises.

It took faith, genuine faith, to trust that the blood of a lamb on a door would spare your family from a terrible death. Our people did not understand the mechanics of why this action worked; they only knew that they had to trust in the promises of the Lord.

It is this definition of faith, obediently trusting God’s promises, that we see in the Letter to the Messianic Jews, Hebrews 11:1. There we read, Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. In verse 28, we are reminded that it was through faith that Moses and our people applied the blood of the Passover Lamb.

During that first Passover night, there was much we could not see, and much that we hoped for. I don’t think it is very different today as we prepare for Passover. We live in a time filled with wars and rumors of wars. Terrorist attacks are happening literally miles from us. We also live in a world filled with spiritual darkness, enslaved to sin, and we are completely unable to save ourselves or fix our world.

Today, we also need a Passover, deliverance from the bondage and darkness around us, but also inside us. And just as the Jewish people back in Egypt were required to apply the blood of a spotless lamb by faith to the doorposts of their houses, so too each and every one of us today must apply the blood of the Great Lamb, Messiah Yeshua, not to the doors of our houses, but to the doors of our hearts. Each one of us needs a Passover, where the great, risen Lamb of God will apply his blood to our lives and save us from our sins, so that we can begin walking with God through this world headed to His eternal kingdom in the New Jerusalem.

This is also a message many of us have heard, a promise by God of salvation given thousands of years ago. But genuine faith is more than agreeing with what I just said; it requires us to trust in God’s Promises. The promises of the Greater Lamb, Messiah Yeshua. He is God, and He brings promises of amazing salvation again, but also promises of judgment, both of which are eternal.

As we prepare to celebrate the Passover, we must ask ourselves, are we trusting and obeying the commands of God? Our salvation, whether physical in Exodus or spiritual today, is never accomplished by our power. We are simply told to trust and obey the commands and promises of our great Savior.

This is exactly what Messiah Yeshua taught in John 14:23-24, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

We are unable to keep the righteous commands of the Lord in our own power. But through the Holy Spirit, we are able, more than able, to accomplish everything the Lord asks of us.

Passover is also a time for self-examination. A time to confront the lies we tell ourselves. To honestly assess every area of our lives and ask the Lord to work inside of us so that we can be truly transformed. This is something we cannot do on our own; we cannot free ourselves from bondage. We must place our faith in the one who saves us with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

My encouragement for us all this Passover season is to spend time in prayer with the Lord and pray for Him to reveal areas in our lives we need His saving hand. Relationships He wants to be restored, forgiveness that needs to be practiced, sins that need to be confessed and forgiven, and areas where we can grow in the gifting and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

May the Lord enable each of us to remove the leaven, the sin, from our lives. May we all experience the redemption found only in the great risen Lamb of God. May we all be faithful witnesses of the Lord as we await His glorious return.