Topic: Sacred Observance [Friday April 17, 2015]
Text: Numbers 9:1-4
Key verse: “In the fourteenth day of this month, at even, ye shall keep it in his appointed season: according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it” (Numbers 9:3)
God’s command in Exodus 12:14 is that the Passover must be a perpetual ordinance. The Passover was the story of how God delivered the children of Israel from hundreds of years of cruel bondage in Egypt. The Lord had told His people to slay a lamb on the eve of the day He would make a way for their departure from Egypt.
They were to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the two sides and top of the door frames of their homes. God would then despatch the destroyer to pass through the land to kill all the firstborn of Egypt. But the slayer would pass over homes where he found blood, sparing those inside.
That way, by the blood of the slain lamb, the Israelite did not suffer the judgment of death that came upon their oppressors. God used the Passover experience to teach His people the importance of obedience and redemption by the blood. Exactly thirteen months after the institution of Passover in Egypt, as the children of Israel were in the wilderness of Sinai on the way to the Promised Land in Canaan, God instructed Moses His Servant to tell the Israelites to “keep the Passover at his appointed season” (Number 9:3).
The event was a prophetic foreshadow of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ as the “Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29; Revelation 5:6; 1 Peter 1:18,19). Without the Lamb’s blood on the door posts, the Israelites would have been slain by the destroyer as he moved through Egypt that night. Where would the sinner be without Christ’s atoning blood? He would perish.
The Lord’s Supper which Jesus instituted (Luke 22:19) is the New Testament believer’s Passover. We must observe it regularly in obedience to the Lord so we can enjoy the great benefits of fellowship with a God who honours those who obey Him.
Bible in One Year: Psalm 92-100
Thought for The Day: It is Christ’s blood that atones for all sin.
DCLM Daily Manna was written by Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi; is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church situated at KM 42 on the busy Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Nigeria.
