An Easter Passover Reflection

Every year, as I’ve tried to prepare my heart for Easter, God has always blessed me with a new revelation of His truth and this year He has focused me on the Jewish celebration of the Passover. This was celebrated the week before Easter and will finish on Easter Sunday.

Passover celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt.  In Exodus 12:14,18 and 24 we are instructed to observe and commemorate this festival, which although is predominately a Jewish holiday, many Churches and Christians are now choosing to celebrate it, in addition to Easter.  

The Exodus story of the delivery from bondage to slavery, can be seen as a foreshadow of Jesus who broke the bondage of our slavery to sin, as referred to in Romans 6:17. Both Passover and Easter are therefore the perfect occasion to reflect and consider what enslaves us, and to celebrate the freedom that God offers us.

During the Passover week, also referred to as the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, which means bread with no yeast in, Jewish people will eat Matzoh, that dried square cracker.  When you consider that bread is a symbol of Jesus’s body, and leaven or yeast is often referred to as sin in the Bible, it is symbolic that this ‘bread’ is broken at the Passover meal, also known as the Seder.  In actual fact, what Christians refer to as the Last Supper, was actually the celebration of the Passover meal, and where taking the communion elements of bread (body) and wine (blood) first began. 

Just like the story of Moses and the last plague of killing the first-born son, God’s first and only Son also had to be killed, but it was His blood that saves us. It was the blood of an unblemished lamb that was required to cover the doorposts to spare the first-born sons from the Angel of death in the last plague.  It is symbolic that Jesus is called the door or gate to the Kingdom of God, as referred to in John 10:9, and it was His blood that covers us and spares us from eternal death.

Although we celebrate Palm Sunday as the triumphant entry of Jesus on a donkey into Jerusalem, I was interested to learn that this celebration was done every year prior to Jesus’s arrival, to celebrate the procession of carrying the unblemished lamb that had been chosen for the Passover meal.  How fitting that Jesus became our sacrificial Lamb on the altar of the Cross, who although was externally blemished by bloody cuts and piercings, internally He was unblemished, pure and innocent! In John 1:29 we read how Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God.

It’s also fascinating to remember that Jesus’s first entry into Jerusalem was also ridden on a donkey inside Mary’s womb, and again, a donkey was chosen to enter Jerusalem for the last time.  If you look at the back of a donkey, its hairs across its shoulders and along its back actually make the shape of a cross. 

Whilst the Jewish people undergo a thorough spring-cleaning, purification process in order to remove all leaven from their homes and offices and prepare their hearts for Passover, Christians are also called to purify themselves from within during the last week of Lent, called Holy Week, in order to prepare their hearts to receive the Easter message afresh.

Another insightful comparison is the fact that no work is to be done at the start and end of Passover because it is considered a Holy time, which highlights the contrast that Christians don’t need to work in order to receive Christ’s Holiness, which is a gift of grace, based on our faith and in who and what we believe.

And here’s a thought, if Jesus was born at Christmas time, in December, then He would have been immaculately conceived and placed in Mary’s womb around the Passover or Easter period.

There are numerous comparisons in the Old Testament which mirrors Jesus in the New Testament, which I believe reveals God’s sovereign message and prophesy of Jesus. So, as we celebrate Easter this year, let us also reflect on the Passover festival and how it connects to our deliverance, and what its symbolism can teach us. 

Wishing you all a Blessed Easter! As you celebrate your redemption from sin and death and show your gratitude for what Christ did for you, may God bless you with a refreshed spirit of a renewed hope, a sustaining joy, a calming peace, a firmer faith and an overflowing of His abundant, unconditional love…

 

How to Start a Revival

When we think of the word revival, we imagine some supernatural impartation from God, but what if I told you that revival begins with us? The word revival means ‘an improvement in the condition or strength of someone or something; or an instance of something becoming popular, active, or important again.

Revival begins when God’s church come into agreement with the promises of the Bible in a unified yes and Amen. Amen is not just the end of a prayer, but it is the beginning of the declaration we are agreeing to.

In Mark 2:1-12 we read of ‘some’ faithful, expectant men (some Bible versions say 4 men) who pushed through the resistance to what they believed. It is the story of the paralyzed man being lowed down to Jesus from the roof, when the crowds would not let them through to Him. In other words, they pushed through and made a plan to reach their goal, Jesus.

Sadly, it is often the crowds in church that are ignoring the real needs of man, and are choosing to rather focus on themselves and their ‘elite’ members, instead of seeing the missed miracles all around them.

If we are ever going to start a revival, we need to stop looking inside and start looking outside, to where the broken and the lost are. Church is not meant to be a museum for the righteous, but a hospital for those who need God's healing. We need to be reaching far, raising up and releasing wide the people of God’s kingdom.

God’s revival power is linked to His heart, and that is for the people who are broken and need His restoration. When we decide to make ourselves available and pick up the heart of Jesus, that is when we will become carriers of revival and see His Church thrive and flourish.

We need to start pushing and breaking through our barriers, stop looking at our limits and start tearing off those ceilings in our lives, to get to where God’s grace is. Our barriers to revival are the crowds, the ceilings and the critics.

We need to be willing to get our hands dirty, to make sacrifices and go fetch the people to bring them to where Jesus is. By that, I don’t necessarily mean to bring them TO church, but to become the Church and bring Jesus to them.

We need to become people who are known for our love, our care, our concern and our kindness towards others, and not for our judgement and criticism of those we decide don’t measure up to who we think qualifies to become members of God’s Church.

We need to stop expecting an eternal response from God, and start becoming the carriers of God’s revival. Yes, we read of many testimonies of revival where it sounds like it began with just prayer, but we skip the part of how their prayers for others, mirrored their actions towards them. We cannot just stay in our safe, sanitized homes and pray for revival - we need to become the hands and feet of God and carry these people to the feet of Jesus. We need to start seeing the miracles that are right in front of us.

In this story of the paralyzed man that was lowed down through the roof to Jesus to receive his healing, notice what Jesus said. It was because of their faith that the paralyzed man was healed. We have the potential to become the cause and carriers of healing to others, through our faith, expressed through our prayers AND actions and start a revival that is so needed.

We need to counsel others with hope and give them access to the heart and love of God. Just like Jesus broke through the ceiling of heaven to get to us, the nobodies of earth, we need to break through our own barriers to get to those on the outside in order to bring them in. We need to ask God to revive us with His fire, so that WE can become the catalysts of revival; not just for our church building, but for His Church, the body of His Kingdom.

(Based on a sermon by Gabe Philips of Life Changers Church - Milnerton, Cape Town, South Africa) https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YRTsx41d1Bw

Song: Revival, Featuring Kim Walker-Smith, Album: Soulfire Revolution, Year 2013 - https://youtu.be/EiJJd3ISqSE