“GOD’S PERFECT LAMB”
EXODUS 12:1-14

I. Introduction
Join me this morning as we climb aboard our trusty “Bible Time Machine” and journey back to the year 2050 B.C., or thereabouts. Where are we? We’re standing on Mt. Moriah in the city of Jerusalem. Only Jerusalem isn’t here yet. In fact, nothing is here yet. There are no buildings, no people, no nothing. Then why are we here? We are here to witness something marvelous – something of eternal significance that God is about to do. Abraham and his son Isaac are about to become the central figures in one of the OT’s most beautiful and powerful prophecies about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

But there’s a back story. Some years before, God had told Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a son in their old age. That son was Isaac. You can imagine how much Abraham loved Isaac. How much do you love your own children? What is about to take place here on Mt. Moriah will teach us much. But one lesson should be this: No matter how much you love your children, you are called to love God even more. And you are called to trust Him and obey Him no matter what!
*Genesis 22:1-14 (This passage sets the stage for today’s text in Exodus.)
1 Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
2 And He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
4 On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship and return to you.”
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.
7 And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son,” And he said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 And Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offer-ing, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
9 Then they came to the place of which God Had told him; and Abraham built the altar there, and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac, and laid him
on the altar on top of the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
12 And he said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13 Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
14 And Abraham called the name of that place “The LORD Will Provide,” as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”

This would be a fascinating passage to dig into and study verse-by-verse. Here are just four quick examples of why that would be the case:
• In v. 2 Abraham becomes a picture of God the Father and Isaac becomes a picture of God the Son as the father prepares to sacrifice his only son.
• In v. 5 Abraham knows he’s going to take Isaac’s life. Yet he is so sure of the resur-rection of the dead that he tells his servants, “…we will…return to you.”
• In v. 6 Isaac carries the wood for his execution. Jesus would carry the wood for His execution.
• In v. 9 Isaac allows himself to be placed on the wood of the altar of sacrifice. Jesus would allow Himself to be placed on the wood of the cross of sacrifice.

But it is in vv. 7-8 that we find the key point for this morning’s Communion service. Look at them once more. “And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son,” And he said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

“God will provide the Lamb!” But not just any lamb; God will provide the perfect Lamb.
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II. Text
That brings us to today’s text. But first we’ll need to get back into our time machine and move ahead 600 years to 1450 B.C. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel), and Jacob’s twelve sons (the Patriarchs) have all gone on to glory. We find ourselves in Egypt where the sons of Israel have been enslaved for the past 400 years. And now, in the Book of Exodus, God has cho-sen Moses to free the Israelites from slavery and lead them into the Promised Land.

God has spoken to Moses from the burning bush. In Exodus 3:10 He said to him, “I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Pharaoh’s refused to obey God command to “Let My people go…”
So in Exodus 5-11 God poured out ten plagues on Egypt, the last of which took the life of every first-born Egyptian, even Pharaoh’s son. Only then did Pharaoh finally give in. In Exodus 12:31 he spoke to Moses and Aaron and said, “Rise up, get out from among my peo-ple, both you and the sons of Israel; and go…”

But before God sent the angel of death through the nation of Egypt, He made provision for His own people. The angel of death would pass over the sons of Israel.
*Exodus 12:1-14 (Please stand with me in honor of reading God’s Word.)
1 Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
2 “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.
3 “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.
4 ‘Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor near-est to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.
5 ‘Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6 ‘And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.
7 ‘Moreover they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
8 ‘And they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
9 ‘Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails.
10 ‘And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.
11 ‘Now you shall eat it in this manner: With your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste – it is the LORD’S Passover.
12 ‘For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment – I am the LORD.
13 ‘And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 ‘Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast
to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a perma-nent ordinance. (Put a marker here in Exodus 12 because we’ll be coming back to it.)
Back in Genesis 22, while they were still ascending Mt. Moriah we read that Abraham told Isaac, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Yet Abraham knew nothing of what we just read in the Book of Exodus. He knew nothing of Moses or of the thing called Passover. They were still 600 years in the future. All Abraham knew was what God had told him. In Genesis 15:5 God had said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descen-dants be.” For Abraham, that was all he needed to know; it was enough. He believed God, and Genesis 15:6 says, “…and He (God) reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Can you imagine how thrilled Abraham would have been if he had known about God’s pro-vision of the lamb for the first Passover that we just read about in Exodus 12? But I suspect that such a thrill would have paled in comparison to the one Abraham would have had if he had known about God’s perfect Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what about Moses? He knew all about Abraham’s prophecy; he lived it as he saw it ful-filled in the first Passover in Egypt. But that wasn’t the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy, was it? The ultimate fulfillment would come later, much later. Well, we’ll need to return to our trusty time machine once again. This time we’ll leap forward another 1500 years all the way from 1450 B.C. to 33 A.D., give or take a few years. And in the process we’ll move from the banks of the Nile River in Egypt to a small upper room in Jerusalem.

Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has come to earth and lived a perfect life. He has proclaimed the truths of God. In doing so He has exposed the sin of the Jewish religious leaders of the day, and he has called sinners to repentance and faith in God. On this evening in the upper room Jesus and the twelve apostles are celebrating the Passover. He will soon be crucified as the ultimate and final sacrifice for our sins. God’s perfect Lamb is about to shed His blood.

Listen, when we believe that He is God’s Son and when we receive Him as Lord and Savior – when we recognize that He is God’s perfect Lamb – Bible prophecy comes alive and we begin to see what God has done for us. We begin to see that God had the plan for our salva-tion in place from the beginning. And we begin to see the marvelous unity of the Scriptures. The two testaments – what we call old and new – are not two books at all. Rather, they are one book. All sixty-six books of the Bible together form God’s one great book. And they tell the story of Jesus Christ – from Genesis through Revelation.

Jesus Christ – God’s perfect sacrificial Lamb – had to shed His blood and lay down His life in order to save us from the consequences of our sin. Why? Because God has said that the only satisfactory payment for sin is the death of the sinner. Only blood can pay the price.
*Leviticus 17:11
11“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”

From the time of the first Passover the blood of lambs was shed to make atonement for the sins of the people. The writer of Hebrews tells us why this is so. It is because…
*Hebrews 9:22b; 10:4
9:22b …all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (But there remained a problem.)
10:4 …it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

While all of those sacrificial lambs were a testimony to Israel’s obedience to God’s demand for the shedding of blood for the remission of sins, they could never take away sin… they could only cover it up, remove it from view, like a fresh paint on a decaying building. King David understood this.
Psalm 32:1
1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!

For 1500 years all of those millions of little sacrificial lambs were only a shadow of the sub-stance yet to come. But when the time was right the last of the OT prophets, John the Bap-tist, was privileged by God to announce the presence of the Substance. When Jesus came to him to be baptized, John said…
John 1:29
29 “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

So let’s go back to Exodus 12 and consider just five of the prophecies found there that were completed and ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, God’s perfect sacrificial Lamb.
1. God’s Lamb will be loved.
*Exodus 12:3, 6a
3 “On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves…
6a “And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month…”
Matthew 3:17
17 “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

How is Exodus 12:3, 6 fulfilled in Matthew 3:17? Here’s how. The Passover lamb had to be kept in the house for four days before it would be sacrificed. Why four days? Four days would accomplish at least two things.

First, four days would long enough to conduct a thorough examination of the lamb so as to be sure it was pure and spotless. Jesus was examined by people and found to be with-out sin, but He shed His blood anyway.

Second, four days would be long enough for the sacrificial lamb to become a part of the family. And it would be long enough for some in the family to come to love the lamb, and not want to see it shed its blood. Jesus was hated by most of the Jews before He was cru-cified, but some of the people knew who He was and had grown to love Him. They didn’t want Him to die, but He shed His blood anyway.
2. God’s Lamb will be pure and spotless.
*Exodus 12:5
5 “Your lamb shall be an unblemished male…”
Hebrews 9:14
14 Christ…through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God…
1 Peter 1:18-19
18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,
19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

3. God’s Lamb will be killed.
*Exodus 12:6b
6b “…the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.”
Revelation 5:12a
12a “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain…”

4. God’s Lamb will be eaten (symbolically) during Communion.
*Exodus 12:8
8 “And they shall eat the flesh that same night… and they shall eat it with unlea-vened bread…”
Matthew 26:26
26 And while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
1 Corinthians 11:24b
24b “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

5. God’s Lamb will be sacrificed to save others from the judgment to come.
*Exodus 12:13
13 “And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to de-stroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”
1 Corinthians 5:7b
7b For Christ our Passover (Lamb) also has been sacrificed.
Revelation 12:11a (referring to the believers’ ultimate victory over Satan)
11a “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb…”

Could it be any clearer than that? Truly the Passover Lamb provides us with a powerful and unmistakable picture of Jesus, His finished work, and our eternal salvation.

We’re almost finished, but we need to return to our time machine once more. We’re going to see God’s perfect Lamb again. This time we will leap forward through human history. We’ll go from 33 A.D. right on through 2016 and stop sometime in the future. (near future?)
We don’t know what year, but that’s all right, God does. He has chosen the year, the month, the day, and the hour when the Tribulation will begin and God’s perfect Lamb will judge this world. Go with me to the passage Tim read to open the service.
*Revelation 5:6a-9, 12-13
6a And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing as if slain…
7 And He came, and He took it out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne (The book is the title deed to the earth. It gives Jesus the right to judge the world.)
8a And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb…
9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book, and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Then millions upon millions of angels and God’s people will all cry out…
12 …saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”
13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

Today you and I wait for the promise of this prophecy to be fulfilled. Jesus said He would come back for us and He cannot lie.
John 14:1-3
1 “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.
2 “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you.
3 “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

In the meantime, while we wait for Him, Jesus told us to “…do this in remembrance of Me (Luke 22:19).” Please join me at the table as we remember God’s perfect Lamb…