What encouragement for timid Christians! Perhaps, as the angel went on his awful mission, the shriek and wail from some neighboring house would reach the ears of an Israelitish family. A mother might tremble and clasp her child to her breast with fear; her faith might be weak; but if the blood were on the door she was safe, though trembling. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." "Pass over." The general idea that God was passing through by his destroying angel, and left those doors on which the blood was seen. This, perhaps, is not strictly the meaning. At least, Bishop Lowth, an eminent Hebrew scholar, says, "Two agents are supposed—the destroying angel on his errand of judgment, and Jehovah Himself, as it were, accompanying him; and when he sees the sign, 'springing forward before the door,' he makes Himself the safety of his own" (compare Isa. xxxi. 5).
Peculiar beauty of the type thus viewed. If the blood of the Lamb is sprinkled upon us, we are as safe, though not yet as happy, as the redeemed in heaven (Rom. viii. 1, 31, 33, 34). Nothing but the blood of the great Sacrifice will save the soul. Have you come to it? No outward membership, no self-denial, no suffering, nothing but Christ can save.
II. The paschal sacrifice was to be eaten.
1. The blood was to be sprinkled before the food was eaten. It was consciousness of safety through the blood that enabled them with gladness to partake of the feast. We must have faith in Jesus before we can have communion with him.
2. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread—the former the emblem of their bitter oppression and the type of sorrow for sin; the latter showing that the redeemed must be holy. They are set free, but it is to be made pure.
III. The Passover was to be kept.
The feast of unleavened bread was to last seven days. It was, as it were, the continuance of the Passover. The one exhibits the way of pardon; the other, the holiness which follows pardon.
IV. In closing our subject, not exhausting it, turn to Leviticus xxiii. 9-11.
1. "On the morrow after the Sabbath," that is, the first day after Passover Sabbath, sometimes the third day after the Passover, sometimes later.
2. The sheaf is evidently "Christ the first-fruits" (1 Cor. xv. 23). Jesus rose the third day after the Passover, and this has become our Sabbath ever since.