The Lamb Before the Lamb
Exodus 12:13 "The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. 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."
On the banks of the Jordan River, somewhere in the region of Bethany beyond the Jordan, around AD 27 or 28, a wild-eyed prophet in camel's hair stood ankle-deep in the water and saw his cousin walking toward him. John the Baptist had been preaching repentance to anyone who would come down to the river. Crowds had been pouring out from Jerusalem and Judea to be baptized by him. And then, that day, he looked up and saw Jesus.
He said one sentence. "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
It’s one of the most loaded sentences in the entire Bible, because every faithful Jew listening that morning would have heard not one echo but three. Lamb meant Genesis 22, the ram caught in the thicket on Mount Moriah after Abraham raised the knife over Isaac. Lamb meant Exodus 12, the Passover lamb whose blood, smeared on the doorposts, kept the angel of death from claiming the firstborn of Israel. Lamb meant Isaiah 53, the silent lamb led to the slaughter who would bear the iniquity of His people. John wasn’t coining a new metaphor in Jesus' presence. He was naming the One the metaphors had always been about.
Walk back fifteen centuries from John's announcement to a slave family in Egypt the night before the Exodus.
It’s dark. The family has just slaughtered a year-old lamb, roasted it whole, and eaten it standing up, sandals on, staffs in hand, ready to leave. The blood of that lamb is now smeared with hyssop across the lintel and the two doorposts of their house. Outside, the angel of death is moving through Egypt. Inside, the family is safe. Why?
God Himself answered the question in Exodus 12:13: "The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you." Notice that God didn’t say when you see the blood. He said when I see the blood. The protection was never about the family's worthiness. It was about the lamb's blood and the Father's gaze.
And here’s the wonder we should hold this morning. Israel celebrated this meal every spring for fifteen centuries before the Lamb that the lamb pointed to ever walked into the Jordan. Generations of Jewish parents told their children the story. Generations of families ate unleavened bread and roasted lamb and bitter herbs and waited for a deliverance bigger than the one out of Egypt. They were preaching the gospel to their children for fifteen hundred years, and they didn’t yet know His name.
This is the texture of the Old Testament. It isn’t Israel inventing rituals and waiting for Christians to come along and explain them. It’s God patiently embedding the gospel into the calendar of His people, year after year, generation after generation, until the moment His Son could say at His own Passover table, this cup is the new covenant in My blood (Luke 22:20). The Lamb sat down at the meal His own ancestors had been celebrating for centuries, and He told them, gently, that He was the meal.
Paul says it without flinching in 1 Corinthians 5:7: "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." Not a new sacrifice. Not a different sacrifice. The fulfillment of every Passover lamb that had ever been roasted in every Jewish home from Goshen to Galilee. He is the meal Israel has been eating in shadow form for a millennium and a half.
And what He purchased wasn’t just an exit from Egypt. He purchased an exit from the kingdom of darkness. The blood that protects you this morning was applied not to your doorposts but to your heart and your conscience. The angel of judgment passes over you not because of your worthiness but because the Father sees the blood of His Son and remembers His promise.
Today: Eat one meal slowly with this in mind. Make it dinner if you can. Light a candle. Take some bread, and remember the bread of affliction the Israelites ate. Take the cup, and remember the cup the Lamb lifted at His own Passover. The Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world. Eat in peace.
Prayer: "Father, I worship You for a Lamb prepared from before the foundation of the world. Thank You that fifteen centuries of Passover meals were Your patient gospel preaching, leading Your people to the Son who would be the meal. Let the wonder of His blood rest over my house and my heart today. In Jesus' name, Amen."
-PK