The great deliverance from Egypt now close at hand was both the birthday of the nation, looked back to as such in all future generations, and a great landmark in the history of redemption. Israel, before this time little more than a collection of families of one race, with common traditions and religion, was now to have a unified national life; and it was also to be conscious of a definite Divine call, and a religious separation from all the other nations of the earth. The new nation was to be also a church, a “theocracy,” under the direct rule of Jehovah. This great turning point was marked as the beginning of a new era, with new religious institutions. The calendar was to begin afresh from the day of deliverance; the month of Nisan or Abib (March 21-April 20, the month of green corn) was to be counted for the first month of the year. The Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, and the consecration of the firstborn, were instituted as perpetual memorials.
It was to God above all James Taylor sought to be faithful, and he was possessed by a profound conviction of His infinite faithfulness. He took the Bible very simply, believing it was of all books the most practical if put to the test of experience. In this too he met with fullest sympathy from the young wife who was herself so loyal to the Lord. On a day they could never forget, in their first winter together, he sought her, Bible in hand, to talk over a passage that had impressed him. It was part of the thirteenth chapter of Exodus, with the corresponding verses in Numbers:
“Sanctify unto me all the firstborn
All the firstborn are mine …
Mine shall they be …
Set apart unto the Lord.”
Long and earnest was the talk that followed in view of the happiness to which they were looking forward. Their hearts held back nothing from the Lord. With them it was not a question of how little could be given but how much. Did the Lord claim the best gift of His own giving? Their child was more their own for being His. To such parents what could be more welcome than the invitation, nay, command, to set apart their dearest thus to Him? And how precious the Divine assurance, “It is Mine,” not for time only but for eternity. Together they knelt in the silence to fulfil as literally as possible an obligation they could not relegate to Hebrew parents of old. It was no ceremony to be gone through merely, but a definite transaction, the handing over of their best to God, recalling which the mother wrote long after: “This act of consecration they solemnly performed upon their knees, asking for the rich influence of the Holy Spirit,” that their firstborn might be “set apart” indeed from that hour. And just as definitely the Lord responded, giving them faith to realize that He had accepted the gift; that henceforth the life so dear to them was their own no longer, but must be held at the disposal of a higher claim, a deeper love than theirs.
Thus spring-time came again touching with tender loveliness those Yorkshire hills and valleys, and on May 21, 1832, this child of many prayers was born, and named after both parents, James Hudson Taylor.1 [Note: Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 33.]
1. The religious historians of the Hebrews connected the Passover with the Exodus. But there are indications that its origin lay behind the Exodus in a far-off past. And though we here enter upon a region of inference and deduction, a truer and larger view will be gained of God's methods in dealing with His people when it is seen that the Passover was a primitive institution, engrained in the earlier life of Israel, and that their religious genius, by Divine inspiration, took it up and transformed it into something greater and deeper. It is noticeable that in Exo_12:21 “the Passover” is abruptly introduced as something already well known; and that the Israelites had repeatedly asked permission from Pharaoh to separate themselves three days' journey, for the purpose of holding a pilgrimage and of offering sacrifice (Exo_3:18; Exo_5:1; Exo_7:16; Exo_8:27; Exo_10:9). It would seem, therefore, that they made an annual festival which had come down to them from their fathers the reason-or the ostensible reason-for leaving Egypt. Moreover Pharaoh does not appear to have seen anything strange in the request; he merely refused to grant it. If, then, the Passover was a very early nomad institution, the original meaning of it must be sought partly from the ritual details, and partly from the customs of Arabian nomads of the present day, who are very tenacious of ancient traditions and habits.
2. Thus the Jews regard the Passover, first, as the festival of the public foundation of their religion, when it passed from its family stage to the national stage, just as it was destined to pass from its national stage to one broader and more universal. For the Jews are no longer a nation, but only a religious brotherhood, and their faith knows no difference of race or nation any more. But the Passover may be regarded, secondly, as the great festival of freedom. Liberty or freedom has been abused, as other good things have been abused and put to ignoble uses, but it is none the less a good thing in itself. Whenever and wherever there is oppression of the weak by the strong, of the poor by the rich, or of one race by another, they who are knit together by the common celebration of the Passover ought to feel righteous indignation, and do all that lies in their power to remedy the wrong.
The only recorded celebrations of the Passover in the Old Testament, like the Egyptian Festival, inaugurate some new step in the nation's history.
(1)
In the days of Joshua the manna ceased, when the Passover had been kept, and the people began to eat the corn of Canaan (Jos_5:10-11 P).
(2)
When Hezekiah kept the Passover, he had purified the land for the true worship of Jehovah (2Ch_30:1-27).
(3)
Josiah began his reformation, in accordance with the newly discovered Law, by a solemn Passover (2Ki_23:21-23).
(4)
When the second temple was dedicated a paschal celebration is recorded (Ezr_6:22). In the preceding verse it is said that the children of the captivity had separated themselves from “filthiness of the heathen of the land.”1 [Note: F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical History of the Hebrews, 67.]
3. The Passover ritual, as appointed here, divides itself into two main parts-the sprinkling of the sacrificial blood on the door-posts and lintels, and the feast on the sacrifice.
(1) The ritual of the protecting blood.-Whether readers accept the doctrines of substitution and expiation or not, it ought to be impossible for an honest reader of this passage to deny that these doctrines or thoughts are there. They may be only the barbarous notions of a half-savage age and people. But, whatever they are, there they are. The lamb without blemish, carefully chosen and kept for four days, till it had become as it were part of the household, and then solemnly slain by the head of the family, was their representative. When they sprinkled its blood on the posts, they confessed that they stood in peril of the destroying angel by reason of their impurity, and they presented the blood as their expiation. In so far, their act was an act of confession, deprecation, and faith. It accepted the divinely-appointed means of safety. The consequence was exemption from the fatal stroke, which fell on all homes, from the palace to the slave's hovel, where that red streak was not found. If any son of Abraham had despised the provision for safety, he would have been partaker of the plague.
(2) The festal meal on the sacrifice.-After the sprinkling of the blood came the feast. Only when the house was secure from the destruction which walked in the darkness of that fateful night could a delivered household gather round the board. That which had become their safety now became their food. Other sacrifices were, at a later period, modelled on the same type; and in all cases the symbolism is the same, namely, joyful participation in the sacrifice, and communion with God based upon expiation. In the Passover, this second stage received for future ages the further meaning of a memorial. But on that first night it was only such by anticipation, seeing that it preceded the deliverance which it was afterwards to commemorate.
4. No study of the Passover would be complete which did not take account of St. Paul's words in 1Co_5:7, “our paschal Victim also hath been slain, even Christ.” It is one of the fundamental factors in the growth of Christianity out of the Hebrew germ that in the highest act of Christian worship all the main features in the Passover are taken up and receive their full and eternal significance. The Firstborn, the chosen “Lamb of God,” without blemish, slain once for all, is continually offered; the feast is continually spread through which the faithful partaker enters anew into vital union with God; and the atoning virtue of “the Blood of the Lamb” is continually effectual for the salvation of every heart upon which it is sprinkled.
As the angel of death passed by the Israelites when he saw the blood on the lintel, so shall the angel of retribution spare those who have found refuge in the Cross. Flippant men suppose that nothing is easier than the forgiveness of sin. They cannot believe that it presents any difficulty to God. But it has justly been said, “A fault is not effaced because we reproach ourselves with it.” No, it strikes infinitely deeper than that; it loudly calls for atonement or punishment, and all revelation teaches that the supreme act of Divine wisdom and power was the provision of redemption for a world of sinners. That redemption is in the blood of Christ, shed for me. “Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.” I do not understand the mystery of redemption, as I do not understand many other mysteries: but if I am not forgiven, healed, perfected through the Crucified, I see no other way of escape from the law of retribution. It is either the red cross or the red sword.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 284.]
Slain for man, slain for me, O Lamb of God, look down;
Loving to the end look down, behold and see:
Turn Thine Eyes of pity, turn not on us Thy frown,
O Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.
Mark the wrestling, mark the race for indeed a crown;
Mark our chariots how we drive them heavily;
Mark the foe upon our track blasting thundering down,
O Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.
Set as a Cloudy Pillar against them Thy frown,
Thy Face of Light toward us gracious utterly;
Help granting, hope granting, until Thou grant a crown,
O Lamb of God, slain for man, slain for me.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 31.]
