Passover is the feast of the Lord that begins the year according to the biblical calendar. This is the time of our freedom, when we remember the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt and our exodus from the slavery of sin and death thanks to the redemption that Yeshua accomplished for us once and for all at Calvary. Every year we celebrate Passover using the symbols and rituals of the traditional Seder, but every year the Lord, by His Holy Spirit, reveals to us new facets of this holiday and teaches us something new. What should we think about as we celebrate Passover this year?
Moses: God’s Guidance and Personal Ascension
In the story of the Exodus we read that Moses’ parents saw that the child was beautiful. Of course, every child is beautiful to his parents. But it seems that they saw him not only physically beautiful, but also saw the purpose, the fire of God that the Lord put into him. It is obvious that Moses’ parents were led by the Spirit of God.
It is written that because of this he was not afraid of the command of Pharaoh. God’s guidance in our lives helps us get through difficult times. This support of the Lord helps us to see beyond the fears that are rising in our lives today. We see what others may not see. It doesn’t make us special, but it helps us to walk our path and give hope to other people who need it. Later we see how Moses himself repeatedly went against life’s circumstances, fears and defeats. This seed of obedience to the Spirit of God, planted by his parents, was manifested in him, and this saved not only him, but in the end brought salvation to the whole people.
Moses is a special person. When all the people did not dare to climb the mountain, He went alone. And God called him His friend and spoke to him face to face. Because Moshe always obeyed the Father despite fear and pressure. Imagine what would have happened if this one person who decided to climb the mountain had not been found! Everyone else chose to know God and be led by Him through Moses. Therefore, when Moses ascended the mountain and was gone for a long time, they began to make themselves another god. This teaches us that we need to personally go up and talk to God face to face. We cannot place this responsibility on anyone.
The Purpose of Our Exodus: Sanctification and Service
During the Seder, after the first cup, which is called the cup of consecration, we eat karpas, for example, parsley, which must be soaked in salt water and eaten. This reminds us of the tears of slavery that our people shed in Egypt. It is probably no coincidence that we eat karpas with salt water to remember slavery, precisely after the cup of consecration. After all, the Lord separated our people so that they could serve Him. And if we begin to use God’s blessings only for ourselves and make these blessings our goal, then sooner or later we will come to the point where we will begin to shed tears of slavery.
The purpose of our lives should be to serve, not just to receive benefits from the Lord. Blessings can gradually become the goal of your life, and the more you go after the blessings of this world, the more you become a slave of Egypt. But we must make the goal of our lives sanctification, separation from this world. And then we will not be slaves to anyone except the Lord. And in slavery to our Lord we truly become free people.
Why? Because slavery to the Lord is the free submission of our will to the will of the Lord. If we submit even a little to satan, this world and all kinds of temptations, they will strive to deprive us of free will altogether, but God never deprives us of our free will. We always have freedom of choice when we submit ourselves to God. And there is no such thing as “drug addiction to the Lord.”
What is a seudat mitzvah?
After we have broken the matzah and hidden the afikoman, we usually start the Passover dinner and, first of all, make the so-called Hillel sandwich. It consists of matzah, meat, horseradish and charoset. Charoset is a sweet mixture that reminds us of the clay our ancestors used to make bricks in Egypt. But why is it sweet if it reminds you of such unpleasant moments? Perhaps because we don’t have to do it anymore – we don’t have to knead clay anymore, we don’t have to continue to build the palaces of Egypt, we don’t have to participate in the affairs of this world and we don’t have to obey any pharaohs
Some may not understand why such a meal should be held during the service. The fact is that in Biblical Jewish culture there is such a concept as “seudat mitzvah” (סעודת מצוה). This is a commanded meal. This is not just a blessed meal, but a meal during which we fulfill the commandment, and this process itself blesses us. This is unusual for traditional church culture, because many monks were so afraid of eating something extra that gradually monastic culture made food, if not evil, then at least a necessary nuisance. And in biblical Jewish culture, which extends to the New Testament, a proper meal, sanctified by God, is a blessing in itself.
The main problem of the traditional seder
Typically, four traditional questions are asked at the seder about how this night is different from other nights. But in fact, the main question of the modern Passover Seder for all Jews who do not know Yeshua is the question of the Passover lamb. The fact is that after the destruction of the Second Temple, when it became impossible to sacrifice the Passover lamb, the Passover Jewish celebration lost the most important thing – the sacrificial lamb, which was actually called Passover. Yes, the holiday is called Passover, but its central element is the sacrificial lamb itself.
After the collapse of all hopes for the restoration of the Temple, the rabbis who did not accept Yeshua had to create a new Judaism. They did not accept the Messiah because the way He appeared, the Messiah refuted many of their ideas and undermined the foundations of their power over the Jewish people. They found themselves in a very difficult situation: there is no Temple, there is no sacrificial lamb but Passover must be celebrated.
In fact, since then, for more than 1900 years, all Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic, Conservative and other Jews in all countries of the world have celebrated Passover without Passover lamb. They usually have a bone with a small amount of meat on their Seder plate. Why small? Because you can’t eat it. Otherwise, it may remind them of the Passover lamb, which does not exist, which cannot be sacrificed, and without which Passover is not passover . That’s the problem.
What is full Passover?
By the grace of God we don’t have this problem. Therefore, during the seder we boldly eat meat – usually a chicken leg, which hangs like a question mark over any religious seder in which there is no main thing – there is no sacrificial Passover lamb. There is no answer to this question if Mashiach Yeshua is not at the center of the Passover Seder.
This year (article written in 2023) the celebration of Easter by Christians according to the Western calendar coincides with Passover, and in fact this year they celebrate the resurrection of Yeshua from the dead according to the Jewish calendar. And some Orthodox churches specially celebrate Easter so that it does not coincide with the Jewish one. This is a special anti-Semitic notion, established at one time by the Roman emperor, so that the Christian Easter would not coincide with the Jewish one. But this is against the texts of the Gospel and all the texts of the New Testament, not to mention the Tanakh (Old Testament).
As you can see, there are two extremes. At one extreme, Orthodox Jews celebrate Passover without Passover lamb, and when the lamb is gone, only matzo and other symbols remain. And the other extreme is the traditional church, which cuts off the resurrection of Yeshua from His Jewish roots, from Israel and does not celebrate the Exodus from Egypt.
But many Messianic Jewish communities, as well as Christian churches around the world, who have seen the glory of Israel, celebrate the full Passover – beginning with Israel’s exit from Egypt and ending with the climax, that is, the victorious resurrection of our Lord from the dead.
The blood of the Passover lamb is sufficient
The last Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat Gadol. According to Jewish tradition, it was on this day that the Jews in Egypt needed to fulfill God’s command: “Let everyone take a lamb.” Tradition says that they had to tie this lamb to the leg of the bed, although they did not have beds, especially with legs. But the point is that this lamb had to be as close to the person as possible.
They obeyed God—some out of faith, some out of fear. They slaughtered these lambs—did what God commanded them to do—and covered their houses with the blood of the lamb. And by the way, they themselves did not clean the houses, did not sweep away the chametz from there, did not crawl around and did not look for crumbs of bread by candlelight. They simply covered their houses with blood. And this was enough for them to be saved from the angel of death.
This is all the more effective for us who have the Lamb, Who calls us His friends and Who revealed to us the essence of things. Moreover, we who consciously accept the saving blood on our lives, we do not clean our houses, but we put things in order in God’s Temple, which is within us. Moreover, we, who understand all this, can count on God’s salvation and God’s victory in various areas of our lives.
The sacrifice that allows us to enter the Heavenly Jerusalem
At the beginning of the Seder, we take special three sheets of matzah, take out the middle one, break it into two parts and hide the larger one in a napkin. And at the end of the seder we take out this hidden piece called afikoman. According to Jewish tradition, these three matzah sheets remind us of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The middle leaf of matzah symbolizes Isaac. It was this that Abraham sacrificed. And it is he who is the prototype of Yeshua. The second symbolism of the three sheets of matzah: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Using this afikoman and the last cup of the Seder we break bread because we have the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us. Only, unlike ordinary lambs, this Lamb is both human and Lord. He is above time, and therefore His sacrifice is valid at all times. His power is no less today than it was then. And His power is ready to smash any obstacles that stand before us in our pursuit of the Savior to the Promised Land – to the new Jerusalem.
By the way, the word Yerushalayim in Hebrew has a so-called dual number. What is hidden in this name is that there are two Yerushalayim – one earthly and one heavenly. Heavenly Jerusalem is our promised land. And our life is a time period in which it is determined where we will spend our eternity, whether the Lord will accept us in Heavenly Jerusalem or we will condemn ourselves and be doomed to eternal death in darkness.
Our Passover Lamb gives incomparably more than the lambs that were once present during the Passover celebration. But that Passover celebration is a very important prototype of the current one. Then the lamb was sacrificed in the Temple, its blood was poured onto the altar, and it itself was taken into the family, baked, and it was necessary to eat it during that evening and night. Only when it was eaten was the sacrifice for every person in Israel completed.
Therefore, it is very important that in this piece of matzah we can by faith accept Yeshua, His body broken for us. When we look at the matzah sheet, we see that it is pierced in many places, just like the body of the Messiah – with nails, a crown of thorns and a spear. And we see traces of fire. This was the fire that consumed the Lord on Calvary.
Boris Grisenko, rabbi of KEMO; Andrey Lugovsky and Konstantin Gerdov, KEMO elders
Word at the KEMO Passover Seder April 8, 2023 / kemokiev.org
Source: https://ieshua.org/chemu-nas-mozhet-nauchit-pashalnyj-seder.htm
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