People don’t watch the news to be more current on the day's events; otherwise "The McNeil Hour" on PBS would get the market share of ratings instead of "Temptation Island" or "Survivor." No, people watch for a variety of reasons and TV stations know this quite well. Because of this they often advertise upcoming stories that deal not with events in the Middle East or the faltering economy, but on such pressing matters as shoplifting grannies or teen vandals stupid enough to videotape their own crimes.

I laughed at one recent segment on channel 4 where Lynese Weeks did a spot on bacteria levels in dishwashers. I was waiting for them to insinuate that bacterial levels lurking in our Whirlpools are so dangerous that disease could wipe out the metro-Milwaukee area in a matter of days. The only solution? Wash them by hand! Then the next night they could do a special on Dishcloths and Disease – is your home a breeding ground for the next plague?

We live in a time and place where we imagine we can actually create a germ free environment. In God’s providence, science has created a healthy society wherein the ancient terrors are obliterated or reduced to a scarcity. Perhaps because of that, we develop new concerns.

Standing in the line at Pick 'N' Save on Friday, the cashier scanned a dozen eggs, and oozing out of the cartoon was yellow slime. One had broken, leaving a trail of raw egg across the belt and scanner. The woman behind her became frantic, jumped back, instructing the cashier to call for a Hazmet team to quarantine the area for fear of salmonella.

Should we exercise reasonable caution? Yes. Should we be paranoid? No.

I find such extremes of hysteria interesting, for we live in an age that is concerned with disease and the effects of decay on our own bodies, but appears too little concerned over spiritual decay brought on by sin. We seem to have developed a concern only for our bodies, but not our souls. Do we apply the same fervor in getting the ring out of the tub that we do when confronted with those dark patches in our soul? Are we as quick with confession of sin as we are the disinfectant?

In ancient Israel there was a correlation established between cleanliness on the outside and the need for us to be clean on the inside. While the old adage that "cleanliness is next to godliness" has dubious theological support, it does correspond to a theme we find in our passage. In Deuteronomy 16 three great annual feasts are described: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. This morning I want to look at Passover, but focus on an aspect of this familiar event, an aspect which we often miss, but the New Testament sees as important.

1. Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover of the LORD your God, because in the month of Abib he brought you out of Egypt by night.

2. Sacrifice as the Passover to the LORD your God an animal from your flock or herd at the place the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his Name.

3. Do not eat it with bread made with yeast, but for seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt in haste--so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt.

4. Let no yeast be found in your possession in all your land for seven days. Do not let any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until morning.

5. You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the LORD your God gives you

6. except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name. There you must sacrifice the Passover in the evening, when the sun goes down, on the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.

7. Roast it and eat it at the place the LORD your God will choose. Then in the morning return to your tents.

8. For six days eat unleavened bread and on the seventh day hold an assembly to the LORD your God and do no work.

In this repetition of an important celebration there is the command in verses 4-5 that no yeast be found in your possession and not to let any meat sacrificed remain. The Passover pictures a powerful truth of what God did for us in Christ. We are often familiar with the important aspect of the blood on the door posts saving the firstborn Jewish sons from death, which pictures Christ’s sacrifice for us, but we forget why He commanded the unleavened bread and how the Passover includes a picture not only of our justification, of the declaration of our righteousness, but also points to our sanctification, that God will make us holy.

The decay which surrounds us in our environment is only a small reminder of the decay which exists in each of us. As decay is sign of death, so our sinful thoughts, words and actions point to our spiritual death which reigns supreme when not dealt with by Christ. What is the present benefit of the Cross? Once we know our sins are forgiven, how do we deal with all the other spiritual gunk in our lives, how does the Gospel deal with the decay we still see in ourselves?

The passages opens with a parallel command to observe and to celebrate.

For us, observing is passive or done by rote. I observe the speed limit but may not be happy about it. But the word here in Hebrew implies great care taken to do something. The same word is used of Adam’s tending the Garden and often in Deuteronomy of the careful attention paid to the obligations of the Covenant. To observe is to delve into something with one’s heart and soul. The second imperative is "celebrate," which certainly carries with it the idea of active involvement. But this word has the idea of an ethical response which accompanies a joyous activity. These are terms of worship, of response to the covenant, to what God has done.

What is observed and celebrated? "Observe the month of Abib."

That is not much help to us unless we are aware that this month corresponds to our March/April time of the year and that the word means "green" or "fresh leaves" and came to refer to the time of the first fruits, that season in Palestine when the first crops began to ripen in anticipation of the harvest. The ears of barley grain turned green at this time and signaled the coming harvest a month later. This same month is also known as Nisan, but there the reference is to the new growth, the new life which shows signs that the old decaying seed has sprung to new life. This was the season of promise that more was on its way, that the decay had ceased.

For this reason in 1 Corinthians 15:20 Christ’s Resurrection is called the firstfruit of those who have fallen asleep. He is the first taste of something greater to come.

For some of you, spring training is the firstfruit of the season to come. The Brewers are in Chandler, Arizona, and you can see clips on the news about what is happening down there and you are waiting for Opening Day at  Miller Park. The long cold winter is soon over.

This image of Christ as the first fruits was played out in ironic relief on Good Friday as He hung on the Cross. In Matthew’s Gospel we read of those who passed by Him hurling insults. Even the chief priests, the teachers of the law and elders mocked Him. Had they nothing better to do than ridicule one they thought a mad man being executed on a garbage dump? That they were passing by gives us a clue. The time during which Jesus hung on the Cross was when the priests and worshippers would march outside the city gates to gather the first fruits of the harvest. They would return, pilgrims in toe, waving stalks of barley, praising God for the hope of a greater harvest to come - all this with the Son of God, dying for His people, as the backdrop. They thought the hope for the future was found in the new harvest, but life was found in the one dying on the Cross.

Next in verse 1 is the reference to the Passover.

Exodus 12 details the events of the first Passover, and Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28 give more background. Let’s review the events which lead up to this momentous celebration and what it pictured.

As a prelude to the tenth and greatest plague on Egypt for refusing to allow Israel to worship the Lord, God commanded His people to prepare themselves against the judgment that was to come. On the tenth day of the month, every family was to chose a male yearling, either a goat or a sheep, and one without blemish. This lamb was killed at the twilight on the 14th, and its blood was sprinkled over the two door posts and the lintel of the house where it was eaten. The lamb was to be completely consumed, the leftovers burnt, and eaten in an atmosphere of readiness and anticipation.

Don’t forget, those that ate the Passover that first night in Egypt earlier that day had felt the sting of the whip and knew that in Egypt there were nothing more than the living dead. They ate in faith that when the sun broke the horizon in a few hours they would no longer be slaves to the taskmaster ever again. But while they spent the night, eating in anticipation, others spent the night in terror as the Angel of Death passed over their homes and visited those which did not have the mark of the lamb’s blood. There, instead of anticipation, fear and dread filled those homes as the firstborn lay dead.

God’s passing over their homes, delivering them from the decay of death and the stench of slavery came at the price of the death of another. The lamb’s throat was slit, his blood drained, his flesh consumed.

The heart of the Passover meal was a picture of the substitutionary atonement. By the violent death of another, the firstborn was spared. The yearly Passover celebration commemorated God's physical deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. However, Passover was pointing to a much greater deliverance that would be brought about by the death of God's Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord - the deliverance of His people from their bondage to sin, Satan, and death. The Passover lamb without defect pointed to Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God who knew no sin. In His Incarnation and death Jesus became sin for us. Just as Zinzendorf wrote in our hymn this morning, we too can sing:

Jesus, thy blood and righteousness

My beauty are, my glorious dress;

‘Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,

With joy shall I lift up my head.

When I picture a seder meal, it is in people’s homes. We think of it only in terms of the first Passover, but forget that the Passover was not a family affair, but celebrated around the Tabernacle. What we know of today is an adaptation by Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.

Notice the specific instruction in verse 2: it is to be celebrated "at the place the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his Name." Then a prohibition is given in verse 5: "not in any town God gives you, but where his Name dwells." Again, in verse 7, the lamb is to be roasted and consumed "at the place the Lord your God will choose."

This is confirmed in the Gospels as Jesus goes to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, first with His parents when He was 12 as well as during His public ministry, concluding with the final Passover meal, as Mark 14:12 tells us:

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus's disciples asked Him, "Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"

This was because the Passover was not just a religious feast, but a sacrifice.

The connection between the death of that lamb and Christ's death was again made clear by the coinciding events. While Jesus ate the meal with His disciples the night before, it was on Friday that the sacrifice took place. At noon, as Jesus was being nailed to the Cross, the high priest took his knife and slit the throat of the lamb. The lambs eaten by each family were not killed by each family, but by the priests. The blood of all these lambs was collected and thrown on the altar; the lifeless bodies were returned to the worshippers so that they might roast the animals and eat them. While this was taking place, while the Temple mount was filled with the bleating of sheep and flowing blood, Christ hung on the Cross. While He hung there at the high point of the Feast, inside the Holy of Holies, the veil was torn in two, from top to bottom. With the death of Jesus, all other sacrifices became obsolete.

The decay of death could only be answered by the death of another.

Jesus Christ is the great High Priest, whose knife sacrificed the lamb. He is also the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, whose life blood was drained, whose flesh was consumed. Jesus is the Temple wherein all this took place: it was destroyed and raised again in three days.

The Passover was not just a commemorative meal. It did not merely look back to a great event. For the believing Jew, it looked forward to the final end of slavery - not slavery to Egypt, Assyria or Rome, but slavery to sin. Our slavery to sin began with our first parents and decay has been humanity’s curse ever since.

But the powerful news of the Gospel is that sin’s defeat came because God chose a place where His Name would dwell. That place was not ultimately in a tent which would rot and crumble, not in a Temple torn down by invading armies. God’s dwelling among His people was in Christ. The only answer to the stench of decay in your life is in coming to the place God ordains for sinners to come. Having come to Him, we can then be cleansed.