Happy Easter everyone! I wanted to share a great message with you today; the message of Easter. If you get your information about Easter from television or by walking through the grocery store, you may think it's about bunnies and baskets and eggs and candies, but the good news of Easter is that it's about a lamb.
In the beginning, God created us to bring Him glory by worshipping Him, honoring Him and giving thanks to Him. But our sins against God's perfect law (Exodus 20 & elsewhere) bring us physical and spiritual death, as well as eternal seperation from God. Therefore we can't in our own power be who we were created to be.
In the Old Testament God provided animal sacrifices for sin. The life of an animal was substituted as payment for people's sins. However these sacrifices were not perfectly acceptable to God and could not excuse sin once and for all. So these sacrifices were offered over and over again. This substitutionary death for human sin, is best seen in the story of the passover lamb in Exodus 12. God commanded the Israelites to slaughter a male lamb without defect, and to place the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their house. If they followed God's directions, when He passed over their houses, He would see the blood and accept it as payment for their sins. The houses that did not follow these instructions would wake up and find their firstborn children dead. In other words, the firstborn would receive the judgement for sin. It happened just as God said. Those who had the blood of the lamb were passed over, and judgement was witheld.
In Isaiah 53 and elsewhere in the Old Testament we read about a savior who would come who would be like a lamb. He would be pierced, crushed, punished and ultimately killed for our sins. Then this savior would be raised to life showing his defeat of sin and death. His blood would cover our sins just like the passover lamb of the Old Testament.
There are many prophecies througout the Old Testament about this savior, whose blood would cover the sins of the world. Only one man has fulfilled these prophecies, and His name is Jesus.
John the Baptist first recognizes Jesus as the Lamb of God in John 1:29. All the prophecies point to Jesus being the Lamb of God. And as if that wasn't enough, Jesus was crucified during Passover, as if screaming to the world, "I am the Passover Lamb of God." And today, Easter 2012, we celebrate not because of bunnies or baskets or eggs or candies, we celebrate the Lamb of God who was killed for our sins and then raised to life!
As I've stated previously we have two responses. The first is to believe in Christ's death for our sins and his resurrection from the dead. As our passover lamb, Jesus pays the penalty and God passes over our sins giving us eternal life with Him in Heaven. The second response is to deny Him, and pay the penalty ourself. The penalty is spiritual death and eternal separation from God in Hell. I choose to accept Jesus as my passover lamb. My prayer is that you will do the same. That is the only way Easter will be to you all it was meant to be.
