Before we dine with Jesus at the table in Matthew 26...
we need to trace our steps back to Egypt.
More than a thousand years earlier, Israel is enslaved under Pharaoh.
God is about to bring judgment on Egypt and finally lead His people out.
But first, He gives every Israelite household some very specific instructions.
Take a lamb.
“Your lamb shall be without blemish…”
— Exodus 12:5
Kill it.
Take its blood.
Smear that blood on the doorposts of your house.
And then God makes a promise:
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you.”
— Exodus 12:13
That night, the promised judgment sweeps through Egypt as the destroyer passes through the land.
But wherever God sees the blood... judgment passes over.
Israel is delivered.
So God tells them to remember what happened.
Year after year.
Generation after generation.
Passover and remembrance become the fabric of Israel's identity.
And that's where we arrive in Matthew 26.
Jerusalem is once again preparing another year of Passover celebration.
Families are remembering Egypt once again...
The lamb— the blood— the rescue.
So, Jesus tells His disciples:
“Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’”
— Matthew 26:18
Just imagine that scene...
All over Jerusalem, people are preparing to remember the lambs whose blood once marked Israel's rescue from Egypt...
while the true Passover Lamb is sitting in their midst.
Later, Paul would tell us exactly where all of this was pointing:
“For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”
— 1 Corinthians 5:7
There was always a Lamb behind the lambs.
Exodus was a real rescue of real people from real slavery.
But God was also pointing beyond Egypt to something far greater.
A spotless lamb.
A coming judgment.
A final blood shed—once for all time.
Redemption for those sheltered by that blood.
Only this time, it wouldn't be the blood of another lamb.
It would be the blood of the Savior Himself.
Jesus didn't arrive to rescue one nation from a Pharaoh...
but to rescue sinners from something far more destructive.
Sin.
Death.
Judgment.
He doesn't just place the blood of another lamb over a doorway.
He gives His own.
That's what makes Passover so much more extraordinary.
For generations, Israel had been looking backward...
remembering what God had done.
But all along, that story was also pointing forward.
Toward Jesus.
Toward the cross.
Toward the Lamb who would finally accomplish what every earlier sacrifice could only anticipate.
Exodus wasn't just Israel's rescue story...
It was foreshadowing ours.
The lambs pointed forward.
Their blood pointed forward.
The rescue pointed forward.
Until eventually...
the Lamb Himself arrived.
Praise be to God.
— Drew
P.S. The Bible becomes even more incredible when we begin seeing how stories separated by miles and centuries converge in Jesus.
That's one of the things I love exploring in my books—
helping us trace those threads and see the bigger story
Scripture has been telling all along.
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