1 CORINTHIANS 5
CAC My thoughts have been turned to this scripture as thinking of what it must have been to the apostle Paul as he wrote it, and what he would have it suggest to those who read it — to all of us. He does not limit it at all; he says “our passover, Christ”; it is not limited to Egypt, the wilderness, or even the land. He must have summed up in his thoughts the whole truth of the passover as glorified by our Lord Jesus Christ in the upper room. I suppose we have all considered how the truth of the passover is a living and growing thing in the Scriptures — not like a thing delivered once for all and left in its primary elements, but a great divine conception that develops every time you look at it; it expands; its climax is in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. You get the full thought in the upper room with the Lord and His disciples. It is an institution so vast that it takes in the whole of His work. One could certainly not cover the whole field in one reading but I have in my mind to suggest a few thoughts that may be followed up. In Egypt it was a question of the [p. 14] imminent judgment of God (Exodus 12). Egypt, represented by the firstborn, is under judgment. There is no moral difference between Israel and Egypt; if a difference were to be made it had to be made from God’s side. He came in and made a difference: He put all the value of the passover between His people and His holy judgment. He made them eat the flesh of the lamb so that they might be nourished in the wonderful self-sacrificing love set forth in the passover. It was the righteousness of God revealed in the way of grace and love so that all their fears might be removed and they might be secured for God’s pleasure. They never kept the passover again in quite the same way; the destroying angel was never outside again.
JHB They ate it in haste, did they not, and in readiness to depart?
CAC Yes. They were going out; they were strengthened to go out. That is a very great lesson we should learn. The world is under judgment and we with it. Christ has come in to be the passover and has been sacrificed, so that it has become God’s opportunity to come out in righteous grace.
JHB Do you think we are apt to forget what it is intended to result in?
CAC That is very true. It is very important to get the good of what was in the mind of God in it. He did not open it all out on the first page. Really, from the divine side the passover cleared the ground so that God could bring out all that was in His heart.
JHB Exodus 12: 11 describes how they were to eat it; it is “Jehovah’s Passover”.
CAC Yes, He is moving; this is the first step in a great undertaking that He has set Himself to accomplish (Exodus 23: 17, 18) and that thought is emphasised in the giving of the law (Exodus 34: 24, 25). That seems to emphasise what you were saying, so that when the people [p. 15] were in covenant relationship, it is not “your lamb”, it is “my sacrifice”, “my feast”; and you get what is not mentioned in Egypt, “the fat”; that is a great advance. When you come to think of it as “my feast” you bring in all the pleasure of God in Christ and His death, so that the fat necessarily comes in — it was all for God; that is the suggestion of how it develops. It seems that when they came into the wilderness the passover became to God the ground on which He could take up His dwelling among them, so that almost the very first thing after the setting up of the tabernacle is that they have to keep the passover. God would take up His dwelling in the midst of His people. It is a great thing to think of the passover on the divine side — not only that it shelters me, but that it was the thought of God to dwell amongst His people according to all the value of Christ, what God calls “my sacrifice”. It involves infinitely more than we can take in. One of the sweetest thoughts as we approach God is that He has more in Christ than we know; it is beyond our comprehension but not beyond our adoration. The fat is all the blessed excellence of Christ as God can appreciate Him; He has brought us to His habitation according to all the excellence of Christ. If God passes over, it is in view of dwelling; God wants to be near to us. It is not our dwelling with God, that is a most wonderful thing, but it is more wonderful that God should want to dwell with us, and dwell with us in all the perfection of what He finds in Christ. And it is “among the children of Israel”; it is not merely an individual matter; it all comes out when we are together.
JHB Does not movement come in then, God says, “I will walk among you”, Leviticus 26: 12?
CAC Was it not forty-nine days before the tabernacle moved? So we get the setting up of the tabernacle in Exodus 40. Then the keeping of the passover immediately [p. 16] follows; then a period when the service of the sanctuary is carried out. The thing is set up from the point of view of service; then there is movement; this thought of the passover shows how God moves. If we want to move with God we must move with Him reverently, I would say; it is no pleasure to God to walk alone.
JHB Then they made their first journey.
CAC Yes; sometimes all the people of God have to wait, they cannot move forward, as in the matter of Miriam (Numbers 12: 15). It is very gracious of God to wait, and it is a demand on His people to learn to wait, but it is not normal. Numbers 9: 6 - 8 records one of these intuitive exercises that God delights in; there was no command that anyone who was defiled by the dead should not eat the passover; some of the most striking things in scripture were done without any commandment. Nehemiah says, “And I consulted with myself”, Nehemiah 5: 7. He was a very good person to take counsel with — the man that has the anointing is the man to take counsel with. Who told Moses to pitch the tabernacle without the camp after the breaking of the law? Did God? If God had told Moses to do it, it would not have been quite the same; it was intuitive, as was Joshua’s putting the stones in the bed of Jordan (Joshua 4: 9); he was not told to do it; he was told to take them out before (Joshua 4: 3). Some people always want chapter and verse for everything; that is all very good, but we ought to cultivate these spiritual instincts. Who told Mary to bring the box of ointment? It was Mary’s heart that told her. You are brought to it in your own exercises. We are apt to think it is the old white-haired brothers and experienced sisters who have these exercises, but the apostle John says to the ‘little children’, “Ye have the unction from the holy one, and ye know all things”, 1 John 2: 20. What a wonderful thing that is! I have often [p. 17] wondered at it — these men were led by the Holy One, they wanted to present the offering to Jehovah in its set time; they really touched the borders of the land, for the unity of Israel is set forth in the passover. It is kept in the land “at the place that Jehovah thy God will choose”, Deuteronomy 16: 5, 6.
JHB That is a new feature.
CAC Yes. That is an added feature. In the wilderness you get the desire of Jehovah to dwell with Israel His people and that there should be appreciation of His dwelling among them is in accordance with the passover, so that when you come into the land He takes it quite away from “thy gates”. The book of Deuteronomy has two positions — “thy gates” and the place where Jehovah sets His name. The first refers to household responsibility — not individual; and in the land the people are not viewed as individuals, either as in the households, or in “the place”. Certain principles have to be carried out in the households, but when you come to the place where Jehovah has set His name, then you have the unity of all Israel. In Luke 22 it is His household; you have the full character of everything in the upper room: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer”. They are in the blessing of the purpose of God and realise their unity; that is the place where every divine thought is known, where He sets His name.
JHB What corresponds to going up to the place today?
CAC What answers to it is a spiritual movement, the unity of the people as identified with His purpose. It is the Ephesian position, Ephesians 1: 2; Ephesians 2: 5 - 7. You see the blessedness of the purpose of God; you see all the saints unified. Who is bound up in it? All the saints. I must love them all; I must pray for them all; I must lay myself out for them all in as far as I am able. The apostle Paul before Agrippa says, “Our whole twelve tribes serving incessantly day and night”; it did not look like it — ten of them were lost and scattered over the earth; but he would not allow before a gentile monarch that anything would be incomplete; that is faith; it is a wonderful thing. The blessing reaches up to the topmost point, all based on the passover. People look on the passover as something for young converts but you will find if you really take in the thought of the passover that you will not have much trouble about anything else. In 2 Chronicles 30: 15 - 17 we find that this celebration carried, in one sense, a very painful feature: the people were not purified, and indeed they were not ready at the “right time”; they had to keep it at the abnormal time, but there was a feeling of shame. That is a little how we have to take it up now. They had got away from Israel’s purity which was the purity of the sanctuary; but even then there is an additional element, the burnt offerings. Both here and in the time of Josiah the burnt offering has a great place; that is, the precious fragrance of Christ in the burnt offering character. This is a day of recovery; the people are recovered in their affections before spiritual conditions come in; they were willing to keep the passover but there were not the spiritual conditions.
In 2 Chronicles 35: 12, in Josiah’s time, what you get is that they set apart the burnt offerings; then you get the Levites and the singers (verse 15), and all is done at the proper time. It says (verse 18) there was no such passover since the days of Samuel; there were suitable conditions. It is God reviving things.
Then you get in Ezra’s time (Ezra 6) what is so blessed to see — such a wonderful character of purity; when you have conditions like that you have conditions that are morally suitable for the Lord to come in and eat the passover with His people: it is the upper room. The Lord says in John 15, “Ye are already clean by reason of the word which I have spoken to you”, and the Lord sits down with that clean company. Do we really covet the Lord’s company in our passover exercises? It says they were all clean. Where there are clean conditions the Lord can eat the passover with His disciples and can introduce a new element, so that there you get an essential part which was not in the Old Testament; you do not have the full divine idea till you have the cup. In Ezra you get joy — you get singers. In Chronicles you get the “passover offerings”; you have the whole truth of fellowship and the holy joy of the drink offering, and the anointing oil; all are bound up with the passover. Now the Lord brings in the new element — the cup, the thought of drinking into all the blessedness that marks the kingdom of God. What kind of things will there be when God has His own way? Everything is full of blessing just because it is full of God. The actual bringing in is going to wait. The Lord said He would not drink it again until He drank it in a new manner “with you”. In Mark’s gospel it is “in the kingdom of my Father”. Can you surpass that in the way of earthly blessing? — you cannot. It is all waiting for its fulfilment. Israel’s Messiah has consecrated the cup as part of the passover; and that is all going to stand on that imperishable basis. It has gradually spread out until it is seen in relation to God, and it opens out till you get this wonderful portion for man; it is what man is to drink into. The Lord says that is going to wait; but He gives it to us in spirit, —
‘Thou dost make us taste the blessing,
Soon to fill a world of bliss’ (394:5);
that is set forth in Melchisedec — bread and wine. The Lord will bring forth all that the passover is going to be. The passover cup is full of eternal life, and God is going to put it into the hands of men on earth, and in the meantime the Lord is going to bring in another cup “after supper”. I have often wondered why it did not say “the bread” after supper. There is something special in the time when the public blessing is not known — the new covenant; the assembly knows it in a better way than Israel. The assembly has the best of everything and enjoys it in the same way as Christ enjoys it. He knew the love of the blessed God in a sorrowing and suffering heart. Israel never knew that, the church is privileged to know the love of God like that. In the presence of all the grief and pain and trials, the assembly knows, and the saint who is of the assembly knows, what it is to retire into what is spoken of by the “cup after supper”; that is a different character of things.
JHB When should we know something of the passover as in Luke 22; is it when we are together?
CAC I think so; it is collective in every sense, in the household character in Egypt, and when enjoyed in the land it is emphasised they were all to go up, from Dan to Beersheba. It is enjoyed in a peculiar way when we are together — you have it all the week.