Four Days Too Many

“On the tenth of this month, they shall each take for themselves an animal of the flock.” Exodus 12:3

On The Tenth – Passover is the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan.  According to God’s instruction, this is to be the first month of the year.  It is to have the priority over all other months.   It is to set the stage for the succeeding year.  The first thing that obedient followers of the Lord are to do in the first month is to take a lamb from the flock.  God’s instructions are very specific, but they don’t seem to be quite right.  After all, Passover is the fourteenth day, so why do I need to pick out a lamb on the tenth day and care for it for the next four days?

The answer is about compassion and loss.

Go out to the flock.  Pick the most perfect male lamb you can find.  Bring it back to your house.  Care for it.  Feed it.  Become attached to it.  Let your children play with it.  Notice its presence every day.  And four days later, kill it!

Now do you see the sense of this?  The blood of the Passover lamb is not anonymous.  It is personal, intimate and agonizing.  God intends that you should feel the horror of your sin in the death of an innocent little lamb.  God wants you to be physically reminded that the only way you live is because this cute, cuddly lamb dies.  Whenever we practice antiseptic forgiveness, we anesthetize our guilt.  God wants us to know that sin brings death to the innocent.  We are never to forget this.  It is to be the basis of every day actions for the rest of the year.

Bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace.”  That seems to be one of the biggest problems in the church today.  We don’t care for the lamb, so we don’t appreciate the sacrifice.  It doesn’t touch us.  We can just walk down the aisle, confess a few mistakes and feel “covered.”  The real tragedy is that the blood of the innocent has no meaning for us.  We go back to Monday’s job without any consideration of the loss that made Monday possible.  Where the church avoids the gore of killing the innocent in order to pay for the guilty, there is little if any appreciation for the passion of the Passion.  It’s just another sanitary story, a celluloid diversion or a picture on the wall.  It doesn’t hurt.  It doesn’t break my heart, shake my emotions or touch my soul.  I just go to the market and buy a piece of lamb.  It’s no big deal.  And with that approach to the next 364 days, sin has no real consequences either.

God knew what He was doing.  The problem is not God’s.  It’s ours.  When we think we have a better way, we leave behind the four-day lesson.  We’ll regret it, I’m afraid.

Topical Index:  Passover