From Pastor Bill

Human beings are the only creatures in all the earth who have a desire to take another species and make pets out of them.  With nothing to receive in return materially, we like to domesticate animals, provide for their basic needs, and shower them with love and affection.  In fact, 9 out of 10 homes in America have had pets of some sort living within their walls at some time or another!  Ranging from insects to birds, from rodents to reptiles, and including all sizes of mammals, many of us have owned pets and are intimately familiar with the attachments that are formed with them.

With that in mind, think back to the first Passover event, described in Exodus 12, where God told the Israelites to sacrifice an unblemished lamb.  This lamb would have been the most perfect one in the flock.  It very well could have been a lamb that had been taken into the house and pampered as a cherished pet by the children in each respective family. Not only were the Israelites told to kill that unblemished lamb, and place its blood over the entrance to their home as proof, they were also told to eat the flesh of this little lamb which had previously romped throughout their house.  Imagine the anguish that must have been felt by those Hebrew families, especially since there were children present in most of the homes!

Well, there was another lamb who was also sacrificed, Jesus, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.  And He was not just a pet animal.  Rather, He was the perfect, unblemished, precious, beloved Son of God.  Truly the sacrifice that was made by Jesus was great beyond comparison, but the sacrifice made by God the Father was yet greater, and beyond our comprehension!  And, while the sacrifice of that first Passover lamb was for a select few, the sacrifice of God’s Lamb was meant for every person on the face of the earth.

But the story is not over, because that sacrificial death was followed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ!  This was and still is a unique event in all of human history, because everyone else who has gone on before us is dead.  Even those who have founded all of the other religions of the world are  dead; their bones are decomposing in some grave right now.

And so the choice is now up to you and me.  If you by an act of your free will wish to follow a dead savior (and false substitutes are all around us), then you will end up just like him.  But if you by an act of your free will wish to follow the one and only living, resurrected Savior, then you will end up just like Him!

Let’s keep these truths foremost in our minds and hearts during this Passover/Easter season as we help a lost and dying world acknowledge the sacrifice of God’s Lamb and the statement of His victory over death through His bodily resurrection from the grave.

Devotedly your pastor,

Bill Blanchard