The Passover Pearl

The Passover Pearl


Can you remember the largest or most beautiful pearl you ever saw?
A genuine pearl of rare quality can reflect the colors of the rainbow like a diamond! Strangely, real pearls hide within a common-looking shell � easy to overlook. There is a holiday on the Jewish calendar that, for some, is also easy to overlook, but it, too, hides a truth that is very profound and beautiful.
Those who discover it find their lives being transformed to reflect it�s light as if it were their own! I call this truth, the �Pearl of Passover�!

In my Jewish family, we retold the Passover account every spring. At the family Seder (ritual meal), we celebrated the saving power of God as we recalled our nation�s supernatural deliverance from bondage in Egypt 3,400 years ago.
Being the youngest child in our family, I had to recite our ancient history in Hebrew. Let me share this joyful story once again with you�this time in English!


The ruler of Egypt (Pharaoh) had enslaved the Jewish people and set them to work building monuments and treasure cities for the fame of his throne.
In our suffering, we cried out to our God and He heard us. He chose a man named Moses to be the one to lead us to freedom in the land of Israel which He had first promised to our father, Abraham, some 400 years before!

God sent a message to Pharaoh through His prophet, Moses: Let my people go! Pharaoh�s answer was defiant: I know not your God, neither will I let the slaves go free!

So it happened that the Lord was required to show His power to Pharaoh by making the Egyptian people suffer. Nine times He struck the land of Egypt with a different plague and 9 times Pharaoh promised to release God�s people, only to break those promises as soon as the Lord lifted each plague! The Lord is merciful and full of compassion, but there is an end to even His patience with evil men! Here, in the words of the Scripture are His instructions to Moses as He prepared to unleash the 10th and final plague upon the stubborn Egyptians�

Now the LORD had said to Moses, �I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.
So Moses said, �This is what the LORD says: �About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt�worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.�
Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn�both men and animals�and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. � Exodus 11:1,4-7 and Ex. 12:3,5-7,12

The very next verse of Exodus (Chapter 12, verse 13) says�

� and when I see _________________________________________, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

Friend, do you know the missing words that should fill in the line above?
Here below are 4 possible choices you can select from.
Try each one out and see which sounds most likely to you�

a.)the mezuzah (prayer box) upon your door posts
b.)a child of Abraham abiding in that house
c.)the mitzvoth (righteous deeds) done by the children of Israel
d.)other (fill in your own)�

What did you choose? If you selected a, b or c, then you are probably a follower of the Judaism of the rabbis. They have taught us for 2,000 years that our salvation is either earned by the quantity/quality of the good deeds we do in this life, or else simply bestowed upon people of Jewish descent.
Tragically, neither is true.

As strange as it may seem to our modern-day minds, God did not
�pass over� the homes of the Jewish people because they were Jews!
Neither did He spare them because they had tried to keep His laws.
(The Torah commandments had not yet been given to us at that time.)

On that fearsome night so many years ago, the mercy of God recognized only one symbol of salvation. It was not a mezuzah, a mitzvah or a magen david.
There are really only 2 words missing from the verse quoted above, but those 2 small words can make the difference between heaven and hell for us all!

The 2 missing words in verse 13 above are simply these � �the blood � !

The thing that made all the difference to God was simply an ugly smear of lamb�s blood forming the shape of a cross upon the doorposts of those who had applied it there in humble obedience.

And here is the secret �Pearl of Passover�� the symbol of God�s salvation is still the blood of a perfect lamb to this very day!


Precious reader, the atoning blood of a sacrificial lamb may have lost its significance for our rabbis, but it has always been the central part of the Judaism of the Torah!

That is exactly why the last great prophet of the Old Covenant, Yonatan,
(John the Baptizer), became so excited when he first laid eyes on Yeshua (Jesus), crying:

Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! - John 1:29

How fitting, then, that Yeshua should spend His last night by celebrating the Passover with His followers. The gentiles call it �The Last Supper�, but it was really a Seder Meal! It was there that Yeshua lifted up the cup of wine symbolizing the blood of the Passover Lamb and spoke these awesome words�

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, �Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.�
-Matthew 26:27,28

Dear friend, by this declaration, Yeshua, the Messiah of God, invites you to partake in the �B�rit Hadash�, the New Covenant of our God.
This New Covenant was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah 600 years before Yeshua came to establish it. The prophet said�

�The time is coming,� declares the LORD, �when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,� declares the LORD.
�This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,� declares the LORD. �I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God,
and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, �Know the LORD,� because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,� declares the LORD. �For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.�- Jeremiah 31:31-34
You can begin to participate in this wonderful New Covenant today by believing that Yeshua was sent to us by our Yahweh to be the Passover Lamb of God. I urge you to do what the Jewish people did on that very first Passover night; apply the blood of this perfect sacrificial lamb to the doorposts and lintel of your heart in humble faith and obedience. When the Lord comes soon to judge the earth, He will not be looking for your mezuzah or your mitzvot, He will be looking for the blood that He Himself has given.
Only when He sees �the blood� will He �pass over� you, and you will be saved!
Do not scorn His precious provision. Remember the faith of Abraham when God called upon him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac�

Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, �Father?�
�Yes, my son?� Abraham replied.
�The fire and wood are here,� Isaac said, �but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?�
Abraham answered, �God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.�
-Genesis 22:7,8

As God faithfully provided His own sacrifice for our father Abraham then,
He has surely done it again in the person of Yeshua, the Lamb of God!

This is the �Pearl of Passover�. Believe it and obey it and your n�shama (soul)
will not only be saved in eternity, but God will also transform you here on earth to reflect the beauty of His redeeming love!


May God confirm His Truth to you with His Shalom�
I am His scribe and your friend,

Asher