The use.
milk and honey. So by the merit of the sacrifice of Christ the true Israelite turns his face from earth to heaven, from a world that lies in wickedness to an inheritance of the saints in light, and travels towards Canaan, whither he shall be sure to enter after he hath finished his pilgrimage, to feed upon the milk and honey, the glory and happiness proper to that state. Then shall all the ends of this passover be fulfilled and completed in the kingdom of God, Luke
22:16, and the soul remain for ever in a glorious state beyond the reach of its former tyrants, free from all fear of slavery, for ever rejoicing in the happy accomplishment of the promises of God. In short, as after the celebration of this passover in Egypt, all the promises of God to them began to take place and pass into performance, so by the death of Christ, the true passover, all the promises were made yea and amen in him, and began to be made good to every believer.
The use.
1. Of information, Is Christ called our passover? Then (1.) The study of the Old Testament is advantageous. The apostle here writes to the Corinthians, among whom were not only
Hellenists but Gentiles, who could not understand the nature and ends of the passover without the knowledge of the Old Testament. By this they are implicitly directed to the study of it. The Old Testament verifies the New, and the New illustrates the Old; the Old shews the promises of God, and the New the performance; what was predicted in the Old is fulfilled in the New. By comparing both together, the wisdom of God in his conduct is cleared, and the truth of God in his word confirmed. The Old Testament delivers the types, the New interprets them; the Old presents them like money in a bag, the New spreads them, and discovers the value of the coin. The Israelites in the Old felt the weight of the ceremonies, believers in the New enjoy the riches of them.
(2.) Upon what a slender thread doth the doctrine of transubstantiation hang. Christ is here called the passover. Was the paschal lamb therefore substantially the body of Christ? Were those lambs that were slain in Egypt, or at any other time, in the celebration of this ordinance, transubstantiated into Christ? Yet Christ is absolutely here called the passover, and in other places the Lamb, as the bread in the sacrament is called his body, or the wine his blood. Christ is said to be the rock of which the Israelites drank, 1
Cor. 10:4; was the rock, or the water that flowed from it, transubstantiated into Christ? But in Scripture the name proper to the thing represented is given to that which represents it. The lamb is called the passover, because it is a memorial of the angel's passing over the Israelites' families; and not only called so at the first institution, but above fifteen hundred years after that miraculous mercy. So the bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ, because they are memorials and signs of his body and blood. If the church of the Jews spake figuratively in the case of the passover, what difficulty is it that Christ should call the memorials of his body and blood by the name of the things they signified?
(3.) It gives us a probable reason for the change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first. That it is changed is evident by apostolical example. It is probable that from the creation the year began in September, the autumnal equinox, the fruits being on the trees at the creation;* but now God orders the beginning of the year from the time of this first passover, and the consequences following upon it, their deliverance from Egypt, which was in March, the vernal equinox: Exod. 12:2, 'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.'
Had the year began from March at the beginning, it had not been so proper to command them to begin it from that month, which they had always observed before as the beginning of the year. The Israelites had been as it were buried in Egypt, and this being the month of their resurrection, should be the first month of the year.
This change of the beginning of the year gives us a probable reason of the change of the Sabbath. If the beginning of the year were changed
upon the account of the type, a day might well be changed upon the account of the antitype. If this in the figure were counted greater than creation, that the month of the world's creation must give place to it, the substance of this figure appearing might well be the cause of the change of a day, and the seventh day of the creation give place to the first day of the perfection of redemption.
(4.) The ancient Jews were under a covenant of grace. Christ was the end, the spirit, the life of their sacrifices. The passover, rock, sacrifices, manna, were the swaddling-bands wherein he was wrapped. They 'ate of the same spiritual meat, drank of the same spiritual drink;' the 'rock which followed them,' cherished them, and watered them, 'was Christ,' 1 Cor. 10:3, 4. Christ to come was set forth to them as an object of faith. Christ was the rock, the passover sacramentally. Their sacraments and ours were the same inre, though diverse in signs. Hence their sacraments are attributed to us, circumcision and the passover, spiritually; ours in the same manner to them, baptism and the Lord's Supper, 1 Cor. 10:2, 3. They indeed had Christ, as it were, in his infancy; we in his ripe and full age. They had him under the obscure veils of lambs, bullocks, goats; we have him in his person. They had the sun under a cloud; we the sun at noonday in his glory.
2. Comfort; in the security Christ procures. The destroying angel was not to enter into any sprinkled house, no passage was afforded to him. The wrath of God, or the malice of the devil, can have no power over them that are sprinkled with the blood of Christ. In the efficacy.
The blood of the lamb was but a sign of that deliverance of the Israelites, but could not purge their defiled consciences; but the blood of our Lamb hath merited our salvation, can cleanse our consciences from dead and condemning works to serve the living
God, and rejoice in him, who, without this sprinkling, will be to us a consuming fire. As the passover was killed, that he might be their food as well as their security, so was Christ crucified, that he might be our atonement and our nourishment, our shield and our food, to make us partakers of his benefits by a spiritual application, and a