Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1637
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, January 1, 1882
“And the Lord spoke unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” Exodus 12:1,2.
In all probability up to that time the year had been supposed to begin in the autumn. The question has been raised at what season of the year did God create man and it has been decided by many that it must have been in autumn, so that when Adam was placed in the garden he might at once find fruits ripe and ready for his use. It has not seemed probable that he would have begun his career while as yet all fruits were raw and green—therefore many have concluded that the first year of human history began in the time of harvest—when fruits were mellowed for man’s food. For this reason, perhaps, in the old times the new year began when the feast of harvest had been celebrated.
Here, at the point of the Exodus, by a decree of God, the commencement of the year was altered and, so far as Israel was concerned, the opening of the year was fixed for the time of our spring—in the month called Abib, or Nisan. We know that a little before the barley was in the ear, (see Exodus 9:31), and on the Sabbath after the Passover, the produce of the earth was so far advanced that the first fruits were offered and a sheaf of new barley was waved before the Lord. Of course, when I speak of spring and then of ears of barley, you must remember the difference of climate, for in that warm region the seasons are far in advance of ours.
You must pardon me if my ideas should become a little mixed—you can correct them easily at your leisure. From the time when the Lord saved His people from destruction by passing over them, the ecclesiastical year began in the month of Abib, in which the Passover was celebrated. The Jubilee Year was not altered, but began in the autumnal equinox. The Jews seem to have had two or three beginnings of the year in relation to different purposes, but the ecclesiastical year, the great year by which Israel reckoned its existence, commenced, from then on, in the month Abib, when the Lord brought His people out with a high hand and an outstretched arm.
It is with God to change times and seasons as He pleases and He has done so for great commemorative purposes. The change of the Sabbath is on the same manner, for whereas the day of rest was formerly the seventh, it is now merged in the Lord’s Day, which is the first day of the week. As Herbert says, “He did unhinge the day,” and He set the Sabbath on golden hinges by consecrating the day of His Resurrection. To every man God makes such a change of times and seasons when He deals with him in a way of Grace, for all things are become new within him and, therefore, he begins a new chronology. Some of us used to think our birthday fell at a certain time of the year, but now we regard with much more delight another day as our true birthday, since on that second natal day we began truly to live! Our calendar has been altered and amended by a deed of divine Grace!
This morning I want to bring to your mind the fact that, just as the people of Israel, when God gave them the Passover, had a complete shifting and changing of all their dates and began their year on quite a different day, so when God gives to His people to eat the spiritual Passover, there takes place in their chronology a very wonderful change. Saved men and women date from the dawn of their true life—not from their first birthday—but from the day wherein they were born again of the Spirit of God—and entered into the knowledge and enjoyment of spiritual things.
The Passover is, as we all know, a type of the great work of our redemption by the blood of Jesus, and it represents the personal application of it to each Believer. When we perceive the Lord’s act of passing over us because of Christ’s atoning Sacrifice, then it is that we begin to live and from that day we date all future events. So this morning we shall first describe the event. Secondly, mention varieties of its recurrence and thirdly, consider in what light the day of this grand event is to be regarded according to the Law of the Lord.
I. First, then, let us describe this remarkable event which was to stand at the head of the Jewish year and, indeed, at the commencement of all Israelite chronology. First, this event was an act of salvation by blood. You know how the elders and heads of families, each one, took the lamb and shut it up, that they might examine it carefully. Having chosen a
lamb without blemish, in the prime of its life, they kept it by itself as a separated and consecrated creature. And after four days they slew it and caught its blood in a basin. When this was done, they took hyssop, dipped it in the blood, and sprinkled the lintel and the two side posts of their houses with it.