The Beginning of Months

“This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves…” Exodus 12:2-3a.

There is the Passover, with its emphasis on the individual and families, and then there is the Day of Atonement, with its emphasis on the nation. We have the individual and we have the collective. I can deny neither my individual sin nor the collective sin that I partake of – I ought to confess both, I ought to repent of both.

We ought to have a “beginning of months” – there ought to be a time, or a season, when we can say, “I ate the Lamb and the judgment of God passed over me.” Some of us are blessed to be able to never remember a time when we were not eating the Lamb, but for many of us, perhaps for most of us, there is a time or a season that we can look back to and say, “Ah, that was the beginning of months in my life, that was the first month of the first year of my new life in Jesus Christ.”

Those who can look to such a time ought to rejoice with those who were truly raised eating the Lamb and have never known anything different; and those who were raised eating the Lamb ought to rejoice with those who have come to the Table later in life. Both ought to know and confess that the judgment of God passes over them because of the Lamb, and only because of the Lamb.

Is the blood of the Lamb on the doorpost and lintel of my house (Exodus 12:7)? Is it on my heart and mind and soul and spirit? Is it on the temple of my body? Is it on me? Does it testify that I belong to Jesus Christ, that I was once a sinner under the judgment of God – but that God saw the blood of the Lamb and passed over me?

When was your beginning of months? When was the last time you shared your story with someone?

“For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” (1 Cor. 5:7b).