What is Pesach (Passover), and how do I keep it?

Pesach, Passover, is the first of the moedim, the appointed times HaShem sets on His own calendar in Leviticus 23:5: the fourteenth day of the first month, at twilight. Its story is told in Exodus 12. Israel was enslaved in Egypt, and on the night of deliverance every household took a lamb, put its blood on the doorposts, and ate it roasted in haste. Where the blood was, the destroyer passed over. Where it was absent, the firstborn died. Israel walked out of slavery the next morning, a free people, because they had trusted the blood of a lamb.

That is the historical meaning, and it is enough to make the night holy on its own. But the picture runs deeper. Sha'ul (Paul) writes plainly, Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7). Yeshua (Jesus) was crucified at Passover, at the very season when lambs were being slain in Jerusalem, and His blood does what the lamb's blood pictured: it marks a people for life, and death passes over them. Passover is not an old Jewish holiday that the cross left behind. It is the appointed time HaShem built, centuries in advance, to teach His people how He saves.

Here is the gentle turn. You may have been told these are simply the Jewish feasts, someone else's holidays. But read the text: HaShem calls them my appointed times (Leviticus 23:2). They are His, and He invites all who belong to Him to meet Him there. Keeping Pesach is not earning anything; it is showing up where He said He would be.

So how do you keep it, starting out? Keep it simple. Share a seder meal, a guided supper that retells the Exodus, on the evening of the fourteenth. Eat unleavened bread (matzah) and bitter herbs as the text describes. Many use cups of wine or juice to mark the movements of the story. And do the one thing Exodus presses hardest: tell the story to your children. When your child asks, What does this ceremony mean to you, you answer, It is the Passover sacrifice of the LORD (Exodus 12:26-27). You do not need a perfect liturgy. You need a table, the bread, the cup, the story, and a heart that wants to remember how HaShem redeems.

Be Berean: read Exodus 12 and 1 Corinthians 5:7 side by side, and watch the lamb of Egypt and the Lamb of Calvary become one picture.