But why this desire? The events will show. It was the time of the great feast of the Passover, which the Jews kept every year to commemorate the miracle which took place when that whole nation was in bondage in Egypt--a miracle which brought about their deliverance. Their Egyptian masters refused to set them free, in spite of many warning plagues which God sent upon them; and at last, one terrible night, the angel of God passed through that doomed land, and in the morning the first-born in every Egyptian house lay dead. {92} The Israelites had been commanded by Almighty God, through Moses, to prepare for this, and what they did became, as God intended, a ceremony typical of the greatest mystery the world has ever known--the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, the deliverance of the world from the slavery of sin and hell by that death, and the institution of a sacrifice which, should be an ever-present, continual, and lively memorial of that act. This is what they did: They killed a lamb without spot or blemish; ate it with unleavened bread; and sprinkled the door-posts of their houses with its blood. "I am the Lord. The blood shall be unto you for a sign in the houses where you shall be, and I shall see the blood, and shall pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I shall strike the land of Egypt." [Footnote 21] [Footnote 21: Exod. xii. 13.] The performance of this solemn commemorative ceremony was obligatory upon every Jewish family, and this was the occasion which brought our Lord and His disciples together, and you see how exactly the sacrificial death of the Paschal Lamb, the sprinkling of its blood on the door posts, typified the death of Jesus, the Immaculate Lamb of God, whose blood was sprinkled on the wood of the cross. But there is something else for us to note. A part of the lamb was to be eaten, and with unleavened bread. {93} What was that a type of? Was Jesus, the Lamb of God, slain for our sins, to be eaten, and with unleavened bread? Listen to what He said some time before this night: "I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." [Footnote 22] [Footnote 22: St. John vi. 52.] [USCCB: St. John vi. 51.]