The Bible is fractal. It works on the micro level, and the macro level. It contains truths and history in the countless moments of Passover that believers experience day by day, but it also points to the big Days.

The observance of Passover, that the Jews have observed for thousands of years, is “instruction,” Torah. The observance is given to help them, and all of us understand what God is doing from beginning to the end.

Passover commemorates God’s rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Each year Jews around the world remember that God intervened in their history at that moment, and what has come since, the generations and the nation, have been blessed by what He gave them then.

However, with eyes of faith we see that freedom from slavery is not a national thing. And that Pharoah is not the one who holds my fate enthralled.

Slavery is very individual. And something far worse and unseen holds me captive. For forty years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, because Passover had not saved them from the fear and mistrust that lived inside them. Their bodies weren’t in Egypt, but their minds and hearts still were.

But God knew that! He gave them the Passover feast, not just to remind them of what He did, but also to point to a thousand little lessons He was still doing. And an even bigger miracle that was coming. The Biggest Day of Passover that was to come. “He was, He is, and He is to come!”

Passover was an historical event, but it is also a motif that repeats. Pointing to a Truth that is bigger than one nation or one generation, but an individual and universal truth that we all are slaves, and that we all owe God our lives and Sin our deaths, but He desires a way that we can have both freedom from our slavery and the life that He gave. He desires to Passover us and give us Peace.

In 2 Samuel 24:18-25, God is judging Israel for David’s sin. (I think He is also teaching David that the consequences of his decisions affect others as much if not more than they do him. As king, he carries a heavier responsibility. But that is another lesson.) David sees this and repents. He says to God, “Let your hand fall on me and on my household.” God sends a prophet to show him how to stop the angel of death from passing through Jerusalem. David does what the prophet says. He buys the threshing floor of Arauna and makes a sacrifice. It is not exactly like Passover, but it is a redemption, through the blood of another, bought and sacrificed by the shepherd of the people. It’s no accident that this takes place on a threshing floor. In many ways it is David’s heart that is being threshed, to reveal the ways in which it is like God’s, a golden kernel of life-giving wheat, willing to sacrifice himself for his people.

Years later, at Passover time, Jesus celebrates Passover with His disciples and says that He is the Passover lamb. Our debt to God and covenant with sin and death will be removed. Judgment from God will pass us by and our obligation to obey sin and serve it as master will be annulled by His blood, bought with His hand, our shepherd.

On the True Passover, a choice Lamb, a Suffering Son of David, would once again stand before God and face the Angel of Death and say, “Spare the people. Let your judgment fall on Me.”  Jesus is that Lamb, and that Shepherd. Calvary is the threshing floor and the cross is the threshing rod and the altar. He died on Passover, because God is using these feasts to point us to eternal truths.

We do need to be rescued from slavery, but not the slavery of circumstances. The slavery that exists in our hearts. The slavery that keeps us from Faith, from God, and from each other.

The Bible is fractal. Passover was true for the nation of Israel. Passover is true on the Cosmic level. Jesus has beaten Sin and Death. And Passover is true for you. If you observe it and trust Him for it, in all the little fears and circumstances of a thousand different days. He has given you the freedom to say to Fear, to Anxiety, to Addiction, to Anger, to Jealousy and Greed, “Pass on! I owe you nothing. My debt is paid, and my life is His.”

And what follows Passover? We rise up and we walk out of the “Egypt” of serving all these petty masters. He leads us to a new place where we live a whole new life free of all these. We walk out of our old natures and into His Image of generosity, love and peace.