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2 Chronicles 30:16-20 Hearts set to seek the Lord - Day 359

Good morning fellow members of the household of God,

After writing the devotional, I am thinking about the Passover as a household event.  In ancient Israel, the physical household of man was covered by the blood of the lamb.  Now, it is the spiritual household of God that is covered by the blood of the Lamb.

Blessings,

Jeff

The account of the greatest celebration of Passover since time of Solomon (v 26).  

Observations:

One of the things that made this one great is participation of some of the tribes from the northern kingdom.  Israel was a united kingdom and Solomon and now toward the end of the northern kingdom, there is at least a semblance of being united.

God allows some exemptions:

Who offers the sacrifice:  The original Passover was a family by family sacrifice of a lamb.  However in  Deuteronomy 16:5-6 this changed to a centralized location once they entered the promised land.  (You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, 6 but at the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt.)  But is was still by the family and not by Levites. Here, God allows Levites to make sacrifice because the people from the northern tribes had not been observing the "clean laws" and were therefore unclean.

When Passover is observed: Original was first month.  This one was delayed to second month to allow priests to cleanse themselves.

Why does God allow these exemptions: People had set their hearts to seek the Lord and Hezekiah had prayed asking for pardon.  Despite years of not keeping Passover properly and priests not keeping themselves clean, God is gracious and looks on the heart.  However, this does not set a precedence for continuing to not observe Passover properly or at any convenient time.  Hearts set to seek the Lord should change to do observe the requirements in the future. 

Keeping the "encouragement of returning exiles" in mind,  we see in Ezra that they kept the Passover in the first month but the priests and Levites still made the sacrifice.


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