Dear Christian friends:

Many of us are eagerly waiting for our Easter ham and those who do not believe in Jesus are more worried about their Easter ham than they are about the true meaning of Easter. Easter ham for mother and father and bunnies and eggs for the children.

God may in mercy give you an Easter ham today, but believe me, He has something much more wonderful for you than a ham. He has a Lamb for you.

Our text calls that Lamb our passover or Easter Lamb. You need God's Easter Lamb more than anything else in the world. Your Easter ham will help you live only a few hours or days, but God's Easter Lamb will give you life forever.

Let us therefore from our text consider:


In our text Paul says, "For even Christ our passover lamb is sacrificed for us." (verse 7) So Jesus is our Easter Lamb. He was killed for us just like the innocent lambs were killed 3,000 years ago under Moses. (Tell about the Passover.)

As the blood painted on the door posts saved the Jews from the angel of death as it passed over. So Jesus the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Jesus the Lamb of God, our Easter Lamb was slain upon the cross to suffer our sin-punishment. God forsook Him. He suffered the darkness and loneliness of hell for us and all people. He then rose from the dead on Easter morning. Jesus is truly our Easter Lamb.

What should this mean for us? It should change us to a new life in God. Paul says in verse 8, "Let us keep the feast (Easter) not with the old yeast of malice and wickedness; but with the new yeast of sincerity and truth."

The wonderful Easter news of the angel to the women: "And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay." (Matthew 28:56)

This Easter news should really change us and help us now to live for our wonderful Lord and Savior. The old false, vain ideas and ways of the proud sinful world no more interest and enslave us. Love for money, pleasure and self-indulgence. Living for this life only and forgetting God. Hiding sin; making death beautiful by many perfumes, embalming, flowers and pretty graves. Saying there is no hell, that all people go to heaven whether they believe in Jesus or not.

After you see the truth of Good Friday and Easter in Jesus Christ you ought to change. Keep Easter with sincerity (honesty) and truth about sin and Jesus: Be honest and true about heaven and hell. Be honest and true about serving God and your neighbor. Jesus has died and rose for you. There is new life for you now on earth and forever in heaven. In our Easter lamb we see the terrible cost of sin and the wonderful love of God for us sinners. This should touch our hearts and really change us to love God and cheerfully serve Him with all our powers.

Paul says in Romans 6:4, "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."

Easter should help you give up too much eating and too much drinking. Easter should help you give up greed and selfishness, adultery, stealing, cheating, lying and jealousy. Easter should help you to love God and your neighbor.

If you have accepted Jesus as your Easter Lamb you will begin to change and live for God; if you have not accepted Jesus for your Easter Lamb, then you will not care about anything else today, except your Easter ham and your Easter pleasures like the sinful world. May God give you His Spirit and help you accept His Easter Lamb with joy!

Amen.