The most beautiful time of year has arrived in Israel: Passover season! Winter rains have given way to picturesque wildflowers and tree blossoms dotting the country. Sweet, intoxicating aromas breeze through the air. Birds chirp melodies that soothe the soul. Against this re-awakening of creation’s natural order, the days leading up to Passover are normally marked by a happy, nationwide hustle-bustle. Normally, families cheerfully stock up on holiday goods and gifts, undertake a “holy spring cleaning” to remove leaven from their homes, gather with loved ones, and plan recreational outings.
But this year is different.
Tensions hang heavy in the air. There is mounting angst over the ongoing captivity of our hostages. Battle fatigue is palpable. Daily life is disrupted by Houthi missiles in the center of the country, with rockets falling again in the north and south from Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively. A potentially earth shattering, military confrontation with Iran looms on the horizon. Internal, anti-Netanyahu strife continues to escalate, threatening civil war.
And so, Passover seders (liturgical table observances) around the nation are expected to be more sober than celebratory this year.
For decades, our own family seders have been worshipful, Yeshua-centered memorials recounting ancestral history. But this year, worldwide, genocidal hate for Jews proves that ancient Egypt’s campaign against God’s people is no remote tale or mere, distant memory. In 2025, history has popped alive. The Exodus-Passover story reflects present day reality as never before in our generation.
In the Exodus account, difficult circumstances grew worse and worse before they got better. The Hebrews suffered increasingly harsh brutalities as slaves of a demonized pharaoh. Under his leadership the Egyptians suffered as well, enduring ten devastating plagues. Through it all, God heard the peoples’ cries–and out of this unprecedented ordeal came unparalleled redemption.
In 2025, as circumstances seem to get worse and worse for Israel and people groups surrounding her, we cry out to God and believe for a similar deliverance. He is faithful!
When YHVH intervened at the original Passover, more than a few Egyptians chose to align with the Hebrews. They applied the prescribed blood of a lamb to their doorposts and were spared from death. Then they journeyed with the Jews to the Promised Land. Exodus 12:38 refers to this company as a “mixed multitude.” We can view them as a foreshadow of the New Covenant one new man in Messiah. (Ephesians 2:14-16).
In 2025, Gentile followers of Yeshua who bless, align and journey with Israel, withstanding the mounting tide of anti-Semitism, will also gain a special place in God’s land of promise, metaphorically and literally, now and forever.
The Exodus-Passover story, with its prophetic Messianic foreshadowing, culminates in the New Covenant redemption of humankind by Yeshua, the Lamb of God. This weekend, Jewish households will remember how the blood of a lamb, applied to the doorposts of our ancestors’ homes, spared our people from death unto life. Please pray that through the seder, many who do not yet know Yeshua will behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. ( John 1:29, 2 Corinthians 3:15-17)
May your own observance of Passover refresh your spirit in the abundant goodness of God, who so loved the world He gave us the Messiah, that whoever would believe in Him would pass over from death to life evermore!