Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.

We have had a couple of bottles of a rather strong cough medicine in our bathroom cabinet for a long time. I had often heard the virtues of this particular linctus being extolled. In fact, someone once asked me to pick up a bottle for him and his wife when they were quite poorly. It was the first time I’d heard of it, but I knew he held it in high regard!

However, when a pre-Christmas cold left me with a lingering chesty cough, I stopped looking at the bottles and admiring them, and I actually took some. It was only then that I was able to experience the beneficial effects for myself. I’d heard ‘testimony’ given by others, but now I knew its efficacy.

The gospel is the good news about Jesus – the Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.But Christ (the gospel) has to be personally appropriated. Each person has to “take” Jesus for themselves, and to themselves. Jesus is the unfailing cure for sin-sick people, but He must be taken.

One day, when I was pastor of a little church in Lancaster, I was serving communion, and I suddenly felt a tug on my trousers, somewhere around my knees. I looked down into a pair of big brown eyes, and a delightful Ugandan boy looked up at me and said, ‘I want to get Jesus!’ Jesus wants us to ‘get’ Him. We so need Him.

Of course, I had to keep taking the medicine after imbibing the first drop. I didn’t merely take one amount, but several. As Christians we never outgrow our need of the gospel. How we need to keep on preaching the great gospel truths to our own souls. We never stop taking the medicine.