Rescued, Then Defined

Transcript

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[0:00] Let's go now to our sermon, and our sermon text is Exodus 12, verses 17 through 27. Again, we're going through a second of a six-week series on the Old Testament. We're going to be looking at how the Old Testament points forward to Jesus a lot of the time in this series, but sometimes it's going to be just about what does the Old Testament contain, what are the important stories. Four of the most important elements of the Old Testament, and really the Bible in general, are in Genesis and Exodus. These two books, Genesis and Exodus, last week we did Genesis, this week we're doing Exodus, these are super important books. So in Genesis 1 through 3 we have the most important story, which is the story of creation and fall. And by definition it's the most important of them because everything flows from that. Without the creation of the world we wouldn't have any other stories, right? But also the fall. So can we understand ourselves? Can we understand the fall? Right?

[1:24] Right? So that's two in Genesis and now two in Exodus. The second of the three, sort of the remaining three, is Exodus 12, which we're going to look at today, which is about the Passover. And then in Exodus 20 is the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. So you have four really important stories in the Old Testament. Creation in the fall, the call of Abraham, that's in Genesis. In Exodus, you have the story of the Passover and the deliverance of the people out of Egypt, and then the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. So those are like, if you want to know the Old Testament and you get those four down, you've got like 75% of it, I would say. It's super important stories that extend well beyond the Old Testament as well. Now the story of Abraham, I'll just sort of real quickly, the story of Abraham sets out the story of God's chosen people, but it also reinforces that God is a faithful partner. Even when we're not. So God is always making covenants with Abraham, and Abraham doesn't always keep them, but God does. So God's faithfulness is on display in the story of Abraham. The story of Passover, which we'll look at today, defines God as one who rescues his people from bondage. So the story of Passover is really a story about God.

[2:35] About God as the Redeemer, as the Rescuer. And the giving of the law is God's first attempt at reconciling our disobedience with his holiness and his faithfulness. So God's faithfulness is on display in the story of Abraham. So that's his first attempt. What's the second attempt? Well, we'll figure that out one of these days, okay? That's going to get you to come back next week. We'll find out more. So today we're going to take up Exodus 12 and the Passover, partly because of all the stories in Exodus, this one points most clearly to Jesus in the New Testament. So think about how this sounds a bit like Jesus. Of course, Victoria gave away all the highlights in the children's sermon, but she saved a little thunder for me, I guess. But let's go to our reading now. Exodus 12, beginning at verse 17. And this is the Lord speaking.

[3:23] Celebrate this festival of unleavened bread, for it will remind you that I brought your forces out of the land of Egypt on this very day. This festival will be a permanent law for you. Celebrate this day from generation to generation. The bread you eat must be made without yeast from the evening of the 14th day of the first month until the evening of the 21st day. During those seven days, there must be no trace of yeast in your homes. Anyone who eats anything made with yeast during this week will be cut off from the community of Israel. These regulations apply both to the foreigners living among you and to the native-born Israelites. During those days, you must not eat anything made with yeast. Wherever you live, eat only bread made without yeast. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel together and said to them, Go, pick out a lamb or young goat for each of your families and slaughter the Passover animal. Drain the blood into a basin, then take a bundle of hyssop branches and dip it into the blood. Brush the hyssop across the top and sides of the door frames of your houses, and no one may go out through the door until morning. For the Lord will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians.

[4:43] But when he sees the blood on the tops and sides, the Lord will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down. Remember, these instructions are a permanent law that you and your descendants must observe forever. When you enter the land the Lord has promised to give you, you will continue to observe this ceremony. Then your children will ask, What does this ceremony mean?

[5:16] You will reply, It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, and though he struck the Egyptians, he spared our families. When Moses had finished speaking, all the people bowed down to the ground and worshiped. Let's pray.

[5:36] Father, thank you for this word, your word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, Amen. So here's a real quick background of how we got this far in Exodus. And I think most of you know it, but this is good just to go over it again. And if you don't know it, then you'll hear it for the first time, which I think is good. So Moses was chosen by God to lead his people out of Egypt and slavery. Okay, so God says, You're going to take my people out of slavery and into a new land.

[6:10] Moses was reluctant. He didn't really think he had what it took, but God kind of saw something in him. And really, God was going to be speaking through him anyway. So it kind of doesn't matter how good Moses was at it. It was that God was going to be speaking through him, and God was going to be performing the many miracles that took place that got the people out of Egypt. So as you would expect, slaveholders don't just give freedom to their slaves. They're like, that's our property. We don't just give stuff away. We don't get rich by giving things away. It's really rare. In American history, there's a few examples of slaveholders voluntarily freeing their slaves for various reasons. And one would hope sometimes because they realized slavery was evil, but not always.

[6:57] But it's hard to give up your property. And so clearly the people of Egypt and definitely the king of Egypt, Pharaoh, did not want to give away these slaves. These were valuable to him. They were valuable. They were building all sorts of things for him, right? And they paid them. They didn't even pay them. They just gave them enough food to barely survive.

[7:16] And so God told Moses to warn the king of Egypt that unless the people were freed and allowed to leave the country, there would be a series of plagues that would really impact the land and the people. And so we got the list, right?

[7:28] And in some cases, the plague came and Pharaoh wasn't even that impressed. He's like, oh, I can do those. I have some people in my employment that can do some of those plagues. That's not that hard. Other times he's like, whoa, this is serious. And he kind of was like, I better pay attention, right? But in the end, after nine plagues, he was still unmoved. He didn't want to give away the slaves. He didn't want to let them go free.

[7:55] So finally, God told Moses to give one last chance. Let my people go or the worst plague yet would come, which would be that the firstborn of all the families of Egypt, including their livestock, would be killed.

[8:09] And Pharaoh was not persuaded. So it kind of had to happen. The plague descended. The plague descended on the land. And killing, we have to imagine that thousands of people died, including, of course, children. So we're going to get to that a little bit later. This is difficult. We shouldn't shy away from it. We shouldn't not talk about it. That what we would consider innocent people among the Egyptian families died as a consequence of the intransigence of the king of Egypt, right? So we're going to get to that a little later on. But let's hold on to that. Because we can talk about it. There's nothing in the Bible that we can't talk about and try to understand a bit better. But it should be concerning to us, and it is concerning to us. Okay. So the people of Israel who followed God's commandment to sacrifice a lamb, they took his blood, they marked their doorways with it. They were spared from the plague, right? And this was God's protection of his people and his rescuing act. Pharaoh used violence to control the people, and nonviolent attempts to persuade him never really worked. So finally, God made it impossible for him to ignore. So God finally, God's power. God kept ratcheting up the consequences. And finally, Pharaoh then did relent.

[9:21] And he said, okay, we'll let your people go. Just get them out of here. I can't even look at them anymore. So they gathered up all their things and left, only to have Pharaoh change his mind one more time and send his army out to destroy them. You know, he's just a very difficult person, Pharaoh. And there's a whole other sort of question that comes up about that that we're not going to go into today. But it was, it's just back and forth, back and forth, always changing his mind.

[9:46] So the army's at their tail. They're up against the water on their way out. And God parts the ocean, or the sea, and the people run through there on dry land. And all the while, God's holding this army at bay with a giant pillar of fire that's kind of standing in their way. And then God takes away that pillar of fire. And the Egyptian army follows them into this dry land in the midst of the parted sea.

[10:16] And as soon as all the Israelites were safely on the other side, then the waters collapsed and destroyed Pharaoh's army. So that was, you know, that's dramatic. If you watch the King of Egypt, the video is kind of really dramatic, right? And so Pharaoh lost both the firstborns from his land, but also his army in short order. So there's a true defeat for Pharaoh. And so that's kind of the story. And so that's kind of the background. That's how we get up to even a little past where we are today. So that's sort of the narrative. But today's text is really about the Passover itself, and more specifically the aspect of it that is ordained as a religious observance for the year to come. Did you notice there was a lot of talk about how to keep this feast, when to keep this feast, you know? A lot of details, right? So it says, how to prepare a meal in haste that would give people energy for a difficult journey. So they would have definitely eaten that lamb that they sacrificed. They would have eaten that lamb that they sacrificed. They would have eaten that lamb that they sacrificed. And they would have eaten it with bread that they made very quickly, right? And it says, get rid of the yeast from your house for a whole week, right?

[11:26] So that you can make bread quickly. And if you've ever made bread at home, like waiting for it to rise, eh, it takes a while. 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on your recipe. It's not a quick thing. Whereas like flapjacks, you know, you can make that in a few minutes, right? It doesn't taste as good. It's not as airy and it's not as fluffy. But the point of this was that you need to move quickly because the word is going to come that you're going to be set free. And you need, before he changes his mind again, you need to get out of there. So you need to make bread and food for the journey. You need to eat so that you have a full belly so you can leave. And so the idea was you make bread, unleavened bread, un-yeasted bread, un-rizen bread, so that you can prepare it quickly and take it with you and it won't spoil. And just it's a way of being faithful to God. So then it talks about how and when to remember this event of God rescuing his people. So there's like, did you catch that? Like this is something that you have to do forever. Like there's no expiration date on this commandment. It's not, you don't do this for 50 years. You do this forever. In essence, this becomes who you are. This becomes your religious practice from now on.

[12:45] You're going to do this every, every new year on the 15th day of the first month of the year. Now, one thing that's kind of interesting, and I think it's helpful because it helps us understand a lot of other things in the Old Testament, is that the Jewish faith uses a lunar calendar. Right? And a lot of older civilizations used a lunar calendar. And in fact, Israel, the current country of Israel, uses a lunar calendar. As do many Muslim nations use a lunar calendar. Right? And a lunar cycle is 29.5 days. All right. So that's challenging because how many are those in a year? Well, somewhere between 12 and 13. And if you don't pay attention, pretty soon the months kind of get off from the seasons. Right? So in, there's a complex series of equations, which you can get to it, that every so often the, in the Jewish calendar at least, they add one extra month into the calendar of 12 months. They add a 13th month in to bring everything back into alignment. Isn't that interesting? Right? So, but the new, the month always starts with the new moon. A new moon is when you can't see the moon at all.

[13:59] And we have something similar. We have what we call a solar calendar. Our calendar is based on the sun. Right? We count the days instead of the months. But we have problems too. Because our year is not exactly 365 days. So every four years we have a leap, instead of a leap month, we have a leap day. To kind of bring us back into alignment.

[14:19] Also, so every four years, except for years that end in 00. Did you know that? Years that end in 00? Which is divisible by four. Yet there's no leap day on that day. That's kind of little, little tweaks there. Okay? And it turns out every now and then, I guess the U.S. government adds or subtracts a second from the calendar. Right? When we're not watching. To keep things going. It's a conspiracy. No, it's not.

[14:46] But because, would you be surprised to know that all these orbital things are perturbed by other gravitational forces in the universe and in the solar system. And so these, the length of a year is even not the same from year to year. From time to time. Interesting. Okay. So. Like, what kind of sermon is this? Is this an astronomy lesson? Kind of. So anywho, and it is right here. It says in my text, anywho.

[15:19] Anywho, Jewish festivals generally are on the 15th day of the lunar month. Which start with the new moon. And thus the 15th day is when the moon is full. And you have a festival and you can see at night. Because the festival is a party. And you go out and you have fun. And you're with your neighbors. And you're celebrating. And you want to be able to see what's happening. If it's not cloudy out, the moon, the full moon will light your day, your night up. And you can, God wants his people to celebrate. This is a celebration. Okay? So the 15th is when the moon is full. People can see. And Passover is generally on the first, so the first lunar month begins after the vernal equinox. Okay? And so the Passover is the first full moon after the vernal equinox. And our holiday of Easter, which you've noticed is movable, is connected to Passover. So generally, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. So our observation of Easter and all the days that are counted after that, like Pentecost and all the rest, those are on a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar. All right. So today's reading is about two things. I want to really kind of sort of highlight this. One is that God rescues his people from bondage.

[16:43] So this defines who God is. God is the one who hears and sees that his people are suffering. And he does something about it. And he comes in with a mighty hand. And he pulls them out of bondage. He uses his servants like Moses to do it. And he definitely intervenes in history. So this is a really important thing, that God intervenes in human history. And in very important ways to rescue his people. And you could say he did the same thing with Jesus. The other thing that our reading is about is that God wants the memory of this to stay alive and become a defining story for his people for all time. And so this has two functions. One is that it happened and it saved the people. The other is that God says, I don't want you to forget about it. I want you to keep paying attention to who this is because it defines who I am. And it defines who you are in relationship to me. So over and over in the Old Testament, God will end a sentence with something like this. There are many variations of it. But a lot of times in the Old Testament when God says something kind of big.

[17:43] You know there was that one, I think it was Mando. It was one of the new Star Wars things. And there was that one character who was kind of the small guy. And after he had said something kind of important, he would say, I have spoken.

[17:54] I have spoken. You know, kind of like, that's how he punctuated really important things he was saying. That's how God does that. But God did it first. You know, and he does it better. So when God says something really important in the Old Testament, he says this. Something like this. He says, remember that I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

[18:12] Remember who I am. I took you out of the land of Egypt. This is who I am. I rescued you. And then he says, I have spoken. He doesn't have to say that, but he could. So then the people might even say to themselves, who are we? Like if we had to define ourselves, who are we? Somebody might ask them, who are you guys? And they would be like, we are the people that God brought us into. We came out of Egypt with great power. That's who we are. That's our identity, right? So this story and the observance of it every year is in the Passover feast. It's completely central to the identity of the Jewish religion. Like if you would ask them, what's one of the most important stories in your religion? They would say Passover. You know, the story of the rescuing of us out of Egypt. So this is super important, right?

[18:57] Now, our second, our first reading. That I read earlier, kind of in an angry voice. Our first reading starts to link this story to Jesus. And this is where we want to go sometimes with this sermon series. To say, what is it in the Old Testament that's pointing forward to Jesus? So Paul again is writing in the context of the church that needs to discipline a member. He's having an affair with his stepmother and the people in the church are applauding him for it. And Paul's like flabbergasted, like how could this be? And in the Passover story, yeast is something that slows the people down, right? It keeps them from following the commands that they need to do to be rescued. So yeast in their house isn't necessarily evil. It's just, it's an impediment to getting rescued. Like yeast is something that will keep you from getting rescued. Think about that, right? And so Jesus himself complains about the yeast of the Pharisees. Their wrong teachings and their wrong thinking that can keep growing unless it's thrown out. And as we know, yeast is an organic. It's an organism. And it reproduces, right? That's how it works. And Jesus says that even, you know, a little bit in the batch makes the whole batch go bad. You have to throw it all out and start over.

[20:10] And that's what the apostle Paul says too in 1 Corinthians 5. You have to throw the whole batch out. But for Paul, the yeast is the presence of an unrepented and grave sin in the body. And in his view, not confronting it will make it worse. So in other words, for Paul, he says, you have to extract the yeast from your dough or else it's going to keep spreading. So you have to confront this man who's doing this thing or else five other people are going to start doing something equally crazy because it seems like the new normal in your church. But it can't be the new normal in your church. You have to have a meeting. You have to throw this guy out. You do it to save his soul so you get his attention and you pray for him to come back and you still stay available to him. But he can't be in the church. You can't let that stand, right?

[20:55] So, and then Paul says, Christ is our Passover lamb. That's what he said in the reading. And so in this context, it means that Jesus saves us, even from our grave sins. Like Jesus, we may have grave sins in the church. We have to confront them. But even all of us are sinning. So we all need Christ's blood on our doorstep, on our doorframe, to save us, to pass over us. So Jesus is sacrificed in his death on the cross. Again, Victoria took all the thunder here. His blood is spilled out. And it's his blood of sacrifice that turns away the destroyer. And it rescues us not from physical slavery, but also from, but really from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil. So Jesus saves us by his blood. And he is the Passover lamb, the real Passover lamb, I would say, to which the old Passover lamb has always been pointing. And this is in many ways that the New Testament is the fulfillment or the completion of the Old Testament. So Jesus, in many stories of the Old Testament, in Jesus, many of the old stories of the Old Testament are brought to completion. The fall of Genesis, the fall in Genesis chapter 3 is answered by Jesus saving us. He blesses all the nation as God promised Abraham, what happened through Abraham's descendants.

[22:14] And he keeps the law of God perfectly. So those are some of those major stories that we talked about at the beginning. We see that Jesus is really connected to them in all sorts of ways. Okay. So one thing that I promised, and that was this idea of really, we want to take just a minute here to say, how should we respond when we read a story about God taking the life of all these Egyptians, some of them who were children, right? And say, how do we square that up? Because that's the difficult thing, right? And one, I'm not saying this is the only way, but one way is that to think about it is that, people back then might not be as concerned about it as we are. And the reason is that people back then understood collective guilt differently than we do. We're Americans. Everything is individualistic for us. I didn't do anything wrong, so I can't be punished for what other people in my family did, or what my ancestors did, or what other people in my nation have done, or other people in my tribe have done. But back then there was a stronger sense of collectivism and collective guilt, and sometimes collective virtue.

[23:22] And that, yes, my whole country has enslaved these Hebrews. And God is punishing not just the leaders who made it all happen, but everybody who benefited from it. So in that sense, back then it would not have, they wouldn't have batted quite as many eyes at it. But I still think it's a challenge for us in our understanding. I think what we have to say is that slavery was wrong, God was offended by it, God tried many times to get his people out of there in nonviolent ways, but it just never took. And so Pharaoh finally had to let them go.

[23:57] But it doesn't mean it's resolved. It's not resolved in my mind. So we have to live in this tension that there's some difficult things in the Old Testament. When we get to the part about how the land had to, they were given the land, but there were already people there. And those people had to go. That's a challenge. We're going to get to that eventually, but it's a difficult one.

[24:17] But you know, it's not so different from even thinking in the 19th century of America. And I want to tell you about Abraham Lincoln talking about this in his second inaugural address. You have to read his second inaugural address. It's not even that long. It's really amazing. It's one of the shorter ones. He wonders aloud if somehow the cost of slavery and blood and toil to the slaves would have to be paid back in full over many generations. Right? Like this sin, this kind of almost sin, almost an original sin of our country, Abraham Lincoln was saying, over which we're fighting a war right now. And it's extracting its toll. He was saying, how much more will we have to pay for this? And it stretches into the future even to people, even the people who didn't own slaves were paying for it. So Abraham Lincoln actually had a collectivist view of the guilt of the nation, which is really interesting when you think about it.

[25:15] And I think we can ask if we have still, not fully paid back for the sins of slavery. I think that's a very interesting question for us. Okay? I don't know what that looks like. I really don't. But I think it's a fair and a good question. And it's the kind of question that a really thoughtful Christian would ask themselves. And they'd say, what consequences of something that people in this country, and you could say, you know, my mom came to the United States from Norway in 1963. She had nothing to do with it. Well, you know, we could, you could all play those games with the realities we're all living here now. And in some level, it's collectively part of our identity as Americans. This is what Lincoln says in his address. He says, yet if God wills that the war, he doesn't say the war, but this is, he's talking about the war, the conflict. If God wills it that the war continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. That's Lincoln saying, God alone knows how much more we're going to have to pay for this collectively.

[26:45] So even collectively, I think we can understand that a nation can be collectively responsible for something. And so that may be collectively punished for something. Sorry, America. Sorry. I mean, I'm saying this to myself. I'm an American. I love individuality. I love, you know, it's just who I am. It's built into me. But I think the Bible is stretching us to say, yes, in some ways we're individuals right before God. But in other ways, we stand collectively before God. And you can't, it's not binary. It's not all one. It's not one or all the other. It's kind of a tension that you have to live in.

[27:21] So finally, I want to leave with this message. There's a lot of unresolved questions there. Come talk to me if you want to. And I won't have any answers, I promise you. But we can talk. There's a lot of unanswered questions in all of this. But that's good. We have to wrestle with them. I want to leave with this one message. Today is about the Passover as God's rescuing act for his people. But it's also about God's creating an identity for his people. This is really important. You're supposed to do this forever. This feast. Do it forever. I mean, what other instructions have you gotten that say, do this forever?

[27:54] Like, it's really something. I'm really struck by that. God says, you're going to do this forever. And the child says, why do we do this? We do this because we need to remind ourselves that God brought us out of the land of Egypt. Right? And we need to teach our children why we do the things we do when we worship. This is super important. We need to keep doing things like this. And if we say, who are we? Like, somebody were to ask, who are you? Or we were to say to ourselves, who are we? We would say, we are the people that God rescued, not from slavery, but from sin, death, and the devil, and who led us through the deep in peril and into a new life in him. That's who we are as God's people.

[28:36] And that's what I want to leave us with, is the Passover is for us, too. The Passover lamb is Jesus Christ. He saves us so that he can lead us in the right path. He leads us into not the new land, but the new life. And so Jesus is really the fulfillment of this Passover story. Let's go ahead and pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for teaching us through it. Thank you for our Passover lamb, Jesus Christ. Thank you for making us new and whole in him, this new life that you've given us. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.