Faithfully Preserved in the Passover (Heb. 11:28)
Notes
Transcript
Call to worship:
Call to worship:
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.
Reading #1, for perspective:
Reading #1, for perspective:
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household; 4 and if the household is too small for a lamb, then a man and his neighbor next to his house shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats; 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening. 7 Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning, anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s passover. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Reading #2, main text:
Reading #2, main text:
28 By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the first-born might not touch them.
I.
Can you imagine you’re not starving…and a meal still saves your life?
Social media purports these “lifesaver meals” to be an everyday thing, and likely enough social media sort of cheapens the concept---“life-saving.”
So looking at food blogs, I came across three things:
“Healthy, cheap, and vegan” is a lifesaver
“Speedy 20-minute meals” are a lifesaver
Ready-to-heat warehouse store meals are a “family lifesaver”
(“Lifesaver” is apparently overused!)
Moses in our passage meanwhile is commended for preparing the PASSOVER meal—and he in actuality makes a meal that is literally LIFESAVING and life-PRESERVING.
II.
So finish this saying: An apple a day ____________.
Socrates too reportedly had a line which said, “Some eat to live, and others live to eat.”
* * *
It’s remarkable here that Moses prepares the Passover…and it impacts the work of KEEPING AWAY what the passage calls the “Destroyer!” — (The Destroyer of the firstborn “would not touch them.”)
How would you like this sort of power in the kitchen??!
Sometimes it’s a challenge enough just to keep our firstborn—our son—from destroying a recipe with too much salt!
The Bible in Exodus tells us that Moses and the people of the Hebrews prepared the Passover there while they were still in Egypt—and because they did this faithfully, then the “Destroyer of the firstborn” would not “touch” them.”
I.e., the Destroyer would not SLAY them, would not INJURE them, would not KILL them.
It’s why it was PASSover. — The Destroyer would “see the blood,” the Lord says there in Exodus 12, and he would “pass over” the people: and no “plague” would “fall upon” them.
He would pass over the people; and the people, then, would be spared. They would not be harmed.
III.
So I want to invite you this morning into the care and mercy of Almighty God.
Habakkuk 2:4 tells us that (echoed 2x in Paul’s letters),
Habakkuk 2:4 (RSV)
4 The righteous shall LIVE by his FAITH.
And then Psalm 121:6
6 The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.
* * *
There is life in that care and mercy of God. When we come by faith, that faith finds us in life and not in death. It finds us in the blessing of God, and in the keeping and securing of God.
And day and night the sun and the moon cannot touch us. It’s the poetic way of saying that we are entirely and ultimately encapsulated by God’s care and are insulated from the worst things that destroy: of ultimate agony, and defeat, and torment.
And Psalm 118:17 echoes the thread,
17 I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
IV.
I’m reminded so much here of meals eaten just before battle.
Steak and eggs before D-Day
Napoleon having breakfast on fine silver before Waterloo
Otherwise, before the Super Bowl—reportedly many players like just a simple PB & J with a glass of milk. (It’s thought to sit easier and keeps things lite and comfortable for playing the big football game.)
* * *
Israel takes their lamb—and they ate it that night, Exodus 12:11, with their “loins girded” (cloak cinched and tucked up for running), with “sandals on (their) feet,” and with “staff in (their) hands.”
“Eat it in haste,” comes the command. Wolfing the meal down, not worrying about leftovers, but scarfing it down. Eating it in haste: in anticipation, in eagerness.
BE READY.
* * *
I have to think of the ball of nerves that must have been scattered around these meal tables.
The “butterflies,” and the utter lack of appetite that many must have felt!
Some may have even preferred being in the bathroom that night, relieving their stomachs, rather than sitting at the table with food.
There were nerves on that night of Passover. No doubt there were tensions. I imagine a “hush” over that night—though things outside might have been swirling and thundering. And the anxieties, at least for some, must have been heightened.
The suspense would have been all around.
Many may have been brooding on the night—and on the flight out of Egypt—that were just ahead of them: moments away from happening.
V.
It’s an incredible thing to consider:
The whole of the Hebrews are mobilized and ready to move. — They’re dressed, and they’re packed to leave.
And yet—for 210 years, all these people had been stuck! For 210 years they were enslaved and were made to stay right where they were and work in the land of Egypt.
(210 years, by the way, being 36 years shorter than how long the U.S. kept slaves in this country…)
Imagine this!
This night of Passover was a major shift for the Hebrews, which had not happened in the past for generations or for centuries.
210 years in the making, and it was about to occur!
210 years in waiting, and finally it was about to happen!
* * *
Not “living to eat” this night: the people are “eating to LIVE.”
Shoes fastened, belongings packed, and everyone is “ready to go.”
The people are about to be preserved and protected and entirely sheltered from the mayhem and chaos that the Destroyer is about to bring upon all of Egypt.—
And the cover that the Hebrews have is a meal...
…a lamb...
…and the sprinkling of blood.
VI.
It’s amazing to me to think here of what is faith?
So I start to consider, what would I do when something destructive is coming to my town?
* * *
If something destructive is coming to town, what do you do?
Maybe if it’s one kind of threat, you arm yourself. Or you install a security alarm. You buy ammo, or whatever.
You can buy insurance.
I’ve seen people on the news spraying their houses with hoses, if a fire is in the area.
You might run to another area and try to escape the danger altogether.
Build a wall, or a fence, or a boundary of some sort.
People in the paths of storms might shutter their windows or put a bunch of tape or plywood on windows to try to prevent shattering.
Now I see ads for “patriots” to stock up on non-perishable food, in case markets crash or government turns to upheaval.
(And fallen-from-grace former televangelist, Jim Bakker, too, is selling 25-year shelf-lifed “survival food” food buckets, in case any pending catastrophe strikes.)
What do you do, when danger could be heading your way?
* * *
The Hebrews get the forewarning that the Destroyer is coming—and they hide, not behind walls. Nor do they go and check their investments or seek counsel whether to “sell” or “sit” on their holdings.
The Hebrews get the forewarning—and their “shields,” by faith, are a meal and a lamb!
A lamb, one year old.
Not even an adult, a ram, that had horns and could potentially “ram” and make an effort at fending off threats in some strength.
But a lamb, a year old.
(Which, one butcher points out is the most vulnerable of all animals—except for a baby chick, which its own parents won’t defend. But a lamb is vulnerable and defenseless, nonetheless, too!)
https://faithgateway.com/blogs/christian-books/taste-and-see-why-the-lamb-is-one-year-old
And the lamb is what the people use—each Hebrew family taking from its flock, and slaughtering and preparing that little animal, and trusting that this lamb by faith would “do the (proverbial) trick,” or “get the (proverbial) job done.” —
These people TRUSTING that their firstborns, their sons, would be protected and sheltered instead in the blood of the firstborn of their individual flocks.
VII.
And so I want to point us to our faith that is for us, in the “here and now.”
And we realize we come here as well, as the people who are also of a meal.
We come to a table, and there by faith, we eat and we drink. We gather in this place for a “spiritual feast,” as Calvin describes it (Institutes, 4.XVII.1).
There, Calvin continues, is also found our life as opposed to our destruction or our death, and our “true and blessed immortality.”
We’re there for the body and blood of Christ, the “Lamb” of God “who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29).
It is “incomprehensible,” Calvin says, the gifts and affect that we receive in this meal—just as incomprehensible (and absurd!) it is that a meal, and a lamb, and its blood could ward off the chaos and destruction of the Destroyer on that Passover night in Egypt!
We receive assurance in the meal. Calvin says, “confidence” and “delight.”
In the swirl of death and chaos that are all around us, we gather here—we gather, and HIS DEATH is made the life eternal that is for us.
And he (Jesus), Paul says, is three things:
He is “the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15);
He, too, is the “first-born from the dead” (Col. 1:18); and not only of death,
He is, third, the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” (1 Cor. 15:20), the one by whom has come “also the resurrection of the dead!”
* * *
This faith to many, and perhaps even to us at times, must feel so strange.
Christ’s body, broken for us.
His blood, shed for us.
And, as Isaiah prophesied of the Lord’s servant, “With his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He is the Lamb of God, hung on the cross for us.
And the table that we share now, is a table of fellowship, a meal of joy, a remembrance of the sacrifice that has removed us “once and for all” from the destruction and tyranny of DEATH, and SIN, and the DEVIL.
We are “fellow heirs with Christ,” that firstborn (Rom. 8:17)—ADOPTED now to be ransomed sons and daughters of God on high.
Jesus, the firstborn, is also our “elder brother”—and Galatians 5:1 says,
1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
* * *
The people, by faith, at the first Passover were commanded to “eat in haste.” Cloaks girded, sandals fastened, ready to flee Egypt and ready to run.
For 210 years they had faced the bondage of Pharaoh and the oppression of slavery in Egypt.
And for millennia and generations as well, the people of God had known the yoke and the bondage of death, and sin, and destruction.
But Christ came to deliver—so that the serpent would “bruise” us for a time, but the seed of the woman eventually would “bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
The promise of the gospel, even before Egypt—it was in the very Garden of Eden, when the Destroyer first reared his ugly head!
Generations and millennia were under threat of the destroying power of the devil—and yet the firstborn of creation was set apart, appointed, for the sacrifice that would crush the power of sin, once and for all!
Well beyond 210 years—4000 years after the fall to the serpent, Jesus would come in that day and shelter us on the cross!
VIII.
So to close, hear these words not from Hebrews 11, but from Hebrews 1:5-6:
5 For to what angel did God ever say, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? 6 And again, when he brings the first-born into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”
* * *
This, this morning, is where we gather:
We gather in the one whom even the angels in heaven worship!
It is his blood, his death, and ultimately his resurrection—his ascension on high—and his coming again—that promises us our vindication, our surety, our confidence, and the grounds of all our faith!
We wait for him.
* * *
And just as at the Passover—it’s no “magic” in the meal itself that sustains us or gives us our life.
It’s no hocus pocus in communion or the elements that makes this a lifesaving meal.
But it’s the Spirit who nourishes us and feeds us. (Peter says, “You (Jesus) have the words of eternal life!” John 6:68)
And “by faith” we gather here still.
And our Lord operates and works in us the faith and the forgiveness that we need—so that, indeed, still the “righteous live by faith.”
And we are counted righteous in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
In whose Spirit and name we receive the good things we need: for life, for forgiveness, for fellowship, and for eternal communion and fellowship with our God.
4 he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
And Revelation 17:14
Revelation 17:14 (RSV)
14 (the kings of the earth) will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”
Amen.
Parting blessing:
Parting blessing:
16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.
Translation/notes:
Translation/notes:
28. By faith he performed/kept/did/prepared the Pesach/Passover and the sprinkling/pouring/dousing/smearing of blood, so that the one destroying/ruining/annihilating the firstborns (Col. 1:18) would not touch/injure/kill/slay them.