Passover-The Meal of Salvation
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Passed over-none of us like to be passed over. The sense of rejection. Meaning, that we were not good enough for that we were being chosen for.
Not making a team, not receiving the promotion we are competing for, the girl or boy we had a crush on that rejects us and passes us over..
Great examples of people that were passed over:
Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper as he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” He went on to give the world characters like Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck.
Steve Jobs-The man responsible for the iphone, the ipod, and the ipad, was given away by his biological parents for adoption because they couldn’t afford to bring him up. Later, Jobs was unceremoniously ousted from Apple, the company he co-founded. Today, he is known as the father of the digital revolution.
Oprah Winfrey-raped at 9; pregnant at 14. Fired from a News Channel for being “unfit for TV.” The host of the most successful talk show in the world had a tough childhood. Who knew she would grow up to become one of the most influential women in the world and North America’s first black billionaire.
Billy Graham-Graham was turned down for membership in a local youth group for being "too worldly".[23] Albert McMakin, who worked on the Graham farm, persuaded him to go see evangelist Mordecai Ham.[13] According to his autobiography, Graham was 16 when he was converted during a series of revival meetings that Ham led in Charlotte in 1934.[24][25]
Gibbs, Nancy; Ostling, Richard N. (November 15, 1993). "God's Billy Pulpit". Time. Archived from the original on June 21, 2007. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
There is a pass over I think most of us would want to miss in our lives. The pass over of death. We would want the death angel to pass over us one day on that day we are called to death and departing this world. I pray for each one here that the death angel of separation from God pass over you and you pass on to heaven when you die. We can address this important theology this morning in our study of the Passover.
Turn in your Bibles to Exodus 12:1-13.
Exodus 12:1-13
Exodus 12:1-13
1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2 “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. 3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. 7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. 8 Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. 10 You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. 11 And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12 ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. 13 Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
Prayer
Message
As we have studied Exodus, we see a great build up to this grand event that is coming about, Passover. Passover is a commemoration of that grand event the night the death angel passed over all Egypt and spared Israel and brought about the death of the first born of all Egypt.
29 And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. 30 So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
That is a very disturbing text.
Oh dearly beloved, I attended a funeral of a fellow church member at the first church I pastored yesterday. Karen was 59 years of age and was battling a sickness. There were tears, but they mourned differently knowing that the death angel passed over her.
For the believer, God’s Word says “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
The Passover would ultimately bring about the deliverance of Israel from slavery . Moses, God’s chosen deliverer and spokesperson for Yahweh went to Pharoah as God’s representative and asked Pharoah to “let God’s people go.”
As we have walked through this story, we see a building process unfold before our eyes. We saw Moses go and deliver the news over a course of nine plagues, we saw the plagues brought about and we saw a continued hardening of the heart of Pharoah.
Over the process of bringing the nine plagues God brought against Egypt, God addressed and overcame the pantheon of gods that the people of Egypt worshipped. Furthermore, through that process I imagine God’s people had been influenced at some level by those same myriad of gods the people of Egypt worshipped. The Israelites lived 430 years with the people of Egypt and I imagine those foreign gods had their influence. But we will see that Israel had their influence on Egypt as well.
The instructions of Passover that God shared with Moses and Aaron is the text we study this morning. We draw from those deep truths.
God called His people to commemorate this great event called Passover. The last plague, the death of the firstborn of all Egypt called for the Israelites to go to the homes and prepare a meal for Passover and if they follow God’s instructions, God’s death angel would pass over the people of Israel.
Dearly beloved, there are matters we must consider and address if we, like Israel are going to be ready when the death angel comes over us us. For you see, the Passover came about because of judgment. Judgment for a people that had sinned. Our sins must be addressed if we are going to escape the passover.
Remember this sorrowful verse in the story:
Exodus 11:6 “6 Then there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before, nor shall be like it again.”
Oh dearly beloved, may it not be so for you on that day the death angel passes over, I pray that you are ready and you can avoid such painful agony by knowing the Lamb. I pray Jesus’ blood is over the doorpost of your heart the day the death angel passes by in your life.
Passover is Providential in Nature v. 12
Passover is Providential in Nature v. 12
“Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt.” This entire event was in God’s timing. Furthermore, Read the end of verse 11, “it is the Lord’s Passover.”
Twelve times the Lord spoke to Moses in the Exodus leading up to our text today.
There are many occasions when Jesus instantaneously had influence as He spoke to people and they listened, they acted and they followed Jesus.
Matthew 9:9 “9 As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.”
Mark 1:16–18 “16 And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 17 Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18 They immediately left their nets and followed Him.”
There are other times when a movement of God is a sequence of events or a process of various encounters where you sense God speaking to you:
23 And when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely. 24 Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. 27 And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. 28 But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.”
29 Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. 34 Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household.
We know in this great story of the Philippian jailer that the jailer and his household was gloriously saved. In this case, God used the witness and influence of Paul and Silas. God used the earthquake and the jail doors opening to arrest the Jailer’s attention. God used a bizarre turn of events that no one chose to escape from jail. The Holy Spirit arrested the man’s attention as he was about to take his life. Paul reached out to assure him no one had left their cells. All of those events and the culmination of the Holy Spirit’s presence and the sequence of events arrested the jailer that he desired something Paul and Silas had. “sir, what must I do to be saved?” Listen, God works in your circumstances.
The whole time God was at work in the plagues everyone was seeing the hand of God at work. Pharoah was told time and again what would take place by Moses and Aaron and those plagues came to fruition. And, with each plague, God was making His impact, His spiritual influence on the people of Egypt, Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel.
Notice with me in verse 38:
“a mixed multitude went up with them”-when the Israelites left Egypt, there were Egyptians who left with them.
How does the Lord’s death angel pass over our lives and spare us?
Salvation is providential in nature. Salvation is initiated by the Holy Spirit. It is possible in the lamb that was slain. Salvation for these Israelites were found in that lamb they killed at twilight.
In God’s Word, John the Baptist when he saw Jesus for the first time said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
That same lamb, Jesus the Christ can instantaneously save you or He works in a series of encounters to impact you that God’s Holy Spirit is definitively speaking and working in you and on you to surrender to His call.
11 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
God may use several events that are foreign or out of character in what would be the ordinary occurrences of life. God uses a sequence of events at times to cause you to ask questions and you are halted, you become convicted and ultimately you can be transformed. God makes clear when He is at work in your life and we are made clear His invitation to receive Him as Lord and Savior.
There may have been in recent days a series of encounters or some captivating voice that has halted you in your tracks.
There are people that communicated later in their testimony, “I do not know why I showed up to church but I just had something in me that was compelling me to go.” “I sensed God wanted something from me.” Is He speaking to you today? He works that way, He works providentially in our lives as He providentially brought those Israelites together in the confines of their homes and prepared their hearts for something great to come. He prepared them to partake of a lamb.
Passover is Punctuated with Newness of Life VV. 2-11
Passover is Punctuated with Newness of Life VV. 2-11
“This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.” The people of Israel were going to experience a new day.
What is interesting that this event was so monumental in the life of Israel that God marked it as the beginning of months, the beginning of a new year.
The new month was Abib. Abib means “young ear” of barley or other grain. Spring-the time of new growth and budding.
Exodus 34:18 “18 “The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.”
The people of God were to experience a new day.
The rest of the world did not change its calendar, but the people of God changed their calendar.
Do you know what BC and AD mean?
Dearly beloved, the coming of Christ changed the world’s calendar.
BC-Before Christ and AD does not mean After Death or 33 years would be lost. AD stands for Anno Domini, which is Latin for in the year of the Lord.
To be politically correct today, BCE or CE. Common Era. Why don’t we say, “before Christ evangelized and Christ Evangelized.”
The point dearly beloved that everyday is a new day in Christ Jesus. Amen.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
The following day after the death angel passed over the land of Egypt would be the starting of a new era in the life of Israel. What brought about this new era? What happened to bring about a new day for Israel?
Let’s read:
Exodus 12:3 “3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.”
Let’s read on:
Exodus 12:4–6 “4 And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.”
For Israel to experience this new day that was to come, a lamb had to be taken in, a lamb had to die, and a lamb had to be consumed.
If you desire newness of life in Christ, Jesus must be taken into your heart. Israel was asked to take this lamb into the home for four days. We’ve discussed in recent days that the religious elite we have studied in Luke represented compartmentalized Christianity or religiosity. For the Lamb to have real impact in your life, it must start in the home. When your family knows that you have a real life in Christ, the world will know that the Lamb is real in you. Amen.
Notice something important about Passover. Everyone needed the lamb. Family sizes may differ, some married, some not, some with children, some without. And the list goes on, but everyone needed the lamb to avoid God’s judgment. Israel as well was deserving of judgment. Besides their own sin nature, they initially did not trust Moses’ words that God spoke. For you see everyone was due judgment. God chose Israel by grace to be His people.
6 “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face.
God chose the people of Israel just as God chooses to pursue a love relationship with you. You did not pursue Him, God pursued you in love. Amen.
A new day rested in the fact that the household had to bring a lamb in and the lamb had to die. Four days the family took the lamb in the home. They became close to the lamb, but then at twilight, the lamb had to die and to be eaten.
Exodus 12:7 “7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.”
The blood was the sign when the death angel passed over to spare the home of the Israelite family. Oh listen to me dear one this morning. When that day comes and you are called away from this place called life, the Judge, Jesus Christ will want to know if you are marked with His lifesaving blood.
13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Passover is Possible in the Lifeblood of the Lord VV. 12-13
Passover is Possible in the Lifeblood of the Lord VV. 12-13
12 ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. 13 Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
So much symbolism in the meal of Passover. They were to eat the meal with bitter herbs to reflect upon their prior life of enslavement. For those here this morning, it is important to remember your prior life before Christ to appreciate what Christ did for you. The bitterness reminded of a rocky past.
Dearly beloved, are you in a rocky patch? I do not mean this morning for the believer because we know as Christians there are difficult times. I am asking you does it seem regardless of what you do, you can’t find peace, you can’t find joy, you can find fulfillment in life. Partake in a spiritual sense the Passover this morning by consuming the lamb of Jesus Christ. Take Him into your heart. Ask him to forgive you of your past and offer you life anew as has been mentioned.
May I share with you what may be the most important verse of our time together this morning.
11 And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
The idea of eating unleavened bread was the fact that when Pharoah and Egypt would be told to leave, and depart, it would be with haste. There was not even time for the bread to rise because they were taking everything on the go when the time came. The idea of belt around the waist and the sandals on their feet was that the time of departure was on a moment’s notice. They had to be ready to run for their freedom at a moment’s notice.
And the most impact text: “It is the Lord’s Passover.” There is a distinct time when God will call you to place the blood on your heart by asking Jesus in. That doorway is not always guaranteed to be open. We must answer His call when He calls.
Revelation 3:20 “20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
He desires that you partake of the meal of Passover by asking Him in, answering His call and the Scripture states that He will dine with you.
Let’s pray.