Worship as Celebration
Notes
Transcript
3 Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.
4 Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out.
5 And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month.
6 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord.
7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen with you, and no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory.
8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’
9 And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt.
10 You shall therefore keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year.
11 “When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you,
12 you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s.
13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
14 And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.
15 For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’
16 It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.”
17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.”
18 But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle.
19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.”
20 And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.
21 And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.
22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
remind them to stay in their Bibles in chapter 13 and 14.
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Some Context
Some Context
If you were worshiping with us last week, you know that we are continuing the sermon series that we have been going through while still at City Church, because we find it incredibly important that as a new church, we have a solid understanding of what it means to worship our creator.
We have seen how God raised up Moses to be a leader amongst His people, to lead them into worship.
We have seen God reveal Himself to Israel through His name, and through His power and love shown to Israel as He is in the process of leading them out of Egypt.
We have seen that our worship is not always going to be when everything goes according to our plans.
but that no matter what is happening, we can still worship God because He is still worthy of our worship.
If you remember, I preached on this several weeks ago, and said that we must be a church that worships God no matter what. I somehow even gave the example that even if we lose our venue after just one service, we are still to worship Him and be thankful for His provisions.
I hope that we find comfort in the knowledge that God gave this teaching weeks ago, long before we could have predicted this week’s events.
He is in control, and we worship Him for that this morning.
We have also seen that there are requirements for worship, and that we are not to go before God in worship in just any way that we choose, but there are prescribed ways that we should go before Him.
Then last week we looked at How we also worship God in our being missional, just as we are doing in planting a church in Haidian.
Today, we continue our study of worship in the book of Exodus by looking at how God gave Israel festivals to celebrate what God has done for them,
so that they won’t forget,
and continue to praise Him in their celebration for generations to come.
So with that, I propose we organize today’s teaching into three main points.
These points are…
1) Festivals given to Israel as celebratory worship.
2) Festivals given as an image of the coming Christ.
3) Communion given to the Church as celebratory worship.
I. The Festivals given to Israel as celebratory worship.
I. The Festivals given to Israel as celebratory worship.
Rick has led us the past few weeks into the great plagues that God sent to Egypt to show His power over both nature,
and the false gods of Egypt,
as well as His just and righteous judgment upon Egypt for refusing to let the Israelites go from their slavery.
The last of these was the death of every first born of both man and beast in Egypt.
This plague was to cover all of Egypt, both poor and rich alike,
except for the homes of the Israelites.
They were told to find a perfect lamb, without blemish, and sacrifice it to the lord.
They were to take the blood of that perfect Lamb and put it over the doorpost of their home so that when God saw the blood,
His wrath and righteous justice would pass over them and would not fall upon the homes that the blood of the lamb covered.
This was not something to be done and forgotten.
This was God showing…
His power.
His wisdom
His love and care for Israel.
And more importantly, His worthiness to be praised.
So it was important that Israel not forget this event.
And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.
So God gave Israel a festival that they were to celebrate yearly .
14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.
15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
16 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you.
17 And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever.
We often divide the festivals today into two, …
passover
and the feast of unleavened bread.
There are valid reasons for separating these, but many scholars see these as one one festival, with the passover being the start of the feast of unleavened bread.
On passover, Israel was to sacrifice a lamb, and roast it by fire, eating it as the main course.
It could have no broken bones.
12 They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break any of its bones; according to all the statute for the Passover they shall keep it.
Bitter Herbs were also served, signifying the bitterness of the Israelites struggles in Egypt.
Only unleavened bread could be used. This was first caused by the fact that there was no time to wait for the bread to rise.
39 And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.
But later, the absence of leaven represented purity from sin.
Participants in the passover feast were to be fully dressed for travel, anticipating God’s deliverance.
11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
In time, more elements of the passover were included, but we will not go into them today,
but I am hoping for opportunities to have passover together as a church when we get closer to that time of the year. We will have to wait and see.
Also during this festival, Israel was to go throughout their house and throw out all yeast from the home.
There was to be no yeast to be found anywhere.
14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.
15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
As I said earlier, unleavened bread eventually came to signify an absence of sin, because yeast had become an image of sin in our lives.
So what a beautiful image this would have been.
A reminder that God led His people out of slavery and into the Promise land,
just as He promised He would do,
and that our response to this all powerful Holy
righteous
God
should be of Humble repentance,
putting away all sin
and turning to Him in Obedient Praise.
This idea of a perfect
Righteous
Holy God
within the feast brings us to our second point,
Festivals given as an image of the coming Christ.
II. The Festivals given as an image of the coming Christ.
II. The Festivals given as an image of the coming Christ.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread,
and within this,
the passover,
is the most theologically rich festival in all of Israel’s many festivals.
We could do an entire series on this, but I only have one point in one sermon to cover it.
So know that we are not going very deep on this.
We are only going to focus on one aspect here, which is quite hard for me to do.
But it is my hope that you are reading Exodus with us each week, so I encourage you to be thinking through other ways that Jesus is seen as an image in these festivals.
But we will focus today on Jesus as the passover Passover lamb.
But we will focus today on Jesus as the passover Passover lamb.
“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). It’s clear that the Apostolic community saw a link between the death of Christ and the Old Testament Passover celebration.
R. C. Sproul
Jesus entered Jerusalem during Passover week, probably at the very time the thousands of Passover lambs were being brought into the city, later to be killed and eaten as part of the Passover observance.2
James Montgomery Boice
I hope when I was describing Passover earlier, you caught on a little to all this.
The blood of a perfect spotless lamb,
who’s bones had not been broken,
had to be spilled during passover.
It’s blood was then put onto the doorposet as a covering for God’s people,
so that His wrath would not pass over them.
Do you see the image here?
Do you see Christ clearly in this?
if not, let’s look at a couple verses from the New Testament.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus is the passover lamb, who is spotless, perfect, without blemish or sin, but killed so that HIs blood is now placed over us.
You see, Romans tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God, and that none are rightous, no not one.
This is a problem, because the wages of sin is death. This is physical death, but also spiritual death, being eternal seperation from God, in Hell.
This is what we all deserve, because we al fail to meet God’s perfect standard.
But He loves us so much, that He came down, being fully God, and fully man, to be our passover lamb.
To be the perfect spottless lamb who’s blood makes us free from sin.
You see, now when I die,
Because the blood of the Lamb is over me,
God’s rightous, just wrath that I deserve because of my sin,
passes over me,
just as His wrath passed over the Israelites who had the blood of the lamb over them.
We often don’t like talking about the wrath of God
but His wrath is good,
Holy,
and Just.
Sin is evil and must be paid for,
we should worship God not just for His love but also for His wrath against sin.
But you see, the blood of animals had no power to forgive sin,
or to satisfy the Just and righteous wrath of God.
this was just an image for what was to come.
This was an image of the one who would one day come and be our perfect Passover lamb, who would be sacrificed for our sins on Passover, so that now, we may have a relationship with our creator.
Is this not exciting?
I hope this gets your heart jumping and your soul primed for worship, because this is our God.
This is who we worship.
He is worthy of our praise Hutong Church.
What is even more beautiful, is when we see how God so elegantly brought us communion out of passover.
It is this communion that we are about to do together, as an act of remembrance, celebration, and worship.
which leads us to our third point.
III. Communion given to the Church as celebratory worship.
III. Communion given to the Church as celebratory worship.
just as God gave Israel the feast of unleavened bread as a remembrance of what He did for them on Passover in Egypt,
God gave the church communion as a remembrance for what Christ did for us on passover in Jerusalem on the cross.
You see, Jesus and His disciples, being Jews, celebrated these feasts and festivals.
Jesus sent His disciples to find the place He divinely ordained to be a place for them to have their passover meal.
I hope you remember this from a few months ago when we were studying the book of Matthew.
We see in Matthew 26:26-30 Where Jesus first gives us the gift of Communion.
Matthew 26:26–30 (ESV)
26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you,
28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
30 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
So just as Jesus did with His disciples over two thousand years ago.
Just as Christians have gathered together to do for the past two thousand years.
We too shall take part this morning in His death, as we reconize His death as the passover lamb, where His flesh was torn and blood was spilled.
At Hutong Church we practice open communion.
This means that If you believe in Jesus’ death
and resurrection,
have repented of your sins,
and trust the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation,
then you are welcomed to participate in our communion service today.
If that is not you,
please simply take this opportunity to reflect on the service and what you have heard this morning.
I also encourage you that if you have any questions on why we are doing this,
what Christianity is all about,
or how you can have a relationship with the one true God,
please come find someone to talk to after service.
There are so many here Who would love nothing more than to have that conversation.
Please wait until everyone has been served and then as a body we will take the bread and juice together.
As the ushers pass out the elements today, let us examine our hearts and remember the work of Jesus.
Repent of any sins that need to be repented of.
Meditate on the sacrificial love of Christ who’s flesh was torn and blood was spilled so we could have forgiveness of sins.
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Let us pray for the bread. PRAY. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Let us eat together.
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Now let us thank God for the cup, which represents Jesus’ blood shed for us. PRAY. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Let us drink together.
Please pass the cups to the center aisle as the ushers come and collect.