Sermon Tone Analysis

PASSOVER TEACHES US THE REALITY OF SINS DEBT

Passover was intended to be a time of sobriety.

Its aim was to reinforce sins totality.

Both Egyptian and Hebrew were under the condemnation of sin for failing to obedient to God’s Word spoken through Moses and Aaron.

This is why Paul calls for one to examination of sin before partaking of The Lord’s Supper.

First of all, the very first chapter in the story of the Lamb in the Bible is the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Genesis 22. Abraham has a son he loves, Isaac, and in Genesis 22, he hears God speak to him.

God says,

Modern people say, “I know why he’s so anguished.”

“He must have thought that was a monstrous command!

He must have thought that was an insane command!”

The answer is no.

If you believe that, it’s because you don’t understand the historical and cultural context of Abraham.

There’s a man named Jon Levenson who is a Jewish scholar and teaches at Harvard.

He’s written a book called The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son which does a wonderful job in a very scholarly way of putting it into context, so we actually have a pretty good idea of what Abraham was thinking, and it’s not that.

Here’s the context.

Ancient people in ancient cultures did not have aspirations for individual prominence, individual prosperity, or individual success.

That’s not what you hoped for.

That’s not what you aspired to.

You aspired for the success and the prominence and the prosperity of your family.

You didn’t think in such individualistic terms.

In ancient cultures, you wanted your family to succeed.

Secondly, in ancient cultures, if some member of the family failed or acted in a very shameful way, the entire family was responsible.

If one person acted shamefully, that shame belonged to everyone.

Modern Americans, Western people, and especially Americans, even more than Europeans, are the most radically individualistic people.

This is the most radically individualistic culture ever.

We feel like, “If some member of my family acts in a shameful way, that’s them.

It’s not me!

I’m my own person.

I’m setting my own course for life, and I don’t want to be held responsible for what they have done.

I’m not responsible for what they have done.

I am my own person.

I am deciding who I want to be.”

I think it’s going to become clear, and I’m sure a lot of you already have recognized this, that this is an unbalanced position.

Our radically individualistic, American, Western culture is unbalanced about this.

As you get older, one of the most disconcerting sort of things is you come to realize you are much, much, much more, inescapably much more, a product of your family than you thought.

What you are, both good and bad, is not as attributable completely to you.

Much of it is attributable (good and bad) to your family, to what they did and what they didn’t do in you, with you, and beside you.

It was universal.

It was unavoidable.

They felt it.

Everybody else felt it.

In other words, the idea that you’re an individual and there’s no relationship between you and the rest of your family is probably unbalanced.

Most cultures in most centuries have had a more balanced understanding of individual and collective responsibility.

Having said that, let’s go back.

In ancient cultures who didn’t think of themselves as individuals but as families and at a time in which the firstborn got the whole estate, God sent a message that was unmistakably clear to them but is opaque to us.

In the book of

and in the book of

there was a message God sent which was opaque to us.

Here’s what it is.

He said over and over again in the Mosaic legislation, “The life of every firstborn is mine unless you redeem.”

Every year they had to put up so many shekels.

There was a redemption price on the head of the firstborn of every family.

Their lives are forfeit unless they’re redeemed.

That’s what the Law of Moses said.

To us, that’s completely opaque, but it was an unmistakable message to ancient people who immediately understood, because in the firstborn all of their hopes were embodied.

All their hopes for themselves and for their families were embodied in the firstborn.

God was sending an unmistakable message, and that is that there is a debt over every family on the face of the earth.

There is a debt of sin.

There is a debt that is owed God on every family on the face of the earth.

Your firstborns are liable for the way in which you are living, and their lives are forfeit unless they’re redeemed.

That doesn’t make any sense to individualistic Americans, but when you begin to understand …

What that means, and it’s very, very important to understand, is when God said to Abraham, “Offer up your firstborn as an offering to me,” if Abraham had heard the words, “Go into the tent and kill Sarah,” Abraham rightly so would have said, “I’m having a hallucination,” or “That’s a demon, because God would not call me to do something absolutely at variance with his righteousness and with his Word and his will.”

When God said, “Offer up your firstborn,” Abraham did not say, “What a monster!” Abraham realized God was calling in the debt, that God was doing something he had a right to do, that Isaac was about to die for Abraham’s sins.

Oh, Abraham struggled, of course, but he didn’t say, “How can you be so unjust?”

What Abraham was saying in his heart was, “How can you be both just, which you have a right to be (you’re a just God), and still a God of grace?

Because you’ve promised great things to happen through me and my son in the world.

How can you be both just and justifier of those who believe?

As he was walking up the mountain, the emotional hot peak of the account of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 comes in verse 7 and 8

What Abraham was saying is, “I hope with all my being you will not have to die for my sins, though that is just.

I, with all my being, hope God will provide a lamb so my little lamb won’t have to die.

Many respond to this idea of debt in either a repulsive or reductionist manner.

Most ask; can’t God release us for our sin debt without all this death.”

Others might say; “can’t God just forgive sin without all this death”.

Listen carefully; no.

When someone hurts you psychologically a debt is created.

It can’t be ignored.

There are only two actions that can be taken.

They must pay for the debt and this is often accomplished as we hurt, berate, or exclude them.

There are many ways we can make them pay for their debt.

This continues until their debt is paid.

By the way, the Bible says if you do this you’re not a Christian and you will become a hard person.

The second that can be taken is forgiveness and this is where we pay the debt.

Forgiveness means; when I want to hurt them, I don’t.

Let’s think about it sociologically.

Let’s just say we find a man (definitely he’s done it) guilty of some horrible crime: serial rape and murder.

What if a judge says, “Well, he’s sorry for it, so let’s let him go free”?

Right away, the reason there would be outrage is if he doesn’t pay, society will pay.

Right?

To let him go free means, first of all, the victim’s lives are devalued.

In other words, if there’s no payment, it means their lives and the things they’ve lost are worthless.

Secondly, if he goes free, society will pay, because this will just go on.

It will just go on.

There’s no deterrence.

This person will go on, perhaps, doing it, or other people will go on doing it because it wasn’t punished.

In other words, either he pays or we pay.

PASSOVER TEACHES US THE REQUIREMENT OF SINS DEBT, DEATH.

The death firstborn teaches us the reality of sins debt; while the death of the firstborn teaches us the requirement for sins debt.

A sacrifice for sins was required.

Someone has to propitiated the wrath of the one sinned against.