Shelter in Place for Passover

Make Lord’s Supper in haste! Juicer- grapes

Introduction

Welcome to a New Sermon series called:

Holy:

Holy= Apart, separate, distinct

We’re experiencing a holy moment:

Concluding series= Pentecost

As we experience this Holy season, we anticipate the arrival of the Holy Spirit!

This will be like an advent series:

Advent: Waiting for the birth of the King

Post-Easter: Waiting for the birth of the Church

Apart on Purpose

What is the Lord teaching us in this moment?

What are you doing with your time?

Where are you finding comfort? The Fridge? Netflix?

What is keeping you motivated?

In what ways are you serving

What is the purpose of this physical partition?

Pentecost Series, as we watch and wait to celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit, we wait as a Holy People, set apart on Purpose.

This sermon:

Title: Shelter in Place for Passover

Set apart meal for a set apart people

3 Lessons:

Shelter in Place to Prepare for Departure

Shelter in Place for First Born Redemption

Shelter in Place for Israel’s Salvation

Shelter in Place to Prepare for Departure

God says stay put, don’t leave your house:

Don’t do nut’n, prepare some mutton!

Mutton: 2 year old lamb…

Purpose of staying in the house was to prepare for this new supper called the Passover

God gives very strange instructions:

1. Roast Lamb with bitter herbs (12:8)- bitter herds/bitter work (1:14, mrr, Moriah)

One year old

Without defect, blood to be spilled into a basin

Dip blood with hyssop plant.

2. Bread without yeast (vv. 5, 34 and 39)

No time to wait for the bread to rise!

“Unleavened”= 6x in ch. 12

3. Eat in Haste:

12:11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

Prepare to walk out of here prepared for the journey ahead!

God will be working out your salvation tonight, but as Egypt wails, you need to just wait...

What can we learn from all this?

Now, I’m uncomfortable comparing our situation today 1 to 1 to Israel’s position in Egypt. There are clear differences and circumstances. This is not our Exodus moment, Jesus was our Exodus moment… They had to stay in-doors one day, and I don’t even know what year it is anymore...

But, this urgency to prepare is instructive, I think:

We are living in a time of waiting, and during that time of waiting I can’t imagine the Lord wanting us to waste this opportunity of waiting while stay-at-home order are in effect.

So rather than view this time just as a time of waiting, think about it as a time of preparation for the journey ahead:

How are you preparing for your journey ahead?

How are you preparing spiritually?

Is it fun eating lamb with bitter herbs? Doesn’t sound fun!

Have you ever had mazas? They taste horrible!

Preparation isn’t fun.

One high school kid: working out hours a day as he prepares for college baseball. Benching more than ever.

That kind of exercise, are you preparing for the journey ahead?

Will you be stronger, closer to the Lord once you emerge?

Comments:

Stressed, anxious, grieving

Bored, unmotivated, weary...

“Extraordinary stress requires extraordinary prayer.” Keller

Prepare to Walk away! We will emerge, but will you be prepared?

Like a bear? Stumbling out of hibernation?

Like all forms of struggle and suffering, there is purpose to it: don’t waste this opportunity to prepare for what’s next!

Shelter in Place for First-Born Redemption

What does THAT mean?!

Redemption: Lit. sense: God making an exchange

Part I: Pharoah kills all the first born males

Exodus 1:15-16: Kings command: Kill all the boys born by the Hebrews.

Exodus 1:22: King commanded all Hebrew sons born be cast into the Nile.

Part II: God speaks to Moses on route to Egypt

Exodus 4:21-31: God tells Moses that Israel is his first born: “Let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse… I will kill your firstborn son.”

Part III: 10th Plague: ALL Firstborns

God stays true to His word: Your son for my son.

Exodus 11: Every first born- boy, girl, rich poor, cow or donkey.

Part IV: Egypts Firstborn Pays Redeems Israel’s Firstborn

Exodus 13: Verse 1= Consecrate all the firstborn males

Exodus 13: vv. 13: “Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.”

If a child asks their parents why, the parents are supposed to share with their children the story of that first Passover night, about how the Lord killed the first born of Egypt, and through that sacrifice he purchased the first born of Israel. “All the firstborn of my sons I redeem.”

So the 10th Plague was about judgment- judgment against Pharoah for playing God by claiming the lives of Israel’s firstbown, but it was also an event of redemption!

God purchased the firstborn as HIS OWN through that judgement...

Peter Enns: “By wanting to kill Israel’s male children, Pharaoh is not simply killing God’s people or reducing the number of potential rebels. The children whom Pharaoh has killed include the firstborn of Israel, God’s property, those who will later be shown to be special to God and who belong to him exclusively. By having them thrown into the Nile, Pharaoh is, as we have seen elsewhere, setting himself up as a god-figure. He is doing no less than usurping Yahweh’s right to the firstborn.”

Although there is an exchange taking place here, I still can’t explain all the complexities behind these events. They are difficult to wrap our minds around...

But what I keep going back to is that God’s Son is in bondage, and He seeks to free Him. The only way to do that is by redeeming Him, and doing so with blood!

Either the blood of a lamb or the blood of the first born.

God then claims all first born males as his own.

Purpose in the judgment, purpose in the death...

Part V: Redemption from Firstborn to Levites

Numbers 3:11-13:

11 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, 13 for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am the Lord.”

Later in the chapter:

Mathematical equation to redeem/purchase the Levites:

So all this redemption that happened in Egypt created the currency to create a priesthood! All of it was paid at a price.

And the Priests were the ones who served as the bridge between God and Israel...

Application:

1. Order within the Chaos

Wailing and waiting is a God who is making the great exchange:

One death lost leads to one life won!

God was setting apart a family member

When all felt crazy, chaotic and out of control out side, God knew what he is doing.

Do you trust that this is happening?

2. Purpose was understood Later

Do you trust that the Lord has a trajectory in place for all this?

Purpose was for a Priesthood!

Centuries later, the purpose of the Priests made out of Levites gave way to the church!

God’s Only Son, redeemed us, so that we can be the priesthood of all believers!

I Peter 1:9  “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession,

Shelter in Place for All of Israel’s Salvation:

23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

God didn’t want his people to leave their homes because that would mean encountering God:

Not an angel of death, this was God’s work

Tis a dangerous event!

God’s Plan was to rescue ALL of Israel, and he provided for them a way out: Blood of the Lamb.

The same way God provided Abraham with a RAM instead of Isaac, God provides a sacrifice for his people!

God’s holiness bypasses the door because sacrifice has already taken place there… What a grace for God’s people… To be bypassed by God’s Holiness:

Reminder of the Gospel:

Have you been saved? Saved from Sin. Saved from Guilt. Saved from death. Saved from the devil. Saved from evil. Saved from hell.

Saved from God’s Holiness! Saved from God’s wrath against sin, guilt, death, the devil, evil and hell!

And the Gospel reminds us that those in Christ are bypassed because sacrifice has already taken place. Those in Christ have died with Christ, been redeemed by his blood, and that purchase has secured our freedom!

Paul writes these incredible words:

I Corinthians 5:7: For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Mark 15:23, Jesus is given bitter drink, no doubt Mark pointing us towards that image of Jesus being prepared as this sacrificial lamb.

And so we are given freedom, new freedom, in the hear and now...

Application:

YOU ARE FREE EVEN WHILE CONFINED!

Our salvation is here, even now!

For those of you experiencing loneliness, isolation, and fear: Hear this: YOU ARE FREE!

For those of you who experience who are shut-ins year round, YOU ARE FREE!

Even if you’re watching within the walls of a prison cell, if you are in Christ, you are FORGIVEN AND FREE!

Article: Desiring God, What Only Suffering Can Say by Vaneetha Rendall Risner

Years ago, my sister told me of an Iranian pastor who was imprisoned and later murdered for his faith. When his brother came to America to visit, he was astonished to hear how people were praying. He pleaded, “Don’t pray that these Christians be released from jail — they would gladly give their lives for the gospel. Pray that their jailers would be converted.”

Pray that their jailers would be converted. I want that attitude toward my own suffering — I want to view everything that happens to me in light of the gospel.

This story put things into perspective for me…

That’s thinking with a free mind- that’s what the Gospel does to us, it gets us to think beyond our own condition and towards the condition of others ALL FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOSPEL TO ADVANCE!

You are free within confinement. You are set apart for a purpose, even now.

Conclusion:

Communion:

Fulfills the role of Passover

Time of Fasting from this meal...

Even though we don’t participate in the Lord’s Supper, the challenge is still to remember and believe!

Shelter in Place to Prepare for Departure

Don’t just wait, prepare with purpose!

Shelter in Place for First Born Redemption

As the church, you have been purchased. You belong to him.

As such, we trust that our God is in control within the chaos and has a purposeful trajectory to all this.

Shelter in Place for Israel’s Salvation

Remember the Gospel, that you are free within your confinement!