Remembering Who We Are
Notes
Transcript
Scripture Reading
Scripture Reading
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
1. Our present is rooted in our past. (vs. 1-3, 14)
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.
14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
2 that you should remember the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken through your apostles.
The announcement to Israel of the final plague is recorded as a longer set of instructions for escaping it, as given by the Lord to Moses, and a shorter set, as given by Moses to the elders of Israel. Involved in these instructions, of course, was the establishment of one of the great national feasts of Israel, the Passover. The longer set of instructions need not be thought of as having been received by Moses between the time of his visit to Pharaoh which ended in 11:8 and his meeting with the elders in 12:21. Rather, this partakes of the nature of a summary of divine instructions which had been received over a number of days. It must have begun during the first nine days of the month, since the Lord refers to this month, and gives instructions concerning the tenth day, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth through the twenty-first. Many scholars believe that Moses’ promise that the first-born would be slain at midnight (11:4) did not refer to the night following the day on which he spoke, but an indefinite midnight in the future. While this is possible, it is also possible that the announcement was made on the fourteenth day while Israel already had the lambs penned up since the tenth day, ready for Moses’ final instruction (12:3). This possibility is strengthened by the fact that when Moses addressed the elders of Israel just before the Passover, he made no reference to a preliminary penning up of the lambs, as if that had already been taken care of, and he referred to the lamb itself in words which indicated they were already familiar with its significance—kill the passover (12:21). The greater length of the Lord’s instructions to Moses as compared with his address to the elders may also be explained in the possibility that they include some items, especially in verses 15–20, which Moses was instructed about at a later time. When Exodus was written, this was a logical place to include them.
The instructions involved the establishment of a religious calendar for Israel. Their previous calendar, which continued as their civil calendar, began in the fall, in the month of Tisri, corresponding roughly with the last half of September and the first half of October (see 34:22). But now the Lord tells them that the month Abib, later called Nisan, corresponding to the last half of March and the first half of April, is to mark the beginning of months. Practically all ancient peoples observed a spring festival of a religious nature. Visitors have also observed among the nomads of the Near East many of the features of the Passover itself: an annual dedication of the first-born of the flocks, the use of these the following spring for a festival meal, the eating with them of unleavened bread, and the marking of the tent with blood for protection and blessing. The Passover itself partook of the spirit of a spring festival, for during the total period of eight days a sheaf of barley, the first-fruits of the year’s harvest, was to be waved before the Lord (Lev. 23:4–14).
4 These are the appointed festivals of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall celebrate at the time appointed for them. 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, there shall be a passover offering to the Lord, 6 and on the fifteenth day of the same month is the festival of unleavened bread to the Lord; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not work at your occupations. 8 For seven days you shall present the Lord’s offerings by fire; on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation: you shall not work at your occupations.
9 The Lord spoke to Moses: 10 Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. 11 He shall raise the sheaf before the Lord, that you may find acceptance; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall raise it. 12 On the day when you raise the sheaf, you shall offer a lamb a year old, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the Lord. 13 And the grain offering with it shall be two-tenths of an ephah of choice flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord; and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. 14 You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your settlements.
This, along with the implied familiarity of the elders with the slaying of the lambs (Exod. 12:21), has led many scholars to believe that from time immemorial Israel had observed a springtime religious festival with many of the ingredients of the Passover. It may even have been called a “passover” although if so the reason is not now known. But however familiar Israel may have been with a springtime religious festival, and with some of the ingredients of the Passover, it is clear that this was the initiation of a new observance as far as its meaning and significance were concerned. This was the birth of a nation, a birth brought about by the gracious power of Jehovah, a birth which Israelites would never forget, and a birth which carried within its symbolism the seeds of an even higher revelation of the character and goodness of God.
The Israelites stopped observing the Passover for centuries according to 2 Kings.
20 He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
21 The king commanded all the people, “Keep the passover to the Lord your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant.” 22 No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, even during all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah; 23 but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem.
2. Community holds us together. (vs. 4-6)
4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.
23 Peace be to the whole community, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord’s words to Moses also included instructions concerning the religious Feast of Unleavened Bread (vv. 15–20). The Passover proper was observed for only one day. But the week which immediately followed it was to continue the abstinence from leaven. The first instance of this abstinence is recorded at the time of the Exodus, and is there explained on the basis of the haste with which Israel departed from Egypt (vv. 34, 39). Moses did not relay instructions concerning the memorializing of this event until after their flight (13:3–10), and this strengthens the possibility that the lengthy instructions from the Lord to him were given before, during, and after the Exodus itself rather than at one time. There are several references to the conjoined Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread throughout the Pentateuch, but those which significantly enlarged upon these early instructions are those which command the consecration of the first-born (Exod. 13:11–16), command the offering of the first-fruits during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:4–14), provide for a second Passover for those ceremonially unfit for the regular one (Num. 9:1–14), command the offering of special daily sacrifices during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Num. 28:16–25), and shift the festival from the home to the city where the central sanctuary would be located in Canaan (Deut. 16:1–8).
1 Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You shall offer the passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it—the bread of affliction—because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. 5 You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you. 6 But at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. 7 You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. 8 For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the Lord your God, when you shall do no work.
3. Jesus is our Passover sacrifice. (vs. 7-13)
7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
The reason for the initial slaying of the lambs, and the meaning of the feast which commemorated it were to be found in the tenth plague. Egypt’s first-born men and beasts were to be slain that night. Since this included the house of Pharaoh, who was considered a god, and since many of the false gods of Egypt were symbolized by various animals, God would now strike the most meaningful blow of His conflict with these false deities, executing judgments against all the gods of Egypt. Only those houses which had the sign of blood upon them would be “passed over.” Thus the feast would serve as a living memorial throughout all coming generations to the miraculous deliverance of the nation by Jehovah—both as to the slaying of the Egyptians and the sparing of Israel. Moses made the memorial even more meaningful when for the first time he instructed the people how to use the questions of their children to give them religious instruction (vv. 26–27).
A Christian cannot fail to see in the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread something more than a memorial to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. The New Testament suggests a deeper significance. We are told that the Jewish feast days were “a shadow of the things to come” (Col. 2:17; Heb. 10:1), the old order of worship was “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5; 9:23), “a figure for the time present” (Heb. 9:9). The prophet Isaiah anticipated the revelation of the Messiah as a lamb (Isa. 53:7; Acts 8:32–35). John the Baptist announced Him to the multitudes as “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36). The Apostle Peter spoke of Him in the exact words describing the Passover lamb, “as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:19). John the Revelator used “the Lamb” as the title of the Messiah twenty-eight times, and referred to Him as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8, KJV, Weymouth, Phillips, Berkeley). Paul went even farther in his identification, declaring, “our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ” (1 Cor. 5:7). The unblemished lamb whose blood caused Jehovah to pass over the dwellings of Israel speaks eloquently of the Lamb whose blood could deliver a man forever from the punishment due for his sins. It was at the same hour that the Passover lamb was slain (the ninth to the eleventh, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.) that Christ died on the cross (the ninth hour, or 3 p.m., Matt. 27:46–50), although it was on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread rather than on the Passover proper. Even the accompanying features of the feast held a deeper meaning, the prohibited leaven symbolizing moral and spiritual impurity which for the Christian was permanently forbidden in his perpetual observance of the true Passover (1 Cor. 5:6–8), and the bitter herbs speaking of the repentant spirit, the memory of the worshiper’s own unfitness for communion with God which must always accompany him to the place of worship. The Passover Supper itself is perpetuated in the Lord’s Supper, established at the Passover He kept with His disciples on the night before the crucifixion. The partaking of the flesh of the Lamb is now in symbol, the unleavened bread representing His broken body and the wine the shed blood which was earlier forbidden to Israel. When one perceives the deeper meaning of the Passover, a meaning which the Israelites could not even faintly have foreseen at this time, he is reminded again of the profundity of the divine plan for human redemption, of the beautiful manner in which it unfolds from the beginning, of the wonderful unity of revelation.
Message from John:
But in witnessing to Jesus’ identity, the Baptist partly unpacked the significance of Jesus’ ministry. First, he declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (1:29b). This implies three significant points: that sin stands as the root problem addressed by Jesus; that the malady of sin afflicts the whole world, rather than a limited segment of it; and that it is God himself who stands behind this Lamb, offering gracious remedy for the world’s affliction.
It is important to note that “God’s Lamb who takes away sin” does not correspond precisely to any single image in the Old Testament. For example, the Passover lambs protected the Israelites from death, not explicitly from sin (see Exodus 12); sin offerings typically employed bulls (see Leviticus 4); the animal which God provided as a substitute for Isaac was a ram, not a lamb (see Genesis 22); a goat transferred sin from the camp on the day of atonement (see Leviticus 16); and so on. If one takes into account the book of Revelation and intertestamental literature, one may even take the reference to “Lamb of God” as God’s triumphant, victorious lion who defeats His enemies in battle though having been slain (Rev. 5:5–6). In my view, the Baptist had no single image in mind, but promoted Jesus as the fulfillment of a variety of images, as the One through whom God would deal definitively with the curse of sin in all of its dimensions.
12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.