085 - The Sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.

Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, have you ever noticed that every year on the calendar, Easter and Passover happen about the same time? Yeah, often within a week of each other. Is there something to that? Well, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't ever make that connection.

Ah, but there is a connection, isn't there? And it starts in our understanding by looking at Passover itself, and today we're going to do that on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome. This is More Than Ink, and I'm Dorothy.

And I'm Jim. And we're sitting here at our dining room table, and we have been talking about the plagues on Egypt. Wow. All leading up to this very one, the final plague.

Final number 10. Today, chapter 11 of Exodus, that final plague of the Passover, God's Passover. Which is a very, it's a very special event.

It's not just another plague in a list of plagues. Right. This is the culmination. Even though this is the culmination of the last one, God says, this one's so important, I want you to remember this forever. Wow. So let's find out exactly what he's talking about and why that's so important. And there is more text devoted to this plague than to any of the others. Yeah. And this is something that is still remembered by Jews every year to this very day.

Actually, many Christians celebrate Passover as well. So let's find out why. You think it's just another one of the plagues? Not really.

It's more than that. Okay. So remember that we left Moses and Pharaoh parting very unhappily.

Oh yeah. Moses, Pharaoh said, you're never going to see my face again. Don't come here. Moses said, that's right.

I will never see your face again. And there was three days of darkness in the land. Right. So it's possible that this next little bit of event takes place while that darkness is still unfolding. Could be.

It's not explicitly clear in the text, but it's possible that it's still dark. Yeah. Possible. So here we are at the beginning of chapter 11. Why don't I jump in? Okay.

Okay. In verse one, chapter 11. So the Lord said to Moses, yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. And afterward, he will let you go from here.

And when he lets you go, he'll drive you away completely. So speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. And moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people. So he says right here, this is something now that the people of Israel have to do.

Right. In concert with this last plague. Ask for riches. Ask for riches. Why would the Egyptians want to give it to them? That was my first question. Well, because the servants of Pharaoh are saying, I want you out of town. Right. So if it's here, take some gold and get out of town.

Take this and it'll help you go. Right. Exactly. So they're ready to let him go.

They're willingly going to do this. But if you remember that God had promised Abraham that when he brought his people out of Egypt, they would come out rich. That's right. And here it is. So this is a direct fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.

And it's an interesting thing for the slaves of Egypt, which is Israel, that they would have the chutzpah to actually go talk to their masters and say, give me cash. Right. Yeah. And God says, yeah, do that.

What will you give me if we go? Yeah. Right.

Right. So on top of that, Moses has a great reputation. I mean, he's a great man. So people say, you know, Moses is not some schlub. This guy is something.

Right. By this time, he's not the shrinking violet anymore. He says he's great in the sight of the Pharaoh's servants and the sight of the people.

Everybody knows Moses is a man to be listened to. So that's persuasive to the people who live, who are neighbors. So yeah, that's going to happen. You'll see here.

We're going to move on to four. Okay. So Moses said, thus says the Lord, about midnight, I'll go out in the midst of Egypt and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

Wow. From the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill and all the firstborn of the cattle. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these, your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying, get out you and all the people who follow you.

And after that, I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. And then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. Okay, wait a minute. So, I thought they had already parted company. But here it says, after that, I will go out. And that's the Lord speaking.

And then the next sentence, and he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Right. Right. Well, who went out?

Did the Lord go out or did Moses go out? You know, there's a little ambiguity in that. There is. And I don't know if anyone really has a good answer for this. Nope.

That's just one of those questions that hangs in the air for me. Yeah. But what Moses is doing here in this warning again, he's reiterating what he said before any of the plagues happened. Right. Remember that way back in chapter four, he says, all the firsts, but Israel is my firstborn. Right. Israel's firstborn. And you need to let them go.

And if you don't, then I'll take your firstborn. Right. So, he said that way long time ago. And so, he's just reiterating it here saying, well, here we go.

It's going to happen. So, this is the end. This is the end. Right. Things have arrived at a pass where your hardened heart will not listen.

You refuse to listen to me or humble yourself and you drive out God's truth. Yep. Exactly. Well, so, hold your breath.

Here we go. So, Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land. I mean, that's the current state of affairs before this last plague. Right. And by the way, I've been keeping score as well about who hardened whose heart. And at this point, I see God hardening Pharaoh's heart four times and Pharaoh hardening his own heart six times and they're all often in concert. Right. Right.

So, when people ask, who did the hardening? Well, they're both involved, God and Pharaoh. Well, yeah.

But it seems in the order that they appear, it seems like God hardens Pharaoh's heart in response to Pharaoh hardening his own heart. Exactly. God says, you want that?

I'll give you that. Yep. Yep. So, as Pharaoh hardens his heart, God is not going to overrule him.

He's going to let him harden his own heart. Ooh, that's sobering. That's how, yeah. In fact, in Romans 1, Paul says, that's how God's wrath comes upon you. Right.

He just lets you go. That's you have what you're seeking. Yep. And so, they wanted to do this. Well, that finishes chapter 11, which is sort of the warning about what's going to happen. And now, we turn the page to chapter 12 and we actually talk about commemorating this last plague with the Passover. Yeah.

So, this is interesting because at this point, it kind of stops being a narrative and starts being instructive. Yes. Yes. So, for the next little while now, it's going to be Moses instructing the people. Yeah. So, Pharaoh's not even in the picture here at this point.

No, no. So, starting in a chapter 12, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb, according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb. So, we've gone from a lamb to a specific lamb.

Yeah. Verse five, your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats and you shall keep it until the 14th day of this month when the whole assembly of congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. You mean this little lamb that they've been living with for four days?

Did you hear the sequence there? Take a lamb, any lamb, just enough for your household, then it's the lamb, the specific lamb, and then it suddenly becomes your lamb. Your lamb. You take it, you keep it, and then you kill it. Yeah.

And I think that your, that possessive version of it is you're living with this beautiful, cute little creature for four days. Knowing you're gonna kill it. Knowing you're gonna kill it, yeah. So when they do kill this animal, it's not just a piece of livestock, it's almost a piece of the family. Right. Yeah. And there's some theology in that as well. Yeah, this is the dedicated lamb.

The sacrifice lamb in which we find life through his death, but it's not that we're emotionally separated from him, we actually love him. Right. Yeah.

Right. Verse seven. So pressing on verse seven, after you've killed the lamb, at twilight, so at the end of the day before the darkness comes, then 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. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it.

Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning, you shall burn. In this manner, you shall eat it with your belt fastened and your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. Okay, now we get a little statement of the meaning. We've had all this instruction about the blood and eating and being ready to go, the Lord's Passover.

The title, yeah. Verse 12. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. 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 no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Wow. Oh, we gotta stop. Wow. No kidding.

No kidding. So here they're filled in on exactly what's gonna take place. This is not talking to Pharaoh, this is talking to the people of Israel. So this Egyptian Passover is a little different from Passovers that will follow it, which all look back to this one.

Look back to this. Yeah. And the lamb plays a key role. The blood of the lamb plays a key role, marking the door, and when you mark a door like that, you're basically saying it regulates who comes in and who goes out.

That's why they're marking the door. But there is an interesting cross symbolism in how they mark the door, because you take some hyssop like a big paintbrush, and you smack it left, smack it right, and then smack the lentil over the top, and then it drips down from the lentil on the ground to make a little pool on the ground, and it looks sort of like a cross. And it's a sign for the people of Israel, because they'll look at that blood and say, that blood is providing two things for us. It's keeping the wrath of God out of here, and it's also preserving us as a people through that blood. So the blood is instrumental as a sign, the blood is key to how this is working. God will not see your righteousness, as you count on your house, he'll see the blood and Passover. He says, I will Passover you, because I'm coming through the entire land. If they had not put the blood on their doorways, they also would have lost their firstborn. God said, you must have this blood of this substitutionary lamb that dies and whose blood protects you on the doorway. You go in through a doorway, into your house to protection, and you go out through a doorway wherever you're going. So we're going to circle back to that idea when we get to the end.

Well, right, and there's a lot of symbolism you can talk about in this, but think about the fact that the family went in there and marked their doorposts and said, let's go outside and watch people die. Well, that wouldn't work. So you have to stay on that side. Stay inside the blood. You have to completely recognize that the blood is what's marking you away from that wrath.

You have to stay behind it. So, I mean, there's so much here, and it prefigures who Christ is as our Passover lamb. We can talk tons about that. But we have these three elements that are important, the blood, what to do with the blood, and then to eat the lamb, right? So it's not just a symbolic lamb. You are what you eat.

What you eat becomes you. Well, that idea of eating the flesh of the lamb becomes very important in the New Testament when Jesus says, this Passover is in my blood, eat my flesh. So eating this lamb is an important symbol, and then being ready to go. And being ready to go, yeah. And that's pretty interesting because he's saying you can eat this meal, you can eat this lamb, but then from that point on, you could be leaving at any moment. Right. Things are going to be different. So put on your walking shoes, get yourself up, get ready to walk out.

And on top of that, you can't even wait for any of your bread to rise. Yeah. Yeah.

And that comes up next. Oh my goodness. So I just get stuck on this statement when God says, I am the Lord, the blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. Yes. Yep.

Thank God. There is a day of judgment coming for mankind, a judgment of sin. And for that judgment to pass over you, the blood of Christ has to be between you. And it has nothing to do with you being obedient in any sense and earning God's respect from being obedient, but has everything to do with you respecting and taking faith in that blood of Christ on your behalf.

And if it weren't for the blood of Christ, we would all be toast when the judgment comes. Yeah. And it's interesting that Moses in writing down the book of Exodus, at this point, he inserts the memorial instructions for how to celebrate the Passover in perpetuity. But he's laying down this picture to remember. That's what a memorial is.

It's a picture that helps you remember. Right. And if you remember in the New Testament when John the Baptist sees Jesus pass, he says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John Welt. Right. Yeah. And then Paul picks that up in 1 Corinthians 5-7 when he's talking about Christ, our Passover has been slain. So Paul draws this direct straight line from this Passover lamb to the death of Jesus.

And Jesus himself, of course, does that at the Last Supper. But I love that phrase where Paul says, Christ, our Passover has been slain. So we better read on to the memorial instructions, verse 14.

I'll read from 14. So this day shall be for you a memorial day. Memorial day. And you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. And you shall keep it as a feast. Interesting that a plague would be memorialized for so long.

Because this is freeing the people. Well it's a plague on the Egyptians, but it is the source of deliverance for the Jews. Source of deliverance for the Jews, yeah.

So here's how it's going to go down. Verse 15, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. You know, no yeast. And on the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses. For if anyone eats what's leavened, what has yeast, from the first day until the seventh day that person shall be cut off from Israel. And on the first day you shall hold a holy assembly. And on the seventh day a holy assembly. And no work shall be done on those days. Kind of like the Sabbath. So this is a whole week long festival.

Whole week long, yeah. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. So you can eat something. 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. And how, verse 18, in the first month, from the 14th day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening. So for seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what's leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel. Whether he's a sojourner or a native of the land, you shall eat nothing leavened. In all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread. Are you stuck there? Okay, so this is clearly the unleavened is very important. And I don't think we want to take the time to unpack it right now.

No. But you listeners should take your concordance and look up leaven. Look up unleavened. You'll find both Old Testament and New Testament references. And start reading about... And the symbolism will become clear to you. What does this leaven represent? It has multi-points of symbolism. Just in the practical sense, they knew that if you took a pinch of your old loaf, which has some yeast in it, and you mixed it in with the new flour, it'll grow again and it'll bubble up and puffs it up. So it's always a sign of sin in many respects.

It's something that kind of seeds itself very easily and spreads and grows. There's just so much symbolism here. Oh, so much.

So much. We don't want to take the time for that because we want to linger in the Passover and linger in the lamb. Because at verse 21, we're going to go back into the narrative now. We're suddenly back in Egypt. And then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, go and select lambs for yourself according to your clans and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, so we're getting the repeated instructions.

Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that's in the basin and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that's in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. 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. You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it's the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses. And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. Right, because they recognize this is the means through which God will deliver them. He's doing exactly what he said he would do. Deliverance is happening right now, yeah.

Right now. Wow. It's the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. Right. You notice he's putting the price in there in the center of the Passover salvation. I think that's the phrase that Paul is picking up on in 1 Corinthians when he says, Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Exactly. Yeah.

Christ our Passover. So he reiterates here what they have to do, how they have to mark their doorposts, what's this going to be at. And by the way, don't forget what you're doing, because you're going to be doing this every year forever. Right. As a commemoration. You're going to do this. And I like 26, when your children say to you, what does this mean?

To this very day. That's still part of the Passover Seder. The Jews do a Passover Seder, they get together for dinner, and part of the Seder, which is what's said, it's like a service that's done in the home, around the dinner table. And it always starts out with, I think it's the youngest son.

I can't remember what it is. Yeah, it should be the youngest kid in the room. But the youngest says, basically, what's this night all about? Why are we doing this? And that's exactly what this is right here, in verse 26, what is this night about? And that's going to become important in the history of Israel. We're going to get instructions about that if we were to press on and read Deuteronomy. Over and over and over again, Moses says in Deuteronomy, now tell your children, tell your children's children, when they ask you, here's what you tell them.

Right, right. God delivered us. This is so much at the core of what Judaism is all about, is the entire story of deliverance. This is the identifying event, right? From here on in the scriptures, countless times God will say to them, I'm the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, remember?

I'm the one that rescued you and gave you your identity. Yeah, in fact, every time he challenges them with, follow me, let's do this, and they balk. He says, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm the God that got you out of Egypt. And they're supposed to go, oh yeah, that's right, I forgot. That's why you have to memorialize this, because you'll forget. But we sure don't want you who are listening to this to miss this picture where Moses says, none of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. Once you've marked that door with the blood, go in and stay there. Stay behind the blood. You go in through that blood-soaked doorway to protection from the judgment that will fall on everyone. The only protection is through that blood-marked doorway. And then the next morning, you're going to go out through the same blood-marked doorway to freedom and a whole new life. So that blood provides protection from the wrath of God, and it's the doorway into deliverance into new life.

It is the boundary condition. And it's so new, he says, I want you to even restart your calendars. So your calendars start from this. This is the first thing you celebrate. This is the beginning of your life. This is the first month of your year.

This is the beginning of everything. So the first month even to this day of the Jewish calendar is when Passover takes place, to this very day. The first month of the Jewish calendar is the month of Passover. Now when this show is airing, Passover is still a couple of weeks ahead, still to come. But perhaps you'll be thinking about that as the Easter season and the Passover season because they're connected together. They're connected. Yeah. And what a coincidence it is that Easter is so close to Passover, that the crucifixion was actually at Passover, not a small connection God's making right there. Yeah.

So he's tying this together tightly. I don't know how you can miss this, actually. This is the Passover lamb. And I like the fact, too, that we talk about, from a New Testament perspective, being born again. It's like we go back in the calendars of our life and we say life was something before that, but then I was born again and I gave my life to Jesus, and it's like I started over. It's like for me, my calendar started over. And that's what he's saying with Israel here, when you're delivered through the blood of the lamb, it's like everything starts anew, starts fresh.

It starts over again. And now you go from being enslaved in the kingdom of darkness to coming into my kingdom, and now you'll be my people and I'll be your God, and the calendar starts today. And you know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature. The old things have passed away. We hold new things have come, right? Moving through that blood-marked doorway that represents the death of Jesus, when we come into the life of Jesus, we become wholly new.

It's new. It doesn't mean we don't continue to experience the consequences of what our previous life was, but all of those things are rendered not powerful, no power over us anymore. It's like being born a second time. Being born again. That's what Jesus said. You gotta be born again. You gotta be born. You gotta start over.

You gotta start over. This is, this is Israel starting over, coming out of four centuries of enslavement, and they're starting over and God says, you know, the promise that God made to Abraham about taking them to a land where God will be their king, dah, dah, dah, all that kind of stuff. Now it's actually gonna happen.

I'm taking you out of here and we're going there. Indeed, this is the beginning of them becoming a nation. Up to this point, they were just an extended family, right? They were the 12 tribes of Israel, the sons of Jacob. But when they come out into the wilderness and God literally recreates them as his people, they become a nation. And boy, we're gonna have fun with that as Exodus unfolds, because this is all still the opening stories of the Exodus, of the coming out. And I frequently tell people when we talk about being saved, that there's actually two parts to that story. You're saved from something and you're saved to something. And in this particular case, we see in close detail them being saved from this enslavement to Egypt. But they're being saved to a new life with God in a place he promised. To becoming God's people. Yeah, and that's exactly the same as what salvation is in the New Testament, becoming God's people. So if a lot of people just get stuck on, well, I'm being saved from being thrown in hell.

Well, you know, that's not really it. Are you saved to relationship with God in the community and the life that he promises to you? Does that figure at all in your thinking when we talk about salvation? Because that's really the core of it.

That's the core. Taken from one kingdom into a new kingdom with a God who loves you and protects you and provides for you and all that. Right, and as we said last week, coming out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light. And that light being in relationship with God, face to face with God, because of Christ.

Yeah. And the real issue that God has overwhelmingly emphasized, and will continue to do so as he creates a nation is that what makes this new society that God is birthing, that starts from misdeliverance, what makes this new society so remarkable is that it's a society that's built with God, it's its center, with God living in their midst. And no society has ever been like that before. So if you're just putting your trust and hope on getting, you know, milk and honey flowing lands, that's one thing. But what about the fact that God's in the center of it? And when we talk about heaven, it's the same thing.

You know, it's not streets of gold, it's who's going to be there, God himself. So that's what he had to teach them in the wilderness. Yeah. What is life like with God in the center? And we're going to go through those lessons for several weeks. Oh my goodness. I love Exodus.

How do we live with him like this? And it's going to be a bumpy road. But the first step we're getting to today and we're going to complete next time is getting out from under the thumb of Pharaoh and those things that enslave us. And thank God, when we come to him, he doesn't deep free us from those things that enslave us. It's all about the sacrifice.

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming back next time to continue discussion. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we hope you join us again for More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. And they would have the chutzpah.