087 - Making a Memory With Matzo

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, so last week Israel finally left the captivity of Egypt. They're not slaves anymore, and they're going into the desert. Now let's talk about how you survive in the desert.

Oh, but wait. Before we do that, we have to talk about the significance of the firstborn and the significance of that unleavened bread that they were carrying. Ah, so something just important happened, and let's figure out what that is today.

On More Than Ink. Well, good morning. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. And we're sitting here at our dining room table, and we've been talking about the Passover in Exodus chapters 12 and 13.

And today we're going to enter chapter 13. So we're not going to review the Passover a whole lot. You can certainly go to the website and listen to the logged shows there.

That's morethanink.org. But suffice it to say, Passover is the event of the Old Testament. Well, it is the defining event of the nation of Israel when God brought them out of Egypt by passing over the blood on the doorway that protected them. So I don't know that I have a whole lot more to say. We're just glad you're with us today. And we need to talk today about leaven, about the firstborn, about redeeming the firstborn, about the ceremony of remembering. So all of that is packed into chapter 13. Yeah. And before we get into the, you know, if I was writing this, the nuts and bolts of the story, like, okay, so you got two million people walking in the desert.

Don't we have some logistic problems? I mean, where do they go next? Well, that doesn't show up till 14. That doesn't show up for a while. So in between there, before talking about all that necessary real life kind of stuff, God is very, very deliberate in this to say, look, I want you all to understand the importance of what just happened. This is really important. So that's kind of what we're looking at today, which God's making a very deliberate point that this is something very, very important, very seminal just happened.

And don't forget it before we get all wrapped up with how do you live in the desert. So that's where we are today. So you want to start in the chapter 13? Sure, that first couple verses. Well, yeah, it's interesting because he starts out talking about the firstborn and then he jumps immediately into the Feast of Unleavened Bread and then circles back to the firstborn. So here we go. Chapter 13, verse one, the Lord said to Moses, consecrate to me all the firstborn, whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both man and a beast is mine. 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. Now do you want to read on? No, let's just stop right there.

Because he's opened all the boxes that he's going to deal with later. Well, and it's an interesting thing. We know that on the last plague that God took the firstborn as that 10th plague.

Right. And now we're bringing up this firstborn thing again. And he says, consecrate to me all the firstborn. It sounds, you know, it sounds almost threatening in a way, but this is not a threat to Israel. What he's saying is there's an important issue going on when we talk about the firstborn that to some degree is lost on us in modern culture about what the firstborn is, what it means. That's a really, really big deal.

So let's just stop right there. And he says, consecrate to me all the firstborn. And I was curious about that consecrate word. It's only been used once before in the Old Testament and before this, and that was during the creation account when God, when God, you know, had blesses the seventh day and he made it holy. It's this word. So it's kind of a, it's an idea of setting apart and saying, this is different from everything else.

The seventh day was different from the other six. So what he's saying here is I want you to set apart as different and holy and actually dedicated to me. You're firstborn. Because the firstborn signifies something.

Signifies something super important. And in ancient cultures, the firstborn was traditionally the one who carried on the business of the father, right? So he was, he, even as he became, came of age and became an older adolescent than, you know, young man, he could actually hold contract negotiations with people on behalf of his father.

He and his father were really one in terms of what their, what was going on. So you could say the firstborn is the one who perfectly carried forward the will of the father. So you could look at this and say, from God's perspective, I want your firstborn to be my firstborn. I want them to carry on my will.

I want them to be prominent in that role. And again, when we look at the tenth plague, which was the death of the firstborn in Egypt, what God was saying through that very clearly was your next generation will not carry forward your will anymore. It's like a death of the future. Indeed, there might not even be a next generation if you only had the one child.

Right, exactly. In fact, this is a small memory tickle, but I remember reading about a particular pharaoh who, there was an inscription in a place about his son saying, this son will become king of Egypt. Which is, you know, in normal Egyptian culture, well of course he will, he's the firstborn. But in this particular case, this son was not the firstborn. So in a way, they had to write it down on a stone to guarantee that it would happen. A lot of people speculate that that was the pharaoh that happened when the firstborn died.

I don't know if that's really true or not. But the idea was that the firstborn would do this. They would carry forward the will of the father seamlessly. So when he says here, consecrate to me the firstborn, that's exactly what he's saying. This nation and your firstborn will carry forward seamlessly my will as father.

So that's all been wrapped up in this entire thing. Well, and from a surely biological point of view, we're talking about carrying on the next generation. Life will go forward, because now there is a guarantee of a next generation, because the firstborn has opened the womb.

Yeah, exactly. And no matter who follows, we're guaranteed of a next generation. That continuing the continuity of the line of the father. Yeah, and so when Moses talks to Pharaoh, and he says to him that God says that Israel is my firstborn.

Right. That's back in chapter four, Israel is my firstborn. What he's saying is that Israel is the one who will seamlessly carry forward my will in the world.

They'll represent what I'm all about going on here. So that idea of inheriting the purpose and will of a father is total with the firstborn. So that's what we're looking at. Well, not just inheriting the purpose and will, but inheriting this stuff. Yeah, exactly.

From a human point of view. Yeah, exactly. The firstborn inherits.

Yeah, yeah. Being literally part of the family. So, you know, if you're listening, you can look up inherit, inheritance, firstborn, and look for a connection between those two things. Across the scriptures, you'll find some interesting things. Use your concordance. I had someone come to me just this week and ask me after a Bible study where I had mentioned it, she said, what is a concordance?

What is a concordance? She didn't know. And so I had the pleasure of pulling one off the shelf and showing her how it worked.

And she walked out saying, I'm going to go get one of these. I just immediately saw the necessity of it as a good tool. So, if you don't have one. You want to explain what it is? Well, okay, so a concordance is a listing of all the terms, all the words that appear in the Bible. An exhaustive concordance will have every single word. And then you can look up that word. And all the references where it shows up. All the references where it shows up.

That's where I was going. And then if you have a Strong's concordance, it will give you a number that you can then look in the back and find the Hebrew or the Greek definition for that word. So it is a powerful, powerful tool.

Yeah, it gives you a one to one correspondence between the English word and the Hebrew or the Greek were the original words that were written. Okay, so now we need to press on here. We do. We got a lot to talk about here. We haven't even talked about leaven yet. A lot to talk about here. So we just got short in his summary there.

No leavened bread shall be eaten. Okay, so let's move on from there. Oh, you want to pick it up from there?

Yeah, from four. Okay, so today in the month of Abib, you're going out. And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites and the wait a minute, I lost my place. The Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you. Okay, so all those peoples are named in Genesis 15 when God makes the original promise to Abraham.

In fact, Jebusites live in Jebus, which is its original name for Jerusalem. Okay, so all those people which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. 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. You shall tell your son on that day, it's because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. 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.

You shall therefore keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year. Okay, we got to stop there. The Lord brought you out, the Lord brought you out, the Lord brought you out. It's emphasized over and over and over again. And this feast of unleavened bread is meant for you to remember what happened.

The details are what happened, yeah. And of course, leavening is just yeast, so raised bread comes from yeast, that's what leaven is. And we're so technically advanced, we know that yeast multiplies in dough, so a small amount of yeast put into dough will multiply and leaven the whole dough. And everybody who deals with bread dough knows this. They know this.

Right, well they've known it from the very beginning. You put your leaven in the bread and it puffs it up. This is Food Science 101. Okay, so take your concordance and look up leaven and unleavened and you will turn up some fascinating things. We're not going to take a whole lot of time with it, but look that up and see how the New Testament unpacks the meaning of this leaven. Jesus used that phrase a whole lot when he said, Now beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees.

It's hypocrisy, it's untruth, it's wickedness. So you look that up and read those passages. Well yeah, and if you find the ones in 1 Corinthians 5. Oh yes, I have that open in front of me actually. Oh do you?

Yeah. Well the context is interesting. In the church in Corinth there was a guy doing just nasty sexual stuff. And Paul says, you know, you've got to take action against this guy.

You just can't leave him there because you use yeast as an example. Right, and he says don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. This is in verse 6 of 1 Corinthians 5.

Clean out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Wow, there's a lot of things tying together. Oh my goodness.

Yeah, this leaven if left unattended to will multiply. He's basically saying this particular guy, you've got to take action against him and get him out of the congregation because he'll infect the whole congregation. Right.

Yeah, it's a big deal. But then he ties it in to Passover. So connect that back to Passover for us. When they left Egypt and they were carrying an unleavened dough because they were going to eat it very quickly.

They didn't have time to wait around for it to puff up. What is the connection there? And is the connection the contamination of the culture of Egypt? That God says don't take that with you. Yeah, so you could make a whole bunch of connections.

So just camp in that a little bit. But in any case, they institute this seven-day feast of unleavened bread, clean out the old leaven, celebrate it. Now the first day of the feast, we learned from the New Testament, the first day of the feast is when the Passover lamb is sacrificed. So then there's the seven days of unleavened bread that follow that. Immediately follows, right.

Just like in the story it does that. Right, right. Because you have the Passover lamb and then you have, yeah. And in fact to this very day, I remember some of my Jewish neighbors, they would do this at the beginning of Passover. One of the rituals they'd do is they'd go through the house ceremonially and search for every bit of yeast that's there, every yeast bread that's in there. And they would even go to the degree that they would clear out the cupboards, they'd take all the loaves of bread out, they'd do all that kind of stuff. And then just in case there's minute crumbs left in the cupboards, they would get out a feather and use it like a duster and sweep out the insides of their cupboards just to make sure there was no leaven at all, because it only takes a tiny pinch and would contaminate the loaf.

So this is still done to this very day, every year at Passover. But it's interesting that the emphasis now is on the cleaning the cupboards and the sweeping out the dusty bits of flour instead of understanding the symbolism of the cleansed heart. Yes, and this ruthlessness against the presence of sin, even in its smallest amount. Yeah, and that's what biblically we're talking about. But here when we talk about leaving Egypt, it's kind of like I want to leave behind all the influences of Egypt. And so many times we read the story and we say, well, it was just a necessity. They didn't have time to have raised bread because they had to leave any second.

Well, that's true. But in the design of that story, God's saying, but there's a deeper truth about this, leaving behind all the leaven of Egypt. Right, because it's part of the picture of the remembering. Remember this in verse 3, Moses says, Now remember this day, the Lord brought you out, the Lord brings you in. The Lord brought you out, the Lord will bring you in. The Lord brought you out, the Lord will bring you in. That couplet occurs several times in this passage. So he says this is a memorial, a sign on your hand, and a memorial between your eyes that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth.

Now that's a very foreign idea to us. Well, okay, but we run into this idea in the Old Testament a lot, that when something is on your hand, it has to do with what you do. What you do. And if something is between your eyes, it has to do with what are you focused on. What are you looking at? What are you aimed at?

What's in your head. Right, right. Yeah, so we know by the time of the New Testament, then that had been pulled out to be actual, literal phylacteries, worn on the hand and worn on the forehead. Yeah, I remember Jesus even putting them down because my phylactery is bigger than your phylactery. Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's crazy. And it just illustrates the degree to which we get focused on the trivia.

Yeah. We get focused on the sign and not the reality to which it points. So Moses said, you know, do this as a memorial to remind you leaven is not a good thing.

It's going to puff you up, leave it behind. And this knowledge should change what you do with your hands. Exactly. And what you think about and dwell upon with your mind. You should live differently because in fact, as Paul says in the New Testament, we just read it, in fact you are unleavened in Christ. The Passover lamb has been slain and you are in him. So live differently.

Live differently, live differently. That's the consecrate to me, you know. Right, right. So let's do a bonus point.

The mark of the beast in Revelation, the mark of the beast is on the right hand and on the forehead. Right. Now that sounds very similar. So what's the tie in between what we're saying right here? Well, you know. I know you just had this conversation with a bunch of people. We grew up in the era you and I did when that was, you know, the implanting of a chip or that was how that was interpreted. But, you know, from the overview of all of scripture it becomes very clear that the mark of the beast is going to be shown by what you do.

What you do, your hands. And how you think. There you go. And that's the mark. Right. And people with an unrenewed mind are going to continue to pursue the track of the beast. Right.

Right. And unless you demonstrate with your hands that you're in line with the culture of the beast and demonstrate with what you think and what you say and what you focus on is in line with the culture of the beast, then you're not going to be able to buy yourself. So, you know, we are urged in the New Testament and several of the prayers of Paul say, now I pray that you will walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you. Walk in a manner worthy of your calling. Different from other people. Walk differently. Yeah.

And then he unpacks that. You can read those. I would encourage you especially to read the beginning of Ephesians 4 and the beginning of Colossians, I guess Colossians 1, 9 to about 13 where he talks about walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you and what that means. So, we won't take time for that now, but you go and look those prayers up. Right. Because God intends for us to walk differently.

Right. In what we think and what we do. And this is captured in this symbolism of what's on your hand, what's in your hand, what you do, and then what you think, what's in your heart, what's in your head. Because of what the Lord has done for you. Moses says here, that's the whole point here. Remember this and let it affect what you do and how you think.

Everything in your life. Every year, commemorate it. Yeah. Because we forget. We forget sooner than a year. Yeah, and do this every year, he says.

A point in time from year to year. Well, let's push on into 11. Oh, we got to. Is that where we are?

Yep. I'll read this. So, 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, 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. 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. And when in time to come, your son asks you, what does this mean? You shall say to him, well, by a strong hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt and from the house of slavery. 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. And so, therefore, I sacrificed to the Lord all the males that first opened the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.

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. Well, there's that. There it is.

Again. You know, based on this memorial of what you do with the firstborn. The Lord has brought me out, redeemed and delivered me, so I will live differently and everything I have belongs to him. My whole future belongs to him, which is the significance of the firstborn. We talked about that a minute ago.

Yeah. So you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. And again, we're talking about letting go and saying this firstborn belongs to God. This firstborn lives the total will of God and not my will as a person. So it's really symbolically and in reality giving over the future saying, you know, our future is not wrapped up in my will, it's wrapped up in God's will, so much so that we give our firstborn to him. So in the case of the animals, they actually would sacrifice the firstborn of the animals.

But it says here now, I'm not going to sacrifice my sons, I will redeem them with a sacrifice that represents them. Oh my goodness. And suddenly there's an echo of Jesus here. Yep. Yep.

In their place. In the Old Testament, God says that I am your redeemer. I'm the one who buys you and pays the price for you. So this redemption, this is a very powerful idea.

And why? Well, because these ones belong to God, but there's something wrong with them. In fact, he talks about that earlier here. He talks about if there's basically an animal that's a firstborn that you're given to him, you're sacrificed, but if it's not, presumptively, if it's not perfect, you need to break its neck or you need to redeem it with a lamb. So there's an idea that God owns this firstborn, but maybe if there's a problem with that firstborn, you need to redeem it another way. But again, you don't sacrifice your own children, you redeem them with the lamb instead.

Yeah. Well, I was thinking about the donkey, because that's what it says in verse 13. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb. So you are interpreting that to mean what you just said, something that's not... I'm interpreting it that there's something wrong with the donkey. Oh.

Because it's not pure in that sense, because sacrifice has to be pure. That may not be true. I don't know. I wouldn't make a whole lot of emphasis on that. That's my speculation.

That's my speculation. Let's just erase that. Erase that thought.

I'm just not sure of that. But the emphasis of this passage is it all belongs to God. Your future, your firstborn belongs to God.

The next generation belongs to God. And he has redeemed it, belongs to him. He has given a life for it. By extension, he's given a life for you. And God delivered you by his own strength in order to bring you in. He brought you out of there to take you in.

Yeah. So the long-term redemption idea, I mean, it comes straight out of Passover, because after all, all those lambs died to redeem them into new life. So that's all he's saying. You need to continue understanding that you have been bought with a price, as Paul writes later. You're not your own. You've been bought with a price, and that price is the precious blood of Christ himself. So that's what we're talking about here, that kind of redemption. But all the firstborn of my sons, I redeem.

I purchase them, and they're mine. And again, because of all that firstborn stuff we just talked about, he caps off this whole section talking about, this is going to be a mark on your hand again, frontlets between your eyes. For by a strong hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt.

That's what it's meant to remind us of. So if you go through a Passover Seder celebration, and they never get to the punchline, the punchline is, we talk about all this because by a strong hand, the Lord made this happen. The Lord brought us out of Egypt. And that's why God uses that punchline all through the Old Testament. I'm the one who got you out of Egypt.

So remember that, because it's not because of anything special you did. I did this for you in order to bring you in to the land that I promised your father, Abraham. I'm the God who keeps his promises, and I will deliver you.

I will deliver you. But there is an expectation that you will live in a manner that's consistent with that. Now, just as we're talking about this, I suddenly realize that Romans 12, 1, and 2 says that exact thing. I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your, your translation might say spiritual service of worship, your rational service of worship. It is the only rational thing to do in response to the grace of God. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove out what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

So there we have it. The renewing of the mind and the surrendering of the self, the body, to live out what the renewed mind understands. So that's the hands and the frontlets.

Right, the hands and the frontlets, yeah. So it's a very consistent idea. And the whole idea about being first born, about God's loved ones, there's also another theme that runs through the entire Old Testament, where God says, if you will be my people, I'll be your God. So that's kind of this mutual, I don't know what you call it, mutual, not ownership, but something. Well, it's an agreement to live in a particular way. You know, what the theological buzzword for that is, covenant.

Yeah, it's covenant. I am for you and you are for me, and we will do life together. Yeah, and it strongly is mirrored for our tutoring advantages in marriage, where there's this mutual giving of one another.

By God's design. Right, and then on all of our little Valentine candies, it says, will you be mine? Will you be mine? And so that's what we're talking about here. So God's establishing the nation of Israel saying, you're mine, now will you let me be yours?

Right. And that's what happens from this point on in the entire Exodus story and as they leave Egypt, is they're coming to a point where they realize that God's making a tremendous offer to them. You know, if you'll be my people, I will be your God. But to be my people, and I've already ransomed you, I've already redeemed you, I've already brought you out of Egypt, I've brought you to this point, but will you give your heart to me so that I can love you? And that's going to come up very shortly. I think by the time we get to chapter 19 of Exodus, we have the first really big statement, I'll be your God and you'll be my people.

I have plans for you if you'll live in relationship with me. Yeah, exactly. So here is just the beginning of the discovery on the nation of Israel, that they have a personal God who has not forgotten them in the four centuries of enslavement in Egypt, but a God who's making them a fundamental covenant offer that if they'll be His people, He'll be their God. Wow. And that discovery starts next week. So remember, you've been delivered by the blood of Jesus.

Yeah. You've been taken out of the domain of darkness and brought to the kingdom of His beloved Son, and there is nothing as terrifying as living in a domain of darkness, a place where you don't understand why life does not work and life is really bad. And He's changed everything. In fact, it's so new, it's like we're reborn, and we're seeing right here the rebirth of the nation of Israel.

It always was a nation all the way back to Abraham, but now there's a new thing happening, and that new thing is a nation that's following God into the great land that He's promised to them. Wow, what an adventure. Yeah, what an adventure. Well, join us for this adventure next week.

It pushes on and the entire adventure is all about discovering the wonderful loving kindness of God in difficult situations. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And join us next time 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. Do you want to listen to that one? No, let's just do it again while we're on a roll here. So, three, two, one.