|
<< Back to Sermon Archive
"Passover"
Creation. Fall. Flood. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob’s
name is changed to Israel. Twelve sons. I want you to be
able to hold this story in your head and your heart as if
it were your very own because it is. Rescued from starvation
by God through the son of Israel named Joseph by relocating
the whole family to Egypt. Four hundred years of slavery.
Moses. This is the story of God woven together with a golden
thread than runs throughout – the promise: I am going to
send a Savior.
Today we reach THE pivotal moment in God’s story so far. He
is about to demonstrate his power to save and reveal a remarkable
glimpse of exactly how he will bring that salvation to all
people of all time. From one man, Abraham, who didn’t have
a son until his old age God has established a whole nation.
Seventy descendants of Abraham had entered Egypt and now 400
years later approximately 600,000 men plus women and children
are about to be rescued. The promise to Abraham that his
descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky
and the sand on the seashore is beginning to be fulfilled. But
you haven’t seen anything yet!
To move the story forward today I need you step back for
a moment and learn a key principle for understanding the
Bible. That principle is simply this: It is all about
Jesus. Or if you like big, fancy words and you want to
sound intelligent to your friends and family – you can
say, “Well, of course, you have to understand the Bible
is Christocentric.” That is the whole story centers on
Christ and it revolves around him. Like I said, “It’s
all about Jesus.”
I think most people have missed that along the way somehow.
At least I know that I did. For a long time it just never
seemed to click – that God had a plan for the rescue,
deliverance, salvation of all people even before He created
Adam and Eve – He knew what He was going to do. The cross,
where God Himself would become the firstborn, the one and
only Son of the heavenly Father, who would die to set people
free, the cross is the guiding and driving force of all
human history.
What that means is that the events we are witnessing in
today’s lesson are happening the way they are happening
because of what God will eventually do at the cross. It’s
all about Jesus. And what was true then is still true
today. The cross is the guiding and driving force of all
the events happening in our lives and in our world. This
is the Christian faith. And it changes everything about
the way you think and live.
Let me put it to you another way. All who are saved, all the
way back to Adam and Eve are saved in exactly the same way
we are – by grace alone, God’s perfect and undeserved love
toward us through faith, that is, believing the story of Jesus’
life, death and resurrection. Sometimes I think people read
the Old Testament and imagine that God had an original plan,
a system of commands and sacrifices and that somehow through
obedience to these commands and practice of the sacrifices
God expected the Old Testament people to live up to His
standards and by their performance earn their salvation from Him.
According to this way of thinking it appears that God’s
original idea was a flop, causing Him to have to scratch His
head and think of something different and wah-lah the New
Testament was born. But please remember, it’s all about
Jesus. The story of the rescue, deliverance and salvation
of the human race is tied together from beginning to end
by the promise of the Savior and the fulfillment of that
promise in the person and work of Jesus Christ. People in
the Old Testament were saved by believing that a Savior
WOULD come in exactly the same way as people in the New Testament,
including you and me, are saved by believing that a Savior HAS come.
It’s all about Jesus. And when you know that these Old Testament
stories come alive and we become detectives of sorts in search
of clues to the connections between what’s happening in the
story and Jesus and us.
So, can you find Jesus in the Passover? Well, let’s back
up a little bit first and get a running start at today’s
installment of the story of God. Four hundred years of
slavery, who can even begin to imagine what that is like?
We prize our freedom above all else. We will fight and
die to protect it. We’ve read about slavery in our
history books. We see variations of it in the news.
The hopelessness, the abuse, the loss of human dignity
are more than we can bear.
God uses that very imagery, in fact the four hundred years
of Israel’s slavery is a lesson on the condition of the
human soul. Sin is the word the Bible uses for this condition.
Sin is the inability to be perfect in every single thought,
word and deed. Because none of us is perfect and cannot by
our reason or strength become perfect Jesus said, “Anyone
who sins is a slave to sin.” The worst kind of slavery is
to have lost all sense of what freedom is like and not even
realize that you are a slave! I think that’s where most of
us live! We’ve become so accustomed to our own sin and the
sin around us we don’t even realize what we are missing and
therefore do not long for the freedom that is ours in the
cross of Jesus Christ.
Not so with Israel. They understood their slavery all too
well. In Exodus 4:29-31 we read: “Moses and Aaron brought
together all the elders of the Israelites, {30} and Aaron
told them everything the LORD had said to Moses. He also
performed the signs before the people, {31} and they
believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned
about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and
worshiped.”
But now the trouble really begins. God is about to start
flexing his muscles against sin, against evil, against Egypt
but they do not passively step aside and surrender. No,
instead of getting better, things immediately got worse.
Pharaoh is unimpressed with Moses and mocks God, which is
really never a good thing to do. There follows a series
of 10 plagues, God’s judgment against sin, but notice their
goal is not destruction, but freedom by turning to Him in
faith and repentance.
That’s a hard pill for us to swallow – that God uses such
drastic measures to try and get people’s attention, to save
them from the final and worst judgment of all – eternal
separation from Him, eternal slavery, if you will, with no
hope and no possibility of freedom. And the world’s reaction
today is no different than Pharaoh’s and Egypt’s. They scoff
at the idea that God is control of human history. And then
whine over how a good and loving God could allow such bad
things to happen. I heard someone suggest recently that a
better bumper sticker than “Stop Global Warming” would say,
“Stop Global Whining!”
But the length to which God is willing to go to rescue, to
deliver, to save his people is brought into sharp focus in
Passover. Can you find Jesus here? After nine unsuccessful
attempts to get Pharaoh to let Israel go the horribleness
of God’s judgment is about to be revealed. The firstborn of
every house and even their animals will be struck down. I
need to see a show of hands. How many of you have seen the
movie the Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil B. DeMills,
starring Charleston Heston and Yul Brenner? Kids, look around.
It was made in 1956 – that’s even before I was born! It is
long – almost four hours I think. Not quite suited for our
fast paced high action tastes. But the scene that is burned
in my memory from childhood is the night of the Passover. The
people are gathered in their homes. There’s an eerie silence.
A cloud, menacing and dark forms and suddenly it becomes
almost alive. It divides into streams of smoke that go down
ever street and alley and then you hear it, shrieks of terror
and loud wailing as the Egyptians discover that God has carried
out his judgment on their unbelief.
But even here there is restraint for God clearly says in Ezekiel 33:11 -
"As surely as I live, … I take no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn!
Turn from your evil ways!" God could most surely have struck them
all down, every last single Egyptian. But listen to 2 Peter 3:9 -
"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand
slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish,
but everyone to come to repentance."
And even the very word “firstborn” is a clue that points us
to Jesus. Remember? “Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a
son.” He is the firstborn of God. The one promised, who
is perfect in every way yet sacrifices himself at the
cross. In Jesus the firstborn of God will die so that
we may live.
Can you find Jesus in the Passover? Take a lamb, without spot
or blemish and sacrifice it. Take its blood and smear it
on the door posts of your house so that the angel of death
will Passover you. Roast the lamb, make unleavened bread,
bread without yeast, because you won’t have time to let
it rise and bake it. The time has come. We are getting
out here. No more slavery. Eat the lamb and the unleavened
bread and be ready to leave. Freedom from slavery is just
around the corner.
When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to the place where
he was baptizing he said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world.” At the cross Jesus blood will
be shed and by faith, by believing that His blood is shed
to set us free from sin, the angel of death passes over you
and me. Did you hear Jesus in the Gospel lesson? (John 11:25-26)
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me
will live, even though he dies; {26} and whoever lives and
believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
The Passover was to be celebrated by God’s people year
after year to remind them that the promised Savior was
coming. On the night Jesus was betrayed he and his
disciples were doing that very thing – they were
celebrating the Passover. Jesus took the unleavened
bread and broke it saying, “This is my body.” Then
he took the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood.”
Jesus now becomes the final and perfect Passover Lamb
and He instituted a new meal to be eaten week after week.
At the first Passover the people were instructed to eat
the meal “with your cloak tucked into your belt, your
sandals on your fee and your staff in your hand. Eat
it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.”
On this side of the cross we live feasting on Jesus, the
Passover Lamb in the miracle of the Lord’s Supper. And
just before we receive him again, what do we sing? “Lamb
of God who takes away the sin of the world!” We live with
our tunics tucked into our belts, our sandals on our feet,
a staff in our hand because we are getting out of here. Our
days of slavery to sin are coming to an end. We eat the new
feast of Jesus and live like we are ready to go.
What does that look like? Well, to be honest, it looks very
ordinary and mundane. We go to school, we go to work, we form
relationships, we have families, we laugh, we cry, and celebrate,
and travel, and enjoy the wonders of God’s creation, we struggle,
we fail, we make horrible mistakes, we experience tragedy and
frustration and bitterness but we do so with our eyes fixed on
the cross and empty tomb of Easter believing that there is more
to life than meets the eye. We are getting out of here.
In us and through us the story of God continues to work itself
out. Only one thing is left – 1 Timothy 2:4 – God wants all
people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth,
which is Jesus. The descendants of Abraham more numerous than
the stars in the sky, includes you and me and all who believe,
and the number is still growing, or is it? Where will they find Jesus?
Amen.
Top of Page
<< Back to Sermon Archive
|
Click here to play video.