Gospel and Passover

Exodus Gospel and Passover

Text: Exodus 12-13:16

Intro: Exodus 12 isn’t just history—it’s identity. It’s not just what God did then for the children of Israel but we will see it directly connects to what God is doing in our lives today. Today, I want you to see that the same God who drew a bloody dividing line for Israel draws a dividing line for us through the blood of His Son. The Passover didn’t just save Israel from judgment—it points to the greater Lamb, who saves us once and for all.

1. Passover Commanded 12:1-28
   1. The Lord revolutionizes their calendar around the new Passover event. 12:1-2a The passover creates a new beginning as it was God’s New Year.
   2. The Passover centers on one lamb per family or one per family group. If you could not afford a lamb, then you joined your neighbor’s home. Selected on the 10th day and sacrificed on the 14th day. Male without blemish. 12:3-6
   3. They were to eat the complete lamb in haste, as judgment is coming. The Israelites ate the meal as if it were take-out. 12:7-10
   4. Israel escapes judgment as they placed blood on a wooden post, pointing to a future payment of blood on another wooden post for man’s sins.
   5. Eating bitter herbs reminded them of their bitter life in slavery. We all need reminded of our past life before Christ, and not forget that we were in bondage to sin, and now have the power of resurrection in our lives, and deliverance from sin. 1 Cor. 6:9-11
   6. Passover and judgment
      1. Judgment must fall on sinful people. We must pay for our sins. The I Am is holy and requires payment for sin. Sin can’t be ignored or deflected. Rom. 6:23a (pop “death”)

• Song Holy God

1. The night of the passover is a night of judgment, as death for the firstborn of man and beast dies.
   1. Firstborn sons represented the family's identity and embodied its hopes and dreams for the future. The firstborn son was like the “soul” of the family. God taking the firstborn was like him saying he owned each family's soul, as each family owed him a debt. The Egyptians and Israelites were communal cultures, so a son being held responsible for the sins of the family made sense within their worldview.
   2. What if they were good people, moral people, religious people - then they would die. Death has no exceptions due to sin.
2. The Lord had judged the gods of Egypt, and now they stand powerless before the Great I Am to defend the death of their firstborn.
3. The Lord Jehovah is a king to be feared, much greater than Pharaoh. What/whom are you afraid of? Are you more afraid of them than you are of the Lord?
4. When death came, the difference between Israelites and Egyptians was not culture, or bloodline, but blood from a lamb on a doorpost that protects them from judgment. If you had lived unfaithfully to the Lord and applied the blood to the doorpost, you lived. 12:11 It is the Lord’s passover. Heb. 9:22
5. This night was not about your faithfulness but about the blood of the lamb. 12:12-13 Judgment fell on the lamb as a substitute for the firstborn. Judgment falls on the good and the evil. No one escapes the judgment of God.
6. Our only hope is in a substitute. Our hope is not in our upbringing or efforts to change our lives. Those saved from judgment had a substitute.
7. What would have happened had they postponed the application of the blood on the doorpost? Good intentions do not replace application of the blood. 2 Cor. 6:2
8. Forgiveness involves absorbing a debt. The sacrifice of a lamb pictures how God absorbs the cost for our sin-- but, that only makes sense if God himself is somehow pictured in the lamb--otherwise, killing a lamb in our place is random and cruel.

• Wreck dating a girl in tunnel hill Ga

1. Passover Memorialized 12:14-20
   1. The Passover begins The Feast of the Unleavened Bread, which lasts for seven days, as they removed all of the leaven from their homes, and were not to eat any leavened food. It receives further description in Exodus 13.
   2. Leaven symbolized sin. 1 Cor. 5:6-7a.
   3. Justification is when we who are guilty are pronounced just or innocent through the blood of Jesus. The removal of the leaven is a picture of sanctification, the cleansing of sin from our lives. You need to know that God pronounces you just and that you are growing in holiness.
   4. The intentional toleration of leaven during this period demands that the nation cut you off. Obedience to Christ and pursuing holiness reveal that we truly know Jesus.
   5. Later in Exodus, after the Passover feast, God will give Moses a sacrificial system centered around a lamb. Moses will instruct them to set up a tabernacle, the center is an altar on which each family, each year, offers a sacrificial lamb.
   6. Behind that altar of sacrifice was the Holy of Holies, which housed the Ark of the Covenant, which included God’s very presence on earth. On top of the ark was what was called the Mercy Seat, where, once a year, on the Day of Atonement (‘Yom Kippur’), the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled blood from the sacrifice on this Mercy Seat 7x.

• Some have calculated how much blood priests sprinkled on the Mercy Seat in the 373 years between the institution of the Temple and its destruction in 586 BC. Scholars say each sprinkling would have used about a quarter gallon of blood, totaling 94 gallons in that room. The High Priest would have drenched the mercy seat in 94 gallons of blood. Can you imagine what that looked like? You say, “Well, didn’t they ever clean it up?” No. There were strict laws about going into the Holy of Holies.

1. Passover Implemented
   1. Families will sacrifice the lamb and catch the blood in a bowl or basin. Hyssop is used as a brush to apply the blood to the doorposts and lintels of their doors. 12:20-22

• Use door

1. The people obey. Moses pleaded with Pharaoh to allow the people of Israel to sacrifice to their Lord Jehovah, but we see their first sacrifice in over 400 years happens inside Egypt.
2. Everyone deserves Judgment, but only those who have received the blood of Jesus will experience mercy. The sacrifice of Jesus changes everything. 12:23-28
3. Passover Enacted and Instituted 12:29-52
   1. Death comes through the Lord’s visitation on Egypt in every household. Can you imagine the screams of terror? The judgment of the Lord is without prejudice. Rom. 2:11 Two ways to pay for sins
      1. Pay for it yourself, by dying eternally and forfeiting your soul
      2. Jesus, the Lamb of God, pays it for you.
   2. Pharaoh began by killing all of their male babies, and now, after 400 years, justice comes for Egypt, and Israel receives mercy through a lamb, and everyone outside of the protection of the lamb dies.
   3. For Pharaoh, the result of judgment was temporary obedience—12:29-31. Notice the prideful Pharaoh asking for a blessing from the Lord.
   4. The Lord holds sin and death in his hands and crushes them at the cross.
   5. The Egyptians and the Israelites were not innocent. The only difference was the application of the blood. 12:32
   6. The people of Israel receive gifts from the Egyptians as they leave, in effect paying them to leave. 12:33-36
   7. The Israelites came into Egypt with 70 and left with around 2 million. 12:37
   8. God keeps His promises 12:40-42. Those who passed from death to life hold onto this.
   9. The Passover rules were restated, probably for the mixed multitude 12:43-51
4. Feast of Unleavened Bread 13:1-16
   1. The firstborn that God saved, He now claims as His own. 13:1-2 1 Cor. 6:18-20
      1. Every firstborn animal had to be brought to the temple and sacrificed. The firstborn of every flock belonged to God.
      2. Every firstborn son, of course, wasn’t physically sacrificed, but the parents went to the Temple and redeemed them with a sacrifice. You see this in the Old Testament with Hannah, and later, Mary and Joseph did it with Jesus.
   2. The Lord institutes a meal of unleavened bread that exists for remembering their deliverance from Egypt. We have a meal that does the same thing. 13:3-10
   3. The Israelites, their whole existence, look back to their deliverance from Egypt through the lens of the Passover, and we look back to the cross through the Lord’s Supper.
   4. Every time we take part in the Lord’s Supper, we remember Jesus’ death and resurrection. We remind ourselves of our deliverance from slavery. Our king has won!
   5. The Lord’s Supper parallels the Passover meal. We deserve judgment, but Jesus took our judgment through His blood and body. 2 Cor. 5:21
      1. Jesus made a final payment for our sins on the cross. Heb. 7:27
      2. Jesus died on the PASSOVER day.
   6. These meals testify to our children who have not yet experienced salvation from sin and salvation in Jesus. 13:8 Use this moment as a time of explanation.
   7. Just as the Israelites in the generations to follow remembered the exodus from Egypt through this meal, we remember the cross that we were not at through this meal, passed down from church to church to us.
5. Four Major Lessons
   1. Sovereignty
      1. It is the Lord’s Passover. God is in charge. This passage is not primarily about Pharaoh, Egypt, or even Israel - It is the Lord’s Passover 12:12
      2. God states 3x “I will.” God reveals that He is in charge of wickedness. God did not forget Egypt’s killing of children by throwing them into the Nile, and now God brings forth righteous judgment as screams of death and terror come throughout the country.
      3. God is in charge of His people as he saw, heard, and knew their condition. Ex. 2:23-25 God heard, remembered, knew (pop heard knew remembered and saw)
   2. Sin We see the holiness of God
      1. If we look at God without including God's holiness, we make God in our image. His holiness designs God above the sinfulness of man.
      2. The destroyer was scheduled to visit every home, and he would pass over that home because of the blood and only the blood. Rom. 3:23 we all fall short.
      3. How do we measure the size of a fire? By the number of firefighters and fire engines sent to fight against it. How do we measure the seriousness of a medical condition? By the amount of risk the doctors take in prescribing dangerous antibiotics or surgical procedures. How do we measure the gravity of sin and the incomparable vastness of God's love for us? By looking at the magnitude of what God has done for us in Jesus, the Son of God who became like a common criminal for our sake and in our place. Is. 64:6 sinners by nature and sinners by choice Eph. 2:4-5
   3. Substitution
      1. God saves by the blood of substitutionary atonement. God provided Adam and Eve with coats of skin, he provided Abraham and Isaac with a ram Gen. 22:8, while Isaac is about to be sacrificed by his own father.
      2. The Israelites were to choose a lamb without spot or blemish, and the innocent lamb would be sacrificed for guilty people. The blood was a sign to God and Israel that they were trusting in it as their protection.
      3. This blood of the Passover lamb is a type of Christ, as Jesus on the cross pays for our sins. (1 Cor. 5:7 Jesus is our passover lamb) One lamb for a person/household, and on the day of atonement, one lamb for a nation. Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 1 Pet. 3:18
   4. Sanctification
      1. The Passover is given as an ongoing memorial.
      2. The feast is not for everyone, as it was not for strangers or foreigners. It was a family meal. 12:44-49 Jesus said it was to be done in remembrance of Him.
      3. I cor. 5:6-8 We are to clean out the sin/leaven of our lives just like the Israelites did for the feast of unleavened bread.

• The job of painting the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is never-ending. I heard once that they paint it end-to-end, but by the time they get to the end—however many years that may take—it is time to start over. In reality though, sections and portions of the bridge are prioritized according to need.

Regardless of strategy, the bridge is never not being painted. It is one of the primary maintenance jobs. Why? Why is the seemingly mundane and monotonous act of painting, in fact, a task of utmost importance to sustaining the structure? Because the air coming in from the Pacific Ocean is incredibly high in salt content and will wreak havoc on the structure if it is not properly sealed with paint. Exposed segments can lead to corrosion, which can lead to structural failure, which can lead to disaster.

A team of thirty-four people make it their life’s purpose to paint the Golden Gate its trademark “international orange” color. They climb ladders hundreds of feet in the air, hang from harnesses and baskets suspended over the vast waters, and risk their lives to put paint to steel. Year after year. Every bolt, every rivet, every beam, every crevice, every cable gets covered. The safety of the bridge depends upon it.

1. So What?
   1. Has the blood of the lamb been applied to your life? How can you come into the presence of a holy God? Only through an unblemished substitute. They leave with a mixed multitude, which includes many nations 12:38. Gen. 12:1-3 (pop 3b)
   2. Don’t forget where you have come from. If you are in a relationship with Jesus because you have fully placed your faith in Him for your salvation, then don’t ever forget where you would be without Him. Some of us have experienced more sin than others, and either way, remember Jesus changes everything - we don’t.
   3. There is another, better, complete lamb. He is completely righteous, no bones broken, dying at twilight, bringing greater, fuller deliverance; this lamb’s blood on a wooden post delivered from eternal death. In the gospel story of Jesus’ final Passover, there is no mention of a lamb on the table because the lamb is sitting at the table.

Conclusion: That night in Egypt, every home experienced death. The only question was where the death would fall. Either the firstborn died, or the lamb died in his place. The difference was not Israel’s goodness, or morality, or sincerity— the difference was the blood. And nothing has changed.

We don’t stand before God tonight because we have been faithful, but because Jesus was faithful.We don’t come because we are clean, but because Christ has made us clean. We don’t avoid judgment because we deserve mercy, but because the Lamb absorbed judgment in our place.

On the night before Jesus died, He sat down for a Passover meal. But this time, there was no lamb on the table—because the Lamb was at the table. The disciples didn’t need to sacrifice a lamb that night, because the final Lamb was about to be sacrificed on a wooden post—just like blood was once applied to wooden doorposts. And just like Israel looked back to their deliverance through a meal, Jesus gave us a meal to look back to ours. When we take this meal, we are proclaiming something: that judgment has passed over us not because of who we are, but because of the blood of the Lamb.

So as we come to the Lord’s Supper, we remember Jesus, our Passover Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world.

Communion

1. What should happen when we experience the New Passover Meal?
   1. Worship 12:27, 13:9-16, Rom. 12:1
   2. Mission - caring for the orphans and the widows, a calling into full-time Christian service, going into the mission field.
   3. We understand that God takes sin seriously, and we will look to turn from sin and to Christ.

3.9 million project for building

60 k under budget

Apr 475 k for chairs and AV

300 k for land

We have brought in apr 1.8/2.1 BGS

3 million est. mortgage too high

Leads from one capital campaign into another