Exodus Chronicles - Part 5
Pastor: Rollan Fisher
What are the means by which God provides permanent change in your life?
Focus: Through the Passover, we see God’s mechanisms for ongoing and permanent change in our lives.
Ongoing Change
Permanent Change
Our Passover Lamb
Ongoing Change
To come into the freedom that God has for you will require ongoing change in your life.
Exodus 12:1-13
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 tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' 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. 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 fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. “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, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn 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.
Contrary to how Pharoah responded to God’s judgements, the Passover exemplifies how the Lord instructed his people to respond to his offer of freedom.
God would lead his people through commands that were to be obeyed and rituals that were to be observed that would construct their life of worship.
*What you have to realize is that these festivals and observances introduced by God through Moses were all new for the Israelites.
As you follow Christ, there are also new rhythms and rituals introduced into your life to continue the process of ongoing transformation.
These changes bring us out of the bondage to which we had been accustomed to the freedom that is ultimately found in Jesus.
Priorities
God starts by changing your calendar and how you spend your time.
In the celebration of the Passover, God made sure to say that the first thing the Israelites would celebrate year after year is a reminder of his deliverance.
There will be no permanent change of life without a change in priorities.
The whole congregation of the people were to celebrate - no one was an exception.
Those who think themselves exceptions are those who inevitably find themselves deceived and eventually cut off from the people of God (Exodus 12:19).
Because of the process of sanctification where you are destined to become more and more like Christ, you never have the right to stop changing as you follow Jesus.
Each time that you worship, it is an opportunity to bring more, not less, of yourself to God.
The whole of the lamb was to be cooked - including the head and inner parts.
In coming to Christ God deals with the whole man, from his actions to the innermost ambitions of the heart - all motives are to be processed and submitted at the table of the Lord.
The command not to leave any of the meal until morning speaks not only of submitting every area of your life to Christ - but not procrastinating in doing so.
The more we relent to God through his prescribed manner of worship, the more we enter into the freedom for which Christ died to usher us.
“Jesus taught that your highest priority must be your relationship with him. If anything detracts you from that relationship, that activity is not from God. God will not ask you to do something that hinders your relationship with Christ.”
-Henry Blackaby
This is why Oswald Chambers of My Utmost For His Highest said,
“Your priorities must be God first, God second and God third, until your life is continually face to face with God.”
*To the degree that we hold back or ignore his specific commands in various areas of our lives is the measure that we will remain in slavery in that particular area.
Think Routines, Rituals and Redemption:
Routines - we are a product of our habits and God introduces rituals to conform us to the image of Christ.
Rituals - rituals are God’s mechanism of both teaching and reinforcing the priority of God’s redemption in our lives
Redemption - the Passover celebration was to be a continual remembrance and foreshadowing of the redemption the people of God would have in Jesus Christ.
Permanent Change
When God brings his people out of slavery, he intends for it to be a permanent change.
The lamb that was to be sacrificed was to be without blemish.
Christ was our permanent, sinless lamb.
When the destroying angel saw the blood, it would pass over those homes and spare those inside.
Blood on the doorposts - God continually emphasizes that worship starts in the home and moves into the assembly.
It is not one or the other.
Make sure that you have both a public and private life of faith.
Take root beneath and bear fruit above (Isaiah 37:30-32).
“Appletree roots can reach up to three times the tree's height and be around 25 feet long. Even dwarf apple trees which are shorter than this, have roots that can spread up to 15 feet. One of an apple tree's essential functions is stretching out and collecting water, oxygen, and nutrients from the soil.”
Private devotion provides the root system of your life and intimacy with God.
Public devotion displays the glory and beauty of God’s work in your life - bringing others to worship, repentance and faith in the same God who has delivered you.
God has always been missional and feeds the world by the fruit of your private and public devotion.
Exodus 12:38-39 (NIV)
Many other people went up with them, and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. With the dough the Israelites had brought from Egypt, they baked loaves of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.
Because of the blood of the lamb and the word of your testimony you have a permanent change on which you need to take your stand
Revelation 12:9-11
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
Who is that lamb?
Our Passover Lamb
Jesus is our Passover Lamb who saves us through both ongoing and permanent change in our lives.
Jesus is the prophesied lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is why John the Baptist, in announcing Christ’s public ministry, referred to Jesus in such a manner.
John 1:29-34
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
The Seder Table was the place where the Passover memorial was celebrated.
It meant community, sharing, prayer and reflection.
Exodus 12:14-20
“This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. 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. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”
In this reflection we see Jesus as the guileless and sinless man who stood before Pilate - declared innocent, but voluntarily accepting his sentence to pay for the sins of humanity.
We see that just as the Passover lamb was shorn, Jesus was stripped naked and crucified.
We acknowledge that as the Passover lamb was a male a year old, so Christ died on the cross in the prime of his manhood, around 34 years of age.
Jesus was at the height of his strength and with that strength humbled himself to bear the wrath of God so that we might be forgiven and set free from our bondage to sin.
Every time we participate in communion, we celebrate the fact that Jesus was almost four years in ministry after his baptism just as the Passover Lamb was set aside four days before the slaughter, and that Christ in his last Passover declared that his own body and blood would be given for the new covenant to be established.
Each generation needs to be intentionally brought into this understanding and prioritization.
The prioritization of God’s rituals for worship need to be modeled, above hobbies (i.e. recreational team sports when your child is on no trajectory to play professionally) and even activities that you think might better refresh you.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread was to be eaten in remembrance of the haste with which the Israelites needed to leave Egypt, reflecting the necessity of our immediate obedience to the commands of God.
As God calls you to obey in worship, he always has your provision in mind.
No work was to be done because you need to trust God for your provision.
No work was to be done because Christ alone would provide your righteousness.
No work was to be done because you need to take time to stop and refocus on the fact that Christ is your life.
This is what we effectively do with every Sunday gathering, functioning for the community as a Sabbath, to refocus and recharge our lives through rest and worship.
Thus the Passover was the first of God’s celebrations instituted during the Exodus, to create mechanisms for ongoing and permanent change in our lives, ultimately through the cross of Jesus Christ.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher