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In recent years, members of Redeemer Community Church from across north Jefferson County began praying and dreaming together about seeing a similar church planted in their community. This had already happened once before in Homewood when Grace Fellowship was planted in 2017 and they wondered whether it could happen where they lived. The more they prayed and discussed this with the leadership of these two churches, the more it became clear that God was leading them to partner together to plant Trinity Fellowship.
The long-term aim is for Trinity to be an independent church that continues to partner with the Redeemer family of churches in celebrating and declaring the gospel across the region.
We'll be in Exodus 12, 1 through 13, beginning in verse 1.
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 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.
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old.
You shall 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 their flesh that night roasted on the fire.
More than leavened bread and bitter herbs, they shall eat it, not eat any of it raw or
boiled in water, but roasted its head with its legs and 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 assigned 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.
This is the word of the Lord.
Let's pray together once again.
Lord, this is your word, and we want to give you thanks for it, and Lord, our dependence
is upon you to speak to us now through your word by your Spirit.
So Lord, I pray that you would now open our eyes that we may see more of Jesus.
We pray this in his name.
Amen.
Amen.
Well, before Julie and I and the kids moved to the U.S. from England, we met with somebody
over there who had some helpful advice to share with us about going through transitions
as a family, and one helpful thing that they said to us is to identify at least some traditions
that can travel with you as a family.
So in other words, when everything changes, it's good to have certain traditions that
anchor you wherever you are, and we thought of several different examples of what that
could be for us, but some of them were our Christmas traditions as a family, and specifically
like Christmas dinner.
So you know, there's very particular British things that are done at Christmas dinner,
and some specific things that we did as a family together, but it's interesting to know
that no matter where you're at in the world, there could be people that you're connected
to who are eating the same foods, or maybe even if you went back a generation, two generations,
on the same day, they'd be doing the same thing, so it's a kind of an anchoring tradition,
but you don't have to move abroad to appreciate traditions and their values.
Maybe when you're eating Thanksgiving dinner with your family, you enjoy the moments where
you're connected there with your family, but you recognize that it's also connecting you
to the wider culture and even the history that is there as well.
So it's a meal, yes, but it's more than just a meal.
It's more than kind of what you had the day before.
It's special.
This morning, we're going to look at this special meal called the Passover, and like
our holidays today, it begins with a significant event that's then followed by the institution
of a special holiday, which includes a special meal as part of its observance.
So for the Israelites, the Passover meal became the most important meal that they shared together
each year.
It was tied to their shared culture, their shared history, and shared identity as a people,
and it was so central because it commemorated their redemption from slavery.
This morning, I want us to also see that it looked forward to a greater day of redemption
that was yet to come, and that is the redemption that Jesus would bring into the world.
The fact is, if you belong to Christ, this story, the story of the Passover, isn't just
their story, it's part of your story as well.
So we're going to look at the significance of the Passover in kind of three major sections.
We're going to look at, first of all, the setting of the Passover, then we're going
to look at the instructions related to it and its observance, and then lastly, we're
going to look at the kind of ongoing celebration of the Passover.
So first of all, the setting.
You see this in chapter 11.
So the first Passover, when it was being celebrated that first time, wasn't nostalgic in the
sense that like us having Thanksgiving or something would be enjoying that in a nostalgic
way.
The situation was pretty ominous.
It was being eaten under the shadow of death during the tenth and final plague on Egypt.
As I was thinking about what it would have felt like to be present there, my mind went
to the movie Signs.
I don't know if any of you have seen Signs.
It's my favorite alien movie.
There's a point at which the aliens are about to arrive, and the family that's the main
family that are there, they gather together for what may be their final meal together,
and so they all have their favorite food spread around the table.
But even though this could be a special meal, the feeling is tense because they don't know
whether or not they're going to survive the night.
What's about to happen next?
So they're having this special meal, but there's a shadow hanging over them.
Perhaps this helps us to feel something of what it might have been like that first night
of the Passover, because death is coming to Egypt, and we've seen all these plagues happening
But we also see that God has provided a way of escape for his people, so actually they
did not need to fear at all.
So what's about to happen?
We have a final climactic plague that is coming to Egypt.
We looked at the first nine last week, and we saw that these were not only acts of judgment,
but acts of decreation.
It was an unraveling of God's created order there in Egypt, and so if there's a connection
with creation, well, what was the climactic point of creation in Genesis 1?
Well, it was the creation of humanity.
Everything is leading to that point when God creates humanity.
People ask his representatives, his image bearers.
Now you see the kind of climactic point of these plagues being death, specifically the
death of the firstborns of Egypt.
We're told that this is coming in chapter 11, then in chapter 12, beginning in verse
29, this happens.
You've got the death of the firstborns.
This is what God said would happen before any of the plagues started.
God told Moses to say to Pharaoh in chapter 4, verses 22 to 23,
You see, in the ancient world, firstborns were viewed as unique representatives of their
families and of their fathers in particular, and Israel is identified as God's firstborn.
So God's firstborn son is being held captive in Egypt, and so he said to Pharaoh, if you
do not let my firstborn go, it will result in the death of your firstborns in Egypt.
So about midnight, we see here that this time has come.
God goes out into the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land was going to die.
Every family was going to be affected from the least to the greatest.
The result is going to be that his firstborn is set free, but let's feel the weight of
what's going on here.
When this happened, we're told a great cry arises in Egypt.
This is a theme that we've seen several times if we've read exes carefully in these early
chapters, because as God's people were enslaved in Egypt, their cries were going up, and God
was hearing their cries.
We're told this repeatedly, but now there is a reversal.
The Lord has brought in this final plague, and the cries are now coming up from Egypt
and even the house of Pharaoh.
It's interesting, in chapter 12 and verse 23, we're told that it is the destroyer.
We're told the destroyer is striking homes, bringing about these deaths.
So it seems like there's some kind of agent, as it were, bringing this about.
You might wonder, well, who is this?
And I'm not going to give you a satisfactory answer, because it would be speculative.
I'm not sure exactly, but I do know this.
The destroyer is mentioned once, but it's repeated over and over again that it's the
Lord who brings about this final plague.
The point isn't the destroyer.
The point is what the Lord is doing here.
He's bringing about this as an act of judgment.
This is telling us something not merely about Egypt and what is going on here with the oppression
of God's people.
It is telling us something about God that cannot be ignored.
This is the Lord's Passover.
He's the central character.
One thing it's telling us about is his righteous judgment.
Now God is patient and long-suffering.
He has been listening to the cries of his people for generations, and he has given multiple
opportunities to let his people go, but his word has been rejected over and over again,
and his patience eventually turns over to his wrath, his judgment for the rejection
of his word.
If you look in Romans chapter 2 in the New Testament, verses 4 and 5, the apostle Paul
speaks about how God is kind and patient with us, and his kindness is there to lead us to
repentance.
So when we reject him, his final judgment doesn't just immediately fall upon us, no,
he's kind to us.
He deals with us graciously, and he does that to lead us to himself, to repentance.
But it also makes it clear in Romans 2, verses 4 and 5, that if we continue to harden our
hearts against him time and time again, as that is happening, his wrath is being stored
up for the day of wrath when his righteous judgment is revealed.
So his patience is almost like, you can imagine, a dam that is there, and there's the river
coming up against the dam, and there is coming a day, though, when the dam is going to be
opened up.
But the good news here is we see that God is not only a righteous judge, as we've been
seeing through these plagues, we also see that this God is a merciful redeemer.
Because here he gives his people a way of escape, and he brings them into a life of
true freedom, and that is ultimately what the Passover is all about.
It's about the redemption that he brings.
So the setting is God's judgment coming to Egypt.
So let's move on now to the instructions and observance of Passover, because now we
see the focuses on God as Redeemer.
You actually have two feasts being introduced here.
You've got both Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, but we're going to
focus our attention on Passover, and the two are related, but let's give our attention
to Passover specifically.
We see in chapter 12 and verse 1 that this is during the first month of the year.
It marked a new beginning for God's people, and it was all pointing back to the central
event that resulted in their redemption from slavery in Egypt.
As we said a moment ago, this Passover isn't just about what he is doing in their midst.
The Passover is about the Lord himself.
It's referred to time and time again as the Lord's Passover, and here's what it's telling
us about him.
He is the Redeemer.
So it speaks of him as the Redeemer, the redemption that he brings, but there's a lot of attention
given as well to how he brings about this redemption.
So God gives specific instructions, and central to these instructions is this truth.
They will be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
So he gives specific instructions.
He says this judgment is coming, but he says I want each household to take a lamb.
It couldn't just be any lamb.
We're told what kind of lamb it has to be.
It has to be a male lamb that is a year old, but it's a lamb that's without blemish as well.
The word here is whole or without any kind of defects.
And they're told what to do with this lamb.
On the 14th day of the month, they were to kill all of these lambs at twilight.
They were to take some of the blood and apply it, paint it to the doorposts of the house
and the lintel of the house as well that they were in, and then they were to gather together
in that house for a meal.
The lamb was part of that meal.
The lamb was to be roasted whole and eaten, and they were to eat it with unleavened bread
and bitter herbs, and if any of it was left over, they were to then burn it.
And this meal was to be eaten urgently.
They're told what they're to be wearing as they have this meal together.
They're to have their belts fastened, sandals on their feet, their staves in their hands.
Why are they to eat it quickly?
Because their redemption is drawing nigh.
They need to be ready to head out of there.
And then it returns to the instructions regarding the blood on the doorposts.
We also see reasons why they were to do this.
You see, the blood was there as a sign.
You see, God promised that when he passed through in judgment, when he saw the blood,
he would pass over them, and that's where the name pass over comes from.
It wasn't just a sign.
It was also a substitute.
So God is bringing death, but instead of taking life in their homes, he is accepting
the life of the lamb as a substitute on their behalf.
So instead of taking the life of the firstborn, he receives the life of the lamb.
And that's exactly what happens in chapter 12, verses 29 to 32.
We see that death comes through just as God said, but just as God promised, he passed
over every house where the blood of the lamb had been applied.
When Pharaoh and the Egyptians realized what had happened in their houses, they cry out,
and we also read that they begged the Israelites to leave, and they said, we're willing to
give you whatever you ask for.
So these people, the Israelites who were slaves just a moment ago, are now heading out with
silver and gold and new clothes.
The kind of picture here is they're moving from they were slaves, and then in an instant
now they're going out as God's blessed people, right?
So you're seeing moving from the condition of a slave to the condition of a son.
But let's return to this.
Why the lamb?
What's going on here with the lamb?
We need to see the significance of the lamb in scripture, because the lamb is one of the
most important kind of motifs, themes that is repeated in the Bible.
It returns to it time and time again.
You can even go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
So Adam and Eve sin against God.
They realize that they are naked, and they try to cover themselves, and then God comes
to them.
They're confronted with their sin, yes, but what does God do?
He provides them with clothing of skins.
So an animal had to be killed in order to provide them this covering.
We don't know what kind of animal it was.
Nonetheless, these people who were sinners deserving of death were then covered through
the death of another.
You then go to Genesis 22, you see Abraham and Isaac.
They're going up this mountain to worship Mount Moriah, and when Isaac asks, where is
the offering?
So God has told Abraham, he's to sacrifice his son.
So Isaac says, well, where is the offering?
What does Abraham reply?
He says, God will provide himself a lamb.
So when they get up there, you see that that's what happened.
God provides this ram caught in the ticket, and the ram is sacrificed in place of the
son.
Later on in Exodus, in the book of Leviticus, and throughout the Old Testament, you see
that priests are going to continually offer these sacrifices, these sacrificial lambs on
behalf of the people to atone for their sins, because the fact is the Israelites themselves
are not blameless.
They're not spotless.
They too are sinful, and they're deserving of death.
But God in his mercy provides a covering for their sin so that they might escape death.
We seize the blood of the spotless lambs offered on their behalf.
He passes over.
We might wonder, well, how in the world could the blood of these lambs satisfy God?
What is going on here?
The answer is not found in the lambs themselves, but what they were pointing to ultimately.
You see in Isaiah 53, we're told that there is one who is coming as a substitutionary
sacrifice.
It says that he's going to come like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.
We're told he's going to bear the sin of many.
Who is that lamb?
John the Baptist saw Jesus coming in John chapter 1 verse 29.
He said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
God's own son, his perfect representative, came into this world, but he came as a lamb,
as a sacrificial lamb.
He's not just a symbolic lamb pointing to something else.
He's the fulfillment of all that these lambs and their deaths were pointing to.
He is the truly spotless one.
The word blemish that's used to speak about these lambs being without blemish is also
used in scripture to speak about sinfulness.
We're not spotless.
None of us are spotless.
None of us are blameless, but the good news is when we look to Jesus, we see that our
substitute is blameless.
He is perfect in every way.
This means that he is totally undeserving of death, and yet he willingly lays down his
life.
As the apostle Peter said it in this way, 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 18 and 19, he says,
you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable
things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb
without blemish or spot.
Jesus gave his life as a sacrificial substitute, just like we see at the Passover.
This is not just a connection that we're kind of making, just kind of looking back, trying
to draw the connections here.
Look at every single one of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Every one of us tell us that Jesus died, but they also tell us when he died.
He died at the time of the Passover.
The apostle John even tells us that it was on the day of preparation that he died, and
that was the very day that the lambs were being killed.
Or you go to the epistles, for example, and you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse
7.
Paul makes the connection crystal clear.
He says, Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
So Jesus is the ultimate lamb who died that we might live.
We are just as deserving of God's judgment as anyone on earth, and yet when God sees
the blood applied to us, he passes over us.
It's by his blood that we are redeemed, set free from sin's dominion, just like the Israelites
can now go free from Egypt.
So we are set free from sin and death and brought into the life of true blessing that
is found in Christ.
So like the people of Israel, we are invited to put our trust in the lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world.
We're invited to put our faith in Jesus, the lamb who was slain for us.
When is his blood applied to our lives?
How is his blood applied to us now?
Simply when we behold him, when we trust in him, when we put our faith in Christ rather
than ourselves.
But even so, it isn't even the quality of our faith that saves us, but the sufficiency
of his sacrifice that saves us.
I heard a sermon one time by Don Carson, maybe some of you heard it, where he kind of went
back to the Passover, and he described a kind of hypothetical situation that really drives
the point home of what's happening here in Passover.
He talked about how there are, say, two Jews who were talking together on the night of
the Passover, and one of them said, are you scared about what's about to happen this
evening?
And he said, well, of course I'm not scared.
God promised that if we put the blood on the doorposts, on the lintel, that he would pass
over us.
He promised that if we're sharing this meal together, we can do so knowing that his judgment
isn't going to befall us.
Why, are you scared?
And the other guy said, well, yeah, a little.
I mean, you've got several sons.
I've only got the one, and as I'm thinking about tonight, I'm really frightened of what's
going to happen.
And the guy said, well, didn't you put the blood on the doorposts, like God told you
to and on the lintel?
And he said, well, yes, of course I did that.
I'm not stupid, but I am scared.
So you've got these two men, and Don Carson then asked this question.
He says, that night the angel of death swept through the land.
Which one lost his son?
And the answer is, neither.
Because death didn't pass over them on the grounds, this is a quote from him, death didn't
pass over them on the ground of the intensity of the faith they exercised, but on the grounds
of the blood of the lamb.
Isn't that wonderful?
Yes, we're called to put our faith in Christ, but death doesn't pass over us because of
the grounds of our great faith, but because Jesus died for us.
He died in our place.
It is his blood that sets us free.
We're redeemed by the blood of the lamb, so look away from yourself to Christ.
Yes, we should confess our sinfulness before him, but our trust is in his blood, knowing
that he received the judgment, so that it would pass over us.
You know this redemptive work that was accomplished this night, on the night of the Passover,
didn't just apply to the people who lived there at the time.
It was a one-time event, yes, but it was then a memorial that was to be remembered for generations
to come.
That's where we get to the Passover meal itself.
It's important to have memorial meals like this.
I don't know if anybody needs to know this now, but this week was Valentine's Day.
Somebody might say, well, say if you've got a husband in here, married, and you know,
oh, I declared my love years ago when we got married.
Every day is Valentine's Day.
We would know that that's an insufficient excuse, because yeah, there was an important
event that took place before, but there's also something significant and important to
declaring your love again and again and again, and meals and special celebrations or days
can be a part of reaffirming that.
You see, Passover wasn't just something that happened at one point in Israel's redemption.
That was the important thing, the most important thing, but it's also to be observed time and
time again, and it wasn't to be observed time and time again so that God's people could
remind God of their love for him.
No, it was the other way around.
God gave this as a reminder of his love for them, so he gave this special meal to observe
each year.
What did it involve?
We have this reenactment or this dramatization of what took place that night, many years
before.
So a slain lamb was to be roasted like the lamb that was slain so that they might live.
They were to eat unleavened bread.
Leaven being used sometimes as a picture of sin in Scripture, and unleavened being a picture
of holiness.
So God is holy, and he calls his people to holiness.
It's to be eaten with bitter herbs, reminding them of the bitter service that they were
delivered from.
They were to eat it dressed, ready to go, remembering that their redemption came quickly
when their Redeemer came.
So who was invited to share in this meal together?
Well, it was a family meal that was to be shared by the people of God.
Remember, this is part of their shared identity.
But we're also told in verse 38 that they came out, we've said this before, but they
came out with a mixed multitude.
It wasn't just Israelites that left.
It seems like there were Egyptians or people from other nationalities that went out with
them too.
So it raises a question.
Well, can they partake in this Passover meal with us?
What do we do about that?
What about other foreigners?
The answer was, to put it negatively, they could not unless they were willing to receive
the sign of the covenant.
Previously, we've seen the sign of the covenant being circumcision.
If the men were willing to receive the sign of circumcision, then they would also be willing
to receive them into this covenant meal that they shared together as the redeemed people
of God.
So it was like circumcision was the initial sign of the covenant.
But then you have this ongoing sign in this celebration of this meal together.
Why was it instituted?
Well, it was to remind them of what the Lord did for them.
It wasn't just for them, but for future generations so that they too would know the Lord and remember
what he had done for them.
And this continued on.
But to say this is an act of remembrance isn't just to say that this is like a memory aid
or something like that.
This meal of remembrance, yes, was a visual aid to remind them of what happened, but it
was also a way of stepping into the very reality of what was accomplished for them.
Because redemption happened at that time in the past, and yet the Lord is still the Redeemer,
and he is their Redeemer.
So to participate in this meal is to say that that Redeemer who delivered our people then
is our Redeemer now.
He is my Redeemer today.
What does this have to do with us?
Well, it's to do with what it points us to today.
See on the night of Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus gathered his disciples together for a meal
at the time of Passover.
And at that meal, he broke bread, and he said,
This is my body which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
And likewise, he took the cup after they had eaten, saying,
This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Remember, this is being done at the time of Passover.
You see, the Passover foreshadowed the greater exodus that Jesus was going to bring.
So at the time of the Passover, he gave us this meal of remembrance.
It's not the Lord's Passover now, it's the Lord's Supper.
You see, Jesus didn't come to merely add on to Passover.
He came to fulfill what the Passover pointed to.
And so when he instituted the Lord's Supper, he is saying that all of that pointed to him,
and now he is establishing a new covenant for those who are purchased by his blood.
But it does share similarities with the Passover.
You see, these elements, they're functioning as signs.
The bread speaking of his body broken, the wine speaking of his blood that is shed.
And then who is invited into this meal together?
It's a meal for the church, those who have trusted in Christ, those who belong to the
people of God.
It's interesting, you see a similar pattern there.
When people are putting their faith in Christ, they hear the gospel proclaimed, they trust
in him.
We then see that they are baptized.
It's a sign that they are part of God's people.
It happens as a one-time thing, but then you have this ongoing sign by receiving the Lord's
Supper together.
As we receive the Lord's Supper, we are doing this in remembrance of Christ and what he
has done for us.
So yes, these are memory aids pointing us to him, but we are looking to the one who
died to purchase our redemption.
And that was a one-time death, but the realization of that is ongoing as people come to trust
in Christ.
And as we partake in this, we are rejoicing in our Redeemer today.
We are celebrating and declaring what he has done for us.
So as we receive the bread and the wine, we're declaring that Jesus has redeemed us by his
blood, has accomplished our exodus, set us free from sin, and made us his own.
We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.