Sermon Tone Analysis

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Meghann and I really enjoy food.
We like good food and, if we’re being really honest, we have to admit that a sizeable portion of our entertainment budget gets spent on good food.
We’ve become pretty decent cooks and make a lot of dishes at home—everything from tropical Thai curry to meatloaf, chicken tikka masala to Mama Case’s lasagna.
But we also love going out to eat: sushi, steak, prime rib, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Korean, German, Greek.
If there’s food to be eaten, call Meghann and me.
We’re your people.
We really like food.
What’s more, we love “breaking bread” with our friends and family.
I think if I had to choose a favorite activity, it would be going out with a group of friends or having people over to our home and sharing a meal together.
That’s my idea of a good evening.
I’ve been shopping around for something to hang on the wall next to our dining room table.
I haven’t found the right one just yet, but I know what it’s going to say.
It’s taken from the book of Acts:
Eating with one another is a huge part of what God’s people are meant to do; it’s part of what it means to be the Church.
Hospitality, sharing a meal, preparing a meal for people is part of what it means to be a Christian.
The Lord Yahweh instituted a meal for His people to observe, to celebrate, to commemorate.
This happened years ago; while they were in Egypt, before the Lord brought them out, He gave them specific instructions about what to eat, when to eat, and why to eat.
>If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Exodus 12.
If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word.
Exodus 12:14ff—
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
_______________
The tenth and final plague the Lord brought upon the Egyptians has been announced by the Lord, by Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh; we’ve read about it.
The Lord has told the people what to do in preparation for it; here in our text this morning, we read even more about it and its preparations and restrictions.
But there’s something interesting here: it hasn’t happened yet.
There’s all of this information about an event before the event has happened.
It’s incredible: the Lord speaks about the event as if it’s already taken place.
The Lord has spoken.
He has decreed that this event would occur.
In His sovereignty, with unspeakable power, the Lord will bring this to pass.
Even though it hasn’t yet taken place, it’s already a foregone conclusion.
It’s done, though it hasn’t happened quite yet.
This ought to fill us unmatched confidence, confidence to the brim, overflowing confidence.
Every word the Lord has spoken, every promise He’s promised, every jot and tittle of His script has or will come to pass.
The tenth and final plague—the death of every firstborn in Egypt—is near.
It’s comin’ round the mountain.
It’s so close.
Yet before it happens, the Lord wants to tell His people how they should observe it.
What the Lord’s doing here is making sure that His people will remember.
More than anything else, the Lord wants His people to remember their salvation.
He’s going to be saving them from the slavery in Egypt.
He wants them to remember this for the rest of their lives; the Lord wants for them to pass it on to their children, down throughout the generations, forever and ever.
To make sure that His people would never forget their salvation, the Lord gives them a special memory aid: a meal—Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
This is to be an annual celebration.
An annual and lasting celebration—three times the Lord told Moses that He wanted Passover to become a permanent addition to Israel’s newly rearranged calendar.
This, Passover/The Feast of Unleavened Bread, would be their big holiday; the most significant one of the year.
Three times we read that this was to be a lasting ordinance:
A lasting ordinance...
The Israelites celebrated the first Passover in Egypt, on the night the Lord passed through and killed the firstborn of every unbelieving household in Egypt, the Israelites—each family—had taken a lamb, slaughtered it, put its blood on the doorframe of their home, roasted the lamb, and ate it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
The Israelites continued to celebrate Passover during the forty years spent wandering in the wilderness.
Once they entered the Promised Land, they still kept the feast, just as the Lord had said:
The very first thing the Israelites did upon crossing the Jordan River and entering into the Promised Land was to celebrate the Passover in their new home.
A lasting ordinance...
It was a yearly reminder of God’s saving grace.
Israel’s deliverance from Egypt was to be commemorated and celebrated.
Neither the Exodus nor the Passover were repeated every year—that’d be weird and unnecessary—but they were reenacted or retold every year, remembered every year, celebrated every year.
With blood and bread, the people would call to mind and remember all that the Lord had done for them.
The feast allowed them to see and taste and touch and smell and hear.
It engaged their senses.
It allowed them to relive their escape from Egypt.
The message of salvation was preserved in their memory; it was passed on from generation to generation.
What a meal that would be!
To share that meal with family, gathered around the table; to rehearse the events of that night; to consider the incomparable work of the Lord.
To be struck anew with the deep, deep love of the Lord.
To see the sacrificial lamb would lead those gathered in a grateful chorus of praise as they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.
On that night in Egypt, the blood covered the people of the Lord and kept them safe, secure.
Celebrating the Passover every year after, the blood and the bread would draw to mind the single-most important day in the history of their people.
A lasting ordinance...
Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread go together.
They are not two separate events, but one week-long celebration.
At other places in the OT, this festival is sometimes called “Passover” and sometimes “the Feast of Unleavened Bread”.
But either term can be used to refer to the whole celebration.
The Bible explains why the Israelites used bread without yeast; it was symbolic of their flight from Egypt.
Remember how they were to eat the first Passover meal?
They left Egypt so quickly that they didn’t even have time to let the dough rise.
The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.
Eating unleavened bread was a historical happening.
It was brought about by that first Passover.
It simply became a permanent part of their religious celebration.
It’s one of those traditions the Lord insisted upon.
“No yeast!
Eat nothing made with yeast!
Whoever eats anything with yeast must be cut off from Israel!”
The Lord is very serious about this—all so His people would remember.
If you’ve eaten unleavened bread, you know: you'll be able to tell that you are eating unleavened bread.
It’s unmissable.
Moses took the instructions he had received from the Lord and instructed all the elders of Israel:
“Go immediately and select a lamb.
Slaughter the lamb.
Dip a hyssop branch in the blood of the lamb and paint your doorframe red.
Stay in your houses until morning.
The Lord will see the blood and will pass over you.”
This lasting ordinance was to be obeyed by the Israelites.
They were to observe the ceremony.
And they were to tell their children all that this—the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread—meant to them.
They were to recount the details and the significance of the meal.
It wasn’t just a meal to enjoy and reflect upon silently, privately.
It was a “teachable moment” (parents, you know what I’m talking about—certain events and various portions of television shows or movies become “teachable moments”.
The number of “teachable moments” I endured growing up…).
Passover was a “teachable moment”.
The parents were to instruct the children, over and over, year after year, generation after generation.
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