It was about Jesus all along
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Introduction
26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’ ” Then the people bowed down and worshiped.
Do our children ask us why we celebrate the Lord’s Supper?
Possibly not, because they aren’t around to see it.
But if they did, if if your grandchildren asked you, ‘why do you take communion? What does it mean to you?’ What would your response be?
Have you thought through a response?
This event that we’re looking at tonight was SO significant in the lives of the Israelites, that God specifically commanded them to have a well-thought-through response for when their children ask what this means…in fact, he told them what to say.
Like I said, such was the significance of this event.
So let’s have a look at this final plague that God sent on Egypt...
The death of the firstborn.
Pause
If you remember from last week, the Egyptians gods were being knocked off their tiny pedestals one by one, culminating with the ‘death’ of Pharaoh’s father, the sun-god Ra - and the plague of darkness killed him off, rendering him useless.
And now that Pharaoh’s father has been taken out, it’s time to make it even more personal…because Pharaoh’s own son is going to be taken out...
4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.
And again, the Israelites are to be saved this wrath.
And God gives very specific instructions on what they need to do to escape this wrath.
3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.
This lamb was to be a perfect lamb - a lamb without blemish.
And the reason for this is simple - the lamb had to be a sacrifice…and a sacrifice is giving up something that you could really do without giving up.
So, for example, if you are a shepherd, and you have a load of lambs, and you’ve been asked to sacrifice a lamb to God - you might be tempted to take a lamb was sick or dying....I can do without that one - I’ll give that one to God.
But that’s not much of a sacrifice, is it? It’s not really demonstrating how important God is to you....in fact it is - it’s saying, ‘God you’re not really THAT important and I don’t love you THAT much.’
Or let’s say you own a few cars. And a couple of them are battered and don’t even work. They are rust-buckets in your yard. but you also have a number of high-performance cars, like a Ferrari…and it’s pristine.
It’s brand new, barely 1000 miles on the clock. You drive it once a year - only on special occasions.
And your spouse comes and says, ‘you’ve TOO many cars...you need to get rid of one of your cars.’ Now, which one do you give up?
Well, you’d give up the battered rust-bucket. You’re not going to give up the Ferrari, are you?
Why? Because you can do without the rust-buckets. Giving up the Ferrari would be a real loss and it would take a LOT to give that up.
But what if your spouse came to you and said, ‘if you really love me…you’d get rid of that Ferrari.’
Now, it would take a LOT of love to get rid of that Ferrari, wouldn’t it. And I don’t know of anyone who would even do that....certainly if you’re a car-lover.
...but in this unrealistic scenario - not necessarily that you have a Ferrari, but that you’d give it up for your spouse if you had one…in THAT case, if you were to do that, it really is a sacrifice - and it’s also a sacrifice for love.
I mean, that’s a real act of love right there. You can’t get a much better act of love than that.
But the Israelites are told to sacrifice a perfect lamb - because this was to be a sacrifice…this lamb represented the BEST thing they had...and by sacrificing THIS lamb and not an old mangey lamb that was about to die of parvo - sacrificing THIS lamb, the best lamb you had, meant that the Israelites believed that God was worth MORE than this lamb.
And it was a demonstration of their love for God.
...and they are to keep this lamb until the fourteenth day of the month when everyone is to kill their lamb at midnight.
7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
And they are not to eat this dressed in a tracksuit and hoodie…they’re not to eat this dressed in their jammies - they are to eat this dressed for travel…i their travel-gear, with sandals on their feet and cloaks on, and belts on, and even with a staff in their hand, because they are to be ready to go at the drop of a hat.
11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.
Can you feel the tension here, and possibly the excitement, that AT LAST they will be free from slavery and beatings and torture - free to go BACK HOME, to the promised land…Free to worship and serve God.
Because God has come to deliver them and bring them back to himself - back so that they may worship and serve him…cos don’t forget, that was the reason for their exodus - to worship and serve God.
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
or as the ESV puts it...
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.
Because the Hebrew word means both worship and serve - you worship AS you serve.
So God’s people weren’t just being freed for the sake of it - they were being freed for a purpose - to worship and serve God.
Pause
So the people did as God commanded them through Moses and Aaron and...
29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.
30 Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
That must have been an awful sound - can you imagine a whole country wailing at the same time?
Pharaoh was defeated by Yahweh and he gave in. God no longer needed to harden his heart - the time had come. Enough was enough…and so Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron and says...
31 During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested. 32 Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”
And there are different words for ‘go’ in Hebrew, and these different words are used here to emphasise the point.
Pharaoh is saying, ‘get up, get out…GO!! Get away from me. Take your stuff and GO.’
And off they went, but not without plundering the Egyptians on the way. Now, I think this is brilliant.
36 The Lord had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.
Isn’t that fantastic!
Pause
Then later on in chapter 12, we have a section instituting the passover. This meal was important for the Israelites and they are to remember this meal every year, eating the unleavened bread and sacrificing a lamb, because it will remind them of how God saved them from slavery - saved them and freed them in order that they might worship and serve him.
And Jews have continued this tradition and continue this tradition even today - every year they celebrate the passover to remember how God saved them from slavery.
Now, the meal evolved slightly over the years. As well as the unleavened bread, there was also wine drank along with the meal…four cups of wine, actually. And each cup of wine represents four expressions of deliverance promised by God in Exodus 6...
6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
I will bring you out
I will free you
I will redeem you
I will take you
And the third cup, called the cup of redemption, was drank AFTER the meal was finished. And it was a reminder of the fact that God redeemed his people - he BOUGHT them back. They were HIS again.
And the meaning of the unleavened bread was to do with the haste that they had to eat this meal - ready to go at the drop of a hat. But also, unleavened bread has a certain look to it.
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If you look at unleavened bread, it has stripes on it and piercings (holes in the bread). The stripes reminded the Jews of the beatings and whippings that they endured at the hands of the Egyptians and the piercings reminded them of their slavery - because slaves were pierced as a mark of slavery.
And so they ate this bread and drank these four cups of wine throughout the meal in remembrance of what God did for them - he freed them from slavery in order that they might worship and serve God.
Pause
This meal occurred again later in the bible, in a significant event.
Because Jesus celebrates this passover with his friends in an upper room just before he is crucified. And here’s why it’s significant.
Because Jesus takes the passover to the next level - because the passover was pointing to HIM all along…and in this upper room, Jesus shows everyone how this is the case.
Jesus takes the unleavened bread, which has stripes and piercings on it. He breaks it and says...
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
So all along, this unleavened bread was referring to Jesus’ body, broken for us. And the stripes and piercings take on a new meaning...
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Or, as the King James puts it...
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
This bread that was broken every year since Exodus 12 was about Jesus all along - pointing forward to the death of Jesus, where he would be broken for us, whipped and beaten, bruised and pierced for US.
Pause
And then...
25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Notice this cup was AFTER supper - the cup of redemption…the cup that represented that God had REDEEMED his people…all along, this cup was pointing to the blood of Jesus Christ, which would be shed for our sin…as Paul says in Ephesians 1...
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
So just as the blood of the perfect, unblemished lamb saved the Israelites from death, the blood of the perfect, unblemished lamb of God saves us from death - eternal death.
But not only that - remember the fact that it would take a tremendous amount of love to give up your Ferrari for your spouse…Giving that up would be the ULTIMATE sacrifice of love. That would show your spouse just how much you loved them.
So imagine how much MORE tremendous a love that God has for us that he would give up, sacrifice his one and only Son for us. That’s a sacrifice of love - that’s an act of love that is unimaginable.
But Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, was given up - sacrificed - so that his blood, shed on the cross would redeem us and bring us back to God, because our sin had removed us from him.
Pause
But the Israelites were freed for a reason. They weren’t freed or saved for the sake of it...
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
They were freed so that they could worship and serve Yahweh.
And it’s the same with us…we aren’t saved by Jesus for the sake of it. We are saved from Hell and from punishment for a reason.
And that reason is so that we, too, can worship and serve God.
We aren’t saved to just sit on our backsides and do nothing for God until we die. We’re saved to worship him with our lives and to serve him.
Paul says as much in Ephesians...
10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
We were created in Christ Jesus TO DO GOOD WORKS.
…and he continues in chapter 4 that the purpose of some of the positions in the church is...
12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up
All of which means that Jesus did not go through the torture and torment of being beaten, crucified, experiencing hell for us, just so we can have a jolly here on earth and go through life and retirement, enjoying nice holidays and caravans and weekends away.
Now - don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with those things, but we were created for MORE than that and we were saved for more than that.
The world think that that’s the goal of life - to be successful, to enjoy retirement and family and take walks and go on nice holidays, and if we’re honest, I think we often slip into that mindset too - I know I do at times.
I often look forward to retirement when I can do nothing, go for long walks, maybe take a couple of holidays a year if we can afford it…but when I think for a bit longer, I am rebuked - it’s like God says to me, ‘Andre, that’s the world talking…you were saved for MORE than that. You were saved to serve me and worship me all your life. You don’t stop when you’re retired.’
And then I am reminded, that I am most blessed when I am fulfilling God’s purpose for me…and if God’s purpose for me is to serve and worship him all the days of my life, if that is what I am saved for, then that’s when I will be most blessed and most content.
So maybe, every time you take the Lord’s supper and are reminded of the extent to which Jesus went to save you, when you are reminded of his body broken, whipped, beaten and bruised for you...
...when you are reminded of his blood which was shed for your redemption...
…perhaps remind yourself that Jesus went through all that for a reason…so that you might worship and serve him. It’s what each and every one of us were saved for
Pause
Let my people go that they may worship me…let my people go that they may serve me...
Maybe that’s what you need to do tonight - to pray to God that you will have the strength to let yourself go - to stop putting obstacles in your way... so that you may worship and serve God all the days of your life.
Let me leave you with this quote from the great reformed theologian, RC Sproul...
Service is not an optional aspect of the Christian life. ALL believers are called to be servants of God.
It’s why we were saved.
Let’s pray.