Promises Of Passover Transcript

A few weeks ago, there was a passage that we talked about that a few of us struggled with. I remember talking with a few of you after the service and saying, I don't really remember hearing that part before, and I honestly don't know what to do with it. And that was the story of Abraham and God's covenant, where they took all of the animals and they split them in half and God walked down the middle of them. What are we supposed to do with that? In many ways, today's passage is similar, because there's so many things that are foreign to us.

The sacrifice of a lamb, the painting of the doorposts and the beam above the doors. These things in our culture, in our world, are just grotesque. We would not do them now, so we don't understand it, and we don't understand what to do with this passage. Now, we know that our Jewish neighbors do not celebrate Passover in the same way as they did in this passage. Over a few thousand years have passed, and practices, have changed. Passover doesn't look like it did then, and it doesn't look like it did with Jesus.

And so we're still faced with this reality of what to do with this passage. Why in the world would God require this sacrifice? Why would God cause the death of the firstborn of all of Egypt? Why do we celebrate this? Why do we remember it? And why did God need to do it?

I think we ask this question because we would like God to transform the world with as many of us as possible. And so we're still faced with this reality of what to do with this minimal impact or negative impact as possible. We wish God would just snap his fingers and say everything is fixed, the world is at peace, the empires that have ruled this world for so long are now out of the picture, and the new kingdom is here. But what we find in scripture, and what we find in the world, and what we find through Jesus Christ, is that the empires and powers of this world will fight with us now to cling on to the power of God.

And so we're still faced with this that they have. They will fight tooth and nail and kill and cause destruction if it means that it gets to hold on to its power. And so when God is establishing a new empire, a new kingdom, a new way of living in this world, the response is this physical and cosmic battle between good and evil, between God's kingdom and the empires of this world. And as we know from any battle, there are no wars. There are no wars. There are no wars. There are no wars. There are no wars. There are casualties on both sides.

There are injuries and casualties of those who are caught in the crossfire who are not on either side. way of looking at this story is that if God is establishing a new way of being in this world, a new way for his people to be in this world that is outside of slavery, that is outside of ownership from the Pharaoh, and this Pharaoh whose heart was hardened over and over again, who wavered, back and forth saying, yes, I'll let the people go. Wait, never mind. Yes, I'll let them go. Wait, never mind. Over and over again, the Pharaoh has shown that he is clinging to that power.

And it finally came to a head in this curse, in this plague, which the firstborn of all of Pharaoh's households were taken. When we look at it that way, it doesn't make God sound a whole lot better, but it does put things into context. It does put things, in this understanding of this cosmic battle between what was and what will be. If there's been a theme over these last few weeks, it's that we've been caught in that time.

If we expect God's kingdom to be established here and now in our lifetimes, we expect it to take root, we should be ready to experience some disheveling of the world. We should expect that this transition from what was and what will be to be easy, or just, happen. It's going to take work, preparation, girding ourselves up in the Lord and moving forward. That's going to cause discomfort. Jesus says that's going to cause breaking in relationships between friends and family.

But it's the cost of the kingdom. It's the cost of the battle between the powers and principalities of this world that we as Christians reject and claim and profess to fight against. And the powers of God establishing a new, new way of being. God has called his people in this passage from Exodus to prepare for their departure from Egypt, telling them to grab onto a lamb and hold onto it for 10 days.

There is that time period between when God says this is going to happen and when it actually happens. And they've got to care for the lamb that they've gathered. They've got to prepare. They have to be ready. They have to wait. And there's a lot of meticulous understandings of what they need to do. And they've got to prepare. They have to be ready. They have to wait. They have to be ready. They have to wait. And they've got to be ready. And they've got to need to do in this 10 -day period to prepare and be ready for the Exodus that's going to come.

There are preparations to make. There are intricate details to be held. The story of this lamb of having to buy it and then keep it in your household for 10 days is interesting to me. Because it's one thing to buy a lamb off the street that same day and sacrifice it the same night. You don't have to think about the lamb too much. This lamb has to be prepared. It's has to be unblemished when they bought it, when they procured it.

And they have to keep it unblemished for those 10 days, making sure it doesn't damage itself, making sure that nothing happens to it. At least in our modern sensibilities, you might grow a little attached to it over those 10 days. After all, it's a lamb. And they grow attached to it. It becomes a part of the household for those 10 days. They care for it. They protect it. They guard it. And then they sacrifice it.

This reminds us, that when we make sacrifices to God, when we offer up to God what he has asked of us, it should cause some discomfort. It should cause some issues within us. This thing that we thought was ours, this thing that we protect and guide and then offer up to God, it should stir feelings up in us. That meticulous preparation that they had to take part of, it should make us think about what we are offering up to God and why.

It's that point of living in that in -between time. It's not just about going through the motions. It's not just about doing what you've always done. It's about doing what it needs to be done intentionally so that when it comes time to move, you are ready. When it's time to go, this passage, it sounds like you're preparing for Sunday dinner in many ways.

You've gotten the lamb, you've raised it, you've cooked it over a fire, you've gathered with your friends, relatives. The scripture says, and I love the wording of this, if you have too little, go find somebody. If your household is not big enough to eat a lamb, go find a bigger one and gather with them so that you all will eat the full lamb. I love that because usually we think about it in the reverse. If you have enough lamb and you have more than enough, then go find somebody who doesn't have enough and bring them into your table.

It's like, go get your lamb. Go find somebody else to eat it with and be ready. So it sounds like this community meal. It sounds like this gathering of friends and neighbors. But when you get to the actual meal, what God says is, wear your sandals, hold your staff in your hand at the table. Be ready that as you are eating this meal at any point, be ready that it is time to get up and go.

So this family meal describes how we are to live in this world, to be ready. Yes, take the time. Yes, gather with your neighbors. Gather with your families. Prepare for this meal. Prepare to feast together. But always be ready for when you are called.

I think that sometimes what happens with us is that we enjoy the part about gathering. We enjoy the part of the common meal. We enjoy the part of inviting our neighbors over. We enjoy the preparations. We enjoy the part of the gathering. We enjoy the part of the ritual. We enjoy all of that. But we don't think that God is quite going to call us. And so we forget the part about being ready.

We forget the part about, hey, God could call you at any point to go somewhere else. And so we leave our staffs behind. We pack our sandals in the closet and go about our business, never expecting God to actually do what he said. And we miss out. Because if we're not expecting God to do what God says he's going to do, if we're not expecting that, if we don't think that's going to happen, if we're not listening for it because we're not prepared, when God does call, we don't hear it.

If God does call in that still small voice that we often hear God speaking in, if we're not actively listening for it, if we don't expect to hear it, then it is incredibly, easy to ignore it and say we never heard it and God never called it. And so at some point, we have the ritual. We have the preparations. We come to church. We sing hymns. We gather and we praise God and we serve God in different ways. But we do so with our staffs in our hands and our sandals on our feet saying, God, where are you going to call me? Where are you going to lead us? And we are ready to hear and we are ready to go.

If we can reconnect those two things, if we can bring that back together, we will be stronger. We will be a more faithful people. We will be ready to see tremendous battles between the cosmic good and cosmic evil and see the kingdom grow where the hurting of this world are restored and reconciled to God. Where that sin we talked about in the garden just a few weeks ago that broke that relationship between people and each other with people and God and creation, we will see God work in miraculous ways, restoring those broken relationships in your life, in our community and around the world. God is calling us to be ready. God will call us to act. But are we listening?

We jump forward in this story to the gospel of Luke where Jesus is celebrating the Passover meal with his disciples. And this is a reminder that this story of the Passover, this story that God has told his people to carry on and tell their children when they get into the promised land, the story is told and retold. And Jewish teaching around this is that it is not just a story to tell and to hear, but it should be told in such a way that it is relived by each person that hears it. That it's not just something that happened so long ago, but it's something that happened and is happening to those there.

At that meal. And so for us, one of the last things that we can do that can encourage us to be ready, that reminds us that God is active in this world, is to tell those stories of what God has already done. Not just as something that happened long ago, that God was great and powerful then and did amazing things, but do it in such a way that those who are here and now hear these stories of the past, the distance past and the recent past, and say God is at work and God is at work here and now. Because if we don't have a sense that God is going to call us to act and we don't have a sense that God has called us to act, then why in the world would we be ready? Why would we be actively listening? Why would we be prepared for the tumultuous transformation that the kingdom of God brings when it encounters the powers of this world?

In Christ, we see this battle still carrying out. The firstborn of God is sacrificed on the cross. The powers of this world who will fight tooth and nail to hold on to that power and never lose it, including the power of death itself, sacrificed the firstborn of God thinking it would win. But the power of the cross and the empty tomb and the resurrection is that that cosmic battle has finally been won. That cosmic battle between what the good and what is of God and God's kingdom and the battle against the powers of this world, Jesus definitively answered who was most powerful, who is going to win.

And what we see now are still remnants of a battle that had been lost 2 ,000 years ago, but it is still waging. There are still signs and still places where the power of this world thinks it will win over the kingdom of God. And we as Christians can be ready for that and say God has won, God is winning, and God will win. And we need to be ready for when he calls us into that battle. With our staff in hand, our sandals on our feet, a meal that can be left at any point because the world needs us. We want to see God's power in this world. We want to see the kingdom taking root. If we want to see true reconciliation and transformation, then that is what we need to do. To prepare, to be ready, and to tell the stories.