Passover

Sermon from CCM Ladybarn
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LISTEN

This sermon was preached by Andy Brownlee at the Ladybarn site of Christ Church Manchester on Sunday 16th June 2019.

SERIES

This message was part of the ‘SERIES NAME’ series, preached at Christ Church Manchester’s church in Withington in EARLY/MID/LATE YEAR. The full series included the following sermons:

BIBLE VERSES

This sermon was based on Exodus 12:1-30.

The Passover

1The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2“This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3Tell 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. 4And 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. 5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6and 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.
7“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. 8They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11In 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. 12For 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. 13The 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.
14“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. 15Seven 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. 16On 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. 17And 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. 18In 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. 19For 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. 20You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”
21Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord‘s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.'” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
28Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn

29At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 

KEY POINTS

 

 

True Freedom Comes from God

  • What I find really interesting about the 10 plagues is that in the first 9 plagues Moses and Aaron always had something to do to bring the plague about, they’d hit the dust with their staff or stretch out their arm or something and the plague would start. But with the 10th plague they didn’t do anything, they were spectators cus God came and delivered the 10th plague himself. The plague that led to the Israelites being freed. In Verse 17 God says: I brought your divisions out of Egypt God’s saying to the people; I was the one who freed you. Your freedom came from me.

  • Many people down throughout history have laid down their lives fighting for our freedom and it is right that we honour them for that. True Freedom, freedom on the inside, (not just political freedom) but freedom that means things are ‘well with our souls,’ that kind of freedom only comes from God.

  • True freedom doesn’t come from achievement, no matter how much you achieve, it doesn’t come from any of these things. True freedom only comes from God, it comes from knowing you are of immeasurable value to him, so much so that he deemed you worth dying for.

It’s by Grace that We are Saved

  • We like to think of this story like the good guys against the bad guys – Pharaoh = Bad | Israelites = Good. The Reality is God = Good and the Israelites and Egyptians = both bad. Despite the fact they were slaves the Israelites were no better morally than the Egyptians, they fought, they grumbled, they moaned, they worshipped idols, they disobeyed God’s commands, they weren’t good people.

  • What this is saying is they weren’t saved because they were morally superior to the Egyptians like in Disney films. No, they were saved because God chose them, he made a distinction between them and the Egyptians. They didn’t deserve to be saved. They were saved by Grace just as we are.

  • We need to be careful not to take this for granted. It can be something that we just get used to and over time we forget the significance and the importance of it. We have to be a bit more intentional about appreciating the grace of God.

Remember what God has Done

  • Ever wondered why we have the Passover? Why did God get the people to put lambs blood on their doorposts and have the meal? Think about it. God protected the Israelites from the previous 6 plagues without needing any markings on doorposts to help him. So, it’s not like he needed them to put blood on their doors so he knew where they lived. He knew exactly where they all lived. So why do we have the Passover? Why didn’t he just kill the first born Egyptians and then Pharaoh would let them go?

  • There are two things God wanted through this whole thing, Firstly, he wanted Freedom for his people, which is what the death of the firstborn Egyptians achieved, that’s the might acts of judgement. But Secondly he wanted relationship with his people which is what the Passover achieved. God involved his people, by getting them to put the blood on the doorposts and eating the meal, even though he didn’t need them to. Why? Because he wanted relationship with them. 

  • The Passover is like a Trailer to the main event. It’s like it but the main thing is much better. It would happen 1500 years later. God sent his son Jesus who came into the world. He too fled to Egypt and come out of it. When John saw him for the first time he said Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. 3 years later he was killed, his blood shed over pieces of wood, so that we could be freed. Not freed from the Egyptians but freed from something much bigger. Freed from the power of sin and death.

    The Passover is the Trailer pointing us to the main thing which is the cross of Jesus Christ!

 

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