Greetings and welcome to Whites Run Baptist Church Online. Today we're looking at the Blood of the Lamb. We'll be taking our message from Exodus chapters 11 and 12, focusing mainly on chapter 12, the great story of the Exodus from the Bible. We're continuing the series that we've called Beginnings, and so far we've gone through all of creation. We've looked at the problem of sin, the promises given then to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to bring this one who will fulfill the prophecy of the beginning that there would be a seed of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent and put an end to sin is the implication of that and save mankind. Well, the most significant event in the history of the nation is real. would be redeeming the entire nation, what we estimate to be a few million people, with great wealth, out of the bondage, the slavery that they were in, in Egypt. And God takes them out of Egypt. He takes them into the land that He had promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we get to Exodus chapter 11, there have already been nine plagues that God has sent against Egypt and against Pharaoh in order to try to convince them it would be a good idea to let the Israelites go. And in chapter 11, he introduces the 10th and what ends up to be the final plague against Egypt and Pharaoh. And he tells the people of Israel, I'm going to do one more plague. And he will let you go completely after this one. So go ask your neighbors for their valuables and they will be more than willing to give it to you. And then he describes how it's going to work. About midnight, the Lord says, I will come through or I will visit. I will come through. And every firstborn of every household and even the livestock will die. then Pharaoh will let you go. So here in chapter 12, what we get are more details concerning this, including what they're to do to avoid the death coming into their very own households. And so we're going to go to the scriptures in Exodus chapter 12, starting in verse one, we're going to go through verse 20 and take a look at this. 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 may 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 the flesh that night, roasted on the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its head with its legs and its 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 a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 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. 7 Days you shall eat unleavened bread. 8 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. 9 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on these days, but what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your hoes out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever. In 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. For 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. You shall eat nothing leavened in all your dwelling places. You shall eat unleavened bread. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father God, we come to you this day and we ask that you would give us understanding of these scriptures that you have provided. I pray, Lord, that we would see the importance of this great feast, that in it we would see your great mercy and grace, your great power, and even your great wrath. Lord, reveal yourself to us today in your Word. We're trusting you to give us understanding and to work past the messenger to bring forth your perfect message. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, a fascinating story, definitely an account that is many people's favorites in the scripture. And we have, I have an interesting picture here for you that we see. And this is from the illustrators of the 1897 book called Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Mr. Charles Foster. And here you can see the family is having their meal in the house together. And they look like they're standing there. It looks like they're maybe saying a blessing over the meal and getting ready to have their roasted lamb. But there's the angel of death outside the door. And he is looking at the blood that has been applied to the lentils there with his sword in his hand. And of course, this is a depiction. There's no detailed description of what indeed it really looked like to us at that time. But indeed, this is something that's helped to give us an understanding, because this is quite ominous, that the only thing standing between this ready angel with his sword is this blood that's applied to the door. And when we think about the power and the influence of angels, we think of great, incredible beings that God has made that are perfectly obedient to his will, We have one scene in Kings and Chronicles in which the angel of death comes and destroys 180,000 soldiers all at once. And we see this one is stopped by this blood on the doorpost. And so the question remains, what is God teaching us here? Well, fortunately, the Bible has interpreted this for us. And what we find here is we find a typology. And it's a very interesting typology that we find, because it shows us several things. In this typology, the Lamb represents Jesus Christ. Israel represents the chosen people of God. And the whole situation, the whole exodus, represents the process of salvation. Indeed, it was Israel's real salvation, but in it is a picture of the salvation of every individual who comes to faith in Jesus Christ. And Jesus, obviously being the Lamb, his life is given as a ransom for his people. This is why, when John the Baptist shows up in the New Testament, he calls him the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. And this is why Jesus was actually crucified on the Passover. The memorial celebration of this actual event was the day on which Jesus was crucified. It was the last supper that he had with his disciples, was this supper described in Exodus chapter 12. And so this is a really exciting thing for us to take a look at because this involves so much of Jesus' life. So many times the Passover is mentioned and he was good to observe it all the time as he was ministering in the area of Jerusalem and Galilee and those places. He would go to Jerusalem. He would have this feast with his disciples and then the very last time he has it with them There are some profound changes that he makes to it, which we'll look at as we get to the end of this. But this is Jesus, the Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb. This is why the book of Revelation calls Jesus the Lamb 29 times. And it refers to the redeemed of Jesus Christ as those who had their robes washed in the blood of the Lamb. And the New Testament makes it then very clear that we're saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. And this happening some 1,500 years before Jesus came and written down many, many centuries before Jesus came is fulfilled by Jesus on that very night. And so it's a profound testimony to the truth of scripture and it teaches us many truths of it. So this is a continuing picture then throughout Genesis and into Exodus is this one of Jesus prefiguring then this sacrifice that's going to be made. Jesus is the final sacrifice just like the lamb is the sacrifice just as we saw a blood sacrifice was going to be necessary to take away sins. Some call this recurring picture of Jesus through the Old Testament as the scarlet thread. This is why I put a red line on our outline today so that we would remember this is part of that great scarlet thread that runs through the Bible. We saw it in Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve were covered with the skins of an animal. It didn't describe the killing of an animal, but it's very hard to get its skins without some blood being shed. This was the very first physical casualty of sin was that animal that provided its skins for Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter 4 we saw animal sacrifice and the proper offering brought by Abel, the one that God had respect for. And generally in Genesis we see in the offerings of animals by the forefathers to God. They would build an altar, they would offer him a burnt sacrifice. In Genesis chapter 17, animals are laid out in this covenant-making ceremony that God has with Abraham. And in Genesis chapters 35 to 50, we see the prefiguring of Joseph. We talked about how he was like Christ in his life and in the narrative of his life. And in a way, Joseph was sacrificed because to his family, especially to his father, he was effectively dead for those 20 years that they were apart. But through Joseph and through his being gone or in a way dead from his family was the salvation of that family. They were saved by him being sold into slavery and going through all that he did to save them from the famine. So since the Lamb's blood is the tool of redemption here in the account that we've looked at in Exodus 12, then Israel represents the chosen of God. Indeed, they truly are called the chosen people of God all throughout the Old Testament. And when we get to the New Testament, we find believers being called the chosen or elect of God. that are being saved out of this world. The Israelites were saved out of Egypt. Believers today are saved out of this world. We remain in it, but we are no longer of it. And it's an illustration of God's saving work to all who believe. Well, let's talk about the nature of this salvation. for just a moment, this is a theme in scripture that I want you to take a look at. And a theme that you're going to find through scripture is you're going to find kind of a bittersweetness of the story, of the account. Because even like here in Exodus, this is a story of redemption. It's a rescue. It's a salvation. It's a story of great justice being done and these people who were oppressed being brought out of this place no longer to be oppressed. And we know that the salvation that we have in the New Testament and the New Covenant in Jesus' blood moves us from death to life and saves mankind from his self-inflicted fatal wound of sin. Now that's the sweet part of it, that's the good news, but with every mention of salvation in the Bible, there has to be mention of the wrath of God, of the bondage to slavery, in this case Israel's literal bondage, but every person's bondage to slavery and sin, and their eventual coming of death. And so this bittersweet picture that we have here is although these people are being brought out of here and out of Egypt and going to experience freedom, there's all this death around them. They had to have heard the weeping throughout the land of Egypt as this occurred on that night as household after household discovered their firstborn dead. And so this would have been noticed by the people. This would have been a dreadful and horrifying thing. And if you want to study the Bible, try to put yourself in the story to understand it. Try to put yourself there. Don't exert your own understanding of it on the story, but rather read what is there and say, okay, what must that have been like? Because human beings haven't changed all that much. They had the same kind of things. They would have familiarity with their neighbors, with the people they typically work for. They would be connected to Egyptians. that they knew, whether in proximity or in their vocations, things like that. Their children played together. These were people that they knew. And they're brought out of this in this great violence and this great destruction. And so this is bittersweet, and it always is. All the firstborn in the land is the judgment that's coming upon the people. And I want you to notice that. All the firstborn in the land. Apparently, as God was describing this, it seemed like it would also include Israel, because He gives them an exemption. He gives them a way out. And so this whole process of putting the blood on the doorframe is what saves them from the wrath of God, because what is going through and destroying these people is the wrath of God. He is pouring out His wrath on Egypt for their enslavement of the people of Israel. You can go to Genesis chapter 17 and read about that. It is because of this oppression that God brings this wrath on them. And so it's important to see that the nature of the salvation, first of all, is this, that we are saved from the wrath of God. Romans chapter 5 verse 9 says this, it says, Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, that is the blood of Jesus Christ, Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." When we talk about human beings being saved, what are they saved from? Well, in a way, they're saved from themselves because they're less self-destructive after being saved. But that's not what it's talking about. In a way, some people say, well, they're saved from Satan. And it's like, well, Satan actually, he only has dominion over this world. He does not have eternal dominion over us. He will not judge us in the end. And that's important for us to understand. What we are saved from, according to the scriptures here, is we're saved from the wrath of God. That death, indeed, is what we had earned by our actions. In Romans 6.23, it says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You see the bitterness and you see the sweetness in a single verse. Proverbs 11.4 summarizes it this way. It said, riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. And we've talked about how in Christ we have His righteousness. We don't have any righteousness of our own, but we're given the righteousness of Jesus Christ in order to get through the wrath of God. Now this requires a little bit of explanation, because if you notice here, this first statement here is that we are saved by God from His wrath. In essence, what this is saying is we're saved by God from God. Because it's His wrath that we're talking about here. But remember in Genesis 2.17, God said to Adam, when He put him in the garden, He said, in the day that you eat of it, that is the knowledge, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the day you eat of its fruit, you shall surely die." So in other words, this indeed is the wrath of God, but the reason for the wrath of God is the sin of mankind, is the sin of Adam and the sin of every one of us. And so we have this coming. We deserve the wrath of God. through this original sin that Adam committed, and that wrath, that sentence being passed down to all of us, to every time we sin and show that we're a part of the problem. This wrath of God then is hanging over humanity, ready to drop on us by God, but by God's mercy. Adam didn't die that day. You could translate what the Lord said not just as, in the day you eat of it you shall surely die, but it could be thought of or translated as, in the day you eat of it your death will become an absolute certainty. And so that's what we're dealing with here. God commutes the sentence. He delays the sentence. Now, Adam and Eve were spiritually dead immediately. They were ashamed. They couldn't be in the presence of God like they used to, but now they're also mortal and they're awaiting the deserved sentence of complete death, eternal suffering in hell. We have earned this. the wages of sin is death. So every single man, woman, child, Israelite, Egyptian, or otherwise, in the land of Egypt, truly had this coming. Just the fact that it had not yet come to all human beings is God's mercy. Matter of fact, if you are alive today It is because of God's mercy. It's because of God's mercy that you were born, and that your parents were born, that your grandparents were born. See, in His mercy, He's delayed the punishment, and that's just a delay though, but grace is when He provides a way out permanently. And so we are saved by God from His wrath, but by His grace. And the New Testament says it so clearly, that by grace we are saved. And it's not something that's of ourselves. It's not by works. And I've given you some cross-references in the notes that you can search there. because I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this, but some may argue, wait a minute, no, no, no, with the Israelites, this was an issue of works. God said, in order to be saved, you gotta paint this stuff, you gotta paint the blood on the doorposts, on the lintels, that is the top of the doorframe. That's true, in a sense, that is what saved them, was doing that, but, God is the rule maker and it is God that provided this way to be saved. To suggest that the Israelites are saved by their own hands putting the blood on their doorposts is to put, then, this rule above God. In other words, it's put God's law above God Himself. Like, if I go out the door and I brush this on the door, God must save me because that's the rule. Well, no, God is saving you by His grace, by giving you this way out. And if you take this way out, indeed, you will be saved. So to apply blood to the doorposts as their saving work under the grace of God that he gave, this is a demonstration of being saved by grace through faith. See how the Israelites were saved by the grace of God to give them this way out. But it's through their faith. Remember, in the Bible, faith and belief are the same thing. To believe is to have faith. God says, put the blood on your doorpost and I'll pass over. Well, those that believed what he said, those that had faith in his word that he gave, they did it. So their obedience is really an act of faith. See, God's grace is realized through believing His word. That's faith. And then true faith always has its result in works. So it's evidenced by our works. The resulting works for the Israelites was putting the blood on the doorpost. Those that believed God and what He said, those that had faith, in other words, they did it. And anyone that did not believe God's words, that did not believe this was going to save them, they didn't bother. I liken it like this, it's similar to this, that if someone comes running in the room and they say, there is a fire, it's spreading fast, you've got to get out of the building immediately. Well, if you believe them, you leave the building. If you don't believe them, you don't. It's very simple. The faith is evidenced then by our works. If we believe, we get out of the building. The Israelites believed, they put the blood on the doorpost. If you believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ, you will repent, and you will put your trust in him, and your life will begin to change. You will turn from your sins. You will begin to walk in a new way as evidence of true faith. Now for the nation Israel, this is truly their birth as a nation. In the Old Testament, there's constant reference back to this point, this birth of the nation, this exodus from Egypt. And there's language of them as having been dead, but then brought to life by God at the exodus. This is such a profound moment for him, and such a powerful typology of Christ in the Bible, that God takes this point in history, this exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and He makes it a memorial feast forever. And so this memorial feast is very important. He brings this up annually. They're to do it every year. He reorders their calendar. It was the month of Aviv, and this was then to become their first month. Didn't used to be their first month, but now it's going to be their first month, and this is going to be their first of seven feasts that God's going to give them. And interestingly, are you ready for this? Because I'm not going to tell you the details, Maybe next time. God is fulfilling all seven of these feasts that he gives to the people of Israel, starting with Passover, through Jesus Christ. in order. He's actually doing it in order. He wrote all this down. We have copies of the Septuagint and fragments of the Septuagint and things that predate Jesus Christ that have all this written in there and it's like a roadmap to Jesus Christ. It only makes sense after Jesus Christ. But then it has all this evidence, which is endorsing the Word of God and endorsing the Bible as a singular unit that could only have been assembled by God, someone outside of our timeline. Well, this memorial feast, he tells them this is going to be a memorial forever. and he builds it into their calendar an entire week of their lives. One out of the 52 weeks of the year is going to be consumed with this Passover, followed immediately by the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They really started the same day. And to this day, as they bring out element by element, this is very fascinating, look here in Exodus chapter 12, later in the chapter we didn't read this part, the Lord says to them, when your children say to you, What do you mean by this service? You shall say it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for He passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt. Do you see how this becomes a permanent thing for them, that this would be? And then to this very day, when Jewish people celebrate the Passover, many of them have their children ask, what does this mean? And then they'll bring out the bread, and the father will present the bread. And he'll wait for the children to ask the question, what does this mean? And he'll explain what it means. and it'll bring out the bitter herbs, and it'll wait for them to ask a question. Children ask, what does this mean? And he tells them what it means. This is part of their celebration, their understanding of the Passover meal. So element by element, these things are brought out, and the story is explained. Oh, this is a powerful thing. And if you have opportunity, there are entire books written on how the Passover speaks of Jesus Christ. Well, I wanna go through just a few of these elements. in a very cursory, very basic kind of way. The lamb, we already discussed in detail, that's Jesus Christ. The lamb becomes a sacrifice. Interestingly, there's instructions not to break a bone of this lamb, because in the end, Jesus has not a bone broken. Remember, when they were coming along, out of mercy sometimes, or expediency, the Romans would break the legs of those being crucified so that they would die quicker, because they couldn't push themselves up and get a proper breath. Well, they come by, they're breaking the legs of the people crucified that day. They come by Jesus and they're like, pretty sure he's already dead. And that's when the soldier sticks a spear in there and out comes water and blood, an indication that yes, indeed, he's absolutely already dead. We don't need to break his legs. And they didn't. because the prophecy was that no bone of his would be broken. All his bones were numbered according to Psalm 22. And here we have in the Passover thing, God says, don't break a bone of this thing, of this lamb. So that's the lamb. And then there's unleavened bread. It's specifically unleavened. That means it doesn't have yeast in it. Leavening is another word for yeast or baking soda or other things that will act as leavening But generally when we're dealing with the Old Testament, we're talking about yeast. And in the Old Testament, yeast is almost always symbolic of sin because of its ability to permeate and go through the entire loaf of bread. Jesus picks up on this and uses it, though not every time Jesus talks about yeast does he mean that it represents sin. But this is representing sin, and he's telling them not to have any in the house whatsoever. And the Jewish parents, during their observance of the Passover, some of them would make a game of this. They would take a little bit, a little bit of leavened bread, or a little pinch of dough, or even just maybe a little bag of yeast or something. They'd hide it in places through the house. And they would go through the house with the children. We need to make sure there's no leaven in the house. We have to get all the leaven out. And they would find it. Found some, great. Let's get it out of the house. And that would bring them into it. And interestingly, this bread that's used here is called the bread of affliction. Because not only was God showing them, hey, you're gonna be holy to me now. You're gonna leave something in Egypt. You're gonna leave the sin. You're gonna leave the leaven. in Egypt, because tonight you're leaving and you're taking only unleavened bread with you, and as you travel then, you're going to have this unleavened bread, a sign of leaving the old life behind, leaving the gods of Egypt in Egypt, leaving the sin behind, because now you're a people of God. Well, indeed, this makes sense to us in the New Testament context, too, that once we're saved in Jesus Christ, we're to be no longer of the world. We're to be closer and closer to God all the time, cleansing our lives of the sin that besets us. But there was a practical reason for this, too, because unleavened bread is quicker to make. You don't have to wait for the dough to rise. And you can even have an uncooked unleavened bread with you on a trip and it'll be okay, but if you have uncooked leavened bread with you on a trip, it'll fall and it won't be good. And so they're having unleavened bread because they're about to go on the move. They're about to move out that night and go into the wilderness where they're going to be some time before they settle down in one place. And so God has got them using unleavened bread for convenience also. Now, also there's the bitter herbs that are mentioned here. And the bitter herbs would be some oil mixed with, of course, bitter herbs of various kinds. And this was to remind them of the bitterness of the slavery in Egypt. And this, of course, then would remind us of the wrath of God that came, the bitterness of the death that took place, the sacrifice of the Lamb, those unrepentant, unbelieving ones that were judged by God. Bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of this event. And then there's the belt, the sandals, and the staff. We'll handle those together. Because God not only tells them what to eat, He tells them how to eat it. He says, you're going to eat this, and you're going to have your belt on, you're going to have your sandals on, and you're going to have your staff in your hand. Now, this takes a little understanding The belt kind of held the outfit together. It wasn't particularly comfortable. First thing to come off when you get home would be the belt in those days. And in those days they had very loose and flowing clothing. And this clothing, if you were to take off running, would be a great hindrance to you. It's very comfortable, you can move freely in it, but when you try to move very quickly, then all of a sudden it becomes a hindrance. That's what the belt was for. The belt would kind of hold it tighter around you, and you could bring the lower parts of it up and tuck it into the belt. This is the phrase in the Bible called, gird up your loins. That means, in other words, tuck in your robe so you're not going to trip on it, because you've got to be ready to run. And so that's what the belt was for. The sandals, of course, were walking. Sandals would normally be left at the door, especially in the evening, at the evening meal. And then there's also the staff. You don't carry your staff around the house. It's something that's useful for you when you're walking outside or tending the sheep or whatever you do with your staff. It would be left at the door. But no, this night God says, I want you in your belt. I want your sandals on. I want your staff in your hand. You got to be ready to go. Is this not the same thing that Jesus taught when he came? He said, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. In other words, he was telling people over and over, If you're going to follow after me, you're going to follow after me. There's not going to be a delay. It's not a thinking about it. It's not easing yourself into it. It's now. And sure enough, that's exactly what he does. He goes around the Sea of Galilee picking up his disciples. He says, come follow me. They leave their fishing nets that very moment and they follow him. And this is what he teaches people. He has people come to him and they say, hey, look, let me go bury my father first before I go. He goes, nope, not good enough. And some of them say, let me go take care of some affairs. Then I'll come follow you. And he goes, no, that's not how we're going to do this. You come follow me right now or you don't. And so this is, Also, He sets us up to be ready for His return. Because He says over and over in the night, they start asking Him, you know, Jesus, you mentioned the temple's going to be destroyed. When is that going to happen? And you mentioned you're coming back. How is that going to be? What's going to be the sign of these things? And He tells them, and the point of what He tells them, over and over and over again, He doesn't give them a date. He doesn't give them specific names of certain things that are going to happen or certain people involved. But what he does give them is instruction to be ready. Be ready. Over and over again he tells several parables. You have to be ready when he returns. Be found a faithful servant. Don't be surprised when the master returns. And so again, here we are. We come to salvation in Jesus Christ. You've got to have your belt on, your sandals on, your staff in your hand, so to speak. Figurative, obvious. But you've got to be ready to go. He could return at any moment. So this feast has so much to symbolize Jesus Christ. And interestingly, about 1500 years later, here comes Jesus. And the night before he's taken and crucified, they're celebrating the Passover meal, and he makes it something new. He makes it something new. See, Jesus then declares the belt. I'm sorry, he rather declares the bread as his body, not the belt. He declares the bread as his body. Now, the night before his crucifixion, he tells his disciples, I have longed to keep this Passover meal with you. In other words, he was really looking forward to this. Why? Because it was their last meal together before his crucifixion. And during that meal, that's a special meal, during that meal, Jesus explains the New Covenant, or at least announces the New Covenant. It's explained kind of all through the Bible and especially in the New Testament after Jesus ascended. But he longed to celebrate it with his disciples this one more time. They take the meal together and Jesus changes the terms. And it's this meeting of the Passover meal between Jesus and his disciples when Jesus initiates a new ordinance one of only two ordinances of the church that we have, the other being baptism. This one's known as the Lord's Supper, or Communion, or the Eucharist. It goes by several names as we find it, but this is so clearly taught that Jesus declared the bread as his body. Look what it says here in the scripture, 1 Corinthians 11.24, Paul says, that Jesus said on this night. He said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. As he said it in Luke chapter 22, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. So you see his emphasis here is on, this is a remembrance. And this is powerfully important for us to see. Then Jesus declares the wine as his blood. Now wine was always used in meals then. And wine, as we find from the other Jewish literature, was an integral part of what was the Passover celebration. You'll search the Old Testament Passover commands by God, you won't find wine mentioned there. But nevertheless, wine was an integral part of this ceremony. And when Jesus comes along, he also reinterprets the wine by saying, as it says here in Luke 11.25, he takes the cup in the same way as the bread. In other words, this is a symbolic thing, just like the bread was. He says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. So all those years, God says, I'm going to give you the Passover meal. I want you to do this every year as a remembrance of the single most significant event in Israel's history. And then Jesus comes along. He says, now this is a remembrance of me. And so this wine traditionally was used and was enjoyed together four times during the meal. The observers would drink it together. And I won't go into all that detail, but Jesus here changed the symbolism from what it meant to what it means it is the new covenant in his blood. And it's interesting he used wine, because on the one hand, wine is a symbol of plenty, of celebration, of gladness. It says in Ecclesiastes 10.19, bread is made for laughter and wine gladdens life. And money answers everything, well, most things. In the context, when you get to the end of the story, he straightens this out. But look also at Psalm 104, 15. Wine to gladden the heart is something God gave by His grace to us. Oil to make His face shine. Bread to strengthen man's heart. These are all things that the psalmist is praising God for. But it's one of those things that's bittersweet because it adds to life. It's a celebratory thing, but it's also itself somewhat bitter. But think about this. Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine. And he did it using the great big vessels that they used. He didn't use the wine pots. He used the vessels they used for the ritual cleansing. And so what he was showing us is, I'm taking you from ritualistic religion to joy and celebration. And he also showed, I'm taking you from water, from things that merely cleanse us externally and clean the hands, to his blood which cleanses us through and through. of sin. Yeah, that was extra, but go now and read that first miracle and you'll see the profoundness of what Jesus is doing there. So the bitter herbs and the wine, bitterness and sweetness, On the one hand, Jesus, perfect, innocent, loving. He takes the full wrath of God for the sins of the world. And on the other hand, you've got the wrath of God. You've got the sins of the world. Those who believe, He gives eternal life, a blessed hope, a clear conscience. As we take communion, we examine ourselves. The bitter part. And then we remember our savior, the sweet part. This memorializes, therefore, His atonement. Because Jesus calls this a memorial because His sacrifice was a once-for-all sacrifice. If you attend a church that suggests that Jesus' blood is present during the communion, you might want to reconsider that and understand Jesus called this, twice, a memorial. This is a memorial to Him. It is representative of Him, and it is temporary. It's only going to be done until He returns. The book of Hebrews makes the case very clearly that His sacrifice was once for all. Look at this in Hebrews chapter 9, verses 11 to 14 here. It says, When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, that is tabernacle, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, Not by means of the blood of goats and cows, but by means of His own blood. Thus securing an eternal redemption. If this redemption has to come to us a week at a time, it is not an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God. And so there it is. We are moved from death to life, from ritual to joy. We're moved from dead works to serve the living God through this once for all Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sins of the world, sacrificed on the very day where they were celebrating the memory of the Passover. Well, I want you to take you back to the Exodus for a moment as we wrap up here, and I want you to consider some things. I want you to understand, and I want you to see from the scriptures, what the Israelites were going through. They just witnessed over the course of some weeks. This guy Moses shows up. He says, I'm getting you out of here. He shows him some signs and wonder. He gives him a message from God. And then things start to happen. He goes and he talks to Pharaoh. He challenges Pharaoh. And they kind of have this battle of signs and wonders, but then the signs keep coming from God, signs that Pharaoh can't reproduce, signs that these magicians cannot stop. These signs, nine of them, plagues, horrible suffering and dramatic difficulty in the land of Egypt, all over the land. And these plagues, each one, seeming to point the finger at a particular Egyptian god, whether it's the frogs or the water into blood or whatever it is, these all seem to point the finger at a particular god or two each time they come around. And God is showing again and again and again His power and His resolve to bring the people out no matter what. And after nine of these horrendous plagues, the last of which was darkness, which by the way, Jesus experienced darkness on the cross right before his work was finished. But anyway, these nine signs, the last of which being darkness, now God comes and says, now I'm going to go through and I'm going to destroy the firstborn of all the people. Would you believe that? They believed it. I think I'd believe it. They were given the evidence of God, and this is the beauty of God, is that when God wants us, when God has made a way to know Him, He reveals it. He shows the way to know Him. He proves Himself. People are not unbelievers because of their ignorance of God. People are unbelievers because of their persistence in their rebellion to God. The book of Romans tells us that at what can be known about God, God has made it plain to us in everything that's been made. Not just the fact that there is a God, but even what he's like. And we don't see it because in our unrighteousness and our sin, we actually suppress it. Because we don't want to know. But then all of a sudden when he reveals himself and we see it and we begin to understand, something happens and we begin to want to know. They had these great signs and wonders, but the question is for you, what signs or wonders do you have? Well, you have the sign of Jesus, who, there's no question, was here. There's no question He was crucified, and there's no question He was resurrected, because if you question the resurrection, then nothing that happens after that makes any sense at all. These apostles would not die for a lie and they all died in the service of Jesus under fierce persecution and this spread like wildfire. It was an act of God and he spread it across cultural and linguistic boundaries and quite suddenly And he's still doing it today. This is the sign of Jesus, crucified and resurrected. There's a sign of the constant judgment on the earth. People like to say things like, well, if God is so good, why does he send a hurricane? I say, because God is so good that he wants you to see that something's wrong. Don't you see it? And don't you see the ultimate sign, the elephant in the room, so to speak, of human life is this, death. We never get used to it. We never like it because we weren't made for it. These are the signs that God has given, and they are so clear. Then the greatest sign, the most clear sign that is ready for you to examine right now is this Word of God. This Word of God that He has given, this account that He has shown, prefigured Christ in hundreds of ways, and prophesied about Him, and proved His Word to be true with all that He has fulfilled. And this is the Word that says the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Remember what I said in our outline when I talked about the nature of this salvation. We are saved by God from the wrath of God. And we are saved by God from His wrath by His grace. through our faith as evidenced by our works. So I appeal to this today. In his mercy, God has passed over you until now. And in his grace, he has provided Jesus Christ as that permanent solution, as the way to get out of Egypt before you die. He's offering you eternal life in Jesus Christ. So now, what do you do? Well, pray. Pray to Him for faith to trust Jesus Christ for salvation. Ask Him to save you. And then show your seriousness by repenting of your sins. Pray a prayer of repentance to God. Something like, I'm really sorry for all this. And you might be specific. It might be a really good idea. You might say, I don't want to do that anymore. I'm more interested in you. And I'm more interested in having life. And I see that I deserve the death that is coming to me because of this sin and the way I have betrayed you, God. But you have provided Jesus Christ. If you would, please save me." And something like that. Don't pray my exact words. They've got to be your words. You've got to mean them. But repent, take this next step of faith. Join with me now in prayer as we ask for that very thing. Let's pray. Father God, we praise your name and we thank you this day. What a great, great message you've given us from the book of Exodus. What a great encouragement that you indeed are working in the world to redeem people. What wonderful grace that you have. We praise you for it, and we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. We thank you for His sacrifice on the cross. We thank you for His resurrection, which gives us hope unto eternal life, that indeed justifies us. And Lord, I pray that you would give us faith to understand these things. and meet each and every one of us where we are, and help us take that next step of faith. Lord, give us what we need to repent of our sins, to trust Jesus Christ, or to take the next step. Lord, some listening to this are ready to take their next step in their walk with you. They're going to become part of a church, or they're going to begin to search your scriptures with a friend, or they're going to begin to reach out more or to serve their church in some way. Lord, I pray that you're working with each and every one to reveal it in their heart right now. Thank you for this day, Lord. Thank you for this word. And may you be blessed by our response to your great word this day in Jesus name. Amen. Well, I invite you to contact us. If you have any questions or comments concerning this, you can reach us. And you can learn more about us at whitesrun.org. That is whitesrun.org. No need for www. And there you'll find more information about us. You'll find more sermon content, including the rest of the series. And then you can email me personally at whitesrunbaptist.gmail.com. I will answer those emails personally. They come right to my phone. I get a good look at them. It may take me a day to get to it because I want to make a thoughtful and true return. It's probably going to have some scripture involved. So I encourage you, give us a note, whitethronebaptistgmail.com, or follow us on social media. You can find those links from the website. God bless you, and I pray that you have a wonderful day.