Well, turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Exodus chapter 12. Exodus chapter 12. The issue so far in Exodus has been the status of the firstborn son. As Pharaoh starts the genocide against the sons in chapter 1, as God announces in chapter 4, Israel is my firstborn son, let my son go. And now as God threatens Pharaoh and says, if you don't let my son go, I will kill your firstborn son. But this plague starts, the narration of this plague starts in a totally different way. It's almost like we take a breath. Verse one, now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, this month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his next neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons. According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roast it in fire with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. And thus you shall eat it, with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, so you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am Yahweh. Now 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, and the plagues shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be to you a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to understand the ritual and the ritual truth contained within it in our text tonight. Give us insight into Passover that we might see there the glory of the Son of God. Lord, we need your help to open our minds, to enlighten our hearts, to understand this. We are not familiar with ritual practices. So help us. Pour your Spirit on us. Give us concentration of heart to understand and to worship. We pray these things, Lord God, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the issue throughout the book, as I said, has been the status of the firstborn. And now in chapter 12, on the heels of the announcement of the 10th plague, God stops and as it were, backs up and gives this plague a ritual importance commensurate with its status. And thus, Moses announces the death of the firstborn in chapter 11, but in chapter 12, he takes 12 verses to get to the point, or to narrate what's actually going to happen in this plague. Instead, he begins the chapter with a seemingly irrelevant point. This is the first month. It's not clear whether God is saying this month is now the first month, it wasn't before, or if he's saying, as you know, Moses, we are in the first month. But it doesn't matter. God is resetting the calendar and outlining on the basis of that calendar, that important calendar date, this whole ritual that says, stop, this is important. Let me put it this way. If I say, this is important, you may or may not believe me. You will form your own conclusions as to the importance of the piece of information I impart. But if I say, dress in these special clothes, wear them a certain way. Okay, now eat this certain food, and only eat it at this particular time. Okay, now do it annually on this certain day. And in fact, do it annually for an entire week. This is key to our identity as a people. You can still dispute with me in one sense whether it's important, but it communicates far more strongly than saying, this is important. When I provide you an entire ritual and you look around and you say, our whole people does this ritual. Obviously, we all think it's important. So that's what God does in this chapter. We've seen moral truth, we've seen spiritual, theological truth, and now God gives us in chapter 12, and many times throughout the rest of Exodus, a dose of ritual truth. These things, these practices, these habits that we perform, what we call in our society, usually, traditions. Well, every year we have the turkey cooked this way. God's way of highlighting to us the importance, the earth-shattering nature of this event that we call Passover. This, God says, as he resets the calendar, is year We don't know enough about the ancient Israelite calendar, as I said, to know whether God is resetting the calendar or simply mentioning what Moses already knows. This is the first month or this shall be the first month. It could be translated either way. But the upshot is that this is not only the first month, this is the first year. You will count your years from this year forward. Thus, other societies, the Greeks count from the first Olympiad. The Romans count Ab Urbe Condita from the founding of the city. The modern Jews count from the creation of the world, Anno Mundi. But we, of course, the mainstream Western tradition now adopted worldwide, counts our years, our year one is the birth of Jesus Christ. Our calendars quite literally assume this same shape that's built around the redemption that God offers for his people. This is January 1st, year one. Your life as a nation begins today. And even in modern times, this same thing has been done. Of course, in 1789, the French revolutionaries tried to redevelop the calendar, make 10-day weeks, change the names of all the months. And as recently as 1976, when the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, they blew up the Bank of Cambodia, and they announced that it was year zero. that they too were resetting the calendar in the new Marxist era of Cambodia. Now, God is saying, of course, that this event, the deliverance of his people, is a big deal. Those revolutionaries, those calendar setters, were trying to say, well, the first Olympiad is a big deal. The Marxist takeover of Cambodia is a big deal. Their calendars have come and gone. God's calendar is with us still, and nobody wants to relearn all the dates. And so, no matter how much they hate Christ, it's hard to convince people today. They've taken his name off the calendar, but they kept the dates. So when we say it's 2021, we are making a statement, not a secular statement, but a Christian statement about the time to count years starts from the birth of Jesus. Not from the time that Mohammed fled to Mecca, not from the time that we first celebrated sports with the first Olympic games, not from the time that Rome was built or that the Marxists took over Cambodia, but from the time that God acted to save the world. Already that was the message to Moses in the days of this, the first Passover. So God describes how to celebrate Passover. The first thing you have to do is to take a lamb. And there's only one contingency. The lamb might be too large for the household, or the household might be too small for the lamb. Virgin, I think, preached a whole sermon on this. There is no possibility that the lamb could be too little for the household. Christ is always sufficient. God doesn't even mention, you might need two lambs. No, it's you might need to drag in more people so that you have enough people to eat the lamb that you have. Jesus is a duck. There's no way your needs can be larger than the provision found in the blood of the Lamb. So if you're struggling with your sin tonight, if you're feeling guilty, say, the Lamb is not too little for the household. The blood of Christ is not insufficient for me. There's enough to cover even my sins. There was enough for every household in Israel. in a single lamb. So you take the animal on the 10th day, and then it lives with you for four days. Verse three, take it on the 10th day. Verse six, keep it till the 14th day. You pull it out, you separate it, you say, this is our Passover lamb. You identify with the animal, you bond with the animal, you get to know the animal as it were, and then you stab it. Now this is the Bronze Age, there may not have been a lot of bleeding heart animal rights people, but if you could stab your lamb without a trimmer, you would miss the point. The point was not, somebody's gonna die and it's either me or you, lamb. The point is, I deserve to die. And this bleeding lamb is the only way I'm alive, is the lamb covered in blood that's not my blood. It's the lamb's blood. The lamb gave its life so I could live. The point is too important to put in so many words and then move on. Moses has been building towards it since Genesis 3 when he announced this theme of offspring and firstborn sons and death. There's one major climax in Genesis 22 when God provided a lamb instead of Isaac. And now here it crops out again Every firstborn is under threat and every firstborn can be saved by hiding under the blood of the lamb. God provides a lamb for Israel, his firstborn son. So when you cut the lamb's throat, you hide under the blood. You take it on, put it on the two door posts, and on the lintel of the houses, the two pillars on the side, the piece over the top, and depending on how you translate it, a little later on, it says, catch the blood either in a bowl, or on the threshold, where it could be translated either way. There might be blood around all four sides of the door. Way of saying, everyone who has come in here, is covered by the blood of this lamb. This goes for all of us. And then timing the meal, verse 8, you have to eat it then. Eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire, not raw, not boiled, roasted. And the whole thing, head, legs, and entrails. You can't just cut off the tastiest bits, the chops, the tenderloin, the leg roasts, and throw the rest out for fertilizer. You have to roast even the head, even the legs, because it is by the whole lamb that you're saved. The emphasis on unity, the emphasis on identifying with the lamb is paramount. It's killed in one place. It's eaten in one house. It's eaten all at one meal. It's not even distributed across multiple meals. There's no eating the leftovers for breakfast. If there are leftovers, they go on the fire and get offered to God. Because the unity is paramount. The whole animal for the whole household. Not offering part of an animal. The front quarter of a lamb is not sufficient. Only the whole lamb, eaten all at once, will do. Finally, you have to dress for dinner. Belt on your waist, sandals on your feet. We would say, again, shoes on, car keys in your hand, phone in your pocket. You have to be ready to get out the door. This is a meal of departure. It's a moving dinner. This is to go. And then, finally, after outlining all the rituals, verses 2 through 11, finally God says, why we're doing this? What's the point of these instructions? Well, it's important. It's how God delivered. He will pass through the land of Egypt and strike the firstborn. Again, when Moses announces all the regulations, all the rituals, and not only we're going to do this now, but we're going to do this annually for the rest of time, Israel can form their own conclusions about whether it's important, but there's no question. It's important. Otherwise, we wouldn't celebrate it annually for the rest of time. My first girlfriend suddenly babysat one day and she set an alarm for the kids to get up at 425 or something and She left that alarm on her phone every day for the next three months You've been out somewhere and the alarm would ring. Oh, it's time for the kids to wake up like are you ever going to stop commemorating that magnificent event in your past and Well, I assume she doesn't do it anymore, but God says, here is something I'm doing and you are going to commemorate it annually because it's important. The connection between the ritual and the event is this, God celebrates Passover. Not by eating the meal, but by going out over the land of Egypt striking down the firstborn that are not covered by blood and passing over those who are. God does it. God passes over, therefore we remember, we memorialize that as this celebration of Passover. Moses has kept us waiting for a dozen verses because the event is so huge we can't take it in all at once. We need to see the preparations to realize how big this is, what an important thing this is. It's not like the other nine plagues, where Moses can spend 10 minutes telling Pharaoh, here's what's happening next. Pharaoh says, okay, and then it happens, and then Pharaoh says, sorry, and then it's done. This plague is the plague of plagues. So what do we learn about God? Here in Exodus, the book of the knowledge of God, we learn that he kills firstborn and that he beats up gods. Against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am Yahweh. We've seen that phrase over and over, and here it is again. This is me. This is Yahweh. I kill firstborns. I judge and beat up gods." Why? Because he's so dedicated to the welfare of Israel, his firstborn son, that he's willing to sacrifice the firstborn of Egypt, willing to take on the gods of Egypt, Anubis and Thoth and all the rest of them, in order to deliver his people from Egyptian bondage. Notice that he starts with the instructions for salvation. He doesn't start with the threat, you'll die, therefore, do all these things to save yourself. He starts with the way of salvation. Take the lamb, kill it, put the blood on your door, eat it. Isn't that like our God? You were born into a Christian home, as many of you were. This is how you experienced it. You heard about the way of salvation before you heard what you were being saved from. You got the Gospel message of hiding under the blood of the Lamb before you understood the death that was coming to those who don't. There's a reason Moses and God present it the way that they do. So what is Passover? Well, it's a sign. Verse 13, the blood shall be a sign for you And it's not just a sign for the Israelites, as important as that is. Oh, there's an Israelite, there's an Israelite. It's a sign for God. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. And again, the same is true of the sacraments today. Yes, it's important to be baptized in front of other people. It's important to eat the Lord's Supper with our brothers and sisters. But as important as that is, what's more important is that God sees the sign. And he knows us as those covered by the blood of the Lamb. And then in verse 14, Moses uses three words to describe what Passover is. This day shall be to you, number one, a memorial. Something that triggers your memory year by year. As things fade into the past, they start to get taken for granted. But Passover is designed to stop that. No, it's a memorial. Every year you stop for a week, right? Almost 2% of your time each year. One 52nd of the year. And that whole week is given over to remembering the Exodus. And then secondly, you shall keep it as a feast. We celebrate this deliverance from Egypt the same way we celebrate pretty much everything else, by eating. Not, you were brought out of Egypt, therefore, eat terrible food. You were brought out, therefore, feast. Eat lamb chops. Eat the best food that you can get. And finally, it is an ordinance. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. Now that just sounds like a good Bible word when we read it in this context. What ordinance means is, it's mandatory. You might have seen it on signs around town. No alcohol in open containers at this park. City ordinance 17 dash blah, blah, blah. City ordinance means it's mandatory. You have to do it. So it's a memorial, it's a feast, and it's not optional. There may be some ladies who want to put that in the prenup, that remembering the anniversary is an ordinance. You must do this. It's a memorial, it's a feast, sure. But it has to be done, and that's what God says here. It is an ordinance. You can't say, well, I don't feel like Passover this year, so I won't do it. No, it is required. God delivered Israel out of Egypt at the cost of the life of all the Egyptian firstborn. Remember that. Feast about that and know that you must remember that and feast about that. God's law requires you to do so. Why? Because this deliverance foreshadowed the greater deliverance that we have in Jesus Christ. God saved us not by the blood of Egyptian firstborns, not by the blood of actual lambs and goats, but by the blood of his son. And it is imperative, it's mandatory that we remember that, that we feast about that, because it's even better than Passover. Egyptian bondage was a terrible place to live. Bondage to sin was far worse. Jesus is the firstborn in whom our life is spared. And so we feast at his table week by week to remember and to feast in that remembrance that we used to be slaves to sin and now we're free. Let's pray. Father, help us to understand Passover as feast, as memorial, and as ordinance. We thank you, Lord. that this is the defining event for Israel. We thank you that your son reshaped it into the defining event for the church. The event that we then celebrate week after week as we eat the bread and drink the wine. Lord, help us not to forget. Help us to feast and remember that we have been delivered. We thank you for the blood of the lamb by which your people are saved. In Jesus name, amen.