10th May 2024

10th May 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 12:14-28)


Message (Alan Burke)


We are all prone to forget, the memory isn’t maybe what it use to be and life goes on for everyone. Well the Lord through the passover with the feast of unleavened bread that was to be reenacted each year to help his people remember the wonderful grace that they had been shown. It is also to act as a testimony, a teaching tool. Look to v25-26; 25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ The children in the coming generations would witness the people of God celebrate the passover and feast of unleavened bread and the children were part of it, they would see and they would ask. If you’ve had any experience of children you’ll have heard that question why, but why, they are inquisitive by their nature, they ask questions, they will want to know, why their parents make this such a big thing. 


Like we’re roasting a whole lamb and burning the left overs, and then which they would literally done and still do in devout Jewish homes today, search to make sure that all the leaven was out of the house then brush the house out the front door to get rid of the leaven. As the children watched this they would see that this was something important to their parents, that it was part of their lives as a new year began and they didn’t miss it. Like why dad did you kill the lamb, why are you putting its blood round the door, why are we having to eat it in one go, why are eating flatbread, what is wrong with the loaf of nutty crust?


And they were to tell their children the wonder of what God had done, that he provided a substitute for them, a lamb died so that they might live, that the Lord had brought this salvation, and he wants us to leave the old life behind, living for him. They would have told them it wasn’t just how they had been saved from slavery but that the passover lamb was an offering for their sin, and they needed God’s grace, they needed a substitute for them and when God brought judgment he would see the blood and know that his justice was satirised, their sins were covered. 


They are to tell these truths to the generations that follow, to their children so that they would know the Lord God as well, the focus of all of this was that God would be known. And it was to be the family who were to pass these truths on, from one generation to the next, this is what God has done, this is who we are. Likewise it is the same today, faith is passed down in the family, from the parent to the children, the grandparent to their grandchildren, every day is an opportunity to pass on the truths of the faith to the next generation, in simple ways, from prayer on the drive to school asking for the Lord’s help, to answering those questions and not ignoring them, to bringing them to worship to see and hear and to know the truth of God. 


The response of the people as they hear what the Lord says comes in v27-28 “Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28 The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.”. What they were doing was responding to the grace of God, and it was coming with worship and obedience. How do we respond to the grace that we have been shown, through the true passover lamb the Lord Jesus who laid down his life for us, well it is to worship and obey. The Israelites worshiped and when they had done that they did exactly what God had commanded them to do, they knew he wasn’t messing about, he knew he was to be feared and it shows the correct response for us to the grace we have been shown. We are all prone to forget, minimise the sin in our lives, and we need constantly reminded what the Lord has done for us through the Lord Jesus Christ. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q35. What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.
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