1st May 2024

1st May 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 12:1-13 focus v3-11)


Message (Alan Burke)


While the new home, new job, heading to university, returning to study, traveling the world, taking a year out may seem like a big thing to many of us, marking a change from what came before, a new beginning, what God was doing here for his people was much much bigger. The Lord was redeeming his people, saving them from their slavery in Egypt. To mark this he was giving them a new calendar to live by, a new month, it was to be  the first month in their calendar that would speak of when they were redeemed. This new beginning was going to come through the blood of the lamb. 


Each household is to take a lamb, stipulations are given if the household is too small for a lamb. They are to calculate it v4 in accordance of what each person will eat, they is not to be left over til the morning. The lamb was also to be without defect. The Lord in all of this could have said one lamb for the entire nation would suffice but he didn’t, he said one lamb per household, none of it was to be wasted. Also note that the lamb would even live with you in your house for four days. This is personal, this is God is teaching his people how for them to live this lamb would be slaughtered, the lamb walking about their house. God wanted his people to identify with the lamb that was slain for their salvation from the judgment that was coming. 


What was the Lord doing in all of this, he was telling the people, that if they wanted to live, if they wanted the eldest son of each of the families to live, that a lamb must die in their place. That what was required of his people, for his people, was that a substitution needed to be made. The lamb for the life of the first born. In all of this they needed to have faith in what the Lord was doing, it wasn’t a matter of shrugging it off, doing nothing about it, the people of God needed to do respond to the word of God. While the Lord had distinguished between his people and the Egyptians before and they didn’t need to lift a finger, they were just spectators in it all, but now they would need to act, to have faith in the word of the Lord because otherwise their lives were in danger. The reason why was that they deserved to die just as much as the Egyptians that had enslaved them, the Lord was teaching them about their sin and his salvation. 


For although God was saving his people from their slavery, from their bondage they were as every bit as sinful as the Egyptians who held them in bondage. They just like Pharaoh had rejected the prophet of the Lord who had told them the word of God. Back in chapter 5 the people said to Moses and Aaron, “May the Lord look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Ex 5:21. They deserved the judgement of God just as much. And just like their masters in Egypt they were idolators, years later Joshua had to rebuke this redeemed people for their idolatry, Joshua 24:14 “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. (Jos 24:14).


They were deserving death not only for their refusal to listen to Moses and for their idolatry but for they were sinners by nature, they were all part just as we are part of Adam’s sinful race and the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin (Ro 3:9). It was through the blood of the lamb that the Lord was sparing his people, he was showing his grace, and foretelling his grace. In this redemption that God provided from their slavery in Egypt, the lamb was sacrificed and eaten, it was to show to the people the substitutionally nature of what God was doing, that through the death of the lamb they would be released from captivity. In Christ Jesus the lamb of God who came in the fullness of time, and He came with a purposes to be our substitute, to take away the judgement that we deserve for our sin. God the Father sent His Son to be the sinless Lamb, (Heb 7:26), to be our sin-bearer (2 Cor 5:17-21). The passover looked forward to what Christ Jesus would do for sinners like me, sinners like you, thanks be to God for the lamb of God that came to take away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29)


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q. 27. Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist?
A. Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.
​