29th April 2024

29th April 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 12:1-13 focus v1-2)


Message (Alan Burke) 


A new house, a new job, heading to university, returning to study, traveling the world, taking a year out. These are but some of the different things that can happen in our lives where it seems that we are having a new beginning, a fresh start, leaving behind what was before and starting something new. When you’re little making the transition from preschool to primary one seems almost overwhelming to some, even the transition from primary seven to year eight where it seems like everything you’ve known can change within the space of a few months. There are events in all of our lives that have begun something new. 


Here the Lord God was giving his people a new beginning but he was giving them a new calendar to live by, he was giving them a new month, that was to be the first month in their calendar, a month in which they were to be redeemed from their slavery in Egypt was to be the first month of their year. 


Think though to a moment of the plight that the people of God were in, they were in slavery, we are told that it was a bitter slavery. Their lives were filled with hard service, they weren’t stopping to mark the holidays of the Egyptians, they were slaves who were treated ruthlessly. Now for most people today it comes to Friday and the weekend begins, two glorious days for many to do what they want where they do not have to work, they can choose what they do. Monday to Friday is for most the routine of work. But for these Israelites they weren’t living for the weekend, every day was the same, get up in the morning and they laboured, harsh bitter labour, go to bed and get up in the morning and they laboured, harsh bitter labour, go to bed, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days of the year. 

From the very beginning, God had given us a pattern to follow; “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Ex 20:9–11).


For the Israelites there would have been no rest from their slavery, no wee day off to head to the Port or a wee day out in Newcastle for a poke, no bank holiday Monday’s. In all likelihood they would have been unaware of the passing of time more than from one day to the other such was their hard, bitter slavery. Each day would have just been a repetition of the last, the toil that seemed to last forever, children as soon as they were able to walk working along side their parents, no pre school, or school for the wains. 


But God was giving them a new beginning, this month was to be the first month. For the years to come this month, the month of Abib would remind the people how the Lord had redeemed them from their slavery, how they were brought out by the work of God. How from the land where they experienced oppression to the land flowing with milk and honey. God was giving a new beginning to his people. This was a turning point in redemptive history, such that as we move forward in scripture God is seen as the one who redeems is people from slavery. (Ex 20:2, Josh 24:17, Ps 81:10 among others).


God was about to give his people a new beginning through the blood of the lamb, a substitute would be made in their place. For those of us who are in Christ Jesus we have been given a new beginning, we are born again, brought from death to life, saved from our slavery to sin, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. That doesn’t mean that we escape the consequences of our sin, the skeletons in our closet, but what now defines you is your relationship with Jesus, you have a new identity in him and you are though the blood saved for eternity in Christ, the Lamb of God whose blood was shed for you. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q. 25. How doth Christ execute the office of a priest?
A. Christ executeth the office of a priest, in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us.
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