“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ‘This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is the first month of your year. . .Here is how you must eat it: You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In John’s Revelation, when the last apostle is recording his vision of the various judgments that will culminate in the end of the world, in two of the three series of seven judgments, the final judgment is silence. Just as we are approaching what we are sure must be the end of everything, we are greeted instead with silence in heaven. Read in context and on its own terms, the moment is truly jarring because of how very unexpected it is. That’s a little like what we get here. We are ready for God to unleash His full fury on the Egyptians. Instead, we get something rather different from that. Let’s begin something new today as we explore together how God finally fulfilled His promise to bring His people out of Egypt.

Starting today and continuing for the next several, Lord willing, we are going to work our way through the Passover judgment and Israel’s departure from Egypt. This part of the story is hard and not just emotionally. We are at long last getting our first real taste of a new genre in the Exodus narrative that we will begin encountering much more frequently as we move forward: Law. This will make our task of seeking out the relevance of the text for our lives more difficult. Yet there is still much good here if we will patiently seek it and wait on the Spirit to reveal it.

Chapter 12 itself is long, and it bleeds into chapter 13 fairly smoothly. We are going to break it all down into three main sections in each of which we will spend as much time as we need to work through what we find. The sections form a nice chiasm (click the link there to learn more about chiasms in the Scriptures and how they work) centered around the actual event of the Passover, the tenth and final judgment on Egypt. The presentation of that climactic event is flanked by large blocks of instruction regarding how Israel is to celebrate the great emancipation God is accomplishing for them.

The description of the killing of the firstborns of Egypt, the great act of judgment whose occurrence so shapes the rest of the story of the Scriptures, like the other great act of judgment that would eventually bring a different and greater kind of freedom to the whole world, is actually afforded only a single sentence. But we’ll get to that in a few days, Lord willing. For today, let’s start with the first part of God’s instructions to Moses regarding a new festival the people are to observe.

This first set of instructions is all about getting ready for and eating the Passover meal. From these instructions a whole block of tradition would develop with a liturgy and everything. This tradition is still observed today by Jews with only a remarkably few number of changes given how long it has been around. In preparation for God’s visiting judgment on the people of Egypt, the people were…to have a feast. They were to “select an animal of the flock.” This meant they could have used a goat or a sheep. The traditional picture of a Passover lamb developed out of this, but it could have just as easily been a Passover goat and been faithful to God’s instructions. The animal had to be a year-old male (so it could not have had babies) and totally without blemish. This is because it was going to be a sacrifice and sacrifices had to be pure.

In these verses God tells them how to cook it (roasted over a fire), what side dishes to serve with it (unleavened bread and bitter herbs), what they were to do when they slaughtered it (paint some of its blood on the doorposts and lintel of the house where they were eating it), with whom they were to eat it (their families, unless one family was too small to eat or afford a whole animal by themselves, then they could join with a neighboring family), how they were to eat it (quickly and ready to hit the road at a moment’s notice), and even what they were to do with the leftovers (burn them).

I’m sure we could dive way into the details here and draw out all kinds of meaning, but I’d rather focus on the big picture for today. This meal that would eventually occupy a central place in a much larger and more elaborate festival was intended to be for everyone in the nation. Later instructions will make clear exactly who can and who can’t participate. But for now, if you were a part of the nation, you were not only invited, but expected to take part. As much as it was to be a time for the nation to remember God’s actions on their behalf together, this remembering happened within the context of individual families. Families were to celebrate as families. As we will see through the lens of later instructions as well, this provided an easy way for the substance of the festival to be passed on from one generation to the next. This pattern of parents passing their faith and the traditions that help to hold it in place to their children is something we see over and over again in the Scriptures. It is still the primary source of the faith making it from one generation to the next today.

God wanted them to remember what He had done for them; what He was doing for them. He wants the same thing today. This is why we have traditions like baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Faith in God is not natural. It does not spring up on its own in our hearts. It has to be actively taught. God doesn’t leave us to manage that process entirely on our own, though. He knows we need help. As a result, He gives us things like He gave Israel here to help us create rhythms of activity that point us in His direction. These rhythms help us remember. This is not mere rote memorization of facts and figures, though. God knows us better than that. He gives us celebrations so that we can delight with joy as we tell and retell the stories of what He has done for us. While these kinds of patterns won’t necessarily guarantee the faith makes it from one generation to the next, they make the likelihood of that happening much higher than it otherwise will be.

One more thing worth noting. These instructions likely would not have made a lot of sense to the people when Moses and Aaron gave them to them. They were ready to leave Egypt behind, but here they were preparing for a feast. They were to get all prepared for a feast, but they were to eat it like it wasn’t going to last long. Why put so much effort into something you’re not going to be able to enjoy? The people had to trust that God had a plan.

That’s a point we dare not miss. We must learn to trust that God can see things in a way we can’t. He knows what’s coming in a way we don’t. He understands the bigger picture of our stories in a way we are simply unable to process. If He gives us instructions to do certain things in certain ways, the reason for this is that He knows the best outcome for us will come when we do them in that way. Any other path we take will lead to a harder journey filled with a great deal more futility and frustration. Our best bet is always to trust Him and do what He says. Israel would learn the importance of that over and over again as their journey unfolded. Let us be sure we are paying attention as we go so that we can learn from observation rather than hard experience.