Tag: The Passover

Morning Musing: Exodus 13:5-7

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“When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which he swore to your ancestors that he would give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you must carry out this ceremony in this month. For seven days you must eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there is to be a festival to the Lord. Unleavened bread is to be eaten for those seven days. Nothing leavened may be found among you, and no yeast may be found among you in all your territory.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I enjoy eating good pizza. I don’t know many people who don’t enjoy that. PIzza may not be considered comfort food by many, but there’s just something homey and familiar about eating it to me. But while my go-to is what I’m going to call “regular” pizza. I also enjoy a good flatbread pizza. That thin, yeast-free, crunchy crust adds a really nice texture to each bite. Flatbread pizza is a rare treat for me, and it’s always optional. For the Israelites coming out of Egypt, yeast-free bread wasn’t a treat, it was a command…at least for the Passover festival it was. Let’s talk a bit today about why.

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Morning Musings: Exodus 12:43, 48-49

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“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner may eat it. . .If an alien resides among you and wants to observe the Lord’s Passover, every male in his household must be circumcised, and then he may participate; he will become like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat it. The same law will apply to both the native and the alien who resides among you.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the criticisms often leveled against Christianity today is that it is very exclusive. In a world in which being inclusive is one of our highest virtues (unless you are deemed insufficiently inclusive, in which case you are excluded with prejudice), this charge carries a lot of weight with some folks. It can be an apologetically difficult question to answer. Well, as we are going to see in the next part of our story here, this charge is not completely without merit. The people of God is an exclusive group. But it is exclusive in the most inclusive way possible. Let’s talk about it through the lens of God’s instructions about who could and could not participate in the Passover festival.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 12:29-32

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“Now at midnight the Lord stuck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock. During the night Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn’t a house without someone dead. He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, ‘Get out immediately from among my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the Lord as you have said. Take even your flocks and your herds as you asked and leave, and also bless me.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

God is going to one day bring judgment on the earth for all the sin that has been committed on it over the course of human history. Now, a great deal of sin was covered by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Actually, all of it was covered, but this covering only extends to those who have been willing to receive it. That’s the problem. Not nearly everyone has accepted His gracious gift. Many have and will yet decide to bear the weight of their sin on their own. They pridefully believe themselves capable of handling the load. They will be proven disastrously wrong in the end. That will indeed be a terrifying day. We know this because the mere snapshots God has given us of judgment in the Scriptures are themselves terrifying to behold. The final plague was a judgment against the sins of Egypt. Let’s talk about what is going on in these hard verses, and why they point us to a God worthy of our devotion.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 12:24-27

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“‘Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony. When your children ask you, “What does this ceremony mean to you?” you are to reply, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.”‘ So the people knelt low and worshiped.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes God reveals Himself in ways that are clear, direct, and unmistakable. More often, though, He works behind the scenes and gives us the task of passing along information about and faith in Him from one generation to the next. He does not, however, leave us alone and unequipped to do this. His big reveals are intended to become tools for us to use in passing on knowledge of Him generationally. We see this in the next part of the story of the Exodus. Let’s talk this morning about the last thing Moses says to the people before sending them on their way to get ready for the first Passover.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 12:21-23

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“Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, ‘Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning. When the Lord passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Blood is really important. That’s true physically, of course, as we die if we lose too much of it. It’s also true in various other symbolic ways. Relationally speaking, we talk about blood relatives versus those who are just relatives by marriage. Familialy, there is the saying that “blood is thicker than water,” meaning we are going to have closer relationships with our family members than non-family members. When they put ratings on movies, part of what determines how restrictive of a rating a particular film gets is how much blood gets splattered across the screen. Bloody violence gets rated higher than non-bloody violence (think Deadpool versus Star Wars). Blood has also long played an important role in our religious practices. This was the case in the first Passover. Let’s talk about why and what is going on in this next part of the story.

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