Exodus 12: The Passover

Transcribed from the podcast audio and lightly edited. Wording is Bro. Leland's own, and Scripture is quoted as he read it.

Part 1 · Exodus 12:1–20

All right, good to see you tonight. We're gonna be in Exodus chapter 12 tonight, Exodus chapter 12. Now last week in chapter 11 was when Moses went to Pharaoh and told him exactly what God's about to do with the Passover deal and he told Pharaoh the whole thing. All the firstborn are gonna die. All the firstborn, there's no blood on the door, they're going to die. Even the firstborn of the animals are gonna die. And I wanna remind you, we asked the question, why the firstborn? What's the deal about that? And there's two things. First of all, God said, you have my firstborn Israel in captivity and so now I'm gonna require your life from your firstborn. That's part of it. The other part is that the firstborn, God often chose the secondborn over the firstborn.

The firstborn represents man's best, but man's best has never been good enough for God. Man's best has never been good enough for God. That's why we must be born again and to the spirit of Christ where we receive Jesus, the Holy Spirit into our lives. That's the thing that makes the real difference. And so he talks about the firstborn. And that leads us now into chapter 12 where Moses is going to come and the Lord is gonna speak to him. In verse one, it says, now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be the beginning of months for you. It is to be the first month of the year to you. Now what is about to happen is so momentous. It's such a big deal. It's such a watershed moment that God says, you're gonna set your calendar by this.

We're gonna start a new calendar and this is gonna be the beginning of it. This Passover celebration because this is going to mark Israel until today. Even all these years later, 3,500 years later, it still marks who Israel is, what happened in the scriptures. So yeah, he says to him, I want you to set your calendar by this. Now we shouldn't really be surprised by that because we set our calendar, believe it or not, by Jesus, his birth. And we talk about all of my life growing up when I would take a class in history or anything else, they would talk about AD and BC. And we knew that stood for before Christ and Anno Domini in the year of our Lord is really what that stood for. Now, whenever they kicked God out of the schools and everything else in our public life in America, they had to change that because obviously you can't mark your calendar, your official calendar with the very person that you're trying to kick out of your public discourse, Jesus.

So they changed it to the BCE and the CE. In other words, the common era is what they now try to use those things. It was before the common era and after the common era. But I'll be honest, I don't use those terms still because I know why that our calendar, we are in the years that we're in right now. I know why it's 2026 because it's 2000 years after Jesus came. That was the beginning of our calendar. That's where everything in the Old Testament, still to this day when you study history, before Jesus came, all the BC, the numbers are going down. They start high and they start receding. You know, when you see them going down, you see 850. Then you see 100 years later, it's 750. What's it doing? Counting down to a specific event when Jesus comes.

And now it's going up. So everything, even our calendar today is centered around Jesus. Even though our world doesn't want to reveal that and they don't want to admit that, but I still use the old terms. I'm a dinosaur anyway, so I can do that, right? And I still use the BC and the AD because I know what those mean. And I realize they can use whatever terms they want. But the fact that the years haven't changed and those years are built around a momentous event and that's Jesus coming into this world. So that's important. That's what God tells them right there in verse two of chapter 12. He goes, this is going to start a new calendar. This event is gonna mark it. That means this is a watershed event. That means that what is about to happen is very momentous.

I mean, if you're setting your calendar to this, then this is a big deal. Changing the calendar they've had, they had a secular calendar and they had a religious calendar. And this is going to change their calendar. Then look what he says after that in verse three. Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying on the 10th of this month, they are each one to take a lamb for themselves. According to their father's households, a lamb for each household. Now, if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the numbers of persons in them, according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Now, he tells him, first of all, each household has to have their own lamb.

You can't just say, well, we're gonna sacrifice a lamb for all of Israel. Jesus has to be accepted and taken by each person. You can't just say, well, I'm an American and I'm born an American, so I'm a Christian. You can't say, I was born in the South, so I'm a Christian. You can't say, I was born a Baptist, so I'm a Christian. Every person has to take Jesus for himself, just like they were to take a lamb for each family. Now, the rabbis later on would guesstimate that when they talk about the neighbor, if you don't have enough for one lamb, they would guesstimate that the lamb, one lamb would feed somewhere between 10 and 20 people, so they would say, if you had less than 10, maybe get somebody to come in with you, and if you had more than 20, then that's it.

That's the, this was later on when the rabbis would get ahold of all these things. Sometimes they made extra rules along the way. I don't know really where they got their numbers from, but anyway, that kind of gives you a little bit of a hint about what he might be talking about. When he says, if you don't have enough people in your house, you get your neighbor to come in with you. But the point is that I think so important is that every family had to have their own lamb. And so we all can come to Jesus individually, but we're not gonna all come to Jesus corporately. Jesus died for everybody, but just because you're a member of the church doesn't mean you belong to Jesus. You have to deal with God yourself. There has to be a personal relationship with you, between you and God yourself.

And that's the key that I think that we're missing. You gotta remember now, everything in this Passover is pointing to Jesus. Everything in this Passover. There's a lot of symbolism here. And there's a lot of things God asks them to do that seem really kind of strange to us today. But when you look at these things and what they really mean and what they meant to those people as well, and you think about what we know now, they didn't see the fact that Jesus was gonna come, but God was giving them hints along the way, even in this Passover that he's going to give them. We look back now. We have the privilege of looking back on history. We see the whole picture that they weren't given then. They simply just believed God, like Abraham did, and it was credited to them as righteousness.

We have a greater responsibility, don't we? Because we do have the facts. We see it all. We see the whole thing laid out before us. We see God's plan of salvation laid out before us. And so we have the big picture, so to speak, that they didn't really have. So he tells them each one, each family has to have their own lamb. It's not gonna be one lamb sacrifice for the nation of Israel. It's gonna be every person dealing with God and their family dealing with God. Look at what he says about this lamb. Your lamb shall be unblemished male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it in verse six until the 14th day of the same month. And then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.

Now that's, it's an interesting thing here. And there's two things I don't want you to miss that are so, I think so powerful when it comes to talking about Jesus and how we see him in this passage right here. First of all, I don't really have to even tell you when it says your lamb has to be unblemished. There needs to be perfection there. And by the way, the word for lamb is also a word in Hebrew that they could use for goat. And so matter of fact, the Hebrews and the Chinese people, both see very little, they don't really make a big distinction between lambs and goats. They just feel like they're just different subsets of a small animal type. And so either the word could refer to either one and you could use either one.

You're gonna see where it can either be a lamb or it can be a goat. But it kind of brings a little significance, doesn't it? To where it says God will someday separate the sheep from the goats. We may not see a big difference there, but God does. God sees the big difference, the difference there. So yes, and there's one other thing I didn't point out to you that I want to mention. In verse three, when it says speak to all the congregation of Israel in the Pentateuch, which is the Greek translation of the old test of the Torah, these first five books of the Bible. That word, there's the first time in the Bible that we see the word ekklesia, the congregation. And so they use that word ekklesia, which later in the New Testament will be used whenever we're talking about the church.

In the book of Acts, you see it a lot, talking about the church. It's that Greek word ekklesia, the congregation. And so it's the first time that we see it in the Bible, and he's talking to the nation of Israel saying, talk to the congregation, talk to all of them and tell them these things. So this is another interesting thing for me. He says, you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. Now remember, he said on the 10th day, you're supposed to choose a lamb. And you keep it until the 14th day of the month. So they bring this lamb into their home and they keep it for four days. They keep it for four days. Why would they do that? You know, why would God ask them to do it?

It seems strange, right? Why wouldn't you just go out and get the lamb and slaughter the lamb on the day that you needed to do it? But they wanted that family to live with that lamb and that lamb to become a part of that family. And whenever they had to kill that lamb, there would be a real sacrifice for them. There would be mourning. There would be grieving. Children probably named it, you know? And now they've got to kill the lamb. And think about our savior. He came to live with us before he was sacrificed. And when he was sacrificed, there was grieving and mourning and tears, weren't there? There was the disciples who didn't know what was going on. There were the women who cried and wept for him and came to the tomb and discovered that it was empty.

So all of those things, you know, he said, keep that lamb in your home for four days. You let that lamb become a part of your family. Jesus had to become a part of us. He had to become who we are in order to be able to sacrifice himself for us. And that lamb becomes a part of that family and then can be taken and sacrificed for that family. And you began to see God's plan a little bit as you go into all of these different things, don't you? So he says, you know, on that 14th day, you take that lamb and you kill it at twilight. Now he says in verse seven, moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

So they were told to take this blood and they were going to spread some of it on the top lintel of the door and then on the two sides of the door. And you know, this isn't necessarily, I don't see this in the Bible, but I just think it's kind of a neat thing. I can imagine as they're putting that blood on the top of that door, some of it's dripping down onto the floor. And they're putting the blood on the two sides and in my mind's eye, I can see what that makes across. As that blood comes down and drips to the floor, as it's right there. The thing about this lamb is the family is going to be told to eat the lamb and burn what's left over. So the only part of this lamb that belongs to God is the blood.

The only part of this lamb that God wants is the blood. Why? Because the life is in the blood. We're told that. And so yes, he tells them, I want you on that 14th day, you slaughter that lamb and you put the, they do this before they even eat the lamb. They take the blood and they put it on the doorpost. And the question is, so what if an Egyptian family would have done that? Well, then the death angel would have passed over them. You know, if they put the blood on the door. What if some Jew, some, you know, Hebrew family said, well, you know, that sounds kind of ridiculous to us. We're just not going to do it. Then the death angel would have visited their house and they would have lost the firstborn of everything in their home, including the animals.

Because it was the blood that made the difference. It wasn't whether they were Hebrew or Egyptian. It was the blood that really, that the death angel was looking at, was that blood there or not? That blood covered that house. And if it wasn't there, that house had no covering at all. You know, I think about later on when the Israelites went into the Promised Land and they went to Jericho, you remember, and they were at Rahab's house and they said, look, here's what you do. You hang a scarlet thread out the window and your house will not be touched. Scarlet thread, which of course is a wonderful symbol of the blood once again and your house will not be touched. It is the blood of Jesus that saves us, that covers our sin. You say, well, why is that?

I say because Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. He is the payment. And so what is that blood? That blood covering us shows that the payment has been made in my life on my benefit and for my benefit. The payment's been made because of that blood. So he says, before you do anything else, after you kill that lamb, you take the blood and you put it on the door. You cover your door frame with that blood on the top and on the sides. Then he goes on in verse eight, and he said, they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Now there's gonna be a symbolism about the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread as well. We're gonna talk about the unleavened bread in a moment.

And the fact that he says to them, don't boil this lamb, but roast this lamb. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, it's faster to roast a lamb than it would be to boil it. You know, if you're gonna boil it, you gotta get a pot ready, you gotta get the water boiling. Now remember, they're eating this because they're fixing to leave. That's what's, that's the whole picture here. They're fixing to leave. And so the unleavened, he's gonna talk about the unleavened bread in a minute, that the bitter herbs is to remind them of the bitterness of the slavery they experienced in Egypt. It's to remind them that to this very day, the Jewish people, when they do the Passover, they still do this. They still eat the unleavened bread.

They still eat the bitter herbs to remind them why. Remember, this is the first, this is the beginning of their calendar. This event is a huge event. And even in the New Testament, whenever Peter and some of the deacons, Stephen, are sharing the gospel story, they always go back to when God delivered them out of Egypt. So they don't ever go back all the way to Adam and Eve. They go back to this first thing, that the calendar starts here because it represents Jesus and his blood and God's plan of salvation for all people. So it's a big deal. So he says, eat the flesh that same night, roast it with fire. And there's another reason, not only was it faster to roast it with fire, but it also kept it together. It wasn't gonna be so tender that it just fell apart if you roasted it with fire.

And you see, that's important. Because in the Bible, we see where it talks about how Jesus' bones would not be broken. That he was whole. Now his bones might've been out of joint some because the Psalms talks about that. But none of his bones were broken. As a matter of fact, the Bible even says over in John chapter 19, when they went to break the legs, because it was Passover. And so they said to the soldiers, listen, we need to put these guys in the ground because it's almost Passover. We can't do this tomorrow. So they went and broke their legs. But when they came to Jesus, he was already dead. They didn't need to break his legs. And so in the Bible talks about how his bones were not broken. And we see that in the Bible.

In Psalms chapter 34, and in verse 20, it says, he keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Not one of them is broken. So yeah, he's talking about Jesus. And so we see that it's important that they roast this lamb. They roast the lamb and they don't boil this lamb because it's gotta stay together. It's gonna be faster if you roast it. And they're gonna eat it in a very specific way. So the bitter herbs, of course we said, was because of the bitterness of their slavery in Egypt. And look at verse nine. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire. Now look at this, both its head and its legs, along with its entrails. They would take the intestines out and wash them and put them back in and roast everything, and then they were told what to do with that.

They said, and you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. Now listen, I want you to know, here's what I see in that. Because we look at that and we say, why would God tell them to burn at all, not to leave anything until morning? You weren't gonna take a little bit and then come back later and get a little bit more. You don't take a little bit of Jesus either and come back later and get a little bit more. You either take Him or you don't. You either take all of Him or you don't take any of Him. He's Lord, right? And so He's either Lord of everything or He's not Lord at all. And so you don't take a little bit of Jesus and say, well, I'll just go to church and I'll get a little bit of Jesus.

And later on in my life, I'll get a little bit more. And when I die, I'll be ready to go to heaven. Just doesn't work like that. And it didn't work like that here. He told them, don't leave any of this. Don't leave any of this lamb until morning. Consume the whole thing and whatever you can't eat, burn it. There's not gonna be a little bit later on. It is an all or nothing proposition, just like Jesus is for you and I today. He's an all or nothing proposition. We either come to Him as our Lord or we don't come to Him at all, to be honest with you. And so yes, you're not supposed to leave any of it until the morning, burn it with fire. Now, here's what He says. Now, you shall eat it in this manner with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand.

And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. So here's what He's, what is He saying to them? And what does that mean? That is talking about faith. He's saying, look, God's told you that He's going to do this and that Pharaoh is gonna literally drive you out of Egypt. You're gonna leave Egypt. So He says, I want you to act like you believe that. And I want you to dress like you believe it. And I want you to be ready like you believe it. You be ready to go with your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, and you eat that in haste, realizing by faith that God's gonna keep His word and that you're gonna be leaving Egypt. In other words, you get ready. You get ready. You get ready and by faith you eat that in a ready position in a ready way, realizing that it's all true.

It's all gonna happen. They didn't sit around at a table and enjoy a leisure meal. He said, this is gonna happen. And so for you to acknowledge that it's gonna happen, I want you to act like it's gonna happen. It's kind of like the person that shows up at church with an umbrella when it hadn't ever rained. But they said, well, the Lord told me it's gonna rain today. So they show up with an umbrella and the rest of us are laughing until we get out of church and it's raining, see? And they've got the umbrella. Same thing. It's the same thing. God's saying to them, listen, I've made a promise to you. I've told you what's gonna happen. Now I want you to eat this in a manner that shows that you believe it.

That your faith is on trial. Your faith is before the Egyptians. Pharaoh is gonna see your faith as you stand in your house and you eat this in haste with your staff ready, with your sandals on your feet, ready to go. Ready to go. Now some of us don't have a problem eating anything in haste. But we don't like to stand there with our sandals on our feet ready to run right after that. We're gonna like to take it easy. But God told them, you're gonna go after this. So eat this in a way that shows that you believe that. There's a lot of ramifications for us on that, didn't there? That we should live our lives every day. What does God said to us? He said, look, I've come to give you life and life abundantly.

I have an inheritance for you when you leave this life. That's just the beginning of everything for you. He says, live your life in a way that shows the world that you believe God when he makes these promises. God says, I've forgiven you and I've cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. That's one of the hardest ones to believe in for you and I. That's the one that makes us stumble more than anything else, isn't it? Because we're like, Lord, but do you know how many times I've sinned? Do you realize that I keep messing up the same sin over and over again? And we can't imagine, you know, there were years in my life when I really struggled with doubt. I had a lot of lack of self-confidence and I don't want to go into all that stuff, but the point is this, one day I was sitting there thinking and I thought, well, Lord, I'm not questioning you.

I'm questioning me. I know what you've said, but I don't know that, I mean, look at me. I keep messing up all the time. Even though I tell you I don't want to do it again, I still mess up again and so I know you. And here's the verse that came to mind. He said, Leland, Abraham simply believed me and it was credited to him as righteousness. Are you just willing to believe me? When I tell you that I've cast your sins as far as the east is from the west, when I tell you that my son Jesus died on a cross and that was enough and your sin was paid for, are you willing to just believe me? I'm telling you, it'll change your life if you just decide to believe God. Why? Because then why, you can't doubt anymore.

You can't doubt anymore. You've turned your life over to Jesus and you know that. You simply have to believe God. Yeah, you're still the same scoundrel you were five minutes before, but you're covered in the blood of Jesus. His righteousness is your righteousness. And so yes, we simply have to come to the place where we just believe him. We just believe him and we live like we believe him. That doesn't mean I walk around thinking I'm perfect. I guess believe me, nobody knows. I'm like Paul, I said, I'm the worst sinner I know, honestly. And yet I just believe him. Just believe him. That's what it's really all about. And that's what he says in it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.

And yet we go through the doubts and the doubts and the doubts and the doubts all the time and Satan loves that. He's the one that does that. God never makes you doubt him. But Satan will. He's the one, and that was the very first sin, wasn't it? And the very first temptation when he said to Eve, did God really say? And he said it in a way that would cause her to doubt God. And he's still doing it and we're still falling for it. So I'm telling you, you and I, we've got to realize that we've got to live our lives in a way that shows the world we believe God's word, we believe what he says, and we believe him. We believe him. Whatever it is he tells us, we believe him. That's the key, and that's the simplest form of faith.

We try to make it so hard sometimes, and we try to make it so difficult, but it just comes down to, do you believe him or not? And if you do, then start living like you believe him. You know, I loved when our church decided to remodel and we said, man, that's a lot of money, and it was a lot of money. It was a little scary to be honest with you, it was a lot of money. But yet, we said, God told us to do this, and so we just did it. And here we are 10 years later, we have no debt at all. All that money that was such a mountain to us is gone. And God did that, and we know that. God just mowed it down. And I sit there and I wonder how many nights did I go to bed thinking, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Really, you know? Worried about that, and I look at myself now and I said, I don't know how God even puts up with me sometimes. But we've got to come to the place where we just believe him, and we walk that away, and we talk that away, and we live that every single day. And that's what faith is all about, isn't it? That's what salvation's all about. Remember, it is not my faith. It's not faith in my faith that's gonna save me. It's who I put my faith in that's gonna save me. So I put my faith in. I drove over, I had to go to the doctor in Shreveport today, and I drove back over to that Jimmy Davis bridge. They've been painting it. I've driven on that bridge so many times, they're building that new bridge.

And I thought, I wonder when this bridge is just gonna fall into the river. Cause it looks pretty rough, doesn't it? Well, now they're painting the bridge, and it looks really good. I'm like, why are we building a new bridge? You know, this one looks pretty good now, but I thought, every time I drive across that bridge, I thought, this is an act of faith. Cause I don't know the guy that designed that bridge. Never met him. I do not know the workers. I don't know their work ethic. I don't know what kind of men they are and women they were that built that bridge many years ago. I don't know them at all. I'm literally driving over that bridge just trusting, trusting that they did their job and that the guy that designed it did his job and that the bridge will hold me up in my truck.

I'm just trusting, that's, you call that faith. I'm putting my faith in that bridge and in their work and what they did. You see, and if they were faulty, then my faith is gonna be faulty. When it comes to salvation, I put my faith in Jesus and he's not faulty. And I will never be disappointed in that. And so I've just got to come to a place and we do as well where we just believe God and it will be credited to us as righteous just like it was for Abraham. He goes on now in verse 11, says, now you shall eat it in this manner with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet. We talked about that in a minute. Your staff in your hand and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover.

It's the Lord's Passover, see. It's the Lord's Passover to them. And what does it remind them? First of all, it's the Passover that reminds them that God saved them from the death angel. It's also the Passover that reminds them that God brought them out of the slavery of Egypt, delivered them out of the slavery of Egypt and up to the very, into the promised land. And it's a powerful picture of Jesus' rescue of us. The Passover is all of those things. And so that's why it says it's the Lord's Passover, but he's making a powerful statement to the Hebrew nation. Even Paul, years later, hundreds of years later would say in 2 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter five and verse seven, he would say this, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump just as you are in fact unleavened for Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

He is our Passover as well. You and I today, John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Hebrews 11 says Moses saw Jesus as the lamb. He was the Passover lamb. Moses saw the Passover and he understood that God was doing something special in their midst. So all of these things we see is by faith that Moses did the Passover. So yes, it was God's Passover. Now look what he says in verse 12, for I will go through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. So all the gods that they trusted in, they were gonna find out could not help them on this night.

God was going to execute his final judgment. He was gonna do something that would be talked about for thousands of years to come. And he was gonna do something that the whole world at that time would hear about and know about. God was gonna show the world once again that he's God. It's amazing to me how many times has God done that? And we still wonder if he's God. We still come up with all kinds of gods, don't we? And the one that we come to most of all is ourselves. We like to be our own God and make our own religion, do our own thing. And that's why we have a problem sometimes obeying the Lord because we're doing our own thing. But God has, time and time again, has shown the whole world who he is.

And he does it every day just through his own creation. He says that. Even the creation I created out here shows people that there's a God so that everybody's without excuse, really. And I've told you this before. Every civilization that we know anything about, I've studied most of them in my history classes, they all worshiped something. What is it in a man and a woman's heart that they know instinctively to worship because they know there's a God? They know there's a God. So yes, God has, he's made himself, he's showing them who he is. He says, I am the Lord, verse 13. The blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you live. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

So he tells him, you put the blood on the house, you're safe. If the blood's not there, then the plague's coming to your house and you're gonna lose your firstborn as well. And then he goes on now, he's gonna switch gears a little bit in verse 14. I'm gonna go up to about verse 20 tonight before we finish. And he says this, now this day will be a memorial to you. So it's gonna be a memorial is something we don't wanna forget. It's a, we're planting, we're kind of putting down a, we're putting a nail in the barn to remind ourselves of this day. He says, it's gonna be a memorial to you. It's something you're gonna celebrate over and over again. We have memorials in our capital city, Washington DC. We have memorials for the Vietnam War and the World War II.

And we've got the Lincoln Memorial and we got all kinds of memorials to remind us of special events and special people and the sacrifices they made and the things that they did. And he says, this is gonna be a memorial for you. And he says, you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. God says, this is gonna be for, until I come back and stop everything, you're gonna celebrate this as a permanent ordinance, this memorial. And then he tells them what to do in verse 15. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

Why unleavened bread? Well, you know, first of all, if you're in a hurry, leavened bread takes time to rise, doesn't it? You gotta give it time to rise before you bake it and all of that. Unleavened bread, not so. And so they're in a hurry. Remember, they're fixing to leave. They're supposed to eat in a hurry. He tells them unleavened bread, but to be honest with you, they also see, and they still today, and we do as well as believers, we see that leaven in the Bible many times represents sin. And it represents sin because when you take yeast and you work it into dough, it kind of works its way through all of the dough, doesn't it? It kind of reminds us that you can't play with sin. You may think that you're in charge.

You may think, well, it's just a little sin. It's not a big deal, but before you know it, it is working its way through your life. Just like leaven works its way through the dough. And so it is for sin. And that's why he says right there, anybody who eats leavened bread shall be cut off. He says, get rid of all the leaven in your houses. I think that's a good, that's a good admonishment for all of us, isn't it? Get rid of the sin in your house. Because if you don't, it's going to take over. You remember what God told Cain? He said, Cain, you know, Cain, he said, if you give him a foothold, he's gonna get the door open. And of course, Cain did. He gave him a foothold and ended up murdering his brother Abel.

So yes, we've got to be so careful. Sin is deceptive and we think we're in control of it. But in the end, we're not. I'm telling you, you ask anybody that's addicted to anything and they will tell you that's true. Because every one of them thought they were in charge and they were in control until they weren't. And now they can't get out of it. Now it's got a hold of them. Now it's a different story for them. And they don't want to be in it and it's ruining their lives and they know it and they want to get out, but they can't do it. Because it has a hold of them. That's why we've got to be careful about what we allow in our homes. We got to be careful about what we allow our children and our grandchildren to bring into our homes and to do in our homes.

We got to be careful about those things because sin has a way of taking over. Sin is never satisfied with just a little bit of your life. Satan is going to get it all. He wants it all. He's greedy for all of it. And he will start small, but he will work his way throughout your life. And that's exactly why they were told to eat unleavened bread because that's kind of what it goes back to. In verse 16, it says on the first day you shall have a holy assembly. And another holy assembly on the seventh day, no work at all shall be done on them on those two days, except what must be eaten by every person that alone may be prepared by you. So he says on the first day on the last day, you have a worship service.

You come and you worship. You have a holy assembly. And they have a holy assembly to thank God for what he's done for them, that he's delivered them. We come every Sunday. And what do we come to church to do? Brag on Jesus and thank him that he's delivered us from the penalty of our sins. And he's delivered us from sin controlling our lives. And he's delivered us from death, our fear of death. He's delivered us from all of that. And so yeah, we come and we celebrate every single week. We come and we do that when we come together on Sunday mornings. And then he says in verse 18, in the first month of the 14th day of the month, at evening you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening.

So for seven days, it's going to be the first day they're going to eat, then for seven days, all they're going to eat is unleavened bread. That's it, for seven days. They're going to eat unleavened bread. Then in verse 19, it says seven days, there shall be no leaven found in your houses. For whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land. You know, so leaven was a picture of sin and corruption. And leaven yeast makes something rise. And you know, I think about how we sin puffs us up in our pride and our arrogance towards God. Same thing. And so he tells him, no leaven is to be found in your houses at all. I love one thing that he says here, I think that's really important.

He says, that person should be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native in the land. You have to remember now that when they left Egypt, there was probably about, when we read the numbers, you're gonna see, they're gonna talk about over 600,000 men. So it's, it's estimated there was over two million people. But there were also some Egyptians who left with them. There were some Egyptians who saw what God had done for them and they came with them as well. There wasn't just Hebrews. It was almost all Hebrews, but there were some Egyptian families that said, yeah, we're going with them. We're going with their God. Cause our gods aren't any good, obviously. They couldn't stop that God. And so some of them came with the Hebrews as well.

And then he goes on in verse 20, I'm gonna end right here. This is where he talks about walking and moral purity. When he talks about unleavened, you shall not eat anything leavened in all your dwellings, you shall eat unleavened bread. So he's saying to them once again, walk in moral purity. Walk, don't take in that sin into your life. Don't take that sin into your house, your home, your family, but walk in moral purity. Now look, let's be really honest. We have, we struggle with sin. I mean, if you were to say, well, I'm never gonna let sin in my house. That's probably not gonna happen. I mean, Satan's gonna find a way. You got a TV set, he'll get there. You got a radio, he'll get there. You got a phone with a screen, he'll get there.

He'll get there, but you and I have to recognize we've got to protect our families, our children, our grandchildren. We've got to protect our own hearts, guard your heart. We're told that in the New Testament more than one time. So yes, it's important. And we look at this, this chapter had 57 verses. Aren't you glad I'm not gonna finish this chapter tonight? Cause we would be watching the sun come up if I tried to do that. But I'm gonna stop here tonight. We'll come back next week, we'll finish the rest of this chapter and we'll see what God does in the land of Egypt. And we'll begin to see how he brings them out of Egypt in their slavery. Let me pray for you. Father, we are so thankful. We're thankful, Lord, to see Jesus in our Old Testament.

To see, Lord, how you kind of laid out and you gave a hints along the way about your plan of salvation, how you were going to accomplish this salvation in our lives. And we have the privilege, as we look back on all that, to see the whole picture. The picture they really couldn't see. A picture they had to accept just by absolute faith in you. They just believed you. And I pray, Father, you would help us to do the same. Help us, Lord, just to believe you and to live like it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Part 2 · Exodus 12:21–27

We are in Exodus chapter 12. We started last week in chapter 12 and of course it had 51 verses. So we only got through about verse 20 and we'll start, we'll pick up in verse 21 tonight. But I wanna remind you of a couple of things that we saw there. I wanna, you know, you need to remember that the Passover, this lamb that they're told to get in slaughter and put the blood over that lamb, of course, is a representation of Jesus who would come. God was always sharing his plan of salvation. He was sharing with people what he was going to do. And so that lamb represented the Savior. And because of that, they were told to get an unblemished lamb. They were told to let that lamb live with them for four days before they killed that lamb because that lamb needs to become a part of the family.

There needs to be a little grief and mourning involved. There needs to be a sacrifice, a real sacrifice whenever they slaughter this lamb on their behalf. If you just pull something out of the herd, you don't necessarily feel any feelings for that. But if you've had a little, an animal live with you for four days and then your kids have named it, well, you're in trouble right there, right? And so he tells them, because look, Jesus had to come to this world and be one of us before he would be able to sacrifice for us. And so that's why God told him, you keep this lamb for four days in your house with you. Whenever it came time to sacrifice that lamb, it was a real sacrifice for them and for that family. And they tell them to roast this lamb, not to boil it.

First of all, it would have been hard. I don't know that they would even have a pot big enough in the Jews in that day and age to even boil something like that. But if you boil something, it falls apart. And see, here's the thing. Remember, this represents Jesus. They were told to roast it. So Jesus, when he hung on the cross, the Bible tells us that his bones would not be broken. Now there might be some out of joint, but not broken. And as a matter of fact, you'll remember that whenever they came to the two thieves, the Roman soldiers on the cross, they broke their legs because they were still alive. But when they came to Jesus, they didn't do anything because he was already dead. And so they didn't break his legs, which the Bible prophesied in the Old Testament that that's exactly what would happen.

So they told them to roast this lamb, not to boil this lamb, because this lamb is a picture, a symbol. It's kind of God's little hint of what he's going to be doing on a little further down the road. So that's the first part of chapter 12 of Exodus. And we're gonna pick up in verse 21. And Moses has already been told what to tell the people and he's gone to them. And look what he says in verse 21. Moses called for all the elders of Israel. The elders were the leaders. They're those people that were in leadership, the people that the other folks followed and looked up to. And he knew Moses had enough, he had enough smarts to know that if you want the people to get involved in this, if you want them to do it, then you have to bring their leadership there.

And you need to get them to do it as well. You know, I think a lot of pastors get themselves in trouble when they run so far ahead of their people and their leadership that they don't include them in the vision. And so a lot of times you have good people who don't understand what their pastor's doing because he hasn't taken the time to really lay the groundwork and give them the vision. And so when you do that, then you end up with churches where people are suspicious of the pastor and the pastor feels like the people won't follow him. And really, when you boil it all down many times, it's a good pastor and it's good people. They just haven't taken the time to listen to each other yet. And when you do that and you bring your leadership along, well, then it all falls into place.

It falls into place. That's the model that I like to follow of leadership is that we, you know, I tell my deacons all the time, if my deacons said to me, we're not real sure about that, Brother Leland, it's not gonna come to you in a business meeting. I'm gonna go back to the drawing board until I can come to my deacons and our finance committee and our staff and our personnel committee and whoever it is that we need to work through. And they say to me, oh yeah, that's it. That's what we need to do. Now when that happens, then I know we've got the right thing. Then we bring it to the whole church and let you make the final decision on all these things. And so, you know, that's one reason our business meetings don't last a long time because we try to bring our leadership along.

Moses did that. He got the elders of Israel. He called for the elders and he said to them, go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families and slay the Passover lamb. Now remember, according to your families, this wasn't just an individual thing. It was a family thing as well. And so the Passover was celebrated always and still is in the Jewish community as families, families celebrate the Passover. It's not something that individuals do. And it's the very same in churches. Ever so often we take the Lord's Supper, which is the New Covenant Passover. Jesus changed it from the Old Testament to the New at his last supper with his men when he talked about that. And he said, do this in remembrance of me. So we do the very same thing. We do that as a church.

Now there have been times when I've gone to someone's house that can't get out, maybe someone who is on hospice or something like that. And we've taken the elements and we've done the Lord's Supper with them as an individual. I've done that before. Charlie's gone to the nursing homes before and taken the elements and we do that at the nursing home. But by and large, it's something we do as a church family. We do that together as a church family. And that's exactly what he told them to do according to your families and slay the Passover lamb. Now he says, you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood, which is in the basin and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two door posts.

And none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. Now he says, first of all, take a bunch of hyssop. There's several places in the Bible that we see them using hyssop. And it almost always has to do with a renewal, with the cleansing, with the purification of something. You know, if you wanted to purify the water, you took hyssop and did that. If you wanted to purify, you know, the lepers, if they wanted to prove they were purified, they took hyssop and even Jesus on the cross. You'll remember this. He said, I thirst and what did the Roman soldier do? He got a branch of hyssop and he dipped it in vinegar and he put it up to his mouth. So hyssop has played a part in, it's just a little plant that they would use sometimes.

And so he said, you take that hyssop plant, of course, it's gonna show up at the cross as well. Because everything in this story relates somehow to Jesus and the cross. So he says, you take that and you dip it in that blood and you spread it on the doors, posting on the lintel. You know, I love what David said. David, when he failed, when he failed with Bathsheba and in Psalm 51, where he's asking God to forgive him. And in verse seven, here's what he says, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. So that hyssop is always, it has something to do with purification. And it's kind of always seen in that way.

Now there's nothing mysterious about that. It's just a symbolic thing. But when you see it in the Bible, you always see it having to do with purification. You see, Jesus has it at the cross. You see here, they are told to get this hyssop and to brush the blood on the top of the door frame and on both sides of the door, the blood of that innocent lamb, spotless lamb, that lived with them, that they were slain on their behalf. That lamb didn't do anything. They're the ones. But they benefited from that lamb's death. They're the ones who got the benefit because the lamb was slain. And so obviously you can see the correlation there between Jesus and the New Testament and what's going on here in the Old Testament. And so he says, yeah, we're gonna spread that blood on the door, all the way around your door.

And he said, and do not let anybody leave the house until morning. Everybody stay in the house. Why? Because whoever is not under the blood is gonna die. Whoever is not under the blood is gonna suffer that curse of death when the death angel comes through in Egypt. And it hasn't changed in all these years has it. Whoever is under the blood does not suffer the curse. The curse that was given at Adam and Eve in the garden when they sinned, and we've carried that on with us, but whoever's under the blood of Jesus doesn't worry about the curse because the blood has taken care of the curse. And you see that right here. So he goes on in verse 23 and he says, for the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you.

So he says, God's gonna be looking for the blood. And here's what I want you to realize. And you know this already, but it's just so good to see it here. He doesn't say God's gonna look for your good works. He doesn't say God's gonna see if you're good things outweigh your bad. He doesn't say God's gonna see if you're just a really good person. He doesn't say God's gonna look at your character. He said when he sees the blood, when he sees the blood, because it really doesn't matter how good of a person you are. You're not good enough ever. It's the blood of Jesus and it's the righteousness of Jesus that makes us acceptable in the eyes of God. That's the only thing. There is nothing else because he's the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world and he was slain for us.

That blood that he shed was shed for our sins and God's justice was God. He satisfied his justice on a cross with the innocent lamb of God. And when he sees the blood over our lives, then the death angel doesn't touch us. We're not subject to death. You say, well, we all die physically, yeah, but we're not dead. I tell people all the time at funerals, this person, they died, but if they're a believer, they're more alive right now than they've ever been in their life, really. Because we don't ever, all death is for us, it's just a graduation to a better thing. And so we realize that. We don't fear death. We realize that we're covered by the blood. If you're covered by the blood, then the curse will not touch you and that's exactly what he tells them.

The death angel will pass over you and then he tells them in verse 24, and you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever. Now, in our Baptist churches, we have two ordinances. There are some churches that have more, but we have two that we believe are biblical ordinances. One of them is baptism. When we baptize someone and we baptize them by immersion, it's a picture that the old person that used to be died and they've been raised as a new person. Just like Jesus came up out of the grave, they come out of the water. That's one of them. The other one is the Lord's Supper. It is an ordinance that even to this day, we as Christian churches, not Jewish, not Gentile, just Christian, we still observe the Passover.

We still observe it every single time that we take the Lord's Supper. And he tells them to do that and he says, your children forever. He says, we want your children to understand what's going on here. We want the, because the gospel message is being preached through this event right here. I want you to realize that something about this Passover, it is the greatest work of redemption on the Old Testament side of the cross. Now get that. The Passover is the greatest work of redemption on the Old Testament side of the cross. Now this Passover has happened in 1446 BC. Most scholars agree that's pretty much it. 1446 BC, which is before Christ came. So 1446 years before Jesus came is when this is happening. And it is the greatest act of redemption, this side, the Old Testament side of the cross of Jesus.

Because everybody that puts that blood of that innocent lamb over their door is going to be saved that night, every single one of them. They're not going to have the curse of the death angel, of the first born in their household. And so it is an act of redemption. And it's the greatest act of redemption. And they look back to it even today. And we look back to it even today. It is a huge, huge moment. And not just in the life of the Jewish people, but in the history of the world. And in our Christian history as well, our heritage as believers, it is a huge moment what God is doing right here, this redemption that he's giving. So look what he says in verse 25. It will come about when you enter the land which the Lord will give you.

And see, God always remembers this promise. And even though we're talking about them leaving the slavery of Egypt, God's not just looking past the slavery of Egypt. He's looking forward to what he promised them, that land. He goes, and even when you enter that land which the Lord will give you, as he's promised, that you shall observe this right. Observe this right. And it will come about when your children will say to you, what does this right mean to you? And that you and I will explain to them what it means. I think that's important. We don't spend enough time anymore, I don't think, in our families teaching our children some of the things we believe in. We just don't spend enough time doing that. I, as a grandfather in my recent years, I have just really felt a burden to talk to my grandchildren every chance I get.

Sometimes I will just text them all and I'll have a little family text and I'll give them a Bible verse and I'll say, hey, here's what God said to me today. This is for you. And I'll just text them all out, all of them. Every one of them gets it. And of course, they'll reply back, most of them, and talk about it that. I've told you before, I sit them down and I say, look, I don't care what you do with your life or your career, but we have one family business in this family. Our family business is to honor Jesus. That's it, period. And we're all gonna do that as a family. What I'm trying to do is instill in my grandchildren so that they will instill in their children, which will be my great-grandchildren someday, these very important concepts and principles and truths.

I want them to hear it from their poppy. Poppy's got a little bit of influence in their lives, more with some than others, but still he's got a little influence in their lives and whatever I don't have an influence in, Mimi has an influence in. The boys love their Mimi. The girls love their poppy. So we, between the two of us, we try to catch them all. But every time we talk to them, we try to bring them back to the family business. He said, when your children say to you, what does this mean? Explain it to them. Let them know, talk to them about it. Let them understand this is an incredible act of redemption. It's historic. There will never be, the only thing greater than this in the history of the world is Jesus when he hung on the cross and died for us.

And came out of the grave because this is just a picture of that. This is the shadow of the things to come. And so yes, but he says to them, he says, look, tell your children, sit down with them. I know that today it's hard for us to sit down with our children because they have a phone and a screen right there. But every once in a while, we need to say to them, hey, put the phone down, let's talk for a little bit. And we need to find out what's going on in their life and what's important and we need to pass down to them. What's important to us? You say, well, they know it's important to me. Don't take that for granted. And even if they know it, say it to them again.

Say it to them again. You say it to them over and over and over until that's what they remember about you. Someday when I'm gone and my grandchildren are standing around at a funeral service or whatever's gonna happen, you know, I told Rose and them, they said, they're gonna take my life insurance and go on an Alaskan cruise when I'm gone. And I said, well, look, just wait till the funeral's over. And they said, what funeral? So at any rate, if we have a funeral and they're standing around, what I want them to remember about me is that I was always focused on the family business. I want them to remember that about me. It doesn't matter to me whether they have another nice thing to say about me at all. If they can say that, our poppy always pointed us to Jesus, then that would be the greatest thing they could say about me.

That's what I want for them to say. And that's what we should all want. We need to teach our children, we need to talk to our children, we need to talk to our grandchildren. We need to instill these things in them. And that's exactly what he says. When they say, what does this right mean to you? Then tell them, tell them. And he says in verse 27, that you shall say it is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when he smote the Egyptians but spared our homes, and the people bowed low and worshiped. Two things in that verse that he says. First of all, he says the enemy was defeated. He smote the Egyptians. And a little bit later on, we're gonna see him drown the whole Egyptian army.

So he's gonna, he smote the Egyptians. He got, he's gonna get rid of their army. And he says, so that's the first thing he did. The second thing is God's people were freed. Think about what Jesus did.

[The recording ends here, mid-thought.]