Exodus 12:1-14
The Passover Instituted
12 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2 “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. 3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without[a] blemish, a male [b]of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. 7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. 8 Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. 10 You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. 11 And thus you shall eat it: [c]with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12 ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. 13 Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 ‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.
The passage I read for you is the Lord telling Moses and Aaron how to celebrate the Passover, a festival practiced yearly in Jewish households along with Christians who also practice these customs. The Passover is annual and in certain books of the Bible the passage of time is marked by Passovers. That is how we know Jesus earthly ministry was three years, because the Gospel According to John has Jesus celebrating Passover three times. Passover also called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is mentioned in many books of the Bible, Exodus, Numbers Deuteronomy, Joshua, 2nd Kings, 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Ezekiel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Passover, is also where we as Christians get communion from. The Lord’s Supper or Last Supper as we called it was Jesus having a Passover meal with the disciples. The bread we eat is like the unleavened bread the people of God ate, and the cup we drink from was the third cup of a four cup meal in Passover, the cup of deliverance. This story focuses on Moses role in the Passover. Moses is important to our people I am reminded of the spiritual, “Go Down, Moses,” because the plight of the Hebrew people in the Bible has similarities to the plight of the African Slaves and their descendants. Also Harriet Tubman, the great liberator of slaves — she was called “Moses.” There is a lot of foundation in Exodus to our modern day. Scholars say that some of the traditions practiced in the feast of unleavened bread we practiced by some other religions at the time and as with other times this claim is made I say the same thing, I’m not concerned with who did it first, I am concerned with who did it best. In the text the Lord is telling Moses and Aaron how to celebrate Passover but there is one tiny problem, the people of God are in bondage.
I read chapter 12 before preaching but the story starts a little earlier than that, everything was all good in Genesis, Joseph saved the Egyptian kingdom during the famine, the powers that be loved Joseph and his people, Joseph’s people the 12 sons of Israel became the Nation of Israel and the 12 tribes and there came into power a Pharaoh that did not know Joseph. He didn’t care about what Joseph had done for the country, he just viewed these people as a threat and decided to deal harshly with them.
Exodus 1:8-14 NIV Says
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor,and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly.14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
Then the Pharaoh wanted the midwives to kill the Hebrew boys when they were born to further weaken the people of God, because attacking the male children would insure that the name and heritage would not continue. I think about this passage when I see what is happening to our black boys in school, hit with harsher punishments, athletic prowess valued over academic achievement, young children charged as adults when their white counterparts are given the benefit of the doubt. That pharaoh had a plan in place to try to eliminate the Hebrew race but God saw differently and the midwives allowed the male children to live. Because of that we are met with Moses, a leader for the people, the one to help the people of God get free.
Pharaoh was still determined to oppress the people of God, I find Pharaoh interesting in the text because if Pharaoh was here today, somebody might want to call Pharaoh racist, and Pharaoh might say he can’t be racist, because he has Hebrew relatives. Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house with him, but yet he is attacking the Hebrew people with systematic oppression. Hebrews made that economy what it was, Hebrews helped them through the drought but yet and still they are being oppressed. Forced to make bricks without straw, pastor what does that mean, well in making the bricks back then, they were made out of clay, and you put the straw in the middle so that the clay would hold up and the bricks be stronger. Well making bricks without clay would be like making concrete today without rebar, its not going to be strong enough to hold up anything. Pharaoh is punishing them but is also punishing himself because everything built with those poor standards is not going to last. If you plan to run anything, lead anything solely on I hate the other people it will not last. The Egyptians put quotas on the Hebrew people and then when the Hebrews did not make the quota they beat them and kept the quotas high. There came a plague in the land, which is a common theme in the Old Testament, whenever there was a crooked or evil king, there seemed to be plagues right behind them. Whenever leadership was unethical the land that leader controlled suffered.
There were plagues over the land before the plagues Moses had told Pharaoh to let his people go. Pharaoh would not, politicians are funny when it comes to free labor huh. So the plagues came. First the water turned to blood, then there were frogs, then lice and gnats, then flies all over the place, then people had boils, that was followed by hail, which was followed by locust, then darkness, those nine plagues had hit the land and Pharaoh would say that he would let the people go, lying to get the plagues to stop but would then go back on his word and keep the people oppressed. Making it worse, funny thing about the Hebrew in the Old Testament whenever you see someone’s heart hardened, that was something we would call today a hard head. Someone that is stubborn, we call children repeatedly misbehaving hard headed. Can you imagine that for a second, a hard headed ruler of a country in the middle of a plague constantly lying and making things worse? Bring plague after plague on the people, damaging the land? All these plagues coming, nine of them so far, and plague number 10 is going to be the death of the everyone’s firstborn. God has told them it is about to get worse before it gets better and here is what you need to do.
Start working while it is still bad.
The first thing that makes me happy about this passage even in the midst of all this suffering is that the word of deliverance came to the people of God while they were still in bondage. They were still in the middle of the plagues but God had told them how they were going to be protected. You have to see your way out of a situation before you can ever actually get out of the situation. What if the people of God had said, I want to see if it works for my neighbors first before I try it myself or what if they had said, we have never done it this way before, why are trying to change things up now? That kind of thinking is one of the reasons churches, business, and other organizations are failing now. If you do the same thing over and over you are going get the same results, God is her showing these people what to do get a miracle and they have to do it while they are still suffering. The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, not a committee meeting nor case study. We have to be willing to step out on faith while things have not improved yet.
Start working with the community.
The text tells them to get an unblemished lamb, less than a year old, take the blood from that lamb and spread it on the doorpost, if you can’t get one on your own go in with your neighbor. Uh oh, there goes that community thing again. A lamb is a precious commodity in the community, more valuable than older sheep because there are still potential future money to be made off the lamb if you let it grow older and use its wool. That is why the text said if you can’t get one, go in with your neighbor, we have to be willing to work together even when times are bad if we want to accomplish work for the kingdom. Every time God does a miracle in the Bible there are instructions and this time he says if you can’t follow the instructions on your own get some help. Now is not the time to be prideful, now is not the time to be stuck and say well we can’t do it by ourselves so we just won’t do it at all. Get some help. I weep for churches that don’t want to work with their communities, that don’t want to work with other churches, that are more concerned about their church history than learning their neighbor’s story. We have to be willing to work with others, that is the only way we survive.
Start working and be ready to move.
The text tells the people to wear certain gear while they eat and not to waste anything, they have to be ready to move. The people of God had to have their belts on and walking staffs ready to go, because after this last plague the environment would not be one the people of God wanted to stay in. Roast the food instead of slow cooking, eat is all, what you can’t eat, burn up. We don’t have time for the bread to rise, nor leave leftovers. This is not a sit down meal where we sit around talking until the restaurant closes. We have to be willing to move when God tells us it's time to move, we have to be willing to go when God tells us it is time to go. Now is not the time to hold on to things we really have no control over anyway God says go, it's time to go! God gives us instructions before the miracle, not because he needs our help, no, no, no. God gives us instructions so that we can participate in our own deliverance. God knew who his people were, God didn’t need blood on the doorpost for that. This was for the people to once again do what God asked them to do. I ask my children to do things sometimes that I know they cannot complete by themselves. I want to see the children make an effort, and if they make an effort, I will do the rest. I could absolutely do it, but they would not appreciate it as much. If they do the work, then later they want to do more, and more, and then when they do more, I do that much more for them. Are we willing to participate in our own deliverance our are we willing to just let the church and the work of the kingdom die by the wayside?
I am happy at this text even in the midst of the death and destruction and plagues, and horrible plagues because even will all that going on, there is still grace. The people of God did not earn their salvation in this trial, God gave it to them. This was the grace of God keeping them through oppression, slavery, beatings, this was the grace of God keeping them through Water turning to blood, frogs, and lice, gnats, flies, pestilence, boils, hailstorms, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn. That same grace kept our people through slavery, and reconstruction, and Jim Crow, and the new Jim Crow, kept us through segregation, and police brutality and dog whistling language, and will keep us through this pandemic. The people of God are being oppressed and the only thing that is protecting them is the blood of the Lamb. They are using lambs during the passover but there is another lamb that blood was used to save us. Blood spilled on Calvary that we can have life and have it more abundantly. The Lamb who was slain Jesus Christ son of the living God. We don’t have to worry about death passing by our house anymore because the blood of the final lamb was shed for us and gives us just the protection we need.
Verse 1:
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Refrain:
O precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow;
no other fount I know;
nothing but the blood of Jesus.
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