Introduction
Today’s text is very familiar to many of us. If you are new to religion, then, it’s no doubt in part specifically new, but the greater picture is probably familiar. You might have seen this in the movies of the past, like The Ten Commandments or Prince of Egypt. Moses and the Jewish people are readying to leave Egypt after 400 years of bondage. The 10th plague of the Death of the First Born occurs one fateful night at midnight and as a result Pharaoh, king of Egypt, evicts the Jewish slaves into the wilderness. This emancipation launches the Jewish people into world history and is the most central and defining moment for our people ever.
Chapter 12 of Exodus is a composite and a mandate for Jewish people for the last 3500 years. It collects the history and the liturgy and offers us a point of history and a point of relevance for our continued celebration of our lives.
Walter Kaiser wrote in his book, The Old Testament Documents, are they reliable and relevant? (InterVarsity Press, 2001), “Even as many Jews eat the seder and read the Hagaddah, many Jewish and Christian scholars assert that an exodus never took place.” He cites several and then takes them to task. “Such estimates hardly begin to explain why this ceremony of the Passover is so strong in the memory and life of the Jewish people. As Alan Millard has said, “The tradition is so vital an element in Israelite history as to make a denial of the event all but incredible.” [The Bible: What can Archaeology Prove? (Phillipsburg, NJ, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977, page 21)] Kaiser ends with “The question demonstrates how central an event such as this can be to the whole story of the Pentateuch.” (p. 132)
Passover as the central event of the Jewish people and of our calendar came from something and somewhere. Today’s text seeks to answer that for anyone who is truly enquiring.
There are 5 major themes in Exodus, all recapitulated here:
1) Proof of God’s presence
2) Defeat of Pharaoh and his gods
3) Freedom/release from bondage
4) Humiliation of Pharaoh and his people
5) The moving to Israel
Timing of the event
It’s a wise idea on a camping trip to take a strong torch, especially if you are going to a place you don’t know. Thus 3 million Hebrew slaves are wise to travel on a full moon into a wilderness they’ve never experienced. But it was God’s idea, not theirs.
Also for future reference, it’s always nice to have an idea when the holiday is supposed to be celebrated and thus the 14th/15th of a Hebrew month, the time of the full moon, is always known. We don’t know when the 7th might be, but all you must do is look up at nighttime and see the full moon. You can’t miss is in a calendar sense.
Another note about the rush from Egypt. The unleavened cakes seem to have been grabbed in a rush, and strapped onto their bowls or platters and taken with them.
Ex. 12.34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls bound up in the clothes on their shoulders.
It’s not a shopping trip to the Coles or Woolies that afforded us our matzos for the trip. We took our daily bread with us, but it wasn’t ready yet. Let me explain.
Yeast works its way through dough and makes it rise. Consicder sourdough. Each day a bit of dough is removed from a central batch. That gets mixed with a new mixture of flour and after baking becomes today’s bread. You never use up your central batch, but it is the bank from which each day’s mixture is taken. The yeast of the original gets mixed into the new batches. Thus a bit of every days’ bread is linked with all other bread eaten for years.
Maybe that will help us understand the words of the Apostle to the Roman believers
Rom. 5.15 But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
And again
Rom. 5.19 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
We are inextricably linked to Adam, and perhaps the linkage of the dough and the daily batches will help you see this, as an object lesson.
And we see the power of the redeemer, Yeshua, who bought us back from the corruption of leavening, received from our ancestor Adam. Praise the Lord.
The 5 themes (Proof of presence, conquest of Pharaoh and gods, Freedom, humiliation of Pharaoh, move to Israel)
So our 5 themes play like songs in a show, repeating and overlapping at times. We hear the music rise and then grow quiet. God has shown Himself strong, He has proved himself present in the plagues, or as John Durham in his Commentary on Exodus (Word Biblical Commentary series) calls them “his mighty acts.” God has shown Himself as real over against a king who admitted at the first he did not know about Yahweh and even fought against him. By the end Pharaoh begged for Moses to join him late at night and asked for God, Yahweh, Israel’s God,
Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the LORD, as you have said.
Ex. 12.32 “Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go, and bless me also. (In Hebrew, Gam oti). After all the also this and also that…also me!
God conquers Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt in each of the 10 mighty acts and brings His power to be seen. Nothing can be hidden from God Almighty. No one has power to stop him. He is Lord of all.
He brings freedom to the Jewish people and to the herds and the flocks and to all things associated with the Hebrews. Look, even the mixed multitude which Durham translates as ‘a motley group’ probably included many Egyptians. They wanted the Jews out, but many Egyptians who had begun to catch on that their gods were not real gods back in the earlier plagues, now wanted to travel out of country with the conquering slaves. Imagine, leaving your country and your money system and your family and friends, and escaping into a wilderness of danger along with your former slaves. Why? Because their god is God!\
A ‘certain Bithiah, Pharaoh’s daughter” is listed in the geneaologies of Judah during this period. ( 1 Chronicles 4.18). God even included instructions for Gentiles who join the community of faith in celebrating the Passover here (v. 43-49) and in Numbers 9.14.
The humiliation of one group becomes the exaltation of another. The silver and gold used by the Egyptians for devilish worship and idolatry is given to the Hebrews. You see the tossing of the goods into the wagon train of the Jews almost like the sailors tossed the goods on Jonah’s boat in his story. “Take this stuff and get out of here.” It’s as if the goods are now tainted. If we can get rid of the Jews, then we can ward off the evil, they seem to think.
That same gold and silver is later used in the construction of the golden calf for evil, then later as instruments in the Tabernacle of God, used for good. Things are not holy in themselves, only when they are used for God’s purposes do they take on the title of good or bad.
And God wants us as his people to go to his land. Escaping slavery is one thing, but Israel represented freedom under God’s sovereignty for the Jewish people. We would be living in his land with his laws as his people. If you will, God’s conquest is not limited to the Egyptians, he wants to conquer us as well!
Passover as an event: The Lamb and the blood
The Jewish people for 3500 years have celebrated the Passover. Each year we eat bitter herbs and matzos and remind ourselves of the lambs that freed us from slavery.
It was impossible to miss the painted blood on the door. The father used the hyssop branch and splashed the blood on the 3 sides. It was at the threshold on the floor. It was on the top and sides. The angel of death could not miss it. You inside could not miss it. The smell, the sight… all reminding us of the death of the animal in our place. The sacrifice was complete as we had faith in it to deliver us from the last plague.
We who know Messiah Yeshua, know that he is the ultimate sacrifice lamb. Now, far from the blood of lambs that delivered us, we have the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, even our world. He delivers us from ourselves and makes us to know true freedom in the Lord. We have a relationship with God now and want to celebrate that.
King David picks up this theme of the forgiving hyssop.
Psa. 51.7 Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
David understood that the blood on the hyssop was more than freedom from Egypt. It was to get Egypt out of us. It was to free us from sin. Today only Yeshua can do that. And our prayer needs to be full to him.
So: What lessons do we learn from today's teaching?
1) One man’s evicting of another could be exile or could be freedom. We make the best of it by our actions and faith.
2) What God wants, he will get done.
3) Lambs delivered from Egypt, the Lamb of God delivers from death and sin.
4) We are linked to Adam by race; we can be linked to Yeshua by faith.
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