Passover – Memorialization 6/17/07
Date – 6/17/07
Sermon Series: Passover: God’s Perfect Promise
Sermon Title: – Memorialization
Text: 14“This day is to be a memorial for you, and you must celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. You are to celebrate it throughout your generations as a permanent statute.”
24-28 “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 ritual. When your children ask you, ‘What does this ritual 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 spared our homes.’ ” So the people bowed down and worshiped. Then the Israelites went and did ⌊this⌋; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.” (Exodus 12:14, 24-28, HCSB)
Theme: Passover was built by God for Himself as a reminder of the awesome provision of God for His people. This message will remind us that it is important to have altars of remembrance so that we never lose track, in the business of our day to day activities, of the big picture of God’s nature and power.
Introduction: I worked for a lot of years with my father in law whose name is Ray. For the last several years he has been producing cars that have won many awards at car shows. Ray is one of those guys with all kinds of raw talent. He has an incredible eye for symmetry. He has the uncanny ability to tell if something is out of plumb by even a fraction of an inch. In a lot of ways he is also a perfectionist. But one of the talents that intrigued me the most about him was the fact that he could remember, what seemed like, thousands of phone numbers. Before I would look a phone number up I would ask him and he could usually tell me what it was. For a long time I thought this was some kind of in born talent that he was born with? One day he told me that he used a mnemonic device, though he didn’t use that word. But what he would do was simply remember the last four digits of their phone number by assigning it a birthday to that person. (example)
Transition: Remembering things is an important part of who we are. I would even go so far as to say that it is only through memory that we retain who we are. We cannot be human without remembering the things that tie us into our family, our culture and our values. Nobody understands this more than our Creator, God the Father. A major part of why He created observances like the Passover was to build into our memories the things that we need to keep in the front of our brains.
What does God what us to remember?
1. Remember God’s Providence
a. The Passover ceremony is first and foremost a reminder of the way that God has cared for those who are His special people.
i. Last week we spent a lot of time talking about the background for that first Passover observance that happened in Egypt. Today I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the ceremony itself.
1. Passover, Seder, Feast of Unleavened bread
2. The observance today.
a. Haggadah
b. 15 parts
i. Kaddesh – Holiness (Blessing)
ii. Urhatz – Washing
iii. Karpas – Fruit/Vegetable (parsley)
iv. Yahatz – Divide (splitting of Matzah loaf)
v. Magid – Narrative (12 parts to this)
vi. Rahtzah – Washing
vii. Motzi
viii. Matzah (these are really one step they are the blessing of the other two loaves of Matzah to show the double portion God gave in the wilderness for Shabbat)
ix. Maror – Bitter herbs
x. Korekh – Hillel Sandwich (lamb, Matzah and bitter herbs)
xi. Shulan Orekh – Meal
xii. Tzafun/Afikomen – Dessert (2nd half of the 1st loaf and dessert.)
xiii. Hallel – Psalm sung
xiv. Koss R’vee – ee
xv. Nirtzah – Seder conclusion.
3. This long complicated formula is built in such a way that the children are a part of every step they are instructed to remember that God supernaturally called and cared for the Jewish people. A big part of this ritual is built around the fulfillment to tell their children the story of the Passover.
b. I have been reading a lot lately about the idea of whether or not we can be certain whether or not God is involved in the details of our lives. Does God participate providentially in the day to day activities of our lives? I think that there is good reason to be sure that He does.
1. The Biblical record. – It is clear that God has, over the course of time, inserted Himself into the lives of people all of the time. Sometimes it is clear that He is doing so in order to propel His plans forward such as the many interactions in Abraham’s life. But there are other times where we see God intensely interested in the seemingly mundane details of life.
a. Jesus reminded the disciples, and us, in Matthew 6:25 that Solomon’s attire was beautiful to behold but God dresses a simple wildflower more extravagantly, don’t you think that he will take care of you.
b. 2 Kings 6 -Elisha and the ax head
c. Eutychus – In Acts 20:7 Paul preaches till midnight during a Sunday worship service, I better never hear you guys complain about my long sermons.
2. The experience of mine and other Christians lives whose prayers have been answered in such specific ways that we have to just stop and give the glory to God.
a. Illustration of my Prayer list.
c. We must remember as God’s Holy People that he has called us and cares for us. Never let a day go by where you don’t notice the rain of God’s blessing on you and your family.
2. Remember We are God’s People
a. The Passover is the opening to the annual feast of unleavened bread. The Jewish people spend a lot of time preparing themselves and their households for this observance. The actual structure of the celebration is such that it lasts 9 days. The whole thing is started off by a cleansing of the house of any Chametz, or leavening. This is an important part of the ritual that Jewish people take very seriously. You see the leaven represents the sin that has accumulated in their lives over the past year. They usually not only take any type of leavening out they assiduously clean all cooking surfaces that might have come in contact with it. They make special provision to sell any yeast bearing products in their homes and then buy them back after the holiday.
b. With this holiday God is forcibly reminding them to remind themselves that they are a separate people, God’s own people.
c. From the world
i. In many ways the Passover and unleavened observance is a beautiful picture of the way the Christian is supposed to exist with the world. It is a holiday that is open to the world but reserved for the Jew. As Christians we exist in the world, but are supposed to maintain a separateness from the world. Ephesians says that we have to walk as children of light in a dark place. The way that we do that is by separating ourselves from sin.
d. And from sin –
i. I have been conducting a personal study through the book of Romans. In the sixth chapter of Romans we come to some conclusions in Paul’s reasoning concerning how it is that we are in relationship with God. Paul has built up this argument that we share our relationship with the Father through faith in the Son. And because we have this connectedness with Jesus we have standing with the Father. This connectedness has to begin with our death. Romans 6:12 – Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires.
3. Remember God’s Praise
a. (Numbers 28:16)
b. As I have been studying the Passover celebration as it is observed by modern Jewish people, I have been struck by the fact that even though they go to great lengths to maintain the tradition of the celebration the central theme of Passover for the Jew has been deleted from their celebration. They can no longer sacrifice so they do not even have the Paschal lamb at the dinner anymore.
c. On the first and the last day of the feast there is a special day of worship
i. Daily sacrifices – a pleasing aroma to God
d. Romans 6:13 – under the new covenant we are to offer ourselves. We are the new sacrifice.
e. One of the things that I need to talk about here is the idea that this kind of worship seems to be a little bit excessive.
i. The point is that we come on Sunday morning and make ourselves feel good about the fact that we have given up a portion of a day off and given it to God. The lesson that we need to have as we come to worship is that our worship can never be excessive. Let’s take an average week and look at the numbers. Let’s say that you came and spent 2.5 hours here on Sunday morning as your worship to God. That means that in a 168 hour week you gave God 4.2% of your time dedicated to Him. You might say to me, “Wait a minute I do other things that are dedicated to God.” I’m sure you do let’s add those up. Say you also spend a couple of hours each week dedicated to a care group or Bible study group. That adds another 3.36% of your week to God. WOW that has you all the way up to 7.56% of your time dedicated to God. That is not even a tithe of your time. What about all of the devotional time I put in every day. OK let’s add that in let’s be generous and say that you spend 20 minutes a day in devotion. That means that we have added another 3.36% of your time to God. That brings us all the way up to 10.92% of your time in dedicated worship time to God. What do you think that we are practicing for? Heaven will be an eternity of ceaseless praise for our Creator and Redeemer our lives here on earth are so limited in scope that the idea that we would spend 10.92 percent on a good week in worship is sufficient. I am not trying to make you fell guilty in any way. What I am trying to say that I think that the Passover observance should teach the new covenant believer is this: All of our time belongs to God. We really short change ourselves and our maker when we apportion it up in chunks and give some to Him and some to a boss and some to our spouse and kids and then keep some for ourselves. We need a new paradigm that shows us that we are stewards of our time and not owners and worship is not just about coming and singing with a crowd. It is about living every moment of our lives in obedience to God. That is worship. It does not matter if I am on a tractor or behind a desk or watching TV my time is God’s time and I need to live it that way. God built us to participate in and enjoy work, recreation, family and even sleep. All of the things that are a part of your life should be a part of your worship.
