Passover- Preparation (6/10/07)
Date – 6/10/07
Sermon Series: Passover: God’s Perfect Promise
Sermon Title: – Preparation
Text: “Here is how you must eat it: dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover. “I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike every firstborn ⌊male⌋ in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. I am the Lord; I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:11-12, HCSB)
Theme: Passover was never intended to be a static celebration. The people are to celebrate it dressed and ready for the action that the Lord is precipitating. This message will speak about the need for Christians of the covenant to be prepared for the kingdom building activity that God designed us to do.
Introduction: A clip from “The Princess Bride”
Transition: If somebody asked you what the Bible was all about what would you say? When the Grandpa in the clip brought the present for his sick grandson he told him it was a special book. He also told him some of the things that were in it and even snuck in the main theme of the book- true love. The Bible is an even more special book. It is God’s communication to man and it too has a theme. It is the cord that runs through the entire Bible. It is the theme of God’s compassionate, redemptive love for those that He created. It started with people designed to be in perfect relationship with their Maker. When disobedience and sin entered the picture and performed their dance of destruction, God began the process of working out an unparalleled plan of redemption: a plan that satisfied His nature of supreme justice and still spanned the gap that man had put between himself and Yahweh.
This theme is pictured beautifully in the Passover. Throughout Biblical history, the Passover is enjoyed by those who want to enter into the covenantal relationship of supreme love and sacrifice pictured there. The Passover is rich with the themes that make up this covenant.
Over the course of the next six weeks we are going to explore some of the aspects of Passover that made it special. Some of the things that we are going to be talking about will no doubt seem odd to you. But they are a piece of the beautiful tapestry of God’s redemptive love and compassion for His covenant people. Over the following weeks we will study this Jewish holiday through the lens of visualization, memorialization, expectation, restoration, and redemption. Today we are going to begin this study with a look at God’s expectation of His people to be clothed in preparation.
I. Prepared for Service
a. Let’s talk for a minute or two today about what it must have been like for those Hebrew slaves 3,500 years ago.
i. I think that most of us have a little bit of a misconception of what their mindset must have been. We automatically assume that because they were slaves to the Egyptians that they would have done almost anything to remove themselves from that position. This is simply not true. They lived in a world that was an awfully unsettled place. Famine, war and disease were always right around the corner. There was no such thing as social security. As a matter of fact, security of any kind was pretty hard to come by.
ii. While it is true that they were slaves, they were slaves to the most powerful nation of the time. Being a slave in Egypt meant that they had some protection they always knew where the next meal was coming from and there was plenty of work to be done as the Egyptians had an insatiable appetite for building things. When Moses showed up and said, “OK, guys, it’s time to go,” they were not a bit excited about the prospect of leaving that measure of security to head out into the wilderness.
iii. God used this event of Passover to call them into becoming a nation.
1. As we read through the narrative of what takes place in the first chapters of Exodus, we see that God is not only convincing the Egyptians that they have to let the Hebrews go; He is also convincing the Jewish people that they are indeed a people, a people who belong to Yahweh. He has to convince them that the only security they need is to belong to Him. It takes an entire generation before He gets His point across.
2. When we come to this event where He inaugurates the first Passover feast, He is calling them into this community act as a new nation. They were not a people before this meal- only a rabble of slaves existing under the heel of their Egyptian owners. Now, through this event, they are not only a people and a nation. They are God’s people and His representatives on the Earth.
3. This Passover meal takes on such great significance when we understand that it predates the Law given at Mt. Sinai. It is placed by God in the first month of their calendar. It is the beginning of all things for the Jew.
b. God had them eat this Passover meal in a state of complete readiness. They had their coats on and their shoes tied up, ready to walk out the door. They were in a state of readiness to answer God’s call.
c. I believe that many people have the completely wrong impression of what God expects when we enter into relationship with Him. They think that now that they have gone through all of five steps necessary to entering into a relationship with Him that they are done. I don’t understand that attitude; do you think that you did God a favor when you got baptized?
d. God expects us to be prepared to serve in His kingdom when we answer His call; when we come to His table.
e. Eph. 4:7-16 paints a beautiful picture of what the Church is supposed to look like.
i. It is clear from this passage and others in the NT, that every Christian was designed by Jesus to fill a particular place in His Church. We are all gifted differently and individually. We have different calls on our lives. But we were built to do something in His kingdom work.
f. The point is this, when God called you into His kingdom He gave you grace and giftedness to fulfill His work. Are you prepared to go? Is your coat on, your shoes laced up? Are you prepared to enter into the service God expects from you?
g. “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 up, leave my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the Lord as you have asked. Take even your flocks and your herds as you asked, and leave, and this will also be a blessing to me.”” (Exodus 12:30-32, HCSB)
h. By this time Pharaoh is ready to get rid of this new nation, this band of Yahweh’s people. If there is anything that we should learn from this story it is that when God says it is time to move we had better be ready to move.
II. Prepared for Purity
a. “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver bowls, but also those of wood and earthenware, some for special use, some for ordinary. So if anyone purifies himself from these things, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.” (2 Timothy 2:20,21, HCSB)
b. In this passage from Paul to his younger colleague Timothy who incidentally is described in scripture as very religious, is being encouraged by Paul to run away from youthful passions but to run toward righteousness, faith, love and peace.
c. I know that this is not a popular message today. We live in a world where we believe that our rights reign supreme. We hate to have someone tell us what to do or even worse what we can’t do. But Jesus made it clear time and again that if we wanted to follow Him we have to say goodbye to the things in the world that hold us back. Christians are simply not supposed to look like the rest of the world.
i. In conduct
1. Honesty
2. Integrity
ii. In Speech
iii. In compassion
iv. In Passion
d. Just like that first Passover when those Hebrew slaves entered into covenant relationship with God and were ready to turn over their entire existence to the new idea of living solely for God, we have to be ready to do the same thing.
III. Conclusion
a. Several years ago I spent a few years as a volunteer firefighter. You know what one of the most important things that you need to figure out to be a good fireman? You have o know how to store your pants. We had these firefighting uniforms that we called turnouts, which consisted of heavy insulated canvas pants with suspenders, a jacket, boots and a hat. But you had to store those pants so that they were over the boots and ready to step into because you only had a moment’s notice to get to the fire.
b. As Christians our lives have be in that state of readiness. We have to be prepared to answer the call in purpose and purity.
