I. Introduction
Who in this class has a collection? Dolls, thimbles, something else?
I used to collect pennies when I was a young teen. I’d go through my grandfather’s big jar of coins looking for specific pennies I didn’t have. The oldest penny I had was from 1916, if I recall correctly. Once, based on something I read, I took a magnet to my grandfather’s old coins and discovered two 1943 pennies made of steel. These coins bring back memories, as I’m sure the thimbles and dolls collected by some of you also bring back memories.
We try to protect precious memories. One of the most important memories I have is the day I married Diane for the second time. God had delivered me from my own bad mistakes and healed a broken marriage in a way no person could have done, and He did it on a specific and perfect timetable that I can look back on and remark upon His miracle. We celebrate this anniversary annually; it marks a new beginning of our family. It’s important to do something to commemorate our anniversary because it renews our memories of this important day. Anything not carefully remembered is easily forgotten.
Today we’re going to study how God asked His people to remember when God moved His hand to deliver His people from bondage. Have you ever found yourself trapped by something? A struggle that you cannot free yourself from? Traps can be physical, like those 50 ships, including 2 passenger ferries, stuck in the Baltic Sea when it froze over a couple weeks ago. One of the cruise ships had 1000 people on it; ice breakers sent to rescue them also got stuck as the ice froze over as fast as it was broken. Traps can be emotional, they can be financial, the can be spiritual.
So, with so many traps keeping us in bondage, it’s no wonder we need deliverance just like the Israelites. Who needs deliverance? Why do we need deliverance? How can you experience the Lord’s amazing deliverance?
God delivers us from life’s traps. It’s a theme repeated throughout history, God delivers His people, and He still delivers you and me.
Last week Theresa taught us about 9 plagues the Lord sent against Pharaoh to free His people, and how each time Pharaoh promised to free the Israelites but then hardened his heart. Those plagues were frogs, gnats, darkness, really bad acne, um, halitosis, I forget the whole list. Still, the Israelites were trapped, in slavery, unable to free themselves from their bondage, and in need of a savior.
Now, God sends the 10th and final plague. Let’s see how He prepares His people.
II. Exodus 12:1-5, New Beginning
Exodus 12:1-5 –
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.
God is creating a new beginning for His people to commemorate His deliverance. This new beginning is the first month of the first year of a brand new calendar. To remember this occasion, the head of each household will select an unblemished and perfect lamb to sacrifice.
Besides teaching us to commemorate the hand of the Lord, and how the Lord will deliver us, we also the beginning of the concept of atonement, or substitutionary death. Why was it important for the lamb to be unblemished, free of any defect?
How did Jesus meet this criteria? 1 Peter 1:18-19 says that we were not saved by perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. John the Baptist proclaimed in John 1:29 the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with these words, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
The sacrifice of the innocent to pay for the sins of the guilty. The lamb was innocent of any wrong doing. Just as Jesus was innocent of any wrongdoing. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us, you and me. And Romans 6:23 says that the punishment for our sins is death, but God’s gift to us is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This concept of atonement begins here in Exodus 12, continues through Isaiah 53:5 that says that our redeemer was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. And all the way through the New Testament, 1 Peter 2:24, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness, by his wounds we have been healed.”
Any other method of trying to provide for our own deliverance will fail. We do not have the ability to save ourselves any more than the Israelites could save themselves from Pharaoh. If we try, we will find we are sinners and must pay for our sins with eternal death. Jesus, the son of God, paid that price on our behalf that we may live in Him.
And when we accept this sacrifice, we become new creations. God delivers us from our eternal punishment, and we become adopted children of God. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creations; the old has gone, the new has come!” God delivers us.
I remember vividly when I gave my life to Christ. I was old for a Christian, having spent my life claiming to be a Christian but living for myself, and gave myself to the Lord in the fall of 1998 at the age of 37. Got baptized in a swimming pool in Singapore. Do you have a new life in Christ? When did it begin? How has god provided a full life since then?
III. Exodus 12:6-11, Urgent Attitude
Once we have accepted Jesus, our lives take on a certain urgency. Exodus 12:6-11 –
Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.
Remember the traps we talked about? Being stuck in the ice, financial traps, emotional traps? God tells the Israelites to eat in haste. Why is there urgency is being delivered from those traps? God is forever, but our earthly lives are not. Eventually, the sand runs out of our hourglass. We are now on a mission, the Great Commission, and we have a deadline. And we don’t even know when the deadline is, but it surely is coming. Matthew 24:42 says, “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.”
What does God expect from us? God expects us to be obedient to Him, to trust in Him because He know all. God expects us to become more and more Christ-like, to become sanctified through the Word. God expects us to be a light to all, to be submissive to each other and strengthen each other. God expects us to spread the word, make new disciples that will continue to spread the gospel long after we’re gone.
God wants us to remember all these things. If we are going to experience the deliverance from God and expect others to also experience God’s deliverance, it’s urgent we practice obedience now. God expects us to take our mission seriously and urgently. And whatever traps us now, there is an urgency to surrender that to God and just let Him deliver us. We cannot move forward as long as we let something hold us back.
We cannot underestimate the significance of sin in our lives and how offensive sin is to a most Holy God. When Julie taught us that the smallest amount of sin in our lives would cause us to fry in the presence of Jehovah, it was a vivid picture of how far we are from trying to earn our way into heaven. God tells his people to make bread without yeast, unleavened bread, and later in Exodus 12:19 God says that whoever eats anything with yeast in it during this Passover will be cut off from Israel. These are not baking instructions. Jesus says in Matthew 16:11-12, “How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” And 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” So it’s definitely not a baking recipe, it’s a warning that a little sin will spread throughout the whole body.
Let’s not overlook the significance of the blood covering. Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Blood is life. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that our advanced society still requires blood donations and haven’t developed artificial blood. They’ve developed some stuff that can help refill the circulatory system in case of blood loss, but they haven’t developed red blood cells to carry oxygen, white blood cells for fighting diseases, plasma with proteins, platelets to stop blood loss, and so on. Blood is life.
And 1 John 1 :7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” It is the blood of Jesus that saves us and gives us eternal life.
For the Israelites, it was only the covering of blood over the door that would save them and deliver them from their bondage. For us, it is only the covering of the blood of Jesus that saves us from our sins and delivers us from our eternal punishment.
So is it any wonder that God told the Israelites to make their preparations with haste?
IV. Exodus 12:12-13, Divine Mercy
If God’s people did as they were instructed and made their sacrifice in haste, the they were saved from the wrath of God. Verse 12-13 –
“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn — both men and animals — and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”
And so begins the 10th plague, the death of every firstborn. Who was judged this night? Egyptians were pantheists, believing that everything in the world was part of a god or goddess. And they were polytheists, worshiping many gods that were all around them. Each god or goddess was involved in a different part of their lives.
God is very deliberate in His wrath, demonstrating his power over all of nature. God says, “I am the Lord.” He stands apart, holy. All other gods are demons. Each of the first 9 plagues demonstrated God’s sovereignty over a popular Egyptian god to demonstrate that He alone is God. And now the 10th plague over all male firstborns including animals demonstrate that no one is god but God alone.
Death is a powerful and painful lesson. It gets our attention like nothing else in this world. And it’s unavoidable. It is God’s final recourse in showing His power to liberate His people and God’s supremacy over Pharaoh’s little gods. When Pharaoh refused, thousands perished. When Israel believed, thousands lived. And today, every person’s fate hinges on either believing or not believing the one true and living God in heaven. And God used the ultimate death, His son Jesus, to save us.
Who needed mercy that night? Everyone, was it not? Who received mercy that night? What was the sole distinguishing mark that granted the Israelites divine mercy?
Romans 2:5 is addressed to those who have not accepted the blood covering of Jesus. “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.” Who needs mercy now? And who receives mercy? This is God’s plan to the end of time; in Revelation 7:9, there is a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. In Revelation 7:14, we are told who these people are and the distinguishing mark of the believer. “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
God has had a plan from the beginning to deliver us from our sins that deserve His wrath. His judgment is perfect; that’s why we should fear Him. But His mercy is perfect; that’s why we should love Him. He first loved us and provided a way to deliver us from our sins that trap us in bondage. We are free in Christ.
God is our deliverer. Psalm 68:20, “God is unto us a God of deliverances; And unto Jehovah the Lord belongeth escape from death.” Psalm 40:17, “But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.” Psalm 144:2, “He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer.” God’s divine mercy has freed us from our traps through Jesus Christ. There is no reason to remain in bondage, halleluiah.
V. Exodus 12:14, Precious Memory
These lessons must be continually learned from one generation to the next. Anything not carefully remembered is easily forgotten, so we must carefully prepare our lives and celebrations in a way that the next generation will also come to know the saving blood of Jesus. Exodus 12:14 –
This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD – a lasting ordinance.
Why did the people of Israel need a permanent statue? What would this memory do for them when they faced hard times later?
Do rituals save us? What rituals do churches observe today?
1 Corinthians 11:23-28 describes why we eat of the Lord’s Supper:
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
Rituals can enslave us if we make the ritual the point instead of a remembrance. The whole purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to remember the divine sacrifice Jesus made for us and to remember to examine ourselves to see if we are living lives pleasing to the Lord. That is the reason we commemorate God’s amazing deliverance and pass those memories down to future generations. So that they, too, may be delivered from their bondage.
VI. Conclusion
Trying to commemorate a deliverance that hasn’t occurred is meaningless. How can we be certain we have experienced God’s love in salvation?
Our goal today was twofold: We want to be certain each of us has experienced God’s amazing deliverance, and we want to be sure to commemorate our deliverance so that we never forget and that others know of God’s plan for salvation. And if you are in a trap or bondage that you have not surrendered to the Lord, it’s about time we give it to the Lord and surrender to Him. We are free in Christ.
We can experience a new beginning when we trust in the Lord for our deliverance and obey His instructions. The Lord gives us a sense of urgency, for we do not know the day when the Lord returns. God’s deliverance is an amazing display of his divine mercy for which we should be eternally thankful. We can show our thanks for our deliverance by continually remembering and celebrating the Lord and all He has done for us. Give thanks today and remember.
Chasing the Wind 
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