1410 - Exodus 12, "Remembering Passover: Behind the Scenes"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1410. Today we're going to look at the background of the Passover Seder. If you've been following me the last couple of days, you know that we are dealing with the background of how these traditions of the Jews related to the great Moadin. That is the feasts, the festivals, and the fast days that are so well known among the Jews, but not that well known except in recent decades by those who are non Jews who are evangelicals, those who are followers of Jesus, who love Israel, and now they're beginning to understand something of the great genius that God gave to the Jewish people to be able to pass on the great holidays, the holy days for the Jewish people for generations. And yesterday I talked about Shabbat. Now the reason I wanted to bring up Shabbat first is simply because it is first in the order of these great appointed times. Now that's what the word Moed or Moedim means. It means appointed time. It's something that goes on the calendar. God says, I have appointments for you. I want you to meet me. I want you to understand more about who I am, about what I've done, and I don't want you to forget, and over and over again, God reminds the people that they need to pass on to their children and the next generation the goodness of God, the graciousness of God, His person, His works. And in our day, many evangelicals are not doing a good job of that, but the Jews are continuing to pass on. I believe more than in the last fifty years that I have been following and understanding more about Jewish traditions. And sometimes we as evangelicals think we don't have traditions. Well, we're crazy because we do. If you don't believe that, you go into any Baptist church or any evangelical church and they say, we don't have an order of service, we don't have a bulletin, we don't have we just follow God. Well, they usually have an opening, a song, a prayer, keeping of attendance, telling about Sunday school, or whatever the different location is used to, and then they maybe give announcements and sing some more, and then they have an offering, and then they have preaching, and then they have an invitation, then they have whatever the case is. Everybody has their traditions, and if you don't believe that, you just get that out of order and you'll see what I'm talking about. People will feel discombobulated. They'll feel like, what's going on? Usually we have an offering here. Why didn't we have an offering? And well, why is he preaching first before we sing? And there's all kinds of traditions that we have. We just have a tendency to think that everybody else has them, but we don't. Traditions are not bad unless they are bad traditions. Traditions are good. Jesus kept traditional feasts, those that are not mentioned in the Old Testament whatsoever. Nowhere in the Torah has it commanded, Hanukkah or Purim. Those are feasts that Jesus obviously kept Hanukkah because in the Gospel of John it talks about Jesus being in Jerusalem in the temple area during the days of Hanukkah, the dedication or really the rededication of the temple after the abomination of desolation of Antiochus Epiphanes or Antiochus IV during the period of the Greeks. Now, let me just go back to why it's important that they observe Shabbat. It's been said that the Jews have kept Shabbat and Shabbat has kept them. And the reason is Shabbat celebrates God as the creator, and they had traditions that formulated and they've been modified down through the years to help keep those traditions. For instance, every Shabbat, and Jesus would have observed these things as well, maybe not these very things, but something similar. And every Shabbat they would have the lighting of the lamps, the setting apart of the sacred day, because it began on the evening before at sundown and went until the day. For instance, it would start at what we would call Friday at sundown, it would end when the first star appeared in the heavens on what we would call Saturday evening. Then the first day of the week would begin, and that would be Sunday. During the Friday evening meal, it was a special meal because work would have ceased at the end of that sixth day. Remember, the evening and the morning were the first day, the evening and the morning were the second. And so the day begins in the evening, the evening before. On Friday evening, they would gather together, the lamps would be lit, the mother would do that because that was her place as the queen of the home to bring in the queen Shabbat. Now all of these things, you say, Well, where's this in the scripture? Oh, it's not, but there's got to be some way that allows a holy day to be commemorated. Because remember, God told them what to do, but he didn't tell them how to do it. He told them to remember, but he didn't tell them how to do it and how to pass it on to their children. And so every Shabbat, I've been in many Jewish homes in Israel during Shabbat, and uh they all had different flavor. I have been an Orthodox home. I've been in the homes of those that had Hasidic members there observing the Shabbat meal. I've been in reform homes where there's more of a very liberal view of certain things in the scriptures, and I've been in Orthodox homes. And the reason I'm telling you that is because the traditions differ a bit, but they're all the same. In other words, there's a blessing by the father, by the head of the household. Many times right up front, the mother will be blessed. The Proverbs 31 blessing many times is used. And each of the children are blessed. The boys are blessed and as Ephraim and Manasha, the sons of Joseph, that they would be fruitful like that. And then the hands of the father and mother are put upon the head and the shoulders of the girls, and they would be blessed as Sarah, as Rebecca and Leah and Rachel. There would be prayers that would be said, blessings that would be said. All of this uh builds a camaraderie and a sense of belonging. I mean you think about it in our American homes. If every week the ill is forgotten on Friday evening and they sit down to a meal and all the things that need to be reconciled are reconciled, the children hear their father blessing their mother, see the mother serving the father and helping him and encouraging him, and then to hear their names, their individual names as children called out. They are able to participate in that and understand the sacredness of the day, and uh hear God as creator being talked about. See, it's powerful when you understand that God made every one of us on purpose, with purpose and for purpose, that we have a life and a purpose here on this earth, and that we can only know that by knowing the God who made us. There is great value in these Shabbat meals. This is not a matter of determining their salvation. This is an act of obedience. This is what God asked the Jewish people to do, and so that's what they do. That doesn't mean that everybody that observes Shabbat that they're sincere, no more than people that come to church on Sunday are sincere. I know I have had people that have said, you know, for years I came to church to network. I came to church because my wife was an agony. I came to church because I knew the kids need to be there. I didn't care much about it, but they did. But what happened? They kept coming and God worked in their life and used that to get them where they need to be. Well, these are the same kinds of things. We just have our own ideas about what we do as being somehow more sacred than what someone else does. And sometimes that's so, sometimes it's not. What I'm trying to get to is this whether it's Shabbat or whether it's Passover, when you turn to the book of Exodus, chapter twelve, God said to Moses and Aaron, This month shall be your beginning of months, and it shall be the first month of the year to you. And then speak to all the congregation saying on the tenth of the month, and here's what he went through it. The tenth of the month they had to take the best of all the flock, they had to bring it into their home, and for four days they kept it up in their home. That is the best of the flock, the prettiest of the flock, the most spotless of the flock. And they would bring it in, and sometimes they would bring in another family, a a neighbor that was with them that their families together could share a lamb. And there were rituals that were developed because God said, I want you to roast that lamb, I want you to take the blood, put it in a basin because I've got a job for you to do with that. I want you to eat with your shoes on, I want you to eat with your clothes on, like you're ready to go somewhere, with your staff in hand, like you're ready to head out the door. God was doing all of these things to remind the people of certain truths about the Passover, that it didn't just happen. God had purpose. So he told them what to do. He told them about the lamb and how precious it had to be and how spotless had had to be the best of the flock. The blood had to be put on certain places on the door, and they were to cook a certain way, they were to eat certain herbs, they were to all of these things became symbols to teach the story. And since it was the whole family, in other words, you didn't go get a sitter or take the kids somewhere else so someone else could keep them while you had a meal out. No, this was the whole family. Because the purpose of this was to teach the children about what God had done and who he is, and his great faithfulness in answering prayer, in seeing their hardship, and when the people called out to him, it didn't happen overnight, but over a period of decades and generations, God showed his people that if they would be constant and call out upon him, that he would hear their prayer and answer them, and that's exactly what God said to Moses. I have heard the cry of my people. I have heard their cries, and I'm sending you. You're the deliverer, and you're going to be my mouthpiece, you're going to be the person that I'm going to use. And all of this to say they got the kids involved. For instance, the fathers and the leaders developed a series of questions that the children would ask that would lead to the parents telling the same story every year. Father, why is this night different than all others? Why is it that we're eating matzo uh instead of regular bread uh like hala? Why is it that and they have all of these questions, and there were a series of questions, the same questions every year, and then the as the family grew, there would be a a son that would give an answer of what a son that didn't care would say, or one that was agnostic, one that was rebellious, one that was compliant. All of these different types of questions helped tell the story of the Passover. And if they asked the same questions every year, and it was very thoughtful, the youngest asked the questions every year. If it was the oldest, then there's only one oldest, but everyone, and no matter if you have a family of a dozen, everyone is the youngest at some time. So they got to ask the questions. The children were challenged to find something that had been hidden during the meal. There were a series of cups that were put out on the table where wine was poured, and each cup represented something where God said, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do that. And those were the ways that this was passed down from generation to generation. It wasn't just arbitrary. There was thought put behind it, prayer put behind it, wisdom put behind it, so that here we are thirty, five hundred years later, and the Jews are still doing it, and they're doing it the same way. The Seder meal that Jesus had two thousand years ago was very much like the Seder meals today. Had all the same ingredients, had the same seating arrangement, on and on and on. All of these same questions and the same implements and articles that they used, all to say you and I need to understand that many times God, when he tells us what to do, he allows us to figure out what is the best way to do that. Because God doesn't always tell us that, but he has given us his spirit within us as followers of Jesus. God lives in us, and if we're in his word and his word is in our heart, the Bible says if we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us the desire of our heart. Just like in Psalm 37, God said, Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. That doesn't mean that just whatever comes into your heart, you follow your heart. No, you delight yourself in the Lord. You commit your way unto him, and he'll direct your paths. He'll give you the very desires of your heart, not what you desire, but what to desire. I'm just saying God is able to speak to us right where we are when we're walking with him. And one reason why we don't have a lifestyle that is what it should be is because we're not delighting ourselves in him, and we haven't set up mechanisms to be intentional in our walk with him. All to say I'm so grateful to God that the Jews have led the way in teaching us. Not only have they given us the oracles of God, the very scriptures themselves, and and the Lord Jesus came through the Jewish people, but God is not finished with them yet. God has a plan for the Jewish people. Does he have a plan for Jew and Gentile alike in the church? Yes. But one day the church will be gone, and the Jews then will be set aside to be God's mouthpiece once again, exclusively to the world. And we just need to understand that God is faithful, and what he promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to their descendants, he will do. And the people of God, the Jews of the Old Testament and the New Testament, are the Jews of today. You say, I don't believe that. Well, you're wrong. You're wrong biblically, you're wrong historically, you're wrong from a genealogical standpoint, you're wrong from a DNA standpoint. And all of that is provable. It also tells me you know nothing about the Jews because they keep meticulous family records. They keep meticulous family records of everything, or you and I wouldn't have the Bible that we have today. Well, that's enough for today. I pray that you're catching it. That God is doing a great work, not just in the past, but even now, and he will in the future. I pray this is an encouragement to you as you walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.