1468 - Exodus 12, "The New Beginning for Israel"

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Chris 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 Chris.

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Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1468. And our chapter reading for today is Exodus chapter twelve. This is a chapter of all chapters in the book of Exodus. It is a new beginning for the people of God. Israel is going to be delivered on Passover. And so we're going to look at what the chapter says and just hit on some key points. I'm going to deal with Passover in two or three different podcasts as we go through the book of Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. And of course, we will deal with it in the New Testament when we deal with the Lord Jesus and the night that he was betrayed, because he was taking Passover on that night, doing the thing that he had done all of his life, all of his childhood, through his teenage years, and now before he dies on a cross to pay the sin debt for mankind. Then he has a final Passover with His disciples before Gethsemane. And so the Passover is instituted in chapter twelve. God has said what he's going to do in chapter eleven, now he does it. Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. And that's exactly what happened. Now this month, according to the book of Exodus, chapter thirteen and verse four, is called a Bib, A B I B. Now that's what it's called in our Bibles. Actually the B, the bait, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is a B sound when it has a dot called a dogish forte in the center, the bosom of that letter. You take that dot out, and it is a V sound, as in Victor. So you will hear Ab in English, but in Hebrew it's Aviv. Aviv is the word for spring. Many daughters in Israel are called Aviv. And it speaks of a three month period or a season or of the month Aviv, which is after the captivity. In the book of Esther, for instance, this month Ab or Aviv is called Nisan. And so after the Babylonian exile, Aviv is changed to Nisan, and that is what we know it as today. But God said this will be the beginning of all months, and then he said on the tenth day of the month, this is verse three, I want you to take every man a lamb. Now this was a lamb that was chosen out of all the flock. It was the best. It was a yearling. They would take this lamb, bring it in for four days, they would keep it in their household. It became precious to them. It became as one of the family. And then on the fourteenth day it was slain. And God said, This is what I want you to do. I want you to at twilight, I want you to take this animal, I want you to slay it, cut his throat, drain the blood, put that in a basin, and then I want you to put blood on the doorpost and on the lentil, which is the top crossbar. And of course, to do that you have to form a cross in the truest sense of the word. That's what they did. I'm not reading that into it. That's just the way that you would do it. If you were making motions with your hand, that's what you would do. And it was at twilight. Now twilight officially began at three o'clock. That's when the Lamb was slain. Just so happens that's the time of day when Jesus died, committed his spirit into the hand of his father at twilight. That began at three in the afternoon and went until the end of the day, which was about three hours. That's when the sun, its angle changes, and there is that soft light, and that's called twilight. Now we usually refer to twilight in America as that period uh between the setting of the sun and before it gets dark. But twilight actually starts at three in the afternoon. That's what he's talking about, and that's when Jesus died on the cross. You can read about it in the Gospels. Why am I talking about Jesus and the Passover? Because he is our Passover. It is through His blood that the death angel passes over us. It is through His blood that we are set free, not from Egyptian bondage and the bondage of literal physical slavery, but we are freed from the bondage of sin and we are taken to the promised land. Those of us who are followers of Jesus, our life begins when we are delivered from the bondage of sin and the penalty of sin, and that's why Jesus came and died. Now the Passover meal was to be a memorial. That's what it says in chapter twelve. He said this is to be a memorial. It's to be something that you're going to remember, and they need to do this over and over again. Look at verse 14. It says, So this day shall be a memorial, a zikron. I want you to remember what I do. When we talk about the Passover meal, most people in the West have never seen the Passover meal if they don't know a Jewish family. And oddly enough, in some states, the Jewish population still to this day is so sparse that many grow up in the South, for instance, and never meet a Jewish person, especially out in the rural countrysides of the Southeast and the Southwest, and sometimes in the Midwest. A person has never met a Jewish person face to face. They sure didn't go to school with them or anything like that. It's just amazing, but this is the country that we live in, and so in the culture that we live in. But these are special days to the Jewish people, and it should be. The Jewish people handed down down through the years the great traditions of the faith. And they had to develop liturgies and rituals to help them to remember this so it would be consistent from generation to generation wherever you lived in the world. And so the priests and the Levites and later the rabbis began to develop a system to teach this. And when we were in Exodus chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, I mentioned at that time as we were in the podcast that this is where the liturgy for the Lord's table or the Passover meal, when you would have four cups, four cups to remember what God did. God set apart his people, he sanctified his people and made a difference between his people and the Egyptians. Then he sent the plagues of judgment, and then he redeemed his people with a strong and mighty arm. And then he led them to the promised land, their inheritance. And so four cups represent that Passover meal. The cup of sanctification is the first cup when God says he will make a distinction between his people and the Egyptians, and he set them apart to deliver them. And then the cup of judgment that has to do with the naming of the ten plagues, and that's why any Jewish young man or young woman, if they're an in an observant family that observes Passover, they would know the plagues because a drop is put on the plate from the wine cup, and every time it is, then a plague is shouted out as of whether it happened in order. That's the way that they would shout those out. And the father or the master of ceremonies, if it was more than one family gathering together, would lead through this process. Then they would all have a meal together. And after supper, Passover's always a supper. It's not a lunch, it's not a breakfast. It is supper. It's a dinner meal. And it's to be done in the evening. And they are to be dressed. They're ready to go. Because all of this has to do with remembering Exodus chapter twelve and the story of the Passover. They never want to forget what God did for them on that night, because this was the beginning of the nation of Israel as a nation. No longer just strangers and pilgrims, but they were going to have a homeland, and they were going to have documents, the founding documents, the Constitution, bylaws. That's begins in earnest at Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 20. And so in the Torah itself, there's 613 laws, regulations. 365 of those would be prohibitions or negative. The remainder would be positive acts that they are to do. 613 in the Torah. And those are the founding documents of the nation of Israel, but it all started with Passover. So you have the cup of sanctification. You have a second cup of judgment. You eat a meal, the Passover meal, as instructed by God Himself. Then you have the cup of redemption. That's the cup that Jesus was taking the night he was betrayed when he said, This bread, this unleavened bread, we remember the Lamb and its purity without spot or without blemish. He said, From now on, I want you to remember me because I am the Lamb. And it's going to be my blood that's going to be shed so you can go free, so I can pass over you. And my father can look at the blood of the Lamb. No, I am the Lamb. And so he said, When you drink of this, I want you to remember me. And that's what we've been doing as followers of Jesus for the last two thousand years. And so Passover had a significance that went beyond just the Jewish people. It went also to the Gentiles of the early church and now to us. And then the last cup was the Hallel cup, the cup of praise, because God had promised He was going to give them an inheritance, and He did. All of this is ritual that grew up around the Memorial Supper of Passover, and you can read about that in starting in chapter twelve of Exodus. The tenth plague was the death of the firstborn, and the firstborn of the Israelites was spared. And God used the means and the example of blood on the doorpost to remind them that it is through the shedding of blood that they are delivered and the death of an innocent one. And in the Passover it was a lamb. In the case of those of us who are followers of Jesus, it is the blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus. And again, I'll be talking more about that in the days ahead. But the Exodus was a specific time in the life of the people of God of new beginning. And that's what I want us to take away from this is Passover in the spring of the year is the time of new beginning. I believe that's when the Lord Jesus was born, and I've spoken of that in podcasts past. I believe that it's very clear in the symbolism that the tenth of Nisan is what we would have called Palm Sunday in the Western world. That's when the presentation of the lambs took place. That's when the lambs were chosen. And as you'll recall, the leaders of Israel rejected the lamb, and Jesus, as he went back up the hillside to go to Bethany on the backside of the Mount of Olives, he looked back over Jerusalem and wept and said, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers its chicks, but you would not. And there is coming a time when Jerusalem and the nation of Israel will embrace a Messiah. Jesus said, You will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And that greeting is still a greeting today, and one day they will look upon him whom they've pierced. They will see that indeed Jesus is the Messiah. You say, Well, that's offensive to a Jew. Well, it's an offense to everyone that is trying to work their way to heaven, because you see, nobody is going to be able to work their way to heaven. No commandment that's given that can be kept will ever take people to heaven. And so God gave the law not as in order to save, but to bring us to the Messiah. That's what Paul talks about in the book of Galatians, chapter three, and verse four. He said the law was a schoolmaster, is what the King James says. The word is Patagogas. It is a child conductor, one who leads the children to the teacher, to the master. The Patagogas was not the master. No, no, no. He took them to the master. And Paul said, who by the way is a Jewish rabbi, said that the law could not save. It was not the master. It took us to the master, to the teacher. And that's what the law does. It shows us that we are exceedingly sinful, that we cannot keep the law. And the book of James, the Lord's brother, he said in chapter two and verse 10 if a man keeps the whole law but yet offends in one, he's guilty of all. And you say, Well, I've not sinned as much as someone else. Doesn't matter. Have you sinned? Yes. And the scripture says there's none righteous. No, not even one. We have all turned to our own way, and because of that, we need a Savior. We need deliverance. And that's what Passover was about. Yes, it was a literal Passover. The firstborn of the Israelites was spared. But also there is a greater symbolism than that first Passover, and that is when the Lord Jesus died, so that you and I, as Jew and Gentile, can be saved and be delivered forever. For On the Way, this is Tony Crisp.

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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.