*** NOTE - Both a brief Children's Sermon and a full Adult sermon are included ***
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Who have we been studying the last three Sundays? Yes… MOSES... Last week, Moses asked Pharaoh (or the leader of the Egyptians) NINE TIMES to let the people of Israel go… and all 9 times, Pharaoh said “NO!”… Pharaoh refused to obey God, so God sent a different plague (or disaster) each of those 9 times proving to everyone that He alone is God… Proving that He is more powerful than any other god.
But even after 9 different disasters, Pharaoh still refused to let God’s people go… So God sent one final disaster… and it was the worst one of all. Moses tells Pharaoh that this last disaster would be so terrible that it would make him change his mind and finally let the people go. Moses tells him that the oldest son of every family and even the firstborn of their animals would all die.
How sad! Since Pharaoh and the people in Egypt refused to do what God told them to do, they suffered terribly! That may be hard to understand, but remember – God gave them many chances to do what he told them to do, but they refused… 9 different times, they refused to obey God.
So God gave Moses instructions on how his own people (the people of Israel) were to prepare for this last disaster. He said that every family was to take a one-year-old lamb… but not just any lamb… it had to be perfect in every way… and they were to prepare a meal. When they killed the lamb so they could cook it, they were to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and top of the doorway of their houses. [have someone put red paper on the sides and top of a doorway as illustration]
God said, "I will go through the land of Egypt tonight… and every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die… this is My judgment on all the gods of Egypt… The blood will be a sign on the houses where you live... When I see the blood I will pass over you—no harm will touch you.”
So the people did as God instructed them… and they were safe… But it was a very sad night for the Egyptians! Because it was so terrible, Pharaoh tells Moses to GET OUT! And so the people of Israel were set free.
God cares for us just like he cared for his children in Egypt long ago. We are also slaves… but we are not slaves in Egypt… we are slaves to sin… But God wants us to be free, so He sent Jesus… Jesus is the perfect lamb that was killed to save us from death, and to set us free. When we believe in Jesus and put our faith in Him, then God sees the blood of Jesus on the doors of our hearts, and His judgment (death) passes over us… and we are set free from sin!
Let’s PRAY… [Dismiss children]
SCRIPTURE READING
Please turn in your Bibles to Exodus 12:1-14… and stand as we honor the reading of God's word...
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 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. 4 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. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 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. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 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. 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 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. 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.
Let’s PRAY… Thank you... You may be seated.
INTRODUCTION
First, I want to you to notice something… There have been 9 plagues or disasters up to this point, but now, when it’s time for the 10th and final one, this is the first time that God gives any instructions to the Israelites… and the instructions He gives them are very specific. There is a reason for this… Out of all of the 10 plagues, this one is going to set the people of Israel free… But it is so much more than that!
Look at Colossians 2:17… "These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ."
This is just a shadow or preview of things to come... Kind of like when you go to the movie theater and you watch previews of movies that will be coming soon… God gave these very detailed instructions to the people of Israel, and He told them to repeat it every year… The events in Exodus 12 become the first Passover… and the people of Israel have continued to celebrate it for the last 3,400 years! And during all this time, the Passover has simply been the preview…
So many thousands of years ago, God gave His people the Passover to prepare them to recognize the Messiah… so that the world could see that Jesus Christ is the spotless Lamb of God… Jesus’ blood that was shed on the cross would cover the doorposts of our hearts… God’s judgment and wrath would be poured out on the sacrificial lamb, so that death would pass over us… so we could be saved… so we could be set free.
This morning, we’re going to look a little deeper into these verses… My prayer is that we will all see Jesus Christ in the details found in Exodus 12… and that we will have no doubt that Jesus is truly the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world... and that we all will place our faith and our trust in Him alone.
1. IT’S A NEW BEGINNING
Let’s start with verses 1 and 2…
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.”
The first thing we see is that God changed their calendar! Starting with the time of Exodus 12, Israel’s religious calendar now starts with the month of Nisan (which falls in the March-April timeframe in our calendars). Why did God do this? Well, simply, because He knows that everything begins with the Passover. This marks the time when He set His people free from bondage in Egypt. This also marks the time when He sets us free from bondage to sin... Jesus’ death on the cross is the beginning of His New Covenant with His people… The sacrificial requirements of the Law are now fulfilled in Jesus!
We experience this new beginning personally when we place our faith in Jesus… 2 Corinthians 5:17 calls us a new creation… "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"
The moment a person places their faith in Jesus, then life truly starts… It’s a new beginning! What better way to mark that occasion than resetting the clock… It’s kind of like God is saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life… your life with Me for the rest of eternity!”
When we celebrate New Year, we celebrate the passing of the old year, and look forward to a new start with a new year. So God tells Moses to create a new calendar… and the first month of their new year starts with the events captured in the book of Exodus.
2. IT’S PERSONAL
The next point we see is how God made the whole thing very personal.
Look at verses 3-4…
3 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. 4 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.
God could have just required one lamb to be killed for the entire nation if He wanted to. But He didn’t! He wanted every household in Israel to identify itself with the lamb! They each had to take a lamb, they each had to inspect the lamb, and they each had to kill the lamb. Talk about getting your hands dirty!
It reminds us of course of how PERSONAL the cross is. Just as each Israelite household had to kill their lamb, so too, our own personal sin was responsible for Jesus going to the cross.
But it also reminds us of His GREAT LOVE for each of us individually! Yes it is true that ‘God so loved the world that He gave his only Son…’ – He died for the entire world. But it is more personal than that!
The Apostle Paul knew it was personal when he wrote in Galatians 2:20… "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
Did you catch what he said? He said Jesus loved ME, and gave Himself for ME… He did it for YOU… He did it for ME… The lamb had to die because of MY sin... His blood is on MY hands! The little lamb didn’t have a choice… but Jesus willingly CHOSE to die as the perfect Passover lamb for the sins of the world… He chose to die to pay the price for MY sins. This is PERSONAL! Hallelujah!!!
3. IT’S PERFECT
But it couldn’t be just any lamb… in verse 5, we notice that it must be a male lamb without any blemishes, or imperfections… it must be pure and perfect…
1 Peter 1:18-19 says it like this…
18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
Even though Jesus was tempted as we are, He never sinned… Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God! We, as humans, can never be perfect. We know in Romans 3:23 that all of us have sinned and have fallen short of God's glory. Only a sacrifice that is PERFECT can pay the price for sin... and only Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life... Jesus is the only Lamb worthy to cover our sins with His blood.
4. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BLOOD
Let's finish this morning by looking at verse 7… What is so important about the blood of the lamb? God’s judgment was getting ready to fall upon the people of Egypt… and the only hope for Israel to escape God’s wrath was to take shelter behind the blood of the lamb…
They had to place their confidence in the word of God, as it came to them through Moses… And they had to demonstrate that faith by doing what God instructed them to do. If you were an Israelite, and you heard what God had commanded through Moses, but decided to ignore it, your first-born would die, just like those of the Egyptians! Your own good works wouldn’t save you… Your identity as an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, wouldn’t save you… Only a personal faith in God, which was lived out by following His command, would save you. They had a choice... Do it God’s way and live…or ignore God and embrace death.
You and I are in the same situation as the Israelites… God has given us a promise – if we trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, we will be saved. If we confess our sin… if we give up all attempts to earn forgiveness by our works of self-righteousness… if we humbly accept as a free gift what God has offered to us through Jesus… then we will be saved. But if we choose to ignore God’s Word, or if we try to approach Him on any other basis than faith in Christ, we will be lost.
As Paul writes in Romans 3:25…
"God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished"
Jesus spoke of His own blood just before being arrested and crucified… Matthew 26:28… as He was celebrating Passover with His disciples, Jesus says… “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Hebrews 9:22 reads, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
It’s all about the blood! Without the blood of a perfect, sinless Lamb, there is no forgiveness for sin!
CONCLUSION
Let’s close by looking at Romans 5:6-9…
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
The people of Israel were SAVED on that very first Passover night… they were SPARED from God’s judgment and wrath… and they were then SET FREE from their bondage of slavery… all because the blood of those spotless lambs covered their homes… and when God saw the blood, death passed over them!
Jesus is the Passover Lamb who takes away our sin… WE are spared from God’s judgment and wrath… WE are set free from our bondage to sin and darkness and fear… all because we have placed our faith in JESUS… and the blood of JESUS covers our sin… God sees the blood of JESUS on our lives, and death passes over us!!!
Let’s PRAY…
