THE STORY OF GOD: THE EXODUS/CHIRST EVENT
TEXT: EXODUS 12:21-27
THEME: THE PASSOVER EVENT FORESHADOWING THE CHRIST EVENT.
Most of us have never experienced slavery. We have no understanding or comprehension about the degrading act of slavery. But Frederick Douglass does. The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland’s eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. (All Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. Douglass spent seven relatively comfortable years in Baltimore before being sent back to the country, where he was hired out to a farm run by a notoriously brutal "slavebreaker" named Edward Covey. And the treatment he received was indeed brutal. Whipped daily and barely fed, Douglass was "broken in body, soul, and spirit."
This must of have been how the Hebrew people felt in Egypt. God’s people became enslaved by the Egyptian nation. But God was going to deliver the people because of their cries to the Lord. Exodus 3:9-10 states, “"And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.” The people of God were the providing the back breaking labor for the Egyptian people. It must have been terrible carrying brick after brick. It must have been horrifying to see their loved ones sold into slavery. It must have been awful watching families break up. The pain of slavery is severe. God promised Abraham that he would have a great nation. Now this nation is serving another nations prosperity. There must have been doubt. There must have been trust issues with the people. Where is God in this slavery? Where is God when we need Him? The people were crying out to the Lord.
This pain of slavery is universal. None of us understand physical slavery but all of us have been in spiritual slavery. We all have been imprisoned by sin. This is the worst slavery because a human master could show mercy and grace, but the master of sin is always seeking to destroy us. When sin is the master, we all are in bondage. Paul states this truth in Romans 7:13-14 “Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. We are all in bondage to sin. Sin has become our master. And like the Hebrew people, we had no power to revolt from our master. We were in bondage serving someone who had no interest in our welfare. We were enslaved like the Hebrew people were.
In 2006, Alex Perry reported on the sick practice of child slavery. It wrote the cover article for the Asia Time magazine. He reports there is no shortage of kids for sale. Across Asia, tens of thousands of children are peddled into slavery each year. Some toil with their families as bonded laborers on farms. Others are sold by their parents—or tricked by agents—into servitude as camel jockeys, fisher boys or beggars. In Burma, some are kidnapped by the state and forced to become soldiers. It’s a growing problem, fueled by the Asian economic boom and the subsequent bust, which has fostered an increasingly gap between rich and poor, countryside and city, isolated hinterlands and wealthy coasts. On the continent, alongside the millionaires of Bangkok and Hong Kong, live two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor—790 million people earning less than $1 a day. In the race to escape their deprivation, whole villages are sometimes complicit in the sale of their children. He has seen pickup trucks full of girls sold from a school house as a police officer is often at the wheel. "This is a war," "A war for our children."
We still live in a world where practices like this takes place. This physical slavery is the result of the slavery to sin by those engaging in these cruel practices. Slavery is alive and well in this world because this world is overpowered by sin.
But God cannot stand back without hearing the cries from his people. He cannot sit back and allow these practices to continue. This is why he rescued the Hebrew people from bondage. The Pharaoh would not let the people go. God gave numerous merciful warning and time for Pharaoh to free God’s people, but he hardened his heart. Finally God gave the ultimate punishment by taking the first boy son in each family of the Egyptian people. God was going to allow the power of death to visit each home where there was not the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts. The Lord instructed the people on how to provide safety to their families. Exodus 12:21-27 details this historical event. “Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said to them, "Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. And you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you. And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever. And it will come about when you enter the land which the LORD will give you, as He has promised, that you shall observe this rite. And it will come about when your children will say to you, ’What does this rite mean to you?’ that you shall say, ’It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.’" And the people bowed low and worshiped.” This event is a centering story for the nation of Israel. The people are going to be delivered. In fact, this is the guiding story for the death of Jesus Christ. The people are to eat of the Passover as we are to eat of the Lord ’s Supper remembering what the Lord has done for us. He delivered us from bondage. As God freed his people in the O.T., we are freed from sin in the N.T. It took the blood of the Lamb save the Israelite people from death. It took at sacrifice of the lamb. Just like our freedom was secured with the death of the Lamb. John 1:29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus was the sacrificial lamb on the cross to freed us all of spiritual bondage to sin. It took a death to secure life. And the people were saved through the blood of the lamb. The blood had to be on the doorposts for death to go by. Death would not touch that family because of the blood of the Lord, just like spiritual death will not come to us if we have been covered by the blood of the Lamb. The Bible declares Acts 20:28 "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” Romans 3:25 “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.” Ephesians 1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” We are saved because of the blood once again. God has redeemed us through his blood.
Now we are free from the bondage of sin. We have been delivered from the power of sin in our lives. The Lord rescued us from the life of death and destruction. We have been saved in order to go to the promise land. We are like the Israelite people as we past through the water like they did through the red sea to safe. Now we are headed to the promise land because we are no longer slaves to sin. We are beyond captivity to sin. Paul says in Romans 6:6-18 “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.”
Instead of practicing sin, we are practicing righteousness. And this is happening in today’s world. In July 2006, this story ran. “As befits a fugitive with an alias, "Amir" is both a hero and a hunted man. In hiding since May from a Pakistani terrorist group doggedly tracing him, he wrote in an e-mail on June 18, "I know that they will kill me soon." But no fear, he wrote in broken English: "I am ready for die." Amir, a Christian in majority-Muslim Pakistan, knew he would have to flee with his family when he mounted an undercover rescue of Christian children kidnapped by Muslim traffickers. As Amir rescued those Children, God rescued his people, and Christ rescued all of us from our sins.
