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Gentlemen, we have spent a day and a half considering the first eleven chapters of the book of Exodus, and reason would have it that we cannot afford to spend such time on the sections that remain. Indeed, today I would hope we should cover what on your sheet has been listed as movement three, movement four, and movement five. That is not so much as it might appear, because, uh, movement, uh, three and four between them only comprise about, uh, uh, the six chapters. I would like to forewarn the lawyers present, as I did on the first occasion, but now with a greater sense of urgency. Tonight, I hope that we shall come to consider movement five, the giving of the law at Sinai. And while it is perhaps comparatively easy to think about chapter nineteen and the proposal of the covenant, and chapter twenty four, the actual making of the covenant, nonetheless, in between come those long chapters of detailed laws. And I shall be in urgent and dire and desperate need of your help, you'll see. And on the principle that the Lord has in his wisdom given some gifts to some and some to others, I want to announce here and now that he's not given me the gift of, of being a lawyer. And, uh, I'm happy to think that amongst us there are a number of lawyers, you'll see, even if they try to travel incognito, you'll see. We shall expose all their disguises, and I shall be calling on you tonight, uh, in our final session to do what you did so liberally last evening, that is to help us in our thinking on the particular topics of Movement five. Now, for the moment, we come now to chapter twelve, to the consideration of that great fundamental seminal event in the history of Israel, the Passover. That was said by God himself to be, in some sense, a complete new beginning. This month, Exodus twelve two, shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Historians tell us that Passover and the Feast of Weeks may have gone back to agricultural celebrations in that part of the world. But it is evident here in the book of Exodus that whatever may have been the feasts hitherto held, from the time of the Passover, the celebration of these annual feasts, the feast of Passover and the feast of unleavened bread, marked the beginning of Israel's experience, a new beginning. In the religious calendar of festivals that were subsequently celebrated, Passover naturally stood first. It is not now so much amongst modern Judaism, where the beginning of the year has migrated, Rosh Hashanah has migrated to the second half of the year and begins in the autumn with blowing of trumpets and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement celebration. But here in Exodus and also in the book of Leviticus, where the religious annual festivals are listed, Passover naturally stands first. For in a sense to Israel, and likewise for us, who have been redeemed by our Passover lamb, the beginnings, the real beginnings of freedom, of experience of the God of liberation, and all that flows from our redemption, it begins with the great Passover sacrifice of Christ. Uh, that said, let us now notice what we noticed on our first occasion, that there were two sides to Israel's deliverance from Egypt. Movement three has the first of them. Israel were delivered from bondage to Pharaoh when God used his mighty power to smash Pharaoh's resistance, and so at simultaneously delivered Israel from the wrath of God that descended upon Egypt by the blood of the Passover sacrifice. Israel then redeemed, liberated by the blood of the Passover lamb. Whereas movement four will direct our attention to the other side of the story of liberation, for it will tell how Pharaoh eventually regretted letting the Israelites go, tried to recapture them. Whereas Israel were taken through the Red Sea as on dry ground, Pharaoh and the Egyptians, trying to do the same, were drowned in the sea, and Israel set free from Pharaoh again, and in particular from being taken back into Pharaoh's domination. Theologically then, as we said on the first occasion, eh, you could put it that they were saved on the first occasion from the wrath of God, and on the second occasion from the power of their enemy. Put it another way, on the first occasion, saved, redeemed by blood. On the second occasion, saved through water. And when we come to the use that the New Testament makes of this great occasion, using it as a prototype of higher things, then of course the New Testament will refer to both these aspects of liberation. um One Corinthians five will remind us that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Whereas one Corinthians ten reminds believers that our fathers were all baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Two aspects to redemption. Now, it is on the New Testament usage of this Old Testament prototype that I want to concentrate in our study, because I am particularly concerned that we are, all of us, or most of us here, will be preachers and wanting in the first instance to be reminded how we may preach these glorious things to, uh, our congregations and to our friends. And so let's take the example of the New Testament and see how the New Testament itself takes up this original prototype and applies it at the higher level. I remind you then that different writers in the New Testament choose different aspects of this great seminal event. We have already considered Peter's use of it in his first epistle and the first chapter. Knowing, he says, we were redeemed not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. We were redeemed, says he, from our empty way of life. Israel were redeemed from a bondage that ground down their lives in meaningless futility. They were redeemed from that way of life and set free to serve God as they should, and thus to find meaning in life. And Peter reminds them that from their empty, vain, ultimately valueless way of life, God redeemed them. Uh, uh, uh, uh, we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. As of a lamb without blemish and without spot. And we pick up at once those value statements from an empty, valueless way of life, vain and futile. We were redeemed by that blood of Christ, the value of which surpasses all calculation. We were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. We are in the area of value assessment. The application that Peter makes of that, as we saw the other day, is on the journey to which Passover introduced Israel. In chapter twelve, as we shall presently observe, the first paragraph is God's instruction to Moses, not only on how they should be delivered, but how in particular they should treat the sacrifice, how prepare it, how process it, and especially how eat of it. And they were to eat of it with their loins girded, staff in hand, and shoes on foot, ready to take off on the journey. That, of course, was implied in their being set free, and I needn't preach again what I talked about on the other occasion. Just let me remind you how Peter spreads out that notion through the second half of his first chapter of his epistle. He says that we are to gird up our loins, the loins of our mind, to do some rigorous thinking and set our hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That is interesting because in chapter, in paragraph one of his first epistle, he has talked about the purifying of our faith. The purifying of your faith, the proving of your faith, says he, is much more precious than of gold that perishes. Nonetheless, it has to be tried by fire. But in paragraph two uh of his first epistle, he talks now not on the purifying of our faith, that our faith needs to have cleansed from it all those unworthy elements that at first are mixed in with faith. But in the second paragraph, he talks about the perfecting of our hope and calls upon us for rigorous mental thinking in working out the implications of our hope. And two things move us to such thought, if not three. One, there is the journey to which we are committed. That your, uh, uh, we are to, to hope perfectly to the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. If we are looking forward to that grace, if that is our, indeed our Christian hope, we must work out the implications of our hope. The Apostle John would express that in other language. He talks in his First Epistle, chapter three, of our hope, whereas we do not know exactly what we shall be, we do know this, that when the Lord Jesus appears again, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And then John adds that everybody who has that hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. John states it not as an exhortation, but as a sheer fact. Notice the weight of that. John says, if you have the hope of being like Christ when the Lord appears, you will purify yourself now. And the man or woman who does not set about purifying themselves now, raises necessarily a big question mark about the genuineness of their hope that they're going to be like Christ then. Gird up the loins of your mind and hope perfectly, work it out to its logical conclusion in all its implications. Gird up the loins of your mind and hope perfectly, set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to you. And we may use the metaphor that Peter employs, as I suggested the other day, to help ourselves grasp the situation. You eat the Passover, you must eat it good, says Peter. Ready for the journey. Suppose you had been taking a tour around the pyramids of Egypt, as is the custom of some, that you had been taking a tour of the pyramids of Egypt six months after Moses and the Israelites had left, and coming around the corner on your moth-eaten camel, you, uh, bump into an old Jewish friend of yours by the name of Zechariah. You'll say, hello, Zechariah, my boy. Pleased to see you, but a little bit surprised to see you here. I thought you believed in this, uh, inheritance business out there in the blue, you know, what Moses used to preach when he was here, that there is an inheritance for you redeemed, uh, Israelites. I thought you believed in that, old chap. Oh, he says, I do. Oh, you say, uh, what are you doing here then? Why aren't you moving on with the rest? Well, he says, you know, that's not particularly my sort of line of country. Some people do, uh, do go in for this kind of ascetic, rigorous discipline and mark themselves out so many kilometers across a desert a day, you know. Uh, I'm not of that type. I prefer to take my spirituality a little bit more easily, you'll see. And anyway, Egypt's got a lot to offer, hasn't it, around here? So why couldn't I stay here and enjoy Egypt, would you say? But my dear good man, well then, how do you propose to get to Canaan? Oh, he said, I don't bother my head about those theological questions. How am I going to get there? I haven't really thought about that. I, I, I shall get there one day, somehow or other. I do fervently believe, you'll see. I don't think it's necessary to do all this foot slogging across the wilderness. Yes, I don't need to preach the sermon to you, gentlemen, but you may need to preach it to others. And the vividness of the prototype lends force to the exhortation, doesn't it? How can we get this across to people who seem to think that trusting Christ and receiving forgiveness of sins, that is the sum total of things, and do not see the necessary implication that they must do some rigorous thinking and work out the implication of their hope, that redemption is to lead us to the inheritance. It is to lead us to be an heir of God, one day, like all sons of their fathers, to bear completely the image of God himself and to be conformed to his dear son. And then Peter, as he applies this Old Testament story, twists the screw just a little bit more, doesn't he? Peter, in his epistle, is very aware of what I call comparative time. Uh, you'll see endless re- uh, references to time, and here is one of them. He says, you, uh, our salvation's ready to be revealed in the last time. And now he says that, uh, this lamb was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in this last time for you. It is a thing to be pondered, isn't it? Why did Christ come when he did? All sorts of answers can be given to that. But Peter observes that the Lamb was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in this last time, and now he particularizes it for you. I suspect that Peter was overwhelmed with the fact that he was given to live in the generation that saw the coming of the Son of God to our world and the actual crucifixion of Christ, and felt to himself, oh, who am I? What marvel is this that I have been privileged to live in that moment in history when God's own son was manifested and the purposes of God swung into action. I suspect Moses and the Israelites, most of them, felt a similar thing. Four hundred years ago, God had told Abraham that he would deliver them and bring them out. For hundreds of years, many Israelites had lived and died in slavery. Who and why was it given to them that they should be living in the generation that should see the Passover? You would suppose that it had such an impact on them that that would have been the most godly generation in the history of Israel that Israel ever knew. Alas, it wasn't, gentlemen. The generation of the wilderness, how will you account for it, were one of the wickedest generations that Israel ever saw. That's not Christian anti-Semitism, that's the admission of Stephen, the Hellenistic. We, if we may take the larger camp. How blessed are our eyes, for they see, and our ears that they heard. Said our Lord to the same effect. You know kings and prophets desire to hear the things that you hear and haven't heard them. They desire to see the things that you see, and they didn't see them. King David would given his right arm to know what you gentlemen know about the unfolding purposes of God, that the Redeemer has actually come, and his name is Jesus, and the Passover sacrifice has been offered. And you and I live in an age that knows this tremendous thing. The Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world manifests in this time for you. And I say to my little self, Gooding, how much time have you got? Out of God's great history and then his eternity. One little life. And is God interested in my few moments? Will it make a difference for him? And the staggering reply comes that the very councils of eternity preparing the Lamb of God ordained that he should be manifest at this time for me. What kind of an implication has that for the way I spend what Peter calls the time of my sojourning here, knowing I am redeemed with the blood of a lamb. Oh, how vain the manner of life from which they had been redeemed. Oh, how costly the life that God gave to buy that little time of their sojourning here. Well might they spend it in fear. If that is the emphasis that Peter puts on it, it is a slightly different emphasis what we find, is it not, in the Gospel of John. Our Lord, according to that gospel, attended, uh, two Passovers if he didn't attend three. And it makes a very interesting study, doesn't it? As you come to the Gospel of John, structured as it is, and built up of certain journeys that our Lord made to Jerusalem on the occasion of the national festivals. It is a instructive study to notice what each particular festival stood for, and then to watch the Lord Jesus going up with the pilgrims to those festivals and making his comment upon them. For instance, in John's Gospel chapter uh two following, there was a feast of the Jews, it was Passover, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and it was Passover time. What would you have expected the crowds to be talking about in the, uh, uh, in the, uh, celebrations of Passover week? I know they wouldn't be talking theology all the time because this was a religious festival, and their, their long lost relatives from Patagonia would all be coming up, you'll see, and seeing your long lost aunt and uncle and all their progeny and, uh, enjoying the old music o- o- on the guitars or whatever they were, and you know there would be a lot of socializing at these otherwise religious festivals. But of course, uh, central to the thing was the religious festival, wasn't it? And this one was Passover, and what would you have expected the people to be talking about? Well, here was Zephaniah, and he was talking to his long lost cousin, you'll see Amos. Yeah, and uh, he was saying, my brother, isn't it marvelous to look back and to remember how God brought our people out with a lifted arm and his mighty power. And here we are celebrating this annual event, but my brother, it's not just a, a little bit of antiquity, is it? Uh, uh, it's a, surely it's an ongoing experience for us all. Tell me, Ema, what experience of the power of God have you been having in the last year or so? Well, doubtless there were such conversations, that our Lord went into the temple, and there he found them selling oxen, sheep, and doves, and it so infuriated him that he made a cord, a a whip of cords, and drove them out. They said, what sign do you show this? He said, uh, destroy this temple, I raise it again in three days. They said, forty and six years was this temple in building. And young man, we'd have you know it takes a lot of money to keep it up. And shekels don't grow on trees around here. You'll see all these ornate ceremonies we have to put on for the people and this gorgeous temple here. I mean, it's such a an important part of our religious experience, and it costs money, and frankly, you've got to be realist in this world and screw every shekel you can out of the people. And this at Passover time? Dear me, what had happened? You will see it is in the Passover regulation, says God, when you get delivered from Egypt, and for about the third or fourth time, it is said, you shall speak to the Egyptians, and they shall give you their gold and silver and whatnot. So the people did, and they came out with vast wealth as a byproduct of their redemption. They hadn't got long in the wilderness. When God showed them what the ultimate purpose of that gold and silver was. And the cry went out in the camp that they were to bring their offering. As we were noticing the other night, at first, in their full folly, they nearly apostatized and lost God's gracious offer of coming to dwell among them. But when after God's disciplines and Moses' intercessions, God graciously granted them again that they might know this wonderful thing, that they could make a sanctuary and God would dwell among them. Moses called for the offering, and they brought, and they brought, and they brought, and they brought! Till the chief workman came to Moses and said, look here, you'll have to make another command. The people bring so much, they bring vastly more than is enough. Make a proclamation, and it had to be made. Please stop giving. If you ever hear there's going to be a Christian convention where the leaders are obliged to get up and tell the people to stop giving, let me know, and I'd like to be there just for the unique experience. What a slander on redemption it is. That Christian people have to be pushed, prodded, poked, driven, lashed. Or alternatively, that they have to be got together and worked on and their emotions put on the boil before they give. How shall we cure it, gentlemen? Well, if we have to descend to the money making, ma- fundraising techniques of the world, well, I suppose we must. But if we do, is it not an evidence that somewhere along the line, the meaning of our redemption has escaped the so-called Christian people? We can afford to be here as literal as we like. When God, by the blood of the Passover Lamb, brought Israel out of Egypt, and they got this wealth. He expected that some at least of it would be given to the making of his dwelling place. Knowing you were redeemed, at what cost were we redeemed? Its claim reaches to our last franc, dollar, mark, and pound. It's a slightly different emphasis again, isn't it? When you come to the last Passover that our Lord attended, according to John chapter eleven twelve following. For it is at that juncture in the Gospel of John, and particularly chapter twelve, that our Lord begins to indicate that what is about to happen at Jerusalem is a battle of the kings. Thinking of the plagues last night, one and another very helpfully contributed this concept of a power struggle. That is the side of the Passover that John presents to us, does he not? In John chapter twelve following. A struggle between the prince of this world and our blessed Lord. The prince of this world comes, he says to his disciples privately, and has nothing in me. It is John alone among the evangelists that repeats in his account of the crucifixion the Passover ordinance that no bone may be broken of the Passover sacrifice. John standing by the cross, watching, subsequently being guided by the Holy Spirit in his deliberations as to what of all those tremendous happenings he should record, chooses to find space for this little ordinance, no bone of him shall be broken. Because John is wishing to affirm to us that here is the Passover lamb. And at once, perhaps, we can see the flow of the thought. It was by the suffering of the Passover lamb Israel was protected as God's power moved through and smashed Pharaoh's domination. That will provoke long thought on our part. What is the connection between these two things? Our Lord standing on the street of Jerusalem, or was it in the temple court? John chapter twelve says, now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying by what death he should die. Die he did as the great Passover lamb. The question that confronts us is, why did he choose that tactic, if I may so call it, to overcome the domination of the prince of this world. It isn't the normal methods of power struggle among the nations, is it? You might have thought that the power struggle between God and his enemy, the devil, would come to its climax in some outburst of inimitable, unique, divine power. But according to this passage, the way the prince of this world was broken was through the sufferings of the Lamb of God. Why is that so? You'll say that's because God in Christ identified himself with the sufferings of the oppressed. And therefore the oppressed come to love him. And they may be true. There's a deeper side to it, isn't it? For at Passover in Exodus, God was not identified. God was executing his wrath. And it was the suffering of the Passover lamb that saved Israel from the wrath of God. How does that break the domination of the prince of Israel? Oh, gentlemen, there is an obvious answer, isn't there? Satan, with his devilish ingenuity, slandered God, brought our forefathers to believe the lie that God was against them. I hear you can't eat of any of these trees in this garden, said the serpent one breezy morning to Eve. Oh, that's an exaggeration, she said. They can eat of all the trees except one. Ah, well, said the devil, you know, that's typically God, isn't it, don't you think? Typical. Ha. Look, woman, he said, look how lovely this tree is. And God knows that in the day you ate it, you would rise, you would be as God. And as typical God, he wants to keep you down, my dear good woman. To spoil your enjoyment. In other words, God is against you. It was a devilishly cunning move because when they disobeyed God, there was a sense in which God had to be against them. How could God be for their sinning? How could God tell them their sinning didn't matter? How could an eventual paradise be built on the notion that it doesn't matter if people sin? And an evil conscience and the threat of God's necessary judgment would drive into many a heart a fear of God, a resentment of God, and push them further away from God until the very thought of God creates enmity in their hearts. What an enemy was Satan, and how should God overcome it? By coming with his big divine club, bashing Satan, and bashing all those that had been hitherto rebellious, forcing them to their knees by the exhibition of his power. Is that God? If I might ask you, without seeking an immediate reply, what broke the enmity in your life, gentlemen? What was it that made you want to obey God anyway? What broke the spell of that satanic liar and slanderer of God and set you free. It was through him who said that he had come to declare the name of God, and he never declared it more loudly than at the Lord's Passover, when he hung an apparently helpless lamb upon the tree, and God's wrath was poured out. But instead of falling upon us, it fell on Christ. It was there the battle was won, the struggle between the two great powers. And it is still that same message of the gospel, that is the power of God to salvation, to break the hold of the prince of this world upon the hearts and loyalties of men. See, however, in John's gospel, the sad irony of it all. Some theologians tell us that in the gospel by Matthew we have an inspired presentation of our Lord as king. In the gospel of John, per contrar, they say we have an inspired presentation of our Lord as the Son of God, and these categories are a help to some extent, aren't they? Actually, if you look them more closely, Matthew's account of the crucifixion chooses to concentrate on the deity of the Lord Jesus. He said he was the Son of God, and so forth. John chooses, per contrat, to concentrate not on our Lord's deity, but on his kingship. And Pilate, up to his tricks, as a final desperate move, brought him forth crowned with thorns and said to the people, behold your king. And to get rid of Jesus, the leaders of the nation replied, we have no king but Caesar. And rejecting the Passover lamb that could have set them free from bondage to his satanic majesty. They hugged their chains around them. Ah, but... well, what foolish men they were. They said, we have no king but Caesar. And Pilate, uh, handed over Christ to be crucified. Pilate had scarce nailed him to the tree. When the Jewish leaders saw that he'd written a title and put it on a cross, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews, and hurriedly, the exalted Sadducees came to Pilate and said, look here, sir. Now, if we may suggest, you see, don't write, uh, this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. I mean, write he said, I'm the king of the Jews. Pilate was fed up. He said, gentlemen, what I have written, I have written. I don't change my mind or my writing for anybody. You get in your place. They said they had no king but Caesar, let them accept what Caesar's representative proposes to do. So Pilate's writing wasn't changed. Interesting, says John, as now he proceeds to describe the Lamb of God nailed to a tree, God's king. Yes. But John sees the crucifixion in terms of four writing, does he not? First of all, there's the soldiers, says John, and they parted their his garments, and they came to his cloak, and there's only one cloak, so they they picked it up and they were going to tear it in four. And then they stopped. And they said, let's not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be. And that's they did. Why did they do it? Well, there was something about that cloak that was so beautiful. Yes, but says John, and behind it all, they knew nothing about it, but there was a writing that said they wouldn't rend his garment. And they didn't. And they changed their mind. And the writing was fulfilled. You say, that's a little thing, isn't it? Well, of course it is a little thing. But I'd have you know that the command of this king extends to the littlest things in the world. And he'll have his writing done, even though he hangs spite on a tree. And I haven't the time, and I mustn't yield to temptation to consider those other writings that were fulfilled, save this one, for we're talking about Passover. Then at last, the crucifixion was coming to its end, and the Jews wanted to celebrate their special religious festival the next day. They came to Pilate, and they asked that the legs of the victims might be broken, that they be taken down and buried, so that they might keep the Passover, you see, properly, the day of preparation. And the soldiers came with their hammers to the first one and break his legs. And they came with their hammers to break the legs of the other, and they break his legs. And the soldier lifted up his hammer to smash the knees of the central figure on the central cross. And he was about to do it when he stopped. Why? Well, the central figure was dead already. So he changed his mind. And John adds that the writing should be fulfilled, that a bone of him should not be broken. Then the soldier had another idea, so he got his spear and pierced his side, and outwith there came blood and water, and he knew not that another writing said that one day they should look on him whom they pierced. They didn't even crucify our Lord the way they intended to. He made them change their minds to do his writing. And at that point in history, John, who was standing by the cross, implores us to believe him. I saw it, and I bear record, and God knows I'm telling the truth. Why the emphasis? Because he was standing by that historic the eh eh act, that action, that happening. That is the beginning of redemption for all mankind from the greatest, the biggest slavery there ever was. And John is pointing to him and saying, see how the tiniest detail of God's plans announced in prototype in Israel's Passover are being fulfilled at their destined highest level and fulfilled to the very last detail, for he is king. And the one who's won your loyalty and obedience by his suffering is none other than the king of the whole universe and proposes to rule it from one end to the other. That's John's, some of John's emphases in his gospel. Let me remind you of his emphasis in the book of the Revelation. This I must do very speedily. The book of the Revelation opens with the letters to the seven churches, and after that proceeds to talk of something quite different. It is talking, uh, uh, of the heavenly scene. Chapter four, John is given to see the throne of God and, uh, and learns that it is the throne of the Creator. At the end of its description, John is- listens to the heavenly choirs as they sing the worthiness of the Creator to receive all the due revenues from his creation. Worthy art thou to receive the honor, the glory, and the power, because for thy will were all things made and were created. The universe has no other rationale, no raison d'être than to serve the will of the Creator. And the chaos that we see around us is because mankind and other powers have turned their own way. Just as he interposed in Pharaoh's day, and first he will introduce plagues, if you like, three series of warning judgments, plagues, as the seals are opened and the trumpets are blown and the bowls of God's wrath are outpoured, leading to the great day of judgment and the day of the Lord, when Christ shall come and take over the government of our world. If, in the last analysis, this world can only be brought back to serve its creator as it was originally intended. If in the last analysis it can only be brought back by the exhibition and use of God's power in judgment, then a question rises: who is not only able, but who has the moral worth to exercise that power? Any fool could press a button that would blow the planet to smithereens by some hydrogen bomb or other. It's not just who is able, it's who is morally worthy. The one who is found worthy to set loose the judgments that shall e- eventually lead to the bringing back of this planet to the submission of to God's government is, of course, the Lamb, and he's worthy in this. He was slain, yes, but listen to the second thing. He's redeemed us to God by his blood out of every people, kindred, tongue, and nation, and made us a kingdom of priests. And you're back with Exodus, aren't you? Purpose of redemption. When Israel were redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb out of Egypt, purpose of redemption was not merely to take them to their glorious inheritance. There was a prior thing. For, as we shall find in Movement five, when they came to Sinai, God came down with his proposal that they should be his peculiar possession, they should be to him a kingdom of priests. Men and women that have learned to obey God. Men and women that have learned to serve God as priests. Men and women who have learned to serve their fellow men and women, not in the spirit of godless competition, enslaving those who are inferior. They have learned to live as priests, putting God first, their fellow man second, and themselves last. There is no hope for a paradise except men and women can be not only forgiven and redeemed, but transformed. The mere exhibition of divine power cannot change a rebel into a priest. Who can provide suitable inhabitants? Who can provide suitable servants of God to take over the dominion of earth along Luqai and the wonder of our Lord is he's worthy to set loose the judgments that shall bring earth back because he is in process of having created, forgive the term, the civil service to take over the administration. And has not only redeemed us, but is in made us kingdom priests to our God. And now, having gone through those things, let me come now to the emphasis of the passage itself, the actual portion from Book of Exodus chapter twelve onwards. What I was attempting, gentlemen, in our first half of this session is to remind you of the different ways in which the New Testament takes up the Passover theme and applies it, and to point out how different writers, or the same writer in different parts of his work, will seize on different elements in the Passover story in order to press home the lessons that they wish to teach. I want to continue with that for the remaining minutes of our session, but to do it, I would like us to go back first to the actual text in Exodus in chapters twelve and thirteen. First of all, to make a quick rundown of the parts of the narrative that go up to make the whole. And then to notice the way the story is told, and the sense of proportions that the story exhibits, and how perhaps surprisingly, things get constantly repeated. Anyway, chapter twelve, and we notice that verses, uh, one to twenty are God's instructions to Moses and Aaron that they are to keep this Passover. So instructions about the selection of suitable lambs and what they are to do with them and their blood, and how they are to eat the lamb, and how they are to be clothed as they eat it, and then the explanation for all this coming subsequently. Verse twelve: for I will go through the land of Egypt, and I will slay, uh, the firstborn, smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. With the explanation that the blood upon the houses shall be a token to Israel, to give them security and peace of heart while these so- solemn events are proceeding, and also to be a token for God, so that when, as he says, I see the blood, I will pass over you, and there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you when you, I, when I smite the land of Egypt. And now, so early on, the Passover hasn't yet been celebrated, but the reminder that throughout the coming generations, this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast of the Lord. Throughout your generations, you shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever. And as if that were not enough, now notice the verses that follow, fifteen to twenty in my particular Bible, uh, that are given over to a description of this second feast, this feast of unleavened bread that they must keep. Even the first day you shall put away leaven out of your houses, and so on until the seventh day. And the demand pressed home by the solemn announcement that anybody who eats leaven until the seventh day, that soul should be cut off from Israel. Mark the proportion. Verses one to thirteen about preparing the Passover. Verses fourteen to twenty, seven verses in all, about the two memorials that are to be kept of this great event. Verse twenty one to twenty eight, Moses calls the elders of Israel and passes on the instructions to them. They are given in verses twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, and twenty four. But look now at twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, and twenty eight. half of it again devoted to telling the Israelites that when they come out of the land, they must keep this service, so that when your children shall say to you, what mean you by this service, you shall explain to them about the Lord's Passover and what he did. We notice in passing that the grievous service of the Egyptians, of which we read from chapter one onwards, is to be replaced by another service. A memorial, the keeping of which shall remind Israel of now the service they owe to God forever hereafter. Thirdly, from verse twenty nine to thirty six, the actual smiting of Egypt, and Israel now being urged to depart first by Pharaoh and then by the, uh, Egyptians as a whole, and, uh, they took their dough, says verse thirty four, because they went out in haste, and they did according to the word of Moses and took, spoiled the Egyptians, taking their silver and so forth. Then another shortest paragraph, thirty seven to forty two. That puts this, this is the historian putting this great event into its historical context. And then ending up by observing it is a night much to be observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. That is a night of the Lord to be much observed. We can't get away from this emphasis on the need to observe this night and keep it as a memorial forever. Forty three to fifty one, The ordinance of the Passover. No alien shall eat thereof. To eat it, you must be circumcised. So we come to a seeming climax, verse fifty one. it came to pass the selfsame day that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts. But we haven't finished yet. And the Lord spake unto Moses, uh, two more things, actually. First, he mentions in verse two the demand, sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast, it is mine, but doesn't explain why they should be so sanctified. Then goes on in verse three to talk about the, uh, uh, necessity of keeping the feast of unleavened bread, three to ten. And as that comes to its end, once more this question of memorial. Sign unto thee upon thy hand for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in thy mouth. And then verse eleven, reverting to what verse two was talking about, and it shall be when the Lord shall bring you into the land of the Canaanite, that he swear to his fathers to give it to you, and gives you all the ultimate blessings of your redemption. In other words, that you will set apart the firstborn to the Lord. And that occupies, uh, the text now down to verse sixteen, which ends with another reminder that these things have to be a memorial. It shall be a sign upon thine hand and for frontlets between thine eyes, for by the strength of the hand of the Lord, the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt. If, therefore, gentlemen, we were paying attention to the way the story is told and to the, uh, emphasis and the proportions that are given, four things would, among others, stand out in our mind. Beyond the actual night and the deliverance by blood, then we have the emphasis that it must be kept as a memorial every year thereafter, to remind successive generations how it was that Israel gained their freedom. Secondly, the emphasis upon the feast of unleavened bread. Thirdly, the emphasis given on the to the sanctification of the firstborn. And finally, we might notice the ordinance about circumcision. So that in any understanding of Passover and in any application of it to our hearts, we must pick up these things too, not only the fact of redemption through the blood of the sacrifice, but the duties that come upon us as a result of it. If Israel needed to be constantly reminded year by year and throughout the generations of what it was that delivered them from Egypt, may we not say by simple analogy that we Christians need constantly to be reminded of that self same thing? If we say, how could the Israelites so soon forget? We noticed on our first occasion how soon they did forget. For in chapter thirty two following, Israel demanded of Aaron that he made them gods, and Aaron made for them the golden calf, and as they danced around it, it was said in their hearing, these are thy gods that brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And they kept this thing as a hajj to the Lord, an utter perversion of the original hajj, uh, laid down in chapter twelve, and a complete forgetting of the true facts of what it was and who it was that brought them out of the land of Egypt. And if not, some argue, not a complete contradiction of those facts, yet a fluffing of the edges, a distortion of the narrative, an addition of all sorts of idolatrous concepts to all the original Passover ceremony. If then we say how s- how could Israel so soon forget, then surely we should first criticize ourselves as members of Christendom. And has not Christendom often forgotten what it was that brought us out of bondage? All sorts of other recipes are prescribed. Social engineering, education of the poor, political involvement, all kinds of things, good enough in themselves, what I would want to call the byproducts of redemption, important enough in themselves, but have often been substituted as the gospel of how men and women are to be delivered. Christendom needs to be reminded. Not for nothing did our Lord institute the memorial of himself. I know you will say to me that that too has very often been perverted. Well, so was the Passover perverted, as you'll see in Exodus thirty two. Been perverted by being turned into a sacrifice or being mixed in with magic. That is no reason for abandoning it, surely. We need the constant reminder. For me, at least, I want to say in humility and not in any boasting pride, if the Lord commanded Israel to keep the memorial, they were meant to keep it. If our blessed Lord has commanded us as Christian people that we shall keep his memorial, it is enough for us, surely, that he commanded it, and we shall do it. But then we come to the second feast that was allied to the first, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Notice how many times it is mentioned. And the regulation is such that you couldn't keep the Passover without keeping Feast of Unleavened Bread. Not a day intervened between the two festivals. You couldn't, so to speak, have one without continuing pronto with the other. You keep Feast of, uh, Passover, you must keep feast of unleavened bread as well. I shall not stay to deal with the history, uh, behind it, save only to notice that Exodus itself says that they actually did, uh, uh, eat unleavened bread when they came out because they came out in haste. But the requirement that they keep the festival of unleavened bread was given even before they came out. I want to proceed straight to the use that later rabbis and then the New Testament made of this festival. Later rabbis, as you know, quickly came to see symbol as a si- uh, leaven as a symbol of evil. Rightly or wrongly, you may protest that they were allegorizing or typologizing or any other thing that you may count as irregular, but they did it. And therefore, to this day, when our Jewish friends at the appropriate time of the year purge their houses of leaven, for the serious-minded, it isn't a little joke like Santa Claus at Christmas time or what have you. It is a serious religious festival when they make attempt to cleanse out of their homes this what for them is a symbol of corruption and evil. The apostles of our Lord Jesus do the same thing, do they not? And now let us look at the major passage that deals with that. It is one Corinthians chapter five. One Corinthians chapter five, where Paul says, it is actually reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is, as is not even among the Gentiles, that one of you has his father's wife, and you are puffed up and did not rather mourn, that he that had done this deed might be taken away from among you. Paul therefore directs that this offending Christian brother must be disciplined and put away, that is, excommunicated from this particular Christian church. Paul then, to urge upon them this duty of godly discipline in the church, quotes the Old Testament. Your glorying is not good, says he, verse six. Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For our Passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ. Wherefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And Paul is making the point that if we have partaken in the benefits of Christ's sacrifice as our Passover, there is a bounden duty upon us to keep our equivalent of the feast of unleavened bread. Now, that exhortation applies to us all as individuals, surely, that all of us who are redeemed by the blood of Christ must give diligence, not once a year, but every day of our life, to purge out the old leaven from our lives of malice and wickedness, and seek to be renewed, and, uh, to feed on, so to speak, the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The exhortation has application to us as individuals, and doubtless that in the first place. But the context in which Paul preaches this is clearly not simply our personal discipline of our private lives, but godly discipline, public godly discipline in the church. Now that has proved a very thorny problem, has it not? I must not attempt to speak without, uh, being aware of it. A thorny problem to Christian people down the centuries. One argument against it is, but it is impossible to operate. Why? Because our churches have to be mixed churches of believers and unbelievers. That's why. And pray don't tell my gracious queen what I'm about to say. But if the monarch of the land is the head of your church, and the monarch of the land, as in some centuries in England, has been a notoriously immoral man. People say, but it's impossible to exercise discipline. It is not for me, brethren, to comment further upon that. But I want to ask whether that is an adequate reason for failing to obey Holy Scripture. Some people say it isn't, it's not only impossible, but it's anti-scriptural. Did not our Lord tell us in his famous parable of the tares and wheat that we are not to attempt to root out the tares among us, but to let them grow to harvest. Would there not be a grievous danger of all kinds of witch hunts, inquisitions of every conceivable type that indeed have marred Christendom down the years, if we were to attempt to root out the tares from the, uh, professing church. Must we not therefore heed the exhortation to leave the tares there and let them grow along with the wheat until the harvest of the final judgment? Gentlemen, it seems to me to be quite a false interpretation of that parable. Certainly that parable cannot be set up as contradicting the plain commands of Paul here. In our Lord's interpretation of that parable, the field in which both wheat and tares were sown was not the church, but the world. The field, said our Lord, is the world, not the church. Secondly, those that were commissioned eventually to root out the tares were not elders, bishops, or others in Christian churches. They were the angels of God. The purpose of rooting out the tears was that they might be consigned to the everlasting burning. You will notice how very different is this passage on Christian discipline in the church here. The purpose of the excommunication of this particular man is not that he shall be consigned to the everlasting burnings, but the very opposite. He is to be delivered, says Paul, to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. This discipline is not to be looked upon as some terrible inquisition, some witch hunt designed for a man's destruction. It is designed for a man's salvation. There's a third reason why it must be done, doesn't it? And that is not merely the good of the man and his salvation, but the testimony of the gospel itself. It is commonly reported among you, actually reported among you, uh, reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles. Goodness me. Paul's writing to a Christian church in a Greek city, and I may tell you without being offensive that Greeks of the ancient world, they weren't too bothered about immorality, at least that of the lesser degrees. I mean, whatever Greek worried his head about fornication, I wonder. Uh, I will say, I mean, it was the normal thing, like Kellogg's cornflakes for your breakfast or whatever it is, chocolate if you are a German, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, it was, I mean, as Cicero the Roman put it, uh, as he was defending that old great Caelius in front of the, uh, Roman, uh, establishment, he said, gentlemen, of course I don't approve of, uh, sowing wild oaks myself, of course, I mean, of course not, no. I mean, but, uh, uh, those old antique moralists who used to fill the lecture benches in the decades gone by, you know, and urged a strict morality on the young, they'd gone out of fashion, said Cicero, hadn't they, surely? I mean, I believe it still, of course, but they've gone out of fashion. I mean, and now there's a public difference of attitude, we'll say, that sort of mild eye, sympathetic and understanding. And whoever said it was wrong for a young man to sow his wild oats? So long as he doesn't injure other people, I mean, it's OK. Uh, and this is a modern fashion, and you're not going to stop it, gentlemen, anyway. I mean, and suppose my, my, my, my, uh, friend, uh, Caelius has a little bit kicked over the traces. Well, perhaps later on he'll simmer down and he'll become a respectable citizen. It would be alarming, wouldn't it, if the Christian church had been allowed in Corinth to slither into copying the mores of the pagan world. And permissiveness of that kind were to invade the church. Oh, gentlemen. The practice of homosexuality and adultery not only falls short of the ideal. Is it not always sin? How shall we preach the gospel if the church permits, not only in its congregation, but in its ministers, perversions? The perversion that they were allowing in the church at Corinth and even glorying over it because presumably their, their presumed liberty in Christ was morality so stark that even your old Greek was scandalized, and he did take some scandalizing. What would be the use of the Christian church in Corinth publicly preaching that men and women need to be saved? Saved, said the Greek. What is saved. Only to find that the kind of behavior the church allowed was this kind of immorality. You might as well pack up preaching. Surely, gentlemen, we must not so undercut the evangelist, nor so undercut and pervert the gospel of Jesus, as to say that you can have forgiveness, be a member of a Christian church, and carry on in blatant immorality as before. But then it is no, not in harshness, is it? For all of us are sinners. And Paul says that this man must be delivered for Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved. What does he mean by flesh? He cannot mean, can he, flesh in the theological sense. I don't know that Satan is in business of destroying our bad tendencies towards sin. He's in business to promote them. The opposition flesh spirit suggests that what Paul is talking about is physical discipline. That the protective surround of the church that God puts as a hedge about his people be removed, and Satan given permission to attack a man, as Satan attacked Job, though he was not a sinner of this sort. Let me say at once that God in his wisdom allows Satan to attack his people, not always because they've been engaged in gross sin, Job hadn't been, but to purify their faith. But on this occasion, Satan to be allowed to attack the believer and bring him into such physical suffering. Why? Well, my good friends, if he is a believer, but he has it in his head that he can go on sinning in this manner, and that is quite consistent with being a Christian. Oh, is it not Christian love for God eventually to show him that that notion is so false that he must be stopped? The idea that you can carry on sinning like that, unrepentantly, and still be a believer, that is false. Constant practice would begin to throw doubt on the question of whether the man is truly a believer at all. And if it requires extreme discipline to wake him up to that fact and to bring him to make account with himself and to ask himself, where do I stand in this great matter of salvation? Well, then the discipline would be worthwhile. Man has an eternal spirit. Oh, if God needs to discipline him, then God will do it, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. I bid us notice then the proportions of the Passover record in the Old Testament. It is so easy to preach redemption through the blood of Christ and use Passover as an illustration of it, and quite rightly so, but then to fail to implement the implications that are in scripture inseparable from it. Israel were told that they must give heed, uh, to participate in the Passover thereafter down the centuries, they must be circumcised. We have not time to go into all the many significances that are attached to that ordinance and that idea, save this surely at the first, that if you would be part of, uh, uh, no ex- experience redemption there in Egypt, you must be prepared to stand as a member of the people of God and take the covenant side. So is it still. It is not false separation, but true biblical separation. Redemption calls us out from the world to become part of the people of God. It will then send us back in the world to evangelize, but it will insist that the redeemed are part of the people of God and take the covenant side. And finally, there is this matter of the firstborn. In my analysis, that you may well not agree with, but in my analysis of the contents of this part of Exodus, the Passover story starts in chapter eleven, where God immediately mentions this matter of the firstborn. The Passover record ends with it. The Israelites were forever after to sanctify the firstborn and hand them over to God. Humans could be redeemed from that lifelong service to God in Israel. But the logic of it was clear enough. Says God, I demand the firstborn consecrated to me entirely on this ground that on the night of Passover I passed through Egypt and smote the firstborn. Israel's firstborn survived, but survived solely because they were covered by the death of the Passover lamb. Because their lives were bought for them by the sacrifice of the blood of that lamb. Now I demand those lives, says God. You must consecrate them to me. And if a firstborn objected, I suppose the argument would be, well, if it hadn't been for God's part of the land, you wouldn't have a life to, to have anyway. Well, we pass immediately to our own situation from the Old Testament to the New. The lasting implication of redemption is surely this, that all who are redeemed must be consecrated to the Lord. If in chapter five of First Corinthians, Paul makes reference to the feast of unleavened bread, at the end of chapter six when he recurs to this matter of immorality, he says, know you not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that you are not your own? You were bought with a price. And how may I protest? How would I urge my case before God that I ought to be allowed my freedom and to more width and breadth to do as I please? For what argument could I bring against God's great argument that if one died for all, then all died. What should I say to God if he said, but Gooding, Gooding, Gooding, you don't want to serve me, but Gooding, pray consider, were it not for the death of my son in your place, you would have no life to lead anyway. If one died for all, then all died, that they which live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. As we ponder that particular implication of redemption, surely the emotion that surges round our hearts as we remember God's love will be a potent motivation to yielding our lives a sacrifice for Christ. But gentlemen, emotion might not be enough. We are asked to bring logic to bear upon the situation. The love of Christ constrains me, says Paul, speaking of that burning fire of the love of Christ. The love of Christ constrains me, having judged this. That is, Paul brought not just emotion, he brought logic to bear upon the situation. God grant that our love for the Savior shall induce in us that rigorous logic, that when we are tempted to live selfish lives, that very logic calls us back. He died for me. Without him, I had no life to live. How shall I do anything but live for him? And if logic doesn't suffice, then pray in the last analysis, let us hear the voice of morality. You are not your own. You are bought with a price. In the English language, there are a number of words that describe what it is a person does when they take something that is not their own, without permission, and misappropriate it to their own use. None of the words in English is pleasant. Gentlemen, to take what God has bought without his permission and misappropriate it to our selfish living offends against the basic morality of redemption. The Lord speak to our hearts as we need to hear it, and give us courage to obey his word in our situations, both individual and ecclesiastical.