This Day Will Be A Permanent Memorial -- Exodus 12:14

“Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.”
 

Before we begin deliberations on this passage, let me state that a friend of mine provided me with an interesting verse about the question we raised concerning the possibility of non-Israelites escaping Egypt in the Exodus. Deuteronomy 29:11 says that there were “alien” people within their camps.  Albeit we cannot say for certain whether they came from Egypt or joined them along the way in the wilderness, Exodus 12:19 which we will study shortly, also uses that word implying that there were ‘aliens’ among the Hebrews from the start.  All this gives us more data for our reflection.  Finally, some think the word “rabble” in Numbers 11:24 that we will come to later or the reference to a “mixed multitude” later in this chapter that we are studying here (Exodus 12) is a reference to non-Israelites.  However, it is also possible it is simply a reference to the different types of people from within the Hebrew ranks.  The point being, we do not know.

Now let us return to Exodus 12:14.  God wanted this day, this Passover feast and night, to be a memorial to all His children.  He wanted it celebrated as a “feast”.  It was to be a permanent celebration.  And it was to be celebrated by all the generations that came after those that left Egypt during the Exodus.

I started thinking about my celebration of the Passover and Easter.  First of all, I consider myself as a Christian to be a “spiritual son” of Abraham (see Galatians 3:7).  Secondly, I was born in Greece and even after coming to Canada as a child, we continued celebrating the major tradition of Greeks having fresh lamb at Easter time.  It seems, however, that over the years, for one reason or another, Christians seem to have moved away from the celebration of the Passover or Easter meal celebration.  It may be that Christmas has become a bigger holiday in North America and taken over.  It may also be that more Christians are failing to recognize their spiritual roots with Abraham, Moses, and the Jews.  Sadly to say, it may also be as one brother told me recently after I had taught on our connection with Israel, that some of us still have some anti-Semitic tendencies.  Perhaps it is time to rethink how we ourselves celebrate Easter.

I note two very strong verbs in this verse.  First, this day “will be” a memorial.  Secondly, “you shall celebrate it”.  No doubt, many can argue that this is all meant for the Jews, and not for us today.  Today we have our Communion Supper and we celebrate that regularly – some annually, some monthly, some weekly because Jesus said “when-so-ever you do it, do it in remembrance of Me.”  He did not give us a command as to when to do it.  We have the freedom to choose the frequency.  And perhaps they that argue that what is talked about here in Exodus 12 is only meant for the Jews, are right.

But let us take a little different perspective.  It may be perfectly all right for us today to neglect this feast celebration God commanded of the Hebrews exiting Egypt three thousand years ago.  But would it be wrong to actually celebrate?  I believe not.  Let me explain.

First, the God of Moses and Aaron is the same God to whom you and I belong.  And our God does not change.  If He wanted that for His children then, but may not demand it of us now – is that a reason for us to neglect following it?  I think not.  You see, God had a purpose for demanding it of His children.  That purpose may well have to do with the idea that we are mere mortals who tend to forget, tend to stray, from remembering what God has done and is doing for us.  We need these celebrations to help remember our history, or in our case, the history of our “spiritual ancestors”.

Secondly, I believe we are indeed part of the “generations” of those very people, albeit “spiritual generations”.  We were grafted into those Jewish roots, the roots of the Children of Israel. (Romans 11:17-21)

Thirdly, I cannot help but believe that when we celebrate the Passover, or Easter in our case, appropriately “with a feast” and with thanksgiving, we make God glad.  This is no different than when a son who has gone to the big city to get educated and become someone in his own mind, returns to his parents’ village and sees his mom and dad stomping on grapes to make wine.  He takes his shoes off, rolls up his pants, washes his feet, and joins in.  His parents are ecstatic.  It is human nature to have your children, even though they have learned new ways to do things, join you in your ways.  And I believe God has a bit of that desire too, if we have it.  After all, we were created in His image.

As an aside, you may wish to take some time to learn about the symbolism in the way the Jewish Passover Meal is celebrated.  You can simply Google that on the Internet.  It is well worth it.

There is a phrase worth noting in this verse.  It is “to the Lord.”  Our celebration of this event is to be feast “to the Lord.”  It is for His honor, not for ours.  Can we really neglect it?  And you will note that it was important enough to God to make it an “ordinance” --  a decree, rule, order, law, edict, dictum, etc.  Get the picture? 

So how do you celebrate Easter?   I know for one, I’ll be doing it a little different come next year.  Maybe I can even talk my daughter or son-in-law into doing at least a leg of lamb on the barbecue.  And as I eat it a little of it with family and friends, I will remember my spiritual ancestors and how they ate on their last night in Egypt.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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Instructions on How To Use the Blood and How To Eat the Passover Lamb -- Exodus 12:7-11

“Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.  And they shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails.  And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.  Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste – it is the Lord’s Passover.”
 

So the Israelites have been told what they need to do in advance to prepare for that night of physical deliverance and salvation.  Now God proceeds to tell them (through Moses) on what exactly they are to do with the blood of the lamb they kill in each household and how to eat it the night of the actual deliverance.  I think the first thing to consider here if we have never done so before is the idea that God cares about how we do things.  He is a God of detail.  We need to be careful when we casually say, “Oh God does not care about the details, only the end result.”  Well, this section of Scripture clearly points to the contrary.  When it comes to obedience and salvation, God cares about the details.  It’s His Plan of Salvation.  It does not belong to the Israelites, or Moses, or you, or me.  We tend to forget that.  We have access to it, but it is His plan, not ours.

The first bit of instruction in this regard is that the Israelites are to take some of the blood from the slain lamb and put it on the two vertical doorposts – left and right frames which hold the door of their dwelling in place, and also on the lintel – the horizontal piece at the top which connects to the two vertical doorposts.  It is important to note that the dwelling that matters is the one in which they will be partaking of the lamb together as a family or household, not just any of their buildings.  This is very symbolic in the sense that the family inside that dwelling, celebrating their deliverance, will be “covered by the blood of the lamb” sprinkled on the doorposts.

The next thing we note is that no blood is to be put on the threshold of the frame – the horizontal part at the bottom which connects to the two vertical doorposts and on which people trod on when entering or leaving a room through that door.  Commentator Chuck Smith suggests that this is because the blood of this lamb is actually symbolic of the blood of Jesus Christ, which is never to be trampled under foot.  We also need to remember that while some of the Israelites may have lived in actual buildings, others may well have still dwelt in tents. Certainly had any moved closer to the center of the activity during those days, they would have lived in more temporary housing which would have meant tents.

The purpose for this sprinkling of blood on the doorposts was to ensure the ‘destroying angel’ that was going to go through Egypt that night would distinguish their homes from those of the Egyptians.  It was a way of protecting and covering those inside the home, those inside with a family that were part of God’s people, His children.  It seems to be the case that somehow God’s own people to be distinguished from those that are not His.  This will also be the case now and in the end days.  For starters, we need to have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Then God tells the Israelites how He wants them to prepare the lamb for consumption.  It had to be roasted on a fire.  It was to be enjoyed with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  Did these detailed instructions matter?  I believe they did.  The unleavened bread was symbolic of the fact that they had to take this meal in haste and had no time to allow the bread to rise.  It was the bread of ‘affliction’.  The bitter herbs were symbolic of the ‘bitterness of Egyptian slavery’.  Those were their Old Testament meanings.  However, they also have New Testament meanings as well.  There’s an excellent article on the Internet that goes into this in a very creative and informative way.  You can check it out here: http://eatingedenblog.blogspot.ca/2012/04/passover-food-lamb-unleavened-bread.html .

The Israelites were also not to eat any of the meat raw or even boiled in water.  Many have tried to explain this instruction – both in a physical sense and in a symbolic one.  You can research that further on the Internet by searching for the following – {"commentary"+"exodus 12:9"} exactly as shown including quotation marks but excluding the parenthesis, on Google.  What I believe the emphasis here is to be is that God wanted this meal prepared in a way that was special as the Israelites most commonly boiled their meat and other dishes.  This was a special ceremony, one that was about salvation.  It was also about a new beginning, and a new calendar.  Secondly, it was to be prepared whole, not in parts.  That preparation was to include the head, the legs and the entrails – innards or internal organs of the animal.

[I must admit one of the memories I have of growing up in a Greek home, was the fact that my mom cooked the entrails of the various meat sources we prepared for meals.  There is nothing like a tasty liver or even a heart of a chicken.  Indulge me for a moment though. Recently I tried to reproduce a day from my youth by buying some fresh smelts at the fish market and deep-frying them.  They were delicious.  My only regret was that the fishmonger, to sell more fish to his North American clientele, had chopped their heads off.  But I digress.]

In fact, if this meal were grouped with the other sacrifices – one would note that all of them except this one involved only parts of the animal, not the whole of the animal.  For this one, God wanted the whole of the animal prepared in this special way.  The parallelism to the preparation of Christ and all his death meant for our salvation is evident.

And then God says “You are to eat it all tonight; don’t leave anything until the morning.”  There are several possibilities for this.  The first being that they needed to eat well this night because their next meal would not be a while as the journey out of Egypt that would follow would be long.  The second is that God wanted them to be totally dependent on Him for their daily needs.  This is, of course, a theme that God wants to drive home to His children, throughout the Bible.  From Genesis to Revelations we see this requirement to be totally dependent on Him if we are to have total access to His best blessings.  Another possibility may be that this meal was to be a “complete” act.  They were not to enter it half-heartedly or put in modern terms, just to “play with their food” leaving much of it uneaten.  And even though God gives that instruction, He knows them well enough to know that some will not comply.  And He gives them another chance, in the morning, to obey Him by then burning anything left over in a fire.  What an amazing and understanding God.

And then God gave them the final instructions in this regard; instructions as to how the Israelites should dress and be equipped when eating this meal.  They had to be fully dressed for action – no hanging around in their sleepwear or less.  And they had to be wearing their sandals for when the time came, they had to rush out the door.  They had to have their staffs in their hands ready to tackle the difficulties of the road and to provide their bodies the support needed, as they tired.  This was going to be no doubt an “eat and run” event.  It reminds me of the meals that some children have in the summertime when they know their friends are waiting outside to play.

Much can be said about the “eat it in haste” part but suffice it to say, that this was a meal with a purpose.  It was the “Lord’s Passover” and whether eaten in Egypt that night, eaten by Christ’s Disciples about a thousand years later, or partaken of by us today – it is a meal that has meaning – in all cases pointing to a time when our “salvation is near”.  For us, it points to a time when Christ will return and we will be redeemed for eternity because of what He did for us on the cross.  The blood had been sprinkled on the doorposts of the homes of the Israelites.  The Son of God has shed His blood for us on the cross of Calvary.  Our sins can be forgiven; we can be sure of our salvation.  I pray that is so with you.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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The Israelites’ Need for a Lamb -- Exodus 12:1-6

Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.  Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.  Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.  Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.  And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.’”
 

The climatic event of the story of the Exodus had been shared with Moses.  It was going to happen, but at a significant cost to the Egyptians.  And the Israelites themselves had to follow strict instructions.  God gives Moses (and thus the Israelites) those instructions while they are still in the land of their bondage.  It seems we are most ready to accept God’s way of salvation when we are embroiled in slavery and suffering.

And, through Moses, God then tells the children of Israel that the month they are about to enter “shall be the beginning of months for you”.  In essence what God is about to do for them is so significant that they need to have a whole new calendar going forward.  Up to this point, their years started around the beginning of September on our calendar.  From then on, their very continued existence would be measured from their freedom from bondage and slavery and their mighty delivery. Thus their year was now to begin around the middle of March on our calendar.  This was the origin of what is now known as the Jewish Religious Calendar and still observed today.  So the first month of this new calendar will be at the time of the Passover and the subsequent Exodus from Egypt that followed it at that time.  It is called “Nisan”.  You can learn more about this topic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar .  The Jewish Civic Calendar year actually begins in and around the Gentile month of September while Nisan is closer to our mid-March to mid-April period of the year.  What is also interesting is that the Israelites got a new calendar when they were being rescued from bondage and the modern world got a new calendar based on the arrival on earth of the King of Kings Who would free us from the judgment and punishment our sins brought upon us.  The parallelism here is striking.

Moses was to speak to “all” the congregation or people of Israel and give them detailed instructions – right down to the date of the month when they were to act.  It is possible that as the plagues occurred the people were becoming more and more cohesive.  God said on the tenth day of what was to become known as the month of Nisan, each household was to get a hold of a lamb and let it actually dwell with the family for four days, so they could identify with it as part of their household, but more importantly that it be separated from the rest of the flock.  Some commentators align the four days to be representative of the time Jesus was taken and then held for interrogations before being crucified about one thousand years later.

No household could be without a lamb, nor could they count on using a lamb of their neighbor’s unless – and I find this most interesting – unless a household was too small to have its own lamb.  How small is small?  Well, historians like Josephus lead us to believe that each lamb normally would be sufficient for as few as ten people.  So a household that had fewer family members than ten was required to partner with another household in the same boat.  What amazes me is why God would even bother with that kind of instruction or approach to the matter?  Surely there were enough lambs around for every family, regardless of how small it was.  I am almost tempted to say that God was indeed a great conservationist.  I will not yield to such temptation seriously.  My better judgment suggests that perhaps God wanted in some small way to model even as early as the Exodus our dependence on not only Him, but also on each other.  I think today of how so many Christians and even Christian leaders want to do their own thing.  They want to have their own church, their own mission – and never get together with others laboring in the same fields as they do, in their own communities.  Sometimes there are good reasons why a group must separate from another large group and go it alone.  Sometimes new locations where the Gospel is to be preached make it necessary.   But woe to anyone who simply wants to be a “big frog” in a “small pond” and he/she allows their ego to say, “I’m going it alone.”  No, God wants us to worship in community and His Son is head of the Whole Body.

God instructs further that the lamb, henceforth known by us as the Passover Lamb (which later also becomes a title assigned to our Lord Jesus Christ), should be unblemished, a male, and one year old.  Commentators have suggested that the slightest blemish would make the lamb unsuitable for the Passover meal.  This is clearly a ‘type’ of Christ Who indeed was without sin when He was sacrificed for us.  No one else would do; no one else would be sufficient to pay for your sin and mine.  In addition, some think the reference to the lamb’s age was a foretelling that Christ would be in the prime of His life when He was killed on the cross.  It could also be a reference to this lamb’s, and also to the Holy Lamb’s, innocence.

On the other hand, the lamb the Israelites could use could either come from the sheepfold or from the herd of goats.  How do we explain that?  The Hebrew word for ‘lamb’ is ‘seh’ and is quite a neutral word according to translators.   Strong’s Dictionary says it is the word for a young sheep or a young goat.  The Israelites did not distinguish between goats and sheep when it came to the newborns.  The word literally means “head of (small) stock”.  If you search the Internet, you will find, sadly perhaps, many sites addressing the issue of whether our Passover Lamb (Christ) was indeed a Passover Goat symbolically, often citing this passage as the source of the issue.  We will leave that to others to stumble over.

Whatever the young animal was, it was supposed to be kept by the household until the 14^th day of the month of Nisan.  And then all those lambs were to be killed simultaneously at twilight.  One can see the further parallelism in foretelling Christ’s death here as well.  They were to kill the lamb late in the afternoon as a sacrifice.  But it was not a sacrifice in the formal sense as it was not to be offered upon the altar.  It was simply to be viewed, as Matthew Henry tells us, “as a religious ceremony, acknowledging God’s goodness to them, not only in preserving them from, but in delivering them by, the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians.”  This was the very late afternoon of the night in which they were to become free.

Many of us have been similarly delivered.  Maybe not from Egypt and slavery, but delivered from the bondage of our sin.  I wonder how often we celebrate that fact and acknowledge God’s goodness to us.  For those of us not yet delivered, I wonder if it is time for you to “get yourself a Lamb”.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

________________________________________________________________________

 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.