This day is full with some of the fullest events of the New Testament.  Do we really need to bother with the Old Testament today?  Jesus is the New Testament!  What can the Old Testament tell us?  Beloved, the Old Testament everywhere is telling us about Jesus, about what God is doing and intends to do for His people.  His people are those who love Him and do His will.  His people are those whose lives are demonstrating Jesus Christ.

That’s a problem, because, much as we want to demonstrate Jesus, to ourselves and others, we’re not remarkably good at it.  God offers grace and mercy, daily, abundantly!  We rightly remind ourselves that this grace and mercy—this love God has for us—covers us completely.  And we know we’re not remarkably good at helping others to see Jesus.  We sometimes obscure him rather than make him clearer!  Our actions and our lack of action obscure him.  What we say and fail to say obscure him.  What to do?!  We can get to feeling sort of confused and down.  This evening, let God show you what He is doing about it.

The Passover is probably the pre-eminent Jewish holy festival: the festival of freedom, of liberation.  God breaks the chains of slavery, leading His people out onto the journey to the Promised Land; God overcomes the enemy too strong for us: hardened hearts, sullen, angry devotion to the old gods, serving mankind’s fallen ways, the lust and the blood.

When God delivers His people, He also utterly defeats the old gods—smashed, broken, demolished, pulverized.  Don’t think for a moment that I have been saying or suggesting that there are in reality gods other than our God.  Our God is the only God and there is no other.  There are also powerful forces at work in the depths of unredeemed humanity, forces that even we redeemed can feel stirring up trouble in our hearts.  The lust and the blood—indulgence of the flesh, indulgence in violence—the rough taking, consuming, abusing because one has the ability to do it.  And the inclination.  Sometimes, it seems as if inclination has people in its grip.  People are not helpless, but we can certainly behave that way.  We can get to feeling chained, and we don’t know what to do about it.

God knows what to do about it, and He does it.

God tells Moses and Aaron that the first month for them begins now (12:2): this Passover event marks the start.  Now, the slavery and suffering begins to end; now begins freedom and the journey to freedom, fullness of blessedness.  God is doing a new thing.  It is glorious and holy—and terrifying—beyond imagination.  It begins with a lamb.  It begins with a body and blood.  It begins with a meal, a covenant meal: momentous, holy, wonderful, effective.

Note how God places the responsibility for the meal upon the man (12:3).  Men, you and I know, can see, that we have long abdicated our place in leading the faith of the family.  We’ve been glad to!  Church?  Boring!  Let the children, grandmas, and soft wimps have it.  The women are very able leaders, God-gifted; they bless us beyond all telling.  Thank you, sisters!  And would we not all of us be blessed still more, if the men once more took up God’s call to faith leadership in their families?  That begins not only at the dinner table or the bedside of your child—or grandchildren.  It also begins, men, by being the ones to bring your family to church on Sunday.  Christ challenges us to become more!  God has made us creators.  What are we creating for Him?  Those who most need to hear and feel this, sadly, aren’t here.  Lord, call them, bring them!

Here, our meal is shared in the family of faith; there is always enough.  Oh, the bite of bread and the sip of juice (or wine, also, tonight) is small, I know: the blessing is not in the quantity but the quality.  The blessing also, I think, is in the company we share here this evening.  God bless you for desiring to be here; by grace, you are going the extra mile.

The covenant meal.  No covenant without blood.  Even if you’ve hunted often, and cleaned what you’ve killed, the blood of an animal is not a pleasant thing.  It’s not supposed to be.  Native Americans rightly understood what the ancient Hebrews also understood: the blood is the life; to shed the blood is to tread upon holy ground.  Only with God’s permission, with reverent thanks to God, should we ever contemplate taking life—think about that the next time you’re buying steak, some drumsticks, burger patties, or catfish.

Visualize with me, just for a moment, that scene Moses calls the “slaughter at twilight” (12:6).  As darkness comes over the earth, each father, each husband, is commanded to “take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat” (12:7).  Why the door frame?  The way in and the way out.  The blood of the lamb is on the way in.  The blood of the lamb is on the way out.  Blood is our way out.  Blood is our way in.  Consider this—it isn’t our blood.  By the grace and mercy of God, it’s not our blood.  By the blood, through the blood, under the blood, God opens the way for us.  There had been no way.  The slavery was all there was, but God took pity.

God has a peculiar notion of how His people are to eat this holy, wonderful, deep, joyous covenant meal under the blood of the lamb.  “This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand.  Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover” (12:11).  My mother-in-law, a retired teacher with decades of rushed, gobbled lunches, hates to feel hurried at mealtime—where’s the enjoyment?!  For families on the go these days, it can seem like every meal is a rushed meal.  All those Expeditions, Hyundais, Hondas, and Highlanders, littered with old French fries, straw wrappers, and cloudy, crumpled Ziploc bags filled with crushed something.  We’re not here to lounge.  Eat prepared to go, prepared to journey, because there is a journey we must make: at the end is the Promised Land.  Where there was no way, God makes the way.  The way is by the blood, by the lamb.  Here, we are invited to be participants and partakers in this gracious meal, to take part.  God invites us, wants us to know Him.  Know me better, He says to us, here.

We must strengthen, fortify ourselves for our journey.  Before Elijah sets out for the place of refuge, the angel of the Lord instructs him to eat (1 Kings 19).  Here is food that is just right for the journey, exactly what God knows we need.

On that eve of freedom, God tells His people He will do one other, staggering thing: “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.  I am the Lord” (12:12).  Must it be so, Lord?  As for all the old, false gods, yes, Lord, judge them, topple them.  Shatter their old hold on these thwarted hearts.  But what of those who have placed their trust in those old, false gods?  What of those who have given a lifetime of service to falsehoods?  Must they perish, too?  Neither I nor you have walked with entire integrity.

We spend so little time in the Old Testament.  God is quite clear: the firstborn always belongs to Him—from Him, for Him.  We cannot with impunity withhold what belongs to God, who created the life, granted conception, who permitted a healthy pregnancy without complication, a successful delivery, and a complete, thriving firstborn—the hope, the promise, the love!  And has He been acknowledged, honored, and served?  Fathers, have you lifted your child to God?  Has God been loved, given His due?  Look around, out there, and tell me.  Look around, Moses.  Look around, pharaoh.  God has always, consistently, been quite clear: failure to serve Him, honor Him, thank Him, love Him, know Him, can only result in grief.

Now is the time to serve the Lord, know the Lord.  Now is the time to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.  Those who, hearing, refuse to hear, who, seeing, refuse to see, are left with no excuse, no alibi.  All the defense they can offer will be their hard, stubborn hearts, their stony indifference and contempt.  We saw it, heard all of that, there at the cross: the jeers, insults, and taunts.  Christians see, hear, and feel it all around us, still.  And God will claim His own and use us as He sees fit for His purposes.  Every created thing and every created one belongs to Him, and always has.

The death of the firstborn—terrible, horrible, unconscionable!  My God would never!  In outrage and disbelief, we might well blame God and feel He doesn’t know the first thing about love and has no sensitivity or compassion.  Why would anyone even want to contemplate worshiping such a God?  The death of the firstborn—as though God knew nothing of it, how it feels, what it means.  We would not devote ourselves to Him; He sacrifices His own for us.

“The blood will be a sign for you [. . . ] when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (12:13).  That blood—whose blood?—is our safety in the Day of the Lord.  The lamb we share—provided by whom?—is our safety in the Day of the Lord.  Here is freedom; here is joy; here is Life, sure and secure.  Don’t think God cruel.  Consider the cost.  He holds out his hands for you; his hands are not empty.  Come, receive; be filled; be broken; be restored.