Exodus 12:43-51

Familiar is easier than new. Doing things we’ve done a hundred times is easier than doing something for the first time. If you work on a computer for a living, you know your way around the keyboard, and typing out an email takes a few seconds. If you have never even turned a computer on, trying to figure out sending an email might take hours, because you don’t usually do this. Baking works the same way. Some of us have baked hundreds of cakes and could do it with our eyes shut. Some of us don’t know the difference between baking powder and baking soda, and spend a lot of time glancing back between the measuring cup and the cook book. And we don’t usually like to do new things. We don’t like to learn new behaviors. We won’t, unless we really need to. We’ll avoid, unless someone kind of pushes us to try new things. We don’t want to, because the familiar is easier than the new. It takes energy, it takes concentration, it takes strength, to do new things.

In our walk with Jesus, we are more familiar with sin than we are with purity. We are more comfortable with doing what we want than doing what God wants. Greed is easier than gratitude. Pride is easier than humility. Grudges are easier than forgiving. And so when we want to be grateful, when we try to be humble, when we know we must forgive, it takes work. It’s not our default. It doesn’t come naturally. We need energy, we need strength to do the new, and to leave the old.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been buried with Christ, we’ve risen with Him, and we live His life. Our old nature is dead, Jesus’ nature is alive in us, and it shows. And all of this is seen and confirmed through the sacrament of baptism. We have been buried with Christ through baptism, and made alive in Him.

With our death and resurrection, with Jesus’ life in us, comes new behavior. With Jesus in us, we are now able to be grateful and forgive and be humble. But these new behaviors take energy. The new is harder than the familiar, the old, the sin. And just like we have the sacrament of baptism that buries us with Jesus, we have the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper that gives us the strength, the energy, to do what doesn’t come naturally, to do the new, to live like Jesus. For the next two weeks, we’re going to see our need for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, how if we’re not eating and drinking Jesus body and blood, we won’t have the energy to live the new life.

Jesus gave us the sacrament, the gift of the Lord’s Supper. But when Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper, He was remembering and observing the feast of Passover. He and His disciples were looking back and remembering how God, in a powerful way, brought people out of sin and death into life. Our Lord’s Supper today is the new remembering of that miracle God does in us, saving us from death and giving us eternal life.

So, for us to understand and recognize the Lord’s Supper, we have to have a good understanding of the Passover. And the Lord explains this in Exodus 12. Hours before verse 43, just hours before, every firstborn child in the whole land of Egypt had died at the hand of the Lord. After 430 years of brutal slavery, of genocide of the Hebrew people, the Israelites were being freed. This is what we hear in the ten commandments:

Pharaoh’s grip on God’s people has finally been ripped open. After 9 plagues, 9 miraculous attacks against Egypt, the final bomb is dropped. The deaths of every firstborn is enough to free the people of God from captivity.

But even as they are released, even as they are freed from captivity, the Lord is giving regulations. Sometimes, we think of all the regulations that God gave in the Old Testament, about the exact kind of cow and sheep that were supposed to be sacrificed, all the rules in Leviticus. And at first glance, this seems like a strange time to be giving out rules. In our thinking, we would just be wanting to get out of there. Let’s just leave, let’s just get away from Egypt, and then we can sit down and figure out all the rules that we’ll need to live by.

But this isn’t what God is thinking. He’s freeing them from captivity, but He wants them to stay free. He’s bringing them out of the land of slavery, but the last thing He wants to do is to lead them to another land of slavery. So, God establishes the Passover. A regular reminder of God freeing His people from slavery. A regular reminder to not go back to slavery

But along with the Passover, there’s something else. Verse 43:

Circumcision was the mark, the badge, the sign of being in God’s nation, one of God’s people, His family. I don’t want to be too graphic here, but God chose circumcision as this sign to portray a cutting away of sin, a removal of sin from a person. There is blood involved, and blood means life and death. All wrapped up in circumcision is the dying of a person, in order to live in God’s family. If you weren’t circumcised, if you hadn’t "died", then you couldn’t be part of God’s family, you couldn’t live. No death, no life. No blood, no freedom.

But if you’ve "died", if you’ve received that mark, that sign, then remember it. Be fed, be strengthened, because it takes energy to live in the freedom. The old life, the life of captivity, of slavery, that will seem easier. It will seem normal. We will want to go back. Eating the Passover supper gives the strength we need to live in the new, to do the unfamiliar, to be free, when being free seems frightening and difficult.

They took a lamb, a perfect lamb, a lamb without any blemish, without defect. They took this lamb, and they killed it. They took the blood of the lamb and they painted their doorframe with the blood. They took the lamb, and they roasted the lamb, and they ate the lamb. And the meat of the lamb gave them strength for this frightening, exciting night. Because they ate the lamb, they had the energy they needed to walk out that night and leave slavery. They had the strength to leave the familiar and go to the new, because they ate the Passover meal.

Eating the Passover supper was mandatory. Verse 47:

This was necessary. They had to be strengthened. God didn’t allow for anyone to say, "Oh, I can make it. I don’t need to eat the lamb. I’ll just grab a snack on the way. It probably won’t be that bad anyway. I mean, we’re just going for a walk."

No, God knew better. He knew that unless they ate this meal, they wouldn’t make it. Unless they remembered His miraculous, powerful delivery, they would want to go back. We see this just two chapters later. The people have made it out of Egypt, but the army of Egypt is coming after them, to take them back. They’re caught between the Red Sea and the greatest army in the world. And the people want to go back. This trusting in God business is hard. It’s much easier to get back to brick making, then to think that God is somehow going to get them out of this jam.

The people needed strength to trust. They would need more strength to trust, when water ran low, and food couldn’t be found. So God gave them the meal, the reminder, the confirmation of His power and His love and His ability to get them through to the other side. They had to eat the Passover, or they wouldn’t make it.

But again, they needed to have died first. They needed to have the sin removed. They needed the sign of circumcision. Verse 48:

Having died to themselves, having their sin cut away, and now feeding on the source of strength God provided, they were able to walk away from captivity, to walk toward freedom, heading toward the promised land of full, free, whole and holy life.

This morning is the night of Passover. This morning is the miracle of release. This morning, God is delivering us from the land of captivity, the bondage of slavery. I don’t know what God is freeing you from, but it’s something.

For some of us, the prisons are big. They seem impossible. They are socially unacceptable, maybe they are illegal, but we just can’t seem to get rid of them. For others of us, our prisons seem more normal, more acceptable, and because of that, more dangerous. We’ve been held captive by pride, that we’re actually pretty good people, not that we’d ever say that to anyone. But it sure feels nice to think it. That pride wraps itself around our hearts and squeezes the life out of us, and we, in our captivity, think it feels good. It’s familiar. We’re used to it. Humility, awareness of our own shortfalls, that’s hard. That’s new. We’ll just stay with the familiar.

We’ve been held captive by grudges. We know that we’ve been wronged, someone else has hurt us. We know we are in the right, and we know they are in the wrong. And we will nurse that hurt, we will hold on to that hurt, because to let go of the hurt seems to excuse the other person. We know the feeling of resentment. We’re used to feeling hurt. We’re not sure what forgiving looks like. It seems like a lot of work

We are held by the prison of guilt. We know we are sinners, and we’ve gotten used to the weight of the burden of guilt. It’s been there so long that to live without guilt seems strange, seems frightening, maybe it seems a little wrong, like we’re supposed to live with guilt. So when someone starts going on about grace, living without shame and guilt, we’re not so sure. We’ll stick with the familiar prison rather than go out in the new freedom.

There are others. We get used to living in fear. We get used to being stuck in a rut in our relationship with Jesus. We get used to living with anger. I don’t know what prison you live in, I don’t know what sin you deal with, but there’s something. And as bad as it is, as sinful as it is, it’s comfortable. It’s like a warm blanket. It’s hard to leave.

And God, this morning, is freeing you from that. He was freeing you from it last night. We’ll be freeing you from it tomorrow. Like the Israelites on Passover night, He’s leading you out of the grip of whatever it is. He’s bringing you into a life of freedom from guilt and grudges and pride and fear and all the rest. He has buried that old life, He has buried you, and you have received the mark that the old life has been cut away and buried. Only this time, circumcision isn’t the mark, baptism is. We heard this from Romans 6 the past few weeks, that with the mark, the sign of baptism, we have died and we’ve come back to life.

But as we move from this old life to this new life, we need strength. We need energy. We need the ability to live the new and forget the old. We have to eat if we want the strength to forgive, or to be humble, or to accept God’s grace, or to step out in our Christianity and try new things. We need to eat.

But this time, we’re not eating a wooly lamb, we are eating THE Lamb, the Lamb of God. And just like the first lamb in Exodus, this Lamb was killed. And just like that Passover night, this Lamb’s blood kept us alive. If it wasn’t for this Lamb’s blood, if it wasn’t for Jesus blood, then each of us would have been killed by God’s hand.

But the Lamb died, and saved us with His blood, and freed us from our captivity, and gave us new lives. And this Lamb, our Jesus, continues to provide the nourishment for the new, free life. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper in our church every 8 weeks. Unlike the Passover meal, which was celebrated once a year, we eat and drink more regularly. We eat the bread, we drink the cup, we eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus to give us strength.

But that eating and drinking that we do every 8 weeks, that’s supposed to keep us feeding on Jesus every day. Like the Israelites, it is mandatory for us to eat, to nourish ourselves with Jesus. We must eat the Lord’s Supper, on those Sundays when we celebrate. But our nourishment has to come every day, or we won’t live in the new freedom.

If our pride is too large to conquer, it’s probably because we’re weak. If our grudge clings to us so strongly that we can’t drop it, then we’re probably not getting enough nutrients. If we just don’t feel like going to the next level in our relationship with Jesus, if it’s just easier to stay where we are, because we know this, it’s familiar, then it’s time to eat. It’s dinner time.

This is mandatory. We must eat. We must open this book and read it and let it soak in to us. We must spend time talking with Jesus. We must make worship with other Christians a regular activity, not just a hit and miss. We must spend time with Jesus, just you and Him. It doesn’t matter if it’s early in the morning or late at night, just go and meet Him. It can be at 10 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon, go talk with Him. Read His word, speak with Him, or just sit quietly in His presence. Read 5 chapters, read 2 two verses, pray for an hour, pray a few words. But spend time being nourished.

And the freedom that God purchased for you with the blood of His Son, that freedom will become permanent. It will be the new familiar. The old familiar will become so old you’ll never want to go back. The new will become so well-known you’ll enjoy the freedom. When we’re eating and drinking the Lamb.