Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Well, my name is Dean Annan, and I'm discipleship pastor here at village church. I want to let you know that this weekend there's going to be a celebration of life. And some of you will know who I'm talking about. Bill Lindbergh. Bill and his wife Arlene were part of the founding members of village church of Bartlett. And Bill has gone to be with the Lord, and he was 96, and now he's in the presence of Jesus. And this coming Saturday, there's a service for him. It will be here. And Pastor Michael sent out an email on that with the details.
[00:00:37] Well, I want to say welcome also to new people that are here. If you're new today, I'm going to be here right afterwards. Just please come up and say hi. I'd love to get to know who you are. Speaking of Memorial Day weekend, you may not know this, but here in Bartlett, and I want to invite all of you to it at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, memorial day at Bartlett's gazebo Park. At 10:00 a.m. people are gathering. And then at 1030, there's a walk to the cemetery. And then at 11:00 there'll be a brief ceremony in remembrance, and Pastor Michael will be praying at that.
[00:01:16] All right, so as we get moving forward here, we're starting a new series today. I'll talk about that in a minute. But before we do. Before we do anything, before we even before we take things in, we want to set the table. So I want to set the table right now, and I want to talk about culture.
[00:01:31] Culture. I have a definition up here, and it is long. It's like as if I found the longest definition other from Wikipedia. I'm going to read the whole thing. It says this culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institution, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, breath, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups. All right, you grew up in a culture. You grew up in a culture. You might have some friends that maybe grew up in a different culture. If you're at work, you have what's called a work culture. If you are a married person, maybe your spouse even came from a different culture, because those cultures are impactful. And if you know what I'm talking about, give an amen to this. They're meaningful. They matter. Culture really matters.
[00:02:29] In our family, me and Chris's family, we would, although we came from similar backgrounds for our children, we wanted what would come out of their mouths. A culture of value, at least in our family, would be that what comes out of your mouth matters deeply. And so we would just go back to that old saying, which is actually very, very old, before it comes out of your mouth. Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? We didn't always hit all three of those, but sometimes we got one or two. But anyways, a young family, if you're a young family here today, and maybe you're about to have children, you're maybe asking this question, what do I need to do to build a family?
[00:03:06] What core values will we have? Will God get our best or not? Are we gonna be a family that quickly when we've hurt somebody or when we've sinned, that we ask for forgiveness? Are we going to be a family that extends forgiveness quickly to people? Or here's one.
[00:03:23] If you're going to have kids, are you going to have them make their beds every day? I mean, there's miracles, right? You can pray for that, can't you?
[00:03:34] Well, all people and all families need strong core values to build a culture where they can survive and thrive. And this is any group of people. Any group of people, any family needs core values to build a culture where people can thrive and survive. In other words, culture really matters. Remember that. That's going to help as we go through this whole series we're about to kick off. Culture really matters. And God knows this because he made us that way. And this is exactly where we are going in this new series today, we're going to start a series called feasts of the Lord. And we're back in Leviticus, chapter 23. You could turn there. We'll be there in just a moment. Today, our feast we're going to talk about is a Passover feast. And in a little while, I'll explain more. We'll go to Exodus eleven and Exodus chapter twelve. In just a little while, if you're a little new to the Bible, Leviticus is the third book into the Bible. Remember, this culture really matters. Here we go. Leviticus 23, verse one says this.
[00:04:40] The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, these are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations.
[00:04:53] They are my appointed feasts. So whose feasts are they? They are Sunday school. Enter God's. Absolutely. These are all his idea. And so we're going to begin with Passover today. And as we move through the series, we're going to end with the feast of booths. And these are appointed feasts and that means God is basically saying, I have specific, repeated, appointed times every year you're going to be celebrating these things. And it also says these are as holy convocations. And you might be like, oh, that's. What is that? That's Old Testament language. Don't fall asleep yet, because it really matters. Holy convocations really matter. Holy convocations are just this special times that our God sets apart for his people. And we see here that he is using holy convocations in Leviticus 23 to build community. That's important to God, one of his values here. He wants to build community, that they would come together, because the Israelites, by nature, are a divided people. If you know much about the Israelites, they have tribes and clans, and they usually kind of do their own thing. Like us today, we have vacations, we have vocations, things that take us away. We take kids to soccer practice. I'm not sure if they did that, but soccer practice and maybe plays and things like that, like us today. And so God, in his pure genius mind, again, is using these feasts to bring people together, like Passover and the others. But that's not the main thing at all. Holy convocations also are being used by God as repeated activity to form into his people the family, or to form them into the family that he wants them to be, because repetition trains our souls. So he is training them. He is training them with these feasts. See, a God honoring culture isn't shaped and isn't built by just words. So I can't be up here just saying some words or some ideas and somehow get a culture here that God wants that is healthy for us. It's not true. He uses repetition all the time. You know, maybe. I don't know if anybody likes to play basketball. So the first time you tried to do a layup, did you get it right the first time? Good for you if you did, but probably not. How about if you tried to play a composition for the first time by Bach or Beethoven or swift?
[00:07:14] I don't know who that is.
[00:07:17] When you tried the first time, you probably didn't do a very good job, did you? You had to do it over and over again, whether it's your body or whether it's your soul. We need repetition.
[00:07:29] Third thing about holy convocations or these appointed feasts is that they build God's culture with eternal values. So God wants to build a culture in his people, in the ancient Israelites that we're learning from today. One feast at a time, pass over through the feast of booths. He wants core values, he wants eternal values for them. As he builds this culture, they matter to God. So these feasts, one at a time, God is giving them the kingdom ideas, the kingdom values, as he builds the culture for what is going to come in their future and who is going to come and who is going to come as the messiah. That's very important. God is creating in Leviticus 23, we have it on the slide, a culture through repeated feasts to get his people ready for Christ's arrival, the messiah's arrival. So as I read my Bible, and I have a, it's called a paper Bible. Some of you still have those, right? It's actually turned to pages. It's the Old Testament. I'll show you one afterwards if you don't have it, some of the younger. My old Testament is about this thick, and the New Testament is about that thick. See the difference?
[00:08:45] Big difference. The Old Testament is setting the groundwork for the New Testament. The New Testament, if you will, stands on top of the Old Testament. And so if we're to pull the Old Testament out, we will have no idea of the goodness of God, the mercy and the grace of God and what he has done fully. We would just would not get it. And so we want to remember that Jesus comes from the Old Testament jewish context. And so we want to take the whole word of God and understand it. So we dig in. But one of the things before we get moving into more scripture is I want to talk about blood.
[00:09:24] Blood matters. Now, if you're brand new to church or you didn't have a lot of christians in your life until maybe you came here, the whole concept of, of blood and talking about blood is kind of weird and confusing, isn't it? I mean, we talk about blood a lot. We have songs, we have the old song that goes, oh, precious is the flow. As christians, we sing that makes us white as so snow no other fountain I know nothing but the what? The blood of Jesus. We remember Jesus's words. He talks about blood during communion or at the last passover he was at. And Jesus said, this, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
[00:10:08] Remember that?
[00:10:10] We need to understand something and get this really clear. And God was teaching the ancient people this, but it's always been true. Blood is spiritually and eternally significant.
[00:10:22] So don't think we ever should get past this concept, not understand our Lord's heart. We will not understand us and our relationship with him unless we get this idea. In Genesis, Cain killed Abel, so Cain kills his brother Abel. And then the Lord goes to Cain, who was the murderer. And what did the Lord say to Cain the murderer? Did he say, your brother's voice calls out to me? No. Your brother's blood calls out to me in Leviticus 17. We were in a part of our series before when we were in Leviticus. Leviticus 1714 says this for the life of every creature. I'll just read it is in the blood.
[00:11:01] Its blood is its life. And in ancient Israel, they knew this metaphor was a symbol for life. But also God is teaching it's equivalent to life. It really matters now, the demonic realm, cults, any kind of witchcraft or voodoo, what they love is to twist God's truth. And what they want is they want your blood. They want you to hurt yourself or something else. And they want the blood. They love to twist what is from the Lord.
[00:11:34] Early on, the ancient people knew that blood was spiritually significant. They understood that, but there was still a lot of confusion. And so when we get to Passover, God is using Passover in the Old Testament to help them understand during this Passover, the first Passover, yes, but also the repeated Passover celebrations. This core value of God, and here's this core value. I want to put it on the screen. This is the one for today. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. This is what God is teaching them in the Old Testament. But guess where I took that from? I took that actual quote from the New Testament. It's the same idea. Doesn't change this from Hebrews.
[00:12:16] Let this sink in. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
[00:12:22] They're being taught nothing but the blood of Jesus. We sing for the forgiveness of sins. So let's get more context.
[00:12:31] Leviticus 23, four five. I want to move a little bit here. We're just in Leviticus. We're just going to mention. God's just going to mention the Lord's Passover as a celebration. So let's put it on the screen. I'll read it. Verse four says this. These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, the holy convocations. That's language from a few sentences before. In verse five, it says this. In the first month, on the 14th day of the month, at twilight, is the Lord's Passover. And so this first month is when they celebrated Passover for them, that would have been about our April. So on the 14th of that day, they would sacrifice a lamb. We'll have to get to that. We'll go back to Exodus in a minute they'll sacrifice a lamb and they're gonna reenact the first Passover as they celebrate. Why? And how does blood fit into any of this anyways?
[00:13:20] Well, you could turn into Exodus chapter eleven here. And as you're going there, let me set this up, because nothing really makes sense in all of life unless we get some context. So we're going back to the time, and you probably know this, that the Egypt, in Egypt, the hebrew people were enslaved for about 400 years. They suffered a lot. In early Pharaoh. He ordered the death of the hebrew male children. And they were under horrible conditions working. And they knew it and they felt it and they cried out to God. And many of them wondered, will our God ever deliver us at all? But God had a plan. He wasn't slow. He had a plan. He was going to show the Israelites and the whole world that the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would keep his promise to bless all the world through his hebrew people. That was what he was going to show him. He's also going to show them this, that every, he was going to show everyone that the egyptian gods, I like this word, are worthless.
[00:14:25] I told that carefully. So through Moses, which is God's leader, he chose, he sent nine plagues to the egyptian people. Why? Because he wanted to destroy their hope in their egyptian demonic false gods so that pharaoh then would let his people go. Let God's people go. So God gave pharaoh nine opportunities, or nine plagues. And every time pharaoh would say no. He was stubborn, like slapping God in the face time after time after time. And God was very patient. Extreme mercy God shows until he no longer does.
[00:15:09] In the Passover, God's people remember the 10th and final plague.
[00:15:14] This is the final plague.
[00:15:16] And after this plague, Pharaoh would let God's people go.
[00:15:21] Okay, so we're getting to the blood. Exodus chapter eleven. I just said they've been in slavery 400 years. It's been very hard, horrible conditions. And in Exodus chapter one, when an early pharaoh had put to death the hebrew children, the males, what was that pharaoh really doing?
[00:15:44] He was really killing the children of yahweh God, the one true God. Why do I say that? Let me tell you where I get that from. Exodus 422 says this, that God called Israel my firstborn son.
[00:16:02] Now God is executing this 10th and worst plague. Here's the announcement of it. Exodus chapter eleven, verse four through five. Here's where he's announcing it. And Moses said, thus says the Lord, about midnight I will go out. So this is the Lord going out here, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl, who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. This would be the death of all the firstborn in Egypt, from the highest, most mighty to the lowest in all of Egypt. Even here, though, God is gracious, because he's not killing all of the Egyptians.
[00:16:46] What's happening? And I'm repeating this a little bit. I get it. But in the physical and the spiritual world, God is deliberately attacking egyptian gods and goddesses here. Specifically, he's attacking ISiS for sure, because IsiS was the protector of the egyptian children, or so they thought. But again, this God of theirs is incompetent, totally powerless and worthless in every way to do what the Egyptians wanted her to do.
[00:17:18] So let's not make a mistake, though. This is something I was thinking about yesterday.
[00:17:23] Maybe not everybody thinks this way, but I know people still sometimes think this way when they think about the Bible. Think of the Bible as this cosmic power struggle between God and demonic forces. I can't tell you how not true that is. There is no power struggle. God has all the power. What God is, though, is he is patient with all human beings because frankly, all human beings are sinners before a holy God and deserve destruction and deserve death and hell. But God, thanks be to Jesus and his work on the cross, gives us grace. You know, you and I, this is something I learned a while ago that helps me a lot. We don't have, this helps any right to claim God's grace. We just don't have the right to claim God's grace unless he gives it to us freely. Right? Thank God for Jesus. So the final plague, the 10th plague, all the firstborn of Egypt, even the firstborn of the Israelites, will be destroyed unless they haven't escaped or unless they have a way out.
[00:18:35] In Exodus, chapter twelve, let's go to Exodus, chapter twelve, and we'll start in about the third verse. And we're going to go through some of the bold here that I have on the screen. We're not going to look at every single thing. We're talking about the lamb, the blood, the judgment, and the escape, just those parts of it here before I mention this, that all people in all families need strong core values in order to survive and thrive. And remember, God is creating a culture.
[00:19:05] God is creating a culture through these feasts, through the repeated feasts, to get his people ready for Christ's arrival. Here's the first passover then. And the part of reality that they needed to get into their culture also is that they're not completely clean, the Israelites. They are also sinners before a holy God. So let's look at Exodus twelve three. It says, this, tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of the month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses. A lamb for a household.
[00:19:39] All right, so we start with a lamb. So if you're an Israelite, you're saying, okay, God, starting with a lamb. I know you're sending.
[00:19:45] You're going to bring destruction. What else do we have to do?
[00:19:48] Verse five, your lamb shall be without blemish. A male, a year old. And at the end of verse six, it says, israel shall kill their lambs. So this is a new thing, that an unblemished or pure lamb would be needed. And the purpose of this unblemished lamb, this pure lamb, was to represent the people as a sacrifice for them, as a substitute. And it must die. Why must it die? Because the evil in Egypt was so bad that something pure had to die. Something pure had to die. This is a truth that God is teaching and they are learning. Something pure has to die. So what do we have so far? We have a lamb. We have that the lamb has to be pure and that the lamb has to be killed. That's where we are so far. What else? Verse seven. Again, just the bold here. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel. And the lintel is just the cross piece between the doorposts.
[00:20:57] And so we're back to blood. They put it over the entry of their houses. And they're learning that blood is spiritually and eternally significant. Remember that. He's connecting the dots for them. Now we get to Exodus. Chapter twelve, verse eleven, verse eleven and twelve. It says this, and you shall eat it in haste. We'll talk about the meal part more next week. It is the Lord here. He's calling it the Lord's passover. And this is the Lord speaking. He says this, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike the the firstborn in the land of Egypt for both man and beast. And then he says this. And on the gods of Egypt, those false, demonic gods, God says this, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord.
[00:21:48] I want you to see what God is saying here. He's saying, I am the Lord, we see that, but he's saying, he is the one. He doesn't contract this out. He is the one that executes judgment. He gives life, but he also takes life. God's also saying to the Egyptians that your gods are useless. Your gods are these little puny gods. That reminds me of the Avengers.
[00:22:14] The Avengers. I just. I like that movie, the Avengers. So if you're not familiar with it, there's somebody, this incredible Hulk, and he's kind of on the good side, the good team. And then you have this, this evil God named Loki. I think that's how you say it, right? Loki. Loki. And it's been a long time, but I remember there's a fight between the Hulk and Loki. And the Hulk grabs Loki, who's the bad guy, the evil God, and he smashes him and he smashes him and he smashes. He keeps smashing him. Finally, he smashes him and Loki can't even move. And it's hilarious. And the hulk is walking away and hulk is of little and few words. And he looks at Loki and you might remember this, he says, puny God. I love that. It's one of the best scenes and it reminded me of this.
[00:22:58] Good news is, the good news is verse 13. We see the mercy of God towards his people. God provides a way of escape for his people from the coming judgment because he is a God of mercy. That's the good news. Verse 13 says this, the blood, here it is again, is a sign for the blood. He's saying is for you. God doesn't need that blood. We need that blood. Israelites, you need the blood. It is for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, when he sees the blood, it says, I will pass over you and you won't be destroyed as he strikes the land of Egypt. Well, spoiler alert, if you're not familiar with this story, what happens is the blood of the lamb keeps the people from destruction, keeps the Israelites from destruction. But the Egyptians, they were judged, and Pharaoh let the Israelites go.
[00:23:58] But that's not the main point for today or what we're getting towards today in this context. Again, we're just learning this, that the only protection they had from judgment was the blood of the lamb. The blood was their escape. They were saved by the blood. You know, demons try to take the idea of blood and they twist it, and they always will and they always do.
[00:24:21] Look at Exodus, chapter twelve, verse 14. It says this, this day shall be a memorial day. He's talking about the Passover. What just happened? It'll be a memorial day for you, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord. This is the Passover throughout your generations as a statue forever. You shall keep it as a feast. So God is using this as a memorial to instill some core value. I love this. Even this weekend, when we think about our nation, we think about this core value that hopefully continues, that we respect, we want to care for, and we are so grateful for those who are given and have given their lives to defend our freedoms so we can even do something like this today. It's amazing. What a wonderful thing. Memorial Day. Well, here God is using Passover as a memorial day to instill in them during times when they will celebrate the Passover, this value of God. Let me put it up here again. It says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
[00:25:23] Old Testament, New Testament, no difference.
[00:25:28] But sometimes in the Passover story, I think sometimes people miss this idea of the faith, the great faith of the israelite people. Certainly they obeyed God, but what's under obeying God, it's always faith. These people, what did they do? They trusted the one true God of the universe. They trusted him at his word of what he said he was going to do and save them. He trusted, they trusted the blood sacrifice. Sound familiar? Anybody, that it would spare them the blood and their God would spare them from the coming judgment if they would put over the doorpost and the lintel the blood of the sacrificed lamb. And if they were to reject that, if the Israelites were to reject that blood for their escape from judgment, then they would be accepting judgment, death.
[00:26:21] So I think the gap between the Old Testament, ancient Israelites and us today, I think, is much smaller than sometimes. We think it's the same thing. The early church understood this, the early church, mostly Jews at the time, but they understood this as it spread to the Gentiles, there was a direct tie between the Old Testament sacrificial system, the feasts that we're talking about, the passover, all to Jesus, directly linked. You see in John chapter one, verse 29, this is the John the Baptist is seeing Jesus coming in the distance, and Jesus is just about to start his public ministry. And do you remember the words? We have it on the screen the next day, he, not the apostle John. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, behold, here it is, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. You know, the apostle Paul writes in the New Testament, he says this about Jesus. He calls him something. And the apostle Paul calls Jesus our Passover lamb who was sacrificed. The apostle Paul writes in another book, and we have it on the screen. Colossians, chapter two. This is the apostle Paul writing, and he says this, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival like Passover, for example. Again, he's talking to the New Testament church, but whatever you're experiencing, whatever you're celebrating, festivals like Passover or a new moon or a sabbath, and he says in verse 17, these, those things, they're a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christopher. Have you ever tried to climb a shadow of a tree? That sounds pretty dumb, doesn't it?
[00:28:12] So once you see the tree, you're going to climb the tree. As Christians, once we know Christ, we no longer need the shadow. But as Christians, we want to, we must all the time know our God, worship our savior, and to do that, we understand the shadow. We know the shadow. The Old Testament, the sacrificial system, all of that. Because the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ to come, the Old Testament was completely fulfilled by Jesus Christ. And once you know Christ, you no longer need the shadow.
[00:28:49] So what can we do with this? I have a couple. So whats the first is just dont substitute any kind of shadow that you think might be godlike or christlike for the real substance of Christ.
[00:29:02] So did you know that the Israelites, some of them, in the wilderness after they were freed from bondage and slavery, what did they do? Some of them complained. They wanted to go back. They wanted to go back to their bondage and their old ways of doing things and living under slavery and oppression. They wanted to go back there.
[00:29:19] For me, I'm kind of a traditional guy. I mean, if you know me, you can say amen to that. They can be great, traditions can be great, relationships can be great, opinions can be great, hobbies can be great. But sometimes they're awful. I mean, sometimes if you have people in your life right now that are trying to help you through something and you're holding on to something that isn't really good for you, and you're hearing, maybe it's not, I would suggest, listen, maybe they're right. Because as Christ followers, we want his truth. We want to follow him, meaning Christ as the substance. Is there something today that God wants you to ask forgiveness for? Maybe to change your way, to stop or to start something new? What is that? Don't go backwards. Move forwards to the substance of Jesus Christ.
[00:30:11] The last. So what then, is this? Believe today in the lamb of God. This is Jesus Christ for salvation. Believe in him today. Because if we, any of us, reject the blood of the lamb, that's just accepting judgment on ourselves and judgment in hell. But God gives us the blood. He gives us the blood of Christ. He offers us forgiveness. Anybody. So if you want today, even today, if you haven't yet, you can ask Jesus to forgive your sins. Trust that his blood as the lamb of God on the cross was the full penalty that you owed, that you could never pay, that he paid for you, and believe in his resurrection three days later. If you are stepping in by faith today to believe that, then the Bible says you're saved.
