Text:\u00a0 Exodus 12: 1-11; 21-28\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 April 17, 2011<\/p>\n
Picture the scene if you will.\u00a0 The road from Jericho to Jerusalem was packed with Passover pilgrims.\u00a0 There was no internet or Twitter in those days but word had quickly spread. The word about Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 He had raised a man named Lazarus back to life after being dead for three days.<\/p>\n
This was also a time when people lived in high expectation that the Messiah would come, a very special king who would save his people.\u00a0 Now this Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem riding on a donkey as the prophet had foretold.\u00a0 See your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey.<\/span> (Zech 9:9)<\/p>\n People ran to cut palm branches to wave before him as a sign of victory, like we might wave little flags at our heroes.\u00a0 Voices began to shout Hosanna.\u00a0 Blessed is the King of Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n But remember the time of his coming.\u00a0 This is the week of the Passover celebration.\u00a0 On Thursday, two of Jesus disciples will go to the sheep market to purchase a lamb and then make their way to the temple.\u00a0 There they will gather with countless others who have come with their lambs.\u00a0\u00a0 They will show it to a priest to insure it is acceptable.\u00a0 And there those lambs will die, their blood be shed and poured out to the Lord.\u00a0 And its meat will be roasted for the Passover meal.<\/p>\n Back up once more to Palm Sunday.\u00a0 It seems to me that there were not just pilgrims on the road.\u00a0 I also picture shepherds bringing their flocks of sheep needed for the Passover.\u00a0 But little did they know that there was another Lamb making his way.\u00a0 A lamb foreshadowed in the first Passover and every one until this time.\u00a0 They are right in calling him a King.\u00a0\u00a0 He is a King, more special than they realize.\u00a0 For this King has come as our Passover lamb.\u00a0 He comes to die and shed his blood for us all.\u00a0 So today we go way back to the first Passover and see another Shadow of our Savior- the Passover Lamb. <\/strong><\/p>\n The Passover celebrates a time when God intervened mightily in the lives of his people.\u00a0 Listen to what their lives had become in Egypt.\u00a0\u00a0 11 <\/sup>So they [the Egyptians] put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh\u202614 <\/sup>They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.<\/span> I can remember working a job where my hands blistered badly and black soot filled my nostrils.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019ve worked a job like that.\u00a0 But I was able to walk away from it and not come back.\u00a0 These people were not so blessed.\u00a0 They were enslaved and powerless to help themselves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n People don\u2019t like to think of it but that describes our lives on our own.\u00a0\u00a0 It offends our pride to hear it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a part of us that holds truth at arm\u2019s length.\u00a0 But minus this One riding on a donkey, you and I are enslaved.\u00a0 We are slaves to our sinful nature.\u00a0 We are slaves to our guilt.\u00a0 We are slaves to death.\u00a0\u00a0 And worse yet, just like the Israelites, we are powerless to help ourselves.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been to Sunday School, you know how God sent Moses to Pharaoh, the Egyptian king.\u00a0 Let my people go but he resisted..\u00a0 You know how the Lord sent plague after plague on the land to break the grip of the Egyptians.<\/p>\n But every time, pharaoh dug in his heels.\u00a0\u00a0 He refused to set them free.\u00a0 Finally the Lord told Moses he was going to send one final plague that would strike every household in the land all the way to Pharaoh\u2019s own family.\u00a0 Then they would be able to go.<\/p>\n And now God calls for something strange<\/strong>.\u00a0 He told them to prepare a special meal for the night he would set them free.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to see why the Lord told them to bake unleavened bread.\u00a0 They would have to leave in a hurry.\u00a0 No time for bread to rise.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the strange part.\u00a0 Each man was to take a lamb for his household.\u00a0 Not just any lamb.\u00a0 This lamb was to be a year old.\u00a0 And it was to be without defect.\u00a0 No disease or deformities, but perfect to the eye.<\/p>\n Early that evening they were to kill the lamb and roast the meat for the meal.\u00a0 Again that seems pretty normal.\u00a0 You gotta eat before a big trip.<\/em> But not this.\u00a0 This is different.\u00a0 This is strange.\u00a0 Take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 The Lord explains.\u00a0 The blood of those lambs would cause Him to pass over that house, spare them from death and send them off free at last.<\/p>\n What a blessed shadow of our Savior we see in that Passover Lamb and its\u2019 blood. Think of how St Peter puts it in our epistle reading. \u00a018 <\/sup>For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 <\/sup>but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect<\/span>. (1Peter1)<\/p>\n When Peter and the rest of the apostles came to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they saw people acclaim Jesus as king.\u00a0 As they followed I imagine them thinking of crowns and glory not death, not blood, not sacrifice.<\/p>\n But for people enslaved and powerless to help themselves, for you and me and countless others, God calls for something strange<\/strong>.\u00a0 He calls for something all those Passovers lambs foreshadowed.\u00a0 The Lamb would die, it\u2019s blood be shed and we would be set free.<\/p>\n But this lamb would not come from the market place.\u00a0 This Lamb would be the Christ, God\u2019s own Son come as your brother.\u00a0 And his death would come on him unexpectedly. No, he rides on in majesty where God calls for something strange.\u00a0 He is innocent, good and loving.\u00a0 We are sinful, guilty in so many ways.\u00a0 Yet he rides on to suffer and die for us all.\u00a0 He rides on that death may Passover us \u00a0and leave us safe in its terrible wake.\u00a0 He rides on, this Lamb, whose precious blood has set us free.<\/p>\n But how easily we forget.\u00a0 We forget our God and what he has done.\u00a0 We do the same thing with each other.\u00a0 Maybe with our moms or dads.\u00a0 Maybe with our husband or wife or friend.\u00a0 That\u2019s why things like birthdays and anniversaries are good to celebrate.\u00a0 We just had our 31st<\/sup> anniversary.\u00a0 It was good to think back on what a blessing my bride has been to me all these years.\u00a0 In \u00a0times of laughter in times of tears. \u00a0So it\u2019s good to gather to remember<\/strong>.\u00a0 For how easily we forget.<\/p>\n God didn\u2019t want his people to forget his grace in Egypt.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want them to forget who it was they prayed to, who it was that promised them a Savior to rescue them from the pit of death.\u00a0 So he told them they were to gather to remember<\/strong> around a special meal.\u00a0 25 <\/sup>When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 <\/sup>And when your children ask you, \u2018What does this ceremony mean to you?\u2019 27 <\/sup>then tell them, \u2018It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.\u2019 <\/span>\u201d They were to gather to remember.<\/p>\n On a night long ago that we call Maundy Thursday, Jesus gathered to remember with his disciples.\u00a0 On that night, the true lamb of God came out of the shadows.\u00a0 After celebrating the Passover, Jesus took the bread and said, this is my body given for you.<\/span> Then later he took the cup of wine and said:\u00a0 This cup is the new covenant in my blood.\u00a0 Do this in remembrance of me.<\/span><\/p>\n So we gather to remember <\/strong>as Jesus wants us to. <\/strong>We gather to remember with this special supper he has given us.\u00a0 We remember God\u2019s love for each of us here.\u00a0 We remember the Lamb who once gave his body and blood to set us free.\u00a0 In fact, he gives us that body and blood to assure us of our freedom.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t forget.\u00a0 We also gather to remember where the Lamb is leading us. \u00a0He did not just die for us.\u00a0 He now lives. So the apostle John was given this wonderful vision of what we can look forward to.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a017<\/sup>For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.\u201d<\/span> (Rev 7)\u00a0 How blessed you are.\u00a0 How blessed you are to know your Passover Lamb.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text:\u00a0 Exodus 12: 1-11; 21-28\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 April 17, 2011 Picture the scene if you will.\u00a0 The road from Jericho to Jerusalem was packed with Passover pilgrims.\u00a0 There was no internet or Twitter in those days but word had quickly spread. The word about Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 He had raised a man named Lazarus back to life after being dead for three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}