[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: So in our we've got a special guest speaker tonight in our ongoing summer series, or at least special to me. It's my brother, Andrew Howell.
Andrew and his wife Crystal are from the mobile area, so they've got some shared relationships with, like Andrew Itzen and Jordan Abrams. I'm always pleased when they ask Andrew to come speak because it means that he's going to bring his family over to Huntsville and we're going to get to hang out and play cards and go eat at Rosie's, which is always a good time.
Andrew, I said, they're from the mobile area. He's been a minister at the Regency Church of Christ since 2013.
Before that, he attended and studied ministry at Harding University, and before that, he was being pestered by his younger brother, me.
So I'm gonna get things started off in a prayer in just a minute, and I think we're gonna have a song and then I'll turn it over to Andrew Howell.
Let's pray.
Dear God, we love you so much. We're so thankful for you. In this time where we get together and we get to hear a message from your word and we get to fellowship with like minded christians. Please be with us in this summer. Help everybody who's traveling to to travel safely.
We love you so much in your sins. Name, amen.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: So tonight we're going to look at how reflection builds resilience. Reflection builds resilience. It's been fun this weekend. Have had a lot of opportunities to reflect. We've gotten together with family and just had a lot of time spending some time in reflection together. My parents celebrated their 50th anniversary and so we had this big celebration. My older brother's family came. My older brother is great at asking really good questions. And so we spent a lot of time, the past few days, kind of sitting around the dinner table and having my parents tell stories, some stories we'd never heard before. And so it was a great time to reflect together. I think social media has been great for reflection. I know there's a lot of negatives about social media, but I think one of the positives, especially about Facebook, besides the fact that Facebook has basically made high school reunions pointless, a positive about something like Facebook, is that occasionally you'll get these memories that pop up. I think they're called Facebook memories. They used to be called time hop, but it's always really neat to see old photos that you posted. Like, I enjoy pulling Facebook up and seeing some photos of my kids when they were younger and sweet and kind. I'm just kidding. When they were younger. And, like, think back to those times with our children, and it's just this great moment to kind of reflect and think about, like, what was going on, what was happening at this moment.
Another way that we sometimes experience reflection is, like, we have these things that happen to us, and something about it just sticks with us sometimes. Like, they're really good, positive things that remind us about things in our past. Sometimes they're not good things. I drive a Ford Explorer, and probably about, like, eight months ago or so, it was a Wednesday night, and Wednesday nights, like, tonight, they're kind of crazy sometimes. My wife was working that night, and so I was in charge of taking care of dinner before heading up to the church building. And so sonic had, like, this 99 cent corndog deal, and so I had my daughter with me, and I was like, all right, we're going to get some corn dogs at Sonic. I pull in, and I tried to go through the drive through, but it was going really slow. I'm running out of time and getting really impatient. And so I zip around the parking lot, and I come back, and I pull in quickly to one of these little booths that they have at Sonic. You've been at Sonic? You know. And so I pull in, and I hit the buzzer, and the machine's not working, and I'm getting really frustrated. So quickly I put the car in reverse, and I back up, and I hadn't done a great job parking to begin with, but me backing up, I heard this loud bang, and my side view mirror has just rammed into the side screen on my right side, and it's so loud. And I will say for a second, I was like, could I just drive off? But then I quickly was like, no, I can't do that. I can't just drive off. This was so loud, and my daughter's with me, and it would be wrong to do that. And so I get out and I go and I talk to the people there. They looked at the damage. It wasn't bad for the machine, but, man, the side view mirror of my car is just not in great shape. Like, there's plastic pieces on the ground. I pick that up. It still works. And so I haven't fixed it yet. And so it's this broken side view mirror. And I will say, every time that I see it, I think about my impatience that night. Every time my daughter sees it, she reminds me about my impatience that night. She's like, every time you hit that window at Sonic, I was like, yes, thank you for reminding me about that. But it's in some ways this bad thing that happened. It's a positive reminder for me. It's like, hey, okay, let's slow down. Let's not be so impatient. And it causes some reflection for me. We're gonna look tonight in the book of Exodus, and I'm just gonna warn you, and, like, warning's probably not a great way to phrase it. I'm going to get you excited about this because we're going to read a lot of scripture together tonight from the book of Exodus. Last year at regency, myself and another minister were part of a preaching team. And so we did a whole series. We went from Genesis to revelation, and we looked at how all of the Bible chronologically, how it points to the gospel story. And some of my favorite parts of doing that were going through some of the sections in the Book of Exodus, and so were going to look together at a piece in Exodus that really, I think, builds on this idea of how reflection can build resilience for us as followers of Jesus. So let's start off in Exodus. Chapter three, verse seven through ten is where we're going to be here. At first, here's what it says.
The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I'm concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the land of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land, into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, a bunch of other ites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. Alright, so a little context of what's going on here is that God is speaking to Moses. And he's sending Moses to Egypt to go and to free his people and to be the one that's going to speak on behalf of God, him and his brother Aaron. And so we get here a reminder that God is telling Moses that God has not forgotten about his people. Even though sometimes it maybe feels that way, even, especially in really challenging, difficult moments, it may feel like it. God has not forgotten his people.
And so God calls Moses. He sends Moses to go and confront Pharaoh. There's these plagues that take place and we're not going to look all of those plagues. We're going to quickly go through some of them. But there's something I want you to notice as I run through some very quick passages dealing with some of these plagues. I want you to notice a very important distinction that takes place as these plagues are being described. Let's start with plague number four. It says, in exodus 822 and 23, it says, but on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live. No swarms of flies will be there. So that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This sign will occur tomorrow. Okay, so just that passage. What do you notice about this sign? What do you notice about the plague? God makes a distinction between the two groups of people when it comes to the place where the Egyptians were. They were going to be the ones that have to suffer this plague. But in the land of Goshen, where God's people dwell, no plague. We continue the next one, plague number five, livestock. In chapter nine, verse four, it says, but the Lord will make a distinction. Again, here's the same thing. Between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt. So that no animal belonging to the the Israelites will die. Continues in verse 26, the only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were. In chapter ten. No one can see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived. So we're told here that God is making a distinction between the land of Egypt and the land of Goshen, where the Hebrews dwelt.
I think just real quick, we need to make note of this, that being a part of the people of God, it makes you different.
Like there is some benefits clearly, that come with being a part of the people of God. So back in February, my wife is here. I did not tell her I'm going to share this story, but back in February, we took our family on a cruise.
This is our second cruise, but we had never taken our kids before, which is a very different experience.
Now, I love going on cruises. Like, it's all the food that you can eat and you can take naps and watch shows, and it's a fun time. And so we decided to take our children. And so, like, the first or second night that we're there, we went to this family friendly, I need to make sure I preface that family friendly comedy show. And so it's packed. We get in there and we got some seats, but it's like standing room only, and it's just covered with people. And the comedian, he does his show, and he gets done, like, maybe 15 minutes early. And so he calls up two kids from the crowd. Now, I have three kids, and I have an eight year old named Houston. And he has this, like, gift where anytime somebody asks for a volunteer, especially child, he gets chosen for it. And it always makes me very nervous. And so he's not sitting right next to me. This comedian asks for volunteers, and before I'm able to leap across the people next to me to put his hand down, he has already been chosen as the volunteer. And so he and this other eight year old little girl get called up to the front. The comedian asks them their names, and they talk for a second, and then he says, hey, I want you to go get a parent that's easily embarrassed and pulled them up here. And so Houston comes and he grabs me, the other little girl grabs her mom. So we both come up there. The comedian asked both of us our names. And so he asked the names, and then he says, well, what do you do for a living? And I'm like, oh, here we go. Because I say, well, I'm a minister at a church, and this can go in a couple directions. He makes a joke about, like, well, I need you to pray for me. And we talk about it for a little bit. And then he tells us what we're going to do. We're going to play a game. And so he sends me and the other mom out of the room where we can't hear anything. And he's going to ask the two kids some questions, kind of like the newlywed game. And so we're able to see but not hear anything. And I am so nervous, like, I don't know what my kid's going to say, I can tell by what he's saying that he's getting a good reaction from the crowd. And so we get called back in, and the girl goes first, which is probably not great for me. So she goes first, and they ask four questions. I get to preview the question, so I'm thinking about my answer.
It comes to my turn, and first question's like, what's his favorite color? I got it. Red. Second one, favorite food. Got it. Hot dog. 2nd, 3rd question's favorite tv show. I got that one right. And the fourth question, this is where I get nervous, is he asks, has your dad drank a little or a lot on this cruise ship? I'm like, well, I haven't drank anything, so I'm going to say that he, he said, I drank a little. And the comedian goes, nope. Your son said, you've drank a lot. And everybody starts laughing and I hear whisperings. Like, I thought he said he was a minister. And there's all kinds of conversations going on now, I realized quickly, like, what Houston heard was a question of, like, has my dad drank a lot? Yeah, he's drank water and coffee and coke. But what made it funny is, like, the other meaning of this question.
What happened? The rest of the cruise is literally everywhere we go. Every single time we got into an elevator, every place we went, I would get recognized, and so would Houston be like, hey, it's that minister that drinks a lot. You know, people joking around.
One person was like, are you worried about your job when you get back? And I wasn't until now, and I will say it was incredible accountability to be on my best behavior because everybody, everywhere I went knew, oh, it's that minister from that game show. I don't know how everybody on the boat was in this room, but there was something about it where, like, people now connected me with church, people now connected me with ministry. And, like, I think sometimes that creates a distinction for you. And maybe it happens at your work, maybe it happens within your family, maybe it happens with where you, you work out or a group of friends that you have because of your connection to church, because of your connection as being a Jesus follower. That should create, I think, sometimes a distinction. Like, it should create, like, a sense of, okay, here's someone that is striving to follow Jesus, trying to follow Jesus. Something about them sets them apart because of that. And we see here in Exodus with the people of God, that simply because they were a part of the people of God, it created this important distinction between them and the Egyptians. And as we see the plagues escalating, we see this total judgment that's happening on Egypt, and it's happening from the waters to the heavens.
And God is making a distinction between Israel and between Egypt.
We continue in Exodus, chapter eleven, it says. In verse four, it says, so Moses said, this is what the Lord says. About midnight, I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die. From the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt, worse than there has ever been or ever will be. Again.
Verse seven. But among the Israelites, not a dog will bark at any person or animal. Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, go, you and all the people who follow you. After that, I will leave. Then Moses, hot with anger. It's kind of a cool lie. Then Moses, hot with anger, left pharaoh again. It points out to us that there's this distinction that's being made between Egypt and Israel. But also notice here that it's not just.
It's not just certain types of people that are impacted. We're going to see all kinds of families, even livestock, impacted because of the loss of their firstborn. In chapter twelve, verse seven says, then they are to take some of the blood. These are the instructions given to people of God. They're to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs that same night. They are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire with the head, legs, and internal organs. Do not leave any of it till morning. If some of it is left till morning, you must burn it. 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.
Okay, so there's something different that's going on here. This feels different than all the other plagues, right? Like, significantly different. Again, they're given these special instructions, and we know the reason why, especially if you study this at all, at any point, there's a reason for the things that they're given to do. They're to eat this in haste. There's bitter herbs. There's the way that they're supposed to roast it and burn it all up and consecrate the whole sacrifice that's happening here. It goes on in verse twelve, the next part. It is the Lord's passover. 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. The blood will be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. Okay? Again, this is significantly different than the other plagues earlier, when God had made a distinction in the other plagues. He just did it like, he just made the distinction between the land of Goshen and the land of Egypt, between God's people and the people of Egypt. There were no flies or hail or darkness in Goshen. And that distinction, God's people, they didn't have to do anything. It just happened. But here, God still makes a distinction.
But God's judgment is coming.
And really it's coming for all people.
It's going to come for the rich and for the poor. We see from the last section here. It's going to come for Egyptians, and it could be coming for God's people as well.
But the way that the distinction now is made is that you have to take something, take blood and put it on the doorpost. The distinction now is directly connected to blood.
You have to do something in order for this distinction to happen.
Verse 14 says, this is a day you are to commemorate for the generations to come. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, a lasting ordinance.
So because of this event, God establishes a feast in Israel for all generations.
This is different.
God didn't tell them to make a feast to remember the frogs or the boils. God's people are supposed to reenact this special night, eat unleavened bread to symbolize the hurriness, bitter herbs, the bitterness that's found in Egypt. Blood on the doorpost as a reminder of the day of God's judgment, passed over because of the blood of the spotless lamb. And so it continues. In chapter twelve, verse 24, it says, obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants when you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised. Observe this ceremony.
And when your children ask you, what does this ceremony mean to you, tell them it 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. Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the lord commanded. Moses and Aaron.
God wants the next generation to always know about this.
Like, there's this understanding that, hey, you're going to do this thing, and it's going to cause reflection. Your kids are going to ask you, mom and dad, why do we do this? And you need to have an answer for them. I can't help but think about our family celebration this past week. Just sitting around the table and asking mom and dad questions about family history.
They kind of took us through the timeline leading up over the past 50 years, and it was a great reminder.
And here we see this reminder taking place, this understanding that, hey, your kids are going to ask you about this. Be ready to give them an answer.
Going on in chapter twelve, verse 37, it says, the Israelites journeyed from ranses to succoth. There were about 600,000 men on foot, besides women and children.
Verse 38. This is important. Many other people went up with them, and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. So it's not just the Hebrews who leave Egypt. It's a mixed group. Could be some Egyptians with them, some others, maybe foreigners living in Egypt that were also joining them.
Okay, so there's a few points that I want you to take away. As we spend a lot of time thinking about what's happened with this 10th plague and the Passover. I think there are three main differences that take place with this 10th plague than what happened with the earlier ones. Here's the first one. The people must do something in order to distinguish themselves from the Egyptians.
Like, at some points, they don't, right? At some points, it's just because of what group of people they're part of. But for the 10th plague, they have to do something in order to distinguish themselves from everyone else, from the Egyptians. What is that thing that has to be there?
It's blood.
It's blood.
And for us, I think, in a similar way, there's something that has to happen and take place in order for us to have this distinction between us and everyone else. And it is the blood of the spotless land.
And there is this covenant that we enter into that we're a part of. It's us putting our faith in Jesus. It's us being baptized and having that blood cover us that allows us to experience, like the Israelites in the exodus, to experience total grace, total freedom.
Second difference that we see with this 10th plague is that God establishes a feast because of this act of judgment and the people's response. God wants them to relive what has taken place. He wants them to reenact it. Why? Because reflecting on what God has done is critical. It's important.
Same is true for us today. It's critical. It's important that we reenact it, that we relive it, that we think about it, that we talk about it, that we tell our kids about it, that our kids ask us about it, and we have an answer to give them about the grace that we experience through the blood of Jesus.
And then the third one is that this plague doesn't just reveal God's power.
It also compels pharaoh and the Egyptians to obey. We see that it's because of what happens, this tragic, really, like, sad thing that happens with this 10th plague. That's the thing that compels Pharaoh, just like God said it would, to let the people go and to give them the freedom, at least for that moment, right? Give them this freedom that they've been asking for. Now, I believe that there are some other ways that the Passover speaks to us today and provides us with this encouragement to reflect, which then leads to resilience in our own lives as followers of Jesus. And so I want to think about this kind of, with three groups of people in mind.
I know there's no teenagers in here tonight, but I want us to think about young people. And if you're a parent, to think about your young people, your kids, your teenagers.
I think an important piece of this is, again, that God spared the people of Israel some of the earlier plagues just because of the nation that they were a part of.
And to me, that's a pretty cool picture of grace. They were spared of flies and boils and dead animals and darkness. They didn't have to do anything to experience being spared of those things. What's the reason for that?
Why were they spared of all those difficulties? It's really just because they had been born into the right family.
They lived in the right place.
They were in the land of Goshen. They were part of a family that allowed them to not experience those things. But the final plague, the people had to act. They had to do something. They had to fear God and his judgment. They had to trust in God's promise. They had to obey his commands, and they did it.
What the people had to do is they had to seek refuge in the blood of the spotless lamb.
I constantly am thankful more every day for growing up in a christian home.
And I know, and we're going to get to other groups as well. But maybe you, like me, got to experience the tremendous blessing of being raised in a family that followed Jesus.
That put a lot of emphasis and focus on the fact that, no, we are going to follow Jesus.
We are going to be a part of a church community, and when that community gathers together, we are going to go and be a part of that gathering. We are going to talk about it in our homes. We're going to act and do things that line up with how Jesus followers should live and act.
And so sometimes when I was younger, I would think about things that I missed out on because of that.
And that was the thing that I would focus a lot of my attention on. I would think about some of my friends at school, some of the things that they got to do that I didn't get to do, and that would be where my focus would be, and I would get frustrated about that.
As I've gotten older, I continue to be more and more grateful for being raised in a family that put an emphasis on following Jesus and that then impacted the things that, that we would do and be a part of. When I was in college, I was a Bible major at Harding, and so that was my focus. Right? Like, I wanted to go into ministry.
And there was this one time where I had this paper that was due. I don't think I told this last time I was here. I'm sorry if I did, but there's one time I had this paper that was due, and I put it off to the last minute. And so I, like, the day before the paper was due, I was like, I'm gonna go knock out this whole paper. And so I was gonna not go to my classes that day, and I was going to go to the library and just solely focus on this paper as a Bible major, how to do well, how to get a good grade on this paper. And so the day comes, I get up early in the morning, I go and I get in my Ford Explorer that we had named Dora, Dora the Explorer. And so I go and I get in the Ford Explorer, and I drive to the library for my apartment, and I'm going to cut across campus, and there's this little section of campus that, like, the flooding would really be bad. Like, if it had rained, there'd be puddles all over the place. But it was a quicker path, I thought, to the library. And so I'm driving my explorer, and it must have been time for, like, an 08:00 class because all of a sudden, there's tons of people walking to the business building, which I was driving by. And so I'm driving probably way too fast in my car, and I see this girl that I know. Like, I would call her, like, a recognition friend, like, not really a friend, but, like, we recognize each other. I don't know if that makes sense. And so I see her, and we kind of even head nod a little bit, but I'm going way too fast. And all of a sudden, I hit her with my car. No, I'm just kidding. All of a sudden, I hit this.
This is gonna sound just as bad. I hit this puddle, and I just spray her with water.
And in my mind, it's a lot of water. I hope it's not as bad as I've, like, built it up over the years as a bible major. Like, surely of all people, like, this is like, the story of the good Samaritan in some ways, right? I should have stopped. Like, she looked like she was kind of dressed up. Maybe a presentation. Who knows? I don't know. I should have asked. And she was now wet from me spraying her. I should have, like, stopped, apologized, offered to drive her back to the dorm. But you know what I did? I had this important paper I had to write.
I just kept driving, and I burned into my mind. I have a memory of just looking in my rearview mirror and perfectly seeing her in that mirror behind me, just with her hands up, just shaking her head, upset. She wouldn't even yelling like I'd be yelling. She was just so disappointed. And so I just kept driving and went to work on that paper without turning back to help. And I think about that moment and how, like, of all the things I should have done in that moment, like, there was a right thing to do, but I didn't do it because I was so focused on other things. Like, I had the shortcut. I had this thing I needed to do, but here was this thing that I should have done that I didn't. And I think sometimes, even in christian families today, we take shortcuts, we get distracted.
We think this other thing is really important, and we forget about the things that we're actually supposed to be doing.
I think a lot of families, a lot of christian families today are struggling with that. It is difficult to raise kids in the social media, technological world that we live in. I mean, we're struggling with it right now. We have a teenage 15 year old son, and we've got two little ones that are pretty hyper. And it is challenging to do that. And it is very easy to get distracted. It's very easy to make excuses.
But I think one thing that we see and are reminded of in a story like exodus of what's happening with the plagues and the Passover is the importance of recognizing that being a part of the people of God is significant. And when we show our kids and our families, like you want to be raised in a family like this, it is good to be a part of these things. It is important to go and to serve on a service Sunday. It's important to come and to be a part of a Bible class in a church community. It's good for us to talk about things that are found in scripture together. Significant thing that we do. And I know as a kid, like, I didn't always appreciate it, but as an adult raising a family of my own, I'm so thankful for all of the things, all of the plagues that I didn't have to experience because I was simply raised in a christian home.
And we see that here in this story.
But what we also see is that being born in the right place or into a certain family isn't enough to rescue you.
It's not enough on its own.
When God's ultimate judgment comes, you need more than the right family.
And as much as parents, as we want to do everything we can for our kids to give them everything that they need to follow Jesus, they still have to be the ones to make that decision.
It's not enough for that last plague, right? It's not enough on that's own to receive freedom from that consequence. And so you need more than just to live in a certain place. What you need, what all of us need is to be protected by the blood of a spotless land to those who aren't followers of Jesus. And we may have some in this group here today.
Maybe you were born in Egypt and life has been hard and difficult. Maybe you feel as though God is out to get you. And it may not be a swarm of flies or frogs or hail, but you feel the difficulties and the hardship of life.
Maybe you've lived in darkness and you can feel it.
Maybe it's like you've been living in Egypt when the plagues fell.
Here is the lesson for you, if that applies to you, is you don't have to stay in Egypt.
You don't have to be from a certain family or born in a certain place to receive grace and freedom.
All you have to do is to fear the Lord and to turn away from your sin and to seek refuge in the blood of Jesus, the church. And this is the cool thing about the church, is it is a mixed group who have one fundamental thing in common. We are clinging to Jesus together.
And so don't harden your heart like Pharaoh, but be like the Egyptians who saw the works of God and believed now to the church as a whole. Something that we can learn as we reflect on the Passover is that there is this special connection between the Passover and the Lord's supper.
God sent judgment to Egypt, and he provided protection for those who trusted in him. And so we see this mix of both mercy and judgment.
And then what God does is he established a meal to commemorate the event.
And this meal he established, it both highlights the judgment and the mercy part of what was going on.
Through this meal, the people relived and they reenacted this fundamental event in their history.
And this feast that they had, it forged both the present and the past that they'd experienced also with the future that was to come in Exodus 1242, it says, because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt. On this night, all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come.
And so every time that they looked back in remembrance, it was building resilience.
And they were also looking forward to the future that they got to experience, that they would get to experience together.
Passover was a memorial for them so that they didn't forget, so that they could teach their children the works and ways of God.
And for us, as the church, we get to experience this cool thing together every week, where we connect our present to our past and to the future.
Like the Passover, this meal is for the people of God.
It's not for outsiders. If I can say that the Lord's supper that we take, it's really for the people of God. If an outsider wants to join the covenant meal, they need to take on the covenant sign.
In Exodus, it was something else. Today, it's faith. It's baptism.
And so today we look back to the mercy of God at the cross. Really, every day, but especially on a Sunday, when we take the Lord's supper meal together, we relive the last supper so that we don't forget.
And we ask God to remember his mercy and to remember the blood that was shed on our behalf in one corinthians. And we'll end with this. Chapter eleven, verse 26. Paul is talking about this Lord's supper. And I love this line. You've probably heard it many times in the Lord's supper talk in verse 26, where he says, for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
When we eat the bread and drink the cup, that is the thing that we are doing in the present.
And when we proclaim the Lord's death, that's us reflecting on the path, the past, and that part where it says do until he comes, that's us focusing on the future reflection reflecting on what God has done for us and how the blood covers us is what we do as followers of Jesus and just how God showed them freedom from their slavery in Egypt. God, through Jesus, now offers us freedom from our slavery to sin, and he does it through Jesus.
And we are allowed to enter into that relationship through the blood of the lamb.
And so this week, as you take the Lord's supper on Sunday, as you have conversations with your families at home about all kinds of things, spend time reflecting. Think about what God has done for you and how that pushes us forward to a future of grace and mercy. Let's go to God in prayer. God, we are so thankful for the blood of the lamb. We're thankful for moments of reflection. We're thankful for times to get together with family and talk about what it means to follow you. God, I pray that we look for opportunities to talk about these things, to think about the past, but also to look forward to the future that you have in store for us. God, I pray if there's someone that's here tonight that maybe feels like life has been really difficult and hard, I pray that they recognize they don't have to stay in Egypt, that through Jesus they can experience freedom because of the blood that was shed on the cross. We love you, God. We're thankful for your son, Jesus. It's in his name we pray. Amen.
