Preached 3/21/10

Fifth Sunday in Lent/Exodus #8

Preached by Dr. Paul R. Smith

West Side Presbyterian Church

Contact: office@wspc.org

TO SET YOU FREE

[Exodus 12:21-51]

Introduction to the Scriptures: [Read Exodus 12:21-23.] This is a pretty dramatic event if you consider it. If you believe what God is saying, this is an awesome night. [Read Exodus 12:24-32.] “And also bless me.” He is recognizing what had come to him was a curse not a blessing, and he is asking that it might be reversed.

[Read Exodus 12:33-51]

Prayer for Illumination – Father, it is clear to us that this is a tremendously significant event. You have asked your people to remember it, and they have for thousands of years even beyond that group who were called immediately to you, those who shared the Hebrew descent. We too celebrate in new ways, because you have moved in new directions to bring about that same deliverance, that same redemption. So we ask you to help us to understand it today. More importantly, not just know it in our heads, but we pray that you would be delivering us, that we would recognize the cost, that we would recognize what that deliverance should look like, and we would receive from you the transforming power of your Spirit that we too might be set free from sin and death. We pray this in your name, AMEN.

Message

The founder of my seminary, A. J. Gordon, was a Baptist preacher in Boston. The initials A. J. stood for Adoniram Judson, a famous Baptist missionary to Burma. His father, however, J. C. Gordon (can anybody think what J. C. Might stand for?), was named after John Calvin. So maybe that helps explain why I am a Presbyterian minister with some latent Baptist tendencies. I got all kinds of affirmation last week for singing several Baptist hymns.

In any case, there is a great story about A. J. Gordon which perfectly illustrates the heart of our message this morning. When A. J. was pastor of a church in Boston, he met a young boy in front of the sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously. Gordon inquired, “Son, where did you get those birds?” The boy replied, “I trapped them out in the field.” “What are you going to do with them?” “I’m going to play with them, and then I guess I’ll just feed them to an old cat we have at home.”

When Gordon offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, “Mister, you don’t want them, they’re just little old wild birds and can’t sing very well.” Gordon replied, “I’ll give you $2 for the cage and the birds.” (This was in the 1870s or 80s.) “Okay, it’s a deal, but you’re making a bad bargain.” The exchange was made and the boy went away whistling, happy with his shiny coins. Gordon walked around to the back of the church property, opened the door of the small wire coop, and let the struggling creatures soar into the blue. The next Sunday he took the empty cage into the pulpit and used it to illustrate his sermon about Christ’s coming to seek and to save the lost – paying for them with His own precious blood. “That boy told me the birds were not songsters,” said Gordon, “but when I released them and they winged their way heavenward, it seemed to me they were singing, ‘Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!’”

Redemption is a very simple concept to grasp. It means “deliverance from bondage.” It is why we began with that clear image. Redemption describes the release of someone (or something) from the control of an alien power that has a claim on it. Redemption, of course, requires a Redeemer. The Redeemer pays a price to accomplish the redemption, and is usually motivated to do so either by a prior claim to whatever is being delivered, or simply by a sense of justice, or even an unexplained love.

The cost of redemption may be nothing more than the payment of an outstanding debt, but if the one who holds the keys to the debtor’s prison or the slave-holder resists the release, the cost is escalated and may involve the shedding of blood. Thus a Redeemer must count the cost to be certain he has the ability to pay the price of redemption and free the one who is in bondage.

We are going to follow our text in looking briefly at the redemption of the people of Israel who were suffering a severe bondage, a slavery in Egypt. But the whole point of this message on redemption this morning is to encourage each of us to look at ourselves and to be honest about the bondage under which we may be struggling, for you and I also suffer under a slavery. It may be an addiction to a particular sin, it may be that we are subject to a debilitating self-image, it may be that we have become the servant of other people’s expectations, or that we are enslaved by our own desires. Whatever it is, as our sermon title this morning suggests, Jesus wants to set you free! He wants to set you free, like those birds released into the heavens. Isn’t that great news! That is the gospel! Good news!

It was about the Messiah that Isaiah the prophet wrote the familiar words printed with the sermon this morning, “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” [Isaiah 61:1] And that is exactly what Jesus did, as the apostle Paul writes to the Colossian Christians, “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:13, 14] When you and I leave this place today, I want you to recognize that if you have placed yourself under the care of our redeeming God, then like the Passover lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ which we share at the Communion table this morning has set you free from your bondage, your slavery to sin and to death.

Now we have been saying all along through our study of the book of Exodus leading up to Lent and Easter, that the whole gospel is contained in this story. Let’s trace the steps we have been learning which led up to this grand and historic deliverance of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. In the first place, it is clear that they are in bondage. They have lost their freedom. They have been forced into slavery and are being abused by their masters.

Now we don’t really quite know how this happened. We hear nothing that suggests they deserved this fate. They simply did not have the strength to resist when a stronger force began to impose this bondage on them. Bad things happen to people in a fallen world, although, as Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.” [Matthew 18:7b] The Pharaoh will recognize the truth of this.

What we do know is that God has a serious stake in this game because these are His people who He has chosen to love. The Egyptians may have the power to impose their will, at least temporarily, but they do not have the right of ownership over these people. God alone has that claim, for He chose them and entered into a covenant with their ancestors – a covenant which guaranteed His protection and care. Now He has arrived and He has asked for their release.

His claim, by the way, is reinforced by His sense of justice and the current slave-holder’s mistreatment of His people. God, who understands human nature completely, had seen this coming, and was preparing for it. Way back in Genesis 15 where He entered into this covenant with Abraham, He had told him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. [This is centuries before it happened. God was anticipating it.] But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.”

So now that day has arrived, and God has confronted Pharaoh with the demand that His people be released from their slavery. He has also had Moses explain it all to the Israelites. In Exodus 6:6ff. It is stated very clearly. “Therefore say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.’” And he goes on to say,

I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am [Yahweh] the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.

You remember that phrase, I am Yahweh. I am the God who is, and I will bring it to pass.

There is the clear and powerful statement of redemption we have been talking about. I will release you from your slavery by judging your masters, and I will buy you back and give you the blessing I promised to my people. And God had indeed let His judgment fall on their taskmasters as we have seen in earlier studies. Because He is a God of mercy, however, do recall that He had repeatedly given even their slave-masters the opportunity to escape His continuing judgment, but they had refused. So now a final judgment is falling – a curse on their future, if you will, in the form of the death of their firstborn.

But now we see an interesting and significant twist in our story of redemption, and this is where it becomes very important for us to understand what is going on. For Israel is not released without obligation. In fact, their release will only come if they are willing to acknowledge that they too would be subject to God’s judgment if they refused God’s offer of mercy. They too would be subject to the judgement, remember? The angel of death was passing over all the houses to see who was and who was not under the blood of the lamb. God is a God of promises, but His promises are contingent. His promise of blessing to Abraham and his descendants had been contingent upon their willingness to acknowledge and follow Him as their God. And this they had failed to do. Their failure had no doubt been no small part of the reason for their subsequent slavery. So now, even as He is offering them their freedom, He makes it clear that their freedom rests entirely on their acknowledgment of Him as their true Lord and Master. They have something to do, and they need to be certain that they do it.

Please understand that every other worldly master wants to control you for its own pleasure and advantage. God wants to control you for your pleasure and advantage. That is the difference among those contending for mastery over us. But this freedom to finally become all He has created you to be will only come if you fore-swear all other masters and swear allegiance to Him alone. That is what He is asking them to do.

This is what lies behind the Passover event. They must do as God says and place themselves at His mercy. They are given strict instructions which they must obey if their lives are to be preserved. Only then will He “pass over” them with the judgment both they and their slave holders deserve.

To a person, we are told, they obey, and God spares them the judgment they deserve. By contrast, their slave-masters, who had refused to obey God and release them, are struck down by God’s judgment, and God’s people are finally free to leave this slavery and commit themselves to God’s care. It’s still a long way to the Promised Land, many adventures, many setbacks, many advances along the way, but they are finally on their way.

Now they have seen God’s judgment on those who had oppressed them, but they have not yet learned the deepest and most astounding lesson of the Passover. They are, I believe, grateful to God for His deliverance, but they have no clue how much it has cost Him. They saw the blood over the door, but they have not yet understood what that blood foreshadowed. It was not until much later that the Psalmist would write, in Psalm 49, “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him – the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough – that he should live on forever and not see decay.”

On this day, the ransom was paid in blood, the blood of a sacrificial lamb, but no such sacrifice would suffice to redeem a life from death and from judgment for sin. What they could not yet have known was that God was quietly preparing to pay the price for their freedom, and it would be with His own blood.

So we arrive at the place where this whole story is leading, and that is our own redemption, for we too are in bondage. In the New Testament, in John 8:31-32, Jesus offered his people that same deliverance and freedom, this time from a far more severe slavery. They did not understand the offer. He said, “You can be set free,” and they answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves to anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” And Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Are you a slave? Jesus says you are. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, the only real bondage from the very beginning – slavery to sin, which always leads to death.

But then he goes on to explain, “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family.” That is our problem. In other words, as long as they remained slaves, they could never share His kingdom and the privileges of being His children. By contrast, He points out in 8:35, “a son belongs to [the family] forever.” Then he goes on to explain, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Remember that promise from Isaiah with which we began? “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Well, this is where it all comes together, for this is the Son of God, the only true heir. If he sets us free, we shall be free indeed. And the apostle Paul points out a little later on in Romans that indeed we become the recipients of his inheritance.

But now you and I must understand that there is no small cost in setting us free. In fact our sins require an infinite cost because justice demands it. Anything less would constitute a failure of justice. God cannot simply say about our sins, “Oh well, forget about it.” To do so would be to say that justice no longer matters. Setting us free from the demands of justice, therefore, requires the payment of death, because we cannot go back in time. We cannot undo the sins we have already done. Justice demands death. That payment, however, God is willing to make on our behalf, because there is no other way of deliverance and because He loves us. He himself will pay the price of redemption.

Romans 3:23ff. says it clearly.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished [he hadn’t slain us all, though we deserved it] – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time [though the price would be paid, but he himself would pay it], so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

You understand, this is the whole story of the gospel. That’s where it all comes together. Jesus’ friend and disciple, Peter, says it this way:

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 [an empty way of life that enslaves us], but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. [1 Peter 1:18, 19]

My friends, do you understand the cost of your redemption? It seems to me that we constantly need to be reminded. It is the blood of Jesus Christ, nothing less. It is the blood of God in the flesh, the only adequate and acceptable sacrifice for our sin, His lifeblood poured out on the cross. It is a tremendously sobering moment when we realize the cost of our sin. But only the realization of that cost can enable us to realize as well the awesome dimensions of God’s love for us.

This, then, the table of our Lord, is our Passover moment. Until we come to this table, Sin and Death rule over us and hold us in thrall. But here at this table is represented the judgment of God against both Sin and Death, for Christ not only died as the lamb sacrificed for our sins, but he rose again as the victor over death itself. So here the wine is the blood of the lamb, and when God sees it, He “passes over” us, not visiting on us the judgment we deserve because He has absorbed that judgment in His own body on the cross. And the bread, like the unleavened bread at Passover, represents not only his body broken for us, but the uncontaminated life which he desires to give us on the other side of that death.

The apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8,

Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast – as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

Ah yes, the Son of God desires more than anything else to set us free from all our old slaveries. But while He has paid the price of our redemption, that deliverance may only begin when we have acknowledged His lordship and given ourselves entirely to His care as He required of His children that first Passover night. Indeed, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast.” [KJV]

Closing prayer – Father, thank you for the ways you have taught us and, again and again, reinforced this lesson – the cost of our redemption and the gift of our freedom. We have gone back, again and again, to our old master. We keep doing what he says even though we know that road leads to death. Father, may we learn to submit our wills to you that we may know your gift of grace and your gift of life. Now as we come to your Table, may we recognize this as our Passover moment, covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, released from our bondage to sin, set free to become all you created us to be. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, AMEN.