Dive deep into the bonds between Abraham’s covenant and the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. This episode uncovers the enduring narrative of faith and promises fulfilled, with a special focus on the symbolic aspects of biblical feasts. Learn how events from centuries past echo into Christian practices today, providing insight into Jesus’ references to unleavened bread and the true bread of life.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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There’s an old hymn I remember singing in church when I was just a boy. It’s striking to me today because it represented an understanding of the Bible in earlier generations that I think has been lost in many churches today. The song was, you may know it, Christ our Redeemer died on the cross, died for the sinner, paid all his due. All who receive him need never fear. Yes, he will pass, will pass over you. When I see the blood, repeated three times, when I see the blood, I will pass, I will pass over you. Now, I sang that song for years and never realized where the theme Passover came from. There was a time when the great hymn writers had a sense of the connection between old and new. They realized that there was a strong tie between the death of Jesus and the Passover of the Jews. But just as that connection presented problems for the early church, which it did, it presents problems today as well. A lot of folks don’t like the idea of anything Jewish connected with their Christianity. And yet, here’s this old hymn. And here is what God said to Moses. In Exodus 12, verse 23, For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood upon the lentil and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. You know, the implications of this are far-reaching. It’s the blood of the Lamb applied that enables God to pass over us and spare us the destruction around us. It seems a shame to me that some Christian churches have lost touch with this great festival. They see Christ in it when they bother to look. But somewhere in history, they stopped observing it annually on the anniversary. In observing communion or the Lord’s Supper every Sunday or monthly or quarterly, they forgot that it was originally an annual observance. And I suppose in the process, they forgot altogether that it was the Passover. The commandment from God to Moses said, “…you shall observe this thing for an ordinance to you and your sons forever.” And it shall come to pass, when you come into the land the Lord will give you, just as He has promised, that you shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say, What does all this mean? You shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel and Egypt when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses. and the people bowed their head and worshipped. And so, Christian theology has the blood of Jesus Christ applied to our lives, and God passes over us and our sins. Well, the children of Israel, in verse 28 of Exodus 12, went away, did what God commanded Moses, and it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon and even the firstborn of all cattle. What a terrible, terrible tragedy to befall Egypt. And if you missed the earlier programs in this series, you’ll have missed something very important about the reason why this had to take place. And if you’d like to catch up with us, when you call in or write in to receive a copy of this program, be sure and ask them for Christian Holidays No. 1 as well. Because that way you’ll be able to follow through and catch up with us on it. So after the midnight when the destroyer had done his work, it was safe to go out. And in a manner of speaking, it was morning after midnight, so they were able to go out. Well, Pharaoh rose up in the middle of the night, all his servants, all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt because there was not a house where there wasn’t somebody dead. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said, Get up, get out, go serve the Lord as you have said. Take your flocks, take your herds, be gone, and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land at haste, get them out of here. They said, if they don’t, we’re all dead men. And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. In verse 39, it says they baked unleavened cakes of the dough they brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened because they were thrust out and couldn’t wait, and they hadn’t prepared themselves any food. And any cook will understand you’ve got to have time for bread to rise, so they ate unleavened bread. Now, you know, I think a lot of people look no further than this in considering why this feast is called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But we’re going to look further than that. But first, let me point out a couple of interesting things in the Exodus account. Now, the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, even the self-same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went up out of the land of Egypt. Now, this is a remarkable statement because it points not merely to a sort of a region of time in the past. It points to a singular day 430 years before. Now, if you’ve ever looked this up in the commentaries, you’re going to find out very quickly that the chronology of this from the time they went into Egypt and came out of Egypt doesn’t work. But actually, it’s talking about the period of time all the way from the call of Abraham until they’re coming out of Egypt. It isn’t clear exactly what day that was 430 years before, but it lends credence to the idea that the festivals of Jehovah are much older than the days of Moses. Now, there’s no way to be certain, but symbolically, the day fits an event described in Genesis chapter 15. If you’re a Bible reader, you know that God called Abraham out of his own land and told him to get to a place where he was going to give him a land for an inheritance. In this 15th chapter, it says, And Abraham said, Lord God, what are you going to give me? I don’t have any children. The steward in my house is this Eliezer of Damascus. I mean, you’re making all kinds of promises to me, but I’m an old man. I have everything I need. What are you going to give me? And Abraham said, look, you haven’t given me any children. And one born in my house, just an ordinary servant, is going to wind up inheriting everything here. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, No, that’s not going to be your heir. He that shall come forth out of your own body shall be your heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and he says, Look, look at the heavens. Look up. Count the stars. Can you number them? I’m sure Abraham was shaking his head about this time. He says, So shall your seed be. And Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him for righteousness. You know, it is remarkable in a sense. You listen to this or you read this phrase right out of the Bible. Yeah, we’re supposed to believe and I believe God and so forth. But do you know how rare it is really for even one person to really believe in another? And what it means when someone does. Well, he said to him, God said to Abraham, I’m the Lord. I brought you out of the land of Chaldees, and I want to give you this land to inherit it. And he said, well, Lord God, how shall I know that I shall inherit it? How is this going to be made secure to me? Now, there’s a curious thing that then follows in this. All of us know that when the time comes to set up an inheritance, we’ve got to do it legally, don’t we? That there are laws, there are customs, there are things that have to be addressed in the process of turning over property from one person to another. Now, for God to be able to give this land to Abraham… He had to own it in the first place, right? That’s not a problem very much because we all know God owns everything. But he does say specifically that he is going to really deed this land, and the land we’re talking about is all the way from the Nile River to the Euphrates that he’s going to deed to Abraham. But in order to do this deed, in order to create a covenant deed, They had to actually do the things required in those days for the deed. So God said, Take a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, and a turtle dove and a young pigeon. So he took all of them. He split them in the middle, laid each piece one against the other. He didn’t bother dividing the birds. What this is is a sacrifice. All these animals are killed, divided in their carcasses, and split into two sides. And whenever the fowls came down on the carcasses, Abraham sat there and drove them away so they wouldn’t defile this particular sacrifice. Now I’ve got to stop and take a moment to explain something to you that otherwise might be lost. In the very earliest of times, one of the ways of creating a covenant between individuals was that they would cut themselves, put a little of their blood in a cup, and they would drink one another’s blood, becoming therefore blood brothers. In later times, this changed to actually drinking the blood of a shared sacrifice. Then in still later times, it became a matter of sharing a sacrificial meal. In other words, this thing is done before God in that the animal is sacrificed, then the blood is presented to God, but then the flesh of the animal is shared between the two of us. Something like that is going on here. Of course, God isn’t going to sit down and eat a covenant meal with Abraham, but nevertheless, the sacrificial arrangement has been done. Not 430. 400 years. But you know what’s something that’s interesting about this, that the initial years of the Israelites in Egypt, they were not afflicted. As long as Joseph was alive, they were treated well in the land of Egypt. Now, we don’t know much about the timing of all the events that took place in there. But what is really interesting is that on this particular day, the prophecy is given that they would afflict Israel for 400 years. And he says, “…that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall they come out with great substance.” Now, you may recall that in the Exodus account, the Israelites went to the Egyptians, or actually when the Egyptians came to them and says, “…get up and get out,” they said, “…give me that ring.” Give me that necklace. And the Egyptians were very quick to bestow all of their jewelry upon the Israelites in order to get them out of the place. And it was just because they owed it to the Israelites for hundreds of years of slavery. God says at the end of this period of time they will come out with great substance. And what the book of Exodus tells us is 430 years from the time that the promise was made to the very day it was fulfilled as Israel came out. You, Abraham, shall go to your fathers in peace, be buried in a good old age, but in the fourth generation they’ll come here again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. The problem was the Amorites possessed the land, and God had not yet found sufficient reason to dispossess them. And it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between these pieces.” In the same day, the Lord made a covenant. The expression in Hebrew is cut a covenant with Abraham, saying, Under your seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. God himself passed between these animals, the parts of these animals, entering formally into a covenant with Abraham and binding himself to fulfill the deal. I’ll have more about this when I come back after this message.
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So this day, when Israel walked out of Egypt, 430 years to the day after this day in which Abraham entered into a covenant for receiving the land of Palestine, is a really fascinating comparison between these two events. The events of the Exodus are the fulfillment of this promise. And I suspect it is the very day, 430 years before the Exodus, when this ceremony took place, when the promises were made and the covenant was cut. This day was, in a very important way, a precursor of the Passover. And because of the symbolism involved, I suspect it was on an anniversary of this date that Abraham was sent to offer his only son as a sacrifice. And, you know, I don’t know what it would take as a Bible reader not to see the connection between Abraham going up to offer his only son as a sacrifice. And John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now, can I prove that this connection is there? No. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. I’m reaching for an understanding of what God is doing and why he is doing it. And I hope that you’re reaching out too. Part of the understanding we are looking for focuses on the curious question of unleavened bread. Paul said to the Corinthians, For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth. The impression one gets from the Exodus is that it was merely a matter of the Israelites fleeing of Egypt and having no time for their bread to rise. But somehow, it seems to me there ought to be more to it than that. Paul certainly thought so. In fact, Jesus gives us a very strong indication of it himself. There’s a long passage in the sixth chapter of the book of John that I want to call your attention to because it relates to this in a very important way. In John 6, verse 1, it says, After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee on the Sea of Tiberias, and a huge crowd of people followed him because they saw his miracles that he did on people who were diseased. It’s really easy to understand why people would be fascinated by this, not to mention why they would want to go if they were sick. But Jesus went up into a mountain and he sat there with his disciples. And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. This is a seasonal thing. We are at a time of year when certain things like Passover and unleavened bread are going to be on Jesus’ mind and on the minds of all of his listeners. Now when Jesus lifted up his eyes and he saw a huge company had come to him, he said to Philip, where are we going to buy bread to feed all these people? Now, you may wonder why Jesus would even concern himself with that. But, you know, this is Middle Eastern hospitality. He felt these people had come to him. He felt a sense of responsibility. And what follows is not exactly in line with what we want to talk about, but it’s this incredible miracle of the five loaves and a few fishes with which Jesus fed thousands of people. In verse 14, it says, Well, these men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, Wow, this is of a truth, that prophet that should come into the world. And when Jesus began to realize that they’re going to come and take him by force and try to make him a king, he departed to a mountain himself alone. At this point, Jesus did everything he could to get away from the people. He went off into the mountain, finally got into a boat and crossed the sea because these people are ready to start a revolution. And he didn’t want any part of it because he had something else entirely that he had to do. Now, when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come over here? Jesus didn’t even consider that question worth answering because he immediately answers what’s on their mind. He said, you know, I’m going to tell you the truth. You seek me not because you saw the miracles, but because you ate bread and were filled. You know, you people really should not labor for the food that perishes. You should work for that food that endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give you. For him has God the Father sealed. And they said, well, what shall we do that we might work the works of God? And Jesus answered and said, this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. And they then, ready to argue with him, it seems like, because they just back and forth, back and forth. They said, well, what sign do you show us then that we may see and believe you? What are you going to do? Our fathers now ate manna in the desert, as is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat, which proves that Jesus was right in judging their motives. They couldn’t make it through three or four sentences without coming back to the question, you know, you did this five loaves and two fishes things again. That was good food. Do it again. Do it again. We want to see it again. And implicit in all of this is you weren’t satisfied when you saw it once. You want to see it again. It’s not because you want to see the miracle. It’s because you want to fill your belly. And Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you that bread from heaven. My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus is starting into a theme here that is connected to the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, which is on his mind at this time. He is thinking of himself, presenting himself as the bread of God, which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And they said to him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. Now Jesus is ready to drop it on him. He said, I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst. And right here, we begin to find the connection with the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover, which is fast approaching. And I’ll talk about that when I come back after this message.
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This was a difficult crowd for Jesus. For some reason, they seemed to be very much at odds with Him. And I wouldn’t want to say that He got testy with them, but He was, within His own area of patience, still pretty firm with this group. It’s worth remembering that when all was said and done, after three and a half years of His ministry, Jesus had the grand sum total of 120 disciples. And he said to this gang here, he says, You have seen me, but you don’t believe. All the Father gives me shall come to me, and he that comes to me I will never cast out. I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which has sent me, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone that sees the Son and believes on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now the Jews listened to all this, and then they murmured. They said, well, he said, I’m the bread that came down from heaven. Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he say, I came down from heaven? Jesus said, Don’t murmur among yourselves. No man can come unto me except the Father which has sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now there’s an interesting circumstance about that spirit of the Father drawing him. It’s in the very next verse. As it is written in the prophets, they shall all be taught of God. Every man, therefore, that has heard and has learned of the Father comes to me. And boy, does that speak volumes for the religious circumstances, for the response to the Father of the vast majority of the population at the time. They weren’t listening to the Father. Their faith was not the faith of the Father. They weren’t following in the steps of old faithful Abraham. Not at all. They had a form of godliness. But there was no power to it. There was no strength to it. He said, anyone who has been taught of God, who follows God, will come to me. Not that any man has seen the Father, save he which is of God, he has seen the Father. Verily I say unto you, he that believes on me has everlasting life. And then he makes a remarkable statement. I am that bread of life. And so when you come to the question of the days of unleavened bread, and you ask, well, what’s that all about? Well, in fact, it’s a little bit hard for people to grasp at first. But the command in the Bible is that you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days. This is not merely an abstinence from leaven, as some people might think. There’s actually the receiving of unleavened bread for the seven days of the festival. What would that unleavened bread be? Jesus, the bread of life, who because sin symbolically is a kind of leavener in that sense, that Jesus as the bread of life must be himself, unleavened and without sin. I’m the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they’re all dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, that if a man may eat of it, he will not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat this bread, He will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. When I read this passage, I can’t help reflecting on all the years I thought about, read about, sang about, trusted the blood of Jesus Christ to take away my sins, which is fundamental. It’s Christianity 101. It’s right there in the basics. But I never gave a thought to the flesh of Jesus, which he said he would give for the life of the world. It’s really funny because that somehow has not made it very far or very deeply into the Christian consciousness. The blood of Christ has. The blood of Christ is well recognized. It’s shot through all of your hymnals. There is that thin red line of blood that people say runs from the beginning of the Bible all the way through to the end. And I understand that. We all do. But Jesus said he would give his flesh for the life of the world. And there is a distinction here. Now the Jews who were listening did not much like this. And they said among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? And Jesus answering said something truly astonishing to these people. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoso eats my flesh… and drinks my blood, has eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day, for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him. Now, it doesn’t take a lot to realize the connection directly with the Lord’s Supper, with communion, where we take a little wine or grape juice and a little wafer or perhaps a piece of unleavened bread as symbols of the shed blood and the broken body of Jesus Christ. This is why at the Last Supper, as Jesus handed them the cup, said, Take this, drink it. This is my blood of the new covenant. You know, this was a hard saying, even for his disciples. In the end, some of them turned back and walked no more with Jesus. What’s inescapable about this passage is the connection between the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread and the Lord’s Supper, which he would soon institute with his disciples. We’ll talk about it. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
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