Turn with me tonight to Exodus
chapter 13 if you would. This chapter begins with an order
from God. An order to sanctify or appoint
or set apart, that's what the word sanctify means, to concentrate. the firstborn of man and beast
to the Lord. Look at verse one. And the Lord
spake unto Moses saying, sanctify unto me all the firstborn. Whatsoever openeth the womb among
the children of Israel, both of man and of beast, it is mine. I wonder if we've figured out
who God is yet. Everything belongs to Him. Scripture
says, for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. This
world and everything in it belongs to God. Teresa and I have a deed
to a house. We live in that house, but someone
lived in that house before we did, and more than likely, unless
the Lord, if the Lord tarries, We'll die and someone else will
live in that house after we do. So really everything that we
have is just on loan to us, isn't it? God was the God of Egypt the
same as he was the God of Israel. Egypt didn't know it. Egypt didn't
recognize him as God, but he was still their God. And then
the sovereign purpose of God, the Almighty chose to be merciful
to some, and to just let others have their own way. That's all
God has to do to harden a man or a woman. We looked a few weeks
back at the passage in John 3, which says, he that believes
not on the Son of God is condemned already, born condemned. If God doesn't intervene, we'll
all wind up in hell without God and without Christ. Men like
to talk about their free will, and it was man's free will that
actually thrust him into his condemned state. He's not going to be redeemed
the same way that he fell. And I would tell you that we
need to Ignore the chapter division here. Chapter 13 is more of the
same of chapter 12. It's talking about the Passover. And these verses are still talking
about how God passes over his people while still executing
perfect justice. That's the key. God cannot compromise
his justice in saving a sinner. Chapter 13 still talking about
the same thing chapter 12 talked about and that is redemption
by the blood. In chapter 12 verse 13 we read,
and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where
you are. And God says, when I see the
blood, I will pass over you. And the plague, what's that plague? The plague of sin shall not be
upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. And friends, this is redemption.
That's what redemption is. This is the redeeming work of
the Lord Jesus. He is our redeemer. He redeemed
us by His blood. When God saw the blood, what
did He do? He passed over. So we see that
the blood of Christ is very, not only significant, but crucial
in the salvation of God's people. Now after this redeeming work,
God says in verse 2, when you observe the feast in the land
of promise. You're gonna go into the land
that God promised you, and I want you to observe this feast year
after year. We'll read that in a moment.
But in verse two, he says, sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatever
openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of
beast, it is mine. Now look down at verse 10. He
says, thou shall keep this ordinance in his season from year to year,
speaking of the Passover and the feast of the unleavened bread.
And in verse 11, he says, and it shall be when the Lord shall
bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, as he swear unto
thee and to thy fathers and shall give it thee, that thou shalt
set apart unto the Lord all that openeth the matrix, and that
simply means all that comes from the womb, And every firstling,
every firstborn that cometh of a beast which thou hast, the
male shall be the Lord's. The Creator of all things has
the right to declare all things to be His. Why? Because they
are. They are. You belong to the Lord
whether you know it or not. Now it's the Lord's at the Lord's discretion, whether
he exercises mercy and grace upon you in Christ, or whether
he just lets you have your own way. God has a right to do what he
wills with his own. I'm afraid there's not a lot
of people that believe that. He has the right to love some
and not others, and people get upset. Why doth he yet find fault,
they say? If we're just doing what God
ordains us to do, why does He find fault? How can He love some
and not love others? That doesn't seem to be fair. He has the right to redeem some
and just leave others to themselves. He's God. To His New Testament
saints, God says, you are not your own. You're not your own,
you're bought with a price. And that price is the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus, the Passover lamb. What do we have
that we did not receive? And how can we glory in those
things that we have as if we hadn't received them? Truly,
it's God who makes us to differ from another. The child of God loves that and
is thankful that God enabled him to be different from another,
that God made him or her to differ from another. God said, whatever opens or comes
from the womb, whether among the firstborn of beast or the
firstborn of the children of man, it is mine. It all belongs
to me, and it does. I think that's something that
men and women need to settle in their own mind and hearts
right in the beginning. is the fact that God has the
right to do what he will with his own. It's lawful, the Lord
Jesus said, it's lawful, it's right for God to do whatever
he pleases with all that belong to him. Now, back up in verse
three, we read, and Moses said unto the people, remember this
day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage,
for by strength of hand The Lord brought you out from this place.
Therefore shall no leavened bread be eaten. Now God's gonna make
sure that his people know, all his people. He's gonna make sure
that all his people know and remember that it was by the sovereign
strength of his hand that God, that he brought them out of bondage.
There's not gonna be any doubt in a believer's mind and heart,
who it was that knew them, chose them, called them, delivered
them, justified and redeemed them, kept them by his power
and will one day glorify them, no doubt in their mind about
who did it. And we thankfully say salvation is of the Lord,
because if the Lord didn't save us, none of us would be saved.
We don't have a problem with God hating Esau, we just don't
understand how God could love Jacob or us. And a child of God
is grateful that the Lord was mindful of him or her. You ask any believer who it was
that delivered them, and they'll tell you salvations of the Lord.
No question about it. Here God tells Israel to sanctify,
to appoint, set apart the firstborn of every man, woman, and beast. And He's showing them and He's
showing us that it all belongs to Him. He's showing them and
us that all the glory is His alone. God is showing them and us that
it's God's right to not only look for, but to expect personal
devotion from His blood-bought people. It's only right that
we praise and glorify God for the great things that He's done. Did you notice the last part
of verse 3? Moses had said, remember this
day, the day that you came out of Egypt, the day that God brought
you out of bondage, The day that he brought you out with a strong
hand. You didn't do anything. You didn't contribute to your
deliverance. God brought you out with a strong hand. But then
out of the blue, the Lord says, there shall no leavened bread
be eaten. You know, God has the right to
expect whatever he wills from us. We're not our own. As I read
a moment ago, we've been bought with a price. And it's the precious
blood of Christ that bought us. And we discussed this in detail
a few studies back. Throughout scripture, leaven
is the symbol of evil, which spreads and corrupts everything
that it comes in contact with. For a little leaven leaveneth
the whole lump. To eat unleavened bread signified
separation from sin and evil in order that we may feed upon
Christ. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot. No man or woman can
serve two masters. It's impossible. And in verse
four, the Lord says through Moses, this day came ye out in the month
of Abib, and it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into
the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites,
and the Habites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto my fathers
to give thee a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt,
now look at this, keep this service in this month. Now this is talking
about the Passover Feast of the Unleavened Bread. You're going
to keep this. God gave Moses instruction as
to how this Feast of Unleavened Bread was to be taken, and the
Old Testament Passover was the first day of a seven-day celebration
that was the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. And we've talked a great
deal about what it pictures and represents. The Passover feast
pictured and was given to remind Israel what we just read. That
because God had saw the blood of the sacrifice, the sacrifice. He didn't execute His wrath and
His judgment and His justice upon them, but by the substitution
of a lamb, He passed over them with great grace and mercy. God
commanded this feast to be observed to put them in continual remembrance
of their deliverance in and by and through the blood of the
Lamb of God that was slain before the foundation of the world.
And by nature we're just so prone to forget the mercies of our
Savior. So God commands his people to
observe and partake of this feast so that his people will remember
and honor the things that God has done for them. What mercy
that is. What mercy it is that God would
bring us into remembrance continually of the salvation that he's provided
for. And that's what we do when we
preach. We feast on Christ. Every time I hear the gospel,
I'm reminded of how Christ died for our sins according to the
scripture. You know, it's pretty sad and pathetic that I can remember
an off-color joke someone told me 25 years ago, but I have a
difficult time in remembering the very scripture in the text
that I preached from the week before. We need reminding. And that's why we give the preeminence
to Christ in our preaching. We preach Christ and Him crucified.
We continually remind ourselves and remember through God's Word
what Christ did for us and how that Christ came into the world
to save sinners. And the Feast of the Passover
and the Unleavened Bread lasted seven days and you know what
that number represents in the scripture. It always pictures
perfection, fullness, wholeness, completion. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul
tells us to purge out there for the old leaven, that we may be
a new lump. As we are unleavened, we are
in Christ. For even Christ our Passover
is sacrifice for us. That's how we're unleavened. Therefore, let us keep the feast,
not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and
wickedness, that which consumed us before, but with the unleavened
bread of sincerity and truth. Just because we're saved by grace
through the shed blood of Christ, we don't now indulge in sin without
fear of its consequences or just simply continue in sin that grace
may abound. No, sir. It's out of thankfulness
and it's out of appreciation and it's out of gratitude that
we happily worship Christ with the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth. And that's the way we have to
worship Him, in sincerity and in truth. That's what true preaching
is. It's Christ preached in sincerity
and truth. And again in verse six, God commands
us, seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the
seventh day shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread
shall be eaten seven days, and there shall no leavened bread
be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee
in all thy quarters. No unleavened bread was to be
seen. It wasn't allowed in the house. And we can go to the New Testament
to see why that's so. In the New Testament, we see
that Levin pictures some things that are just absolutely contrary
to the redemption that's found in Christ. It pictures insincerity,
Levin does. We've looked at these things.
It pictures hypocrisy. It's a pretense. It's having
a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. In Matthew
chapter 16, the Lord said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and the Sadducees. It was all their formalism, their
legalism, all their superstition. Well, it made void the word of
God by the traditions of man. The Pharisees were full of pretense
and hypocrisy. And it was nothing but leaven.
Pride and arrogance is nothing but leaven. And then the 11 of
the Sadducees was intellectualism. The Sadducees were men that wouldn't
believe anything unless they first understood it or saw it
with their own eyes. They didn't believe in the resurrection
because they didn't understand it. They didn't believe in angels
because they'd never seen any. The Sadducees were those who
only believed what they saw and understood. But God's ways are
past finding out, so that's not going to work. The child of God
will believe the word of God by faith alone. It's God's gift
to us. Don't you ever forget that if
you have faith in Christ and you are enabled by God to trust
in Him, it was a gift of God's Faith through grace that made
that so. Saved by grace through faith,
that's a naughty way to say it. It's what? The gift of God. Never
forget that. God's ways are past finding out.
We believe them by faith. I don't know all that Christ
did and suffered when he put away my sin. I can't even begin
to fathom such a thing. but by God's gift of faith to
me, simply like a child, I believe that he did. And I'm resting
my soul upon that, that truth, that Christ died for my sins,
according to the scriptures. We don't walk by sight, by intellect,
we walk by faith. And then our Lord said in Mark
chapter eight, beware of the leaven of Herod. Do you remember
Herod? He was the one who feared John the Baptist, listened to
him, liked a lot of the things that he said. He knew that John
the Baptist was a just man. But Herod was easily influenced
by others. He was much more concerned with
what men thought than with what God thought. The Baptist had
called Herod out on living with his brother's wife. and her name
Herodias. Herodias, his brother's wife,
hated John because of it. And Herod bound John in prison,
the scripture says, for her sake. That's what she wanted. And then,
you remember the story, while John's in prison, her daughter
comes out and danced for Herod, and he was so struck, he was
so moved, he was so carried away, that he promised her up to half
of his kingdom. But instead, she insisted on
the beheading of John, and Herod gave her what she wanted. He was more apt to please man
than he was to please God. That's the leaven of Herod. It's
leaven. James said that the friendship
of the world is enmity with God. Whosoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God. And then in Galatians
chapter 5, Paul warns us of the leaven of works. I quoted this
a moment ago, but he said, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
You add one work to the finished work of Christ, you corrupt the
whole purpose of substitution. Substitution is God providing
for us the perfection and perfect righteousness that we cannot
ourselves provide. And that's the whole purpose
of Christ's coming, to save his people from their sin. Not to
help them, not to assist them, not to make salvation possible,
but to put away their sin. And he accomplished what he came
to do. Now in verse 8, here in Exodus 13, the Lord says, and
thou shalt show thy son in that day, Saying, this is done, we're
doing this because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came
forth out of Egypt. That's why the Lord is doing
this. Thou shalt show thy son in thy day, this is done because
of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt.
God said when your children ask you about this feast and what
it pictures and what it represents, what's this all about? You tell
them it's because of what the Lord did for you. May we always,
the scripture says, be ready to give an answer to every man
that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you. And do it
with meekness and fear, 1 Peter 3.18. In verse nine, God continues
and says, and it shall be for you a sign unto thee upon thine
hand and for a memorial between thine eyes that the Lord's law
may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand hath the
Lord brought thee out of Egypt. Now the basis of the Passover
feast of unleavened bread, picturing and partaking our feeding upon
Christ was because, and I mean to be redundant here, it was
because of what the Lord had done for Israel in delivering
them. It was a remembrance of what
He had done. So the foundation, the reason
for the feast was to remind them that redemption was accomplished
And it had been entered into, and it had been known and enjoyed
and received and experienced. And God tells them that they
were to forever remind the generations that followed about the redemption
in Christ that the Passover feast foreshadowed. That's what we
do in preaching. We lift up Christ the Lamb of
God. It was his death that fulfilled
the law. It was his sacrifice that satisfied God's justice. It's his blood that put away
all the sin of God's elect. And it was his substitution that
caused God to pass over our sin. No soul can feast upon Christ
if in doubt about their own salvation. And if you strive to be redeemed
by keeping the feast, then you've missed the purpose of the feast.
Keeping the feast wasn't the means to salvation. You kept
the feast because you see what God had done for you. Partaking
and feasting on Christ will mean nothing to you until you see
that it was His sacrifice. and His sacrifice alone that
caused God to pass over you. And none, absolutely no man,
no woman, no sinner will be redeemed apart from the shedding of the
blood of the Lamb. And that's our subject every
time we stand to preach. When you see what redemption
really is, and you believe that the Lord has redeemed you, and
that you stand perfect before God, Do you believe that you
stand perfect before God? If you trust in Christ, you do.
Because you do. Your response every time will
be to give yourself to Him completely, lock, stock, and barrel. And
it's our reasonable service to do so. But the question that
we always ask in preaching is how can man who's born a woman
be just with God? What is man that God would be
mindful of? It's only in, by, and through
the substitution of the Lamb. The Lamb of God. God is looking for sin atoning
blood that covers them. And when he sees that blood of
his dear son, he passes over them to whom the blood is applied.
And that's the only way that any sinner is ever gonna be saved.
We just, we ring that bell again and again. It's one note of the
gospel, Christ and Him crucified. And God says, sanctify, set apart
all the firstborn of men and beasts, they're mine, I bought
them, I've paid the price, they belong to me. And the thing that
I see and rejoice in the most in these chapters, and especially
in these verses before us tonight, is that the Lord is showing us
again that we cannot provide for ourselves what He requires. We cannot make ourselves clean.
We cannot make ourselves unleavened. We cannot deliver ourselves out
of bondage, no more than Israel could. Over 400 years, they remained
in bondage. They couldn't deliver themselves.
God had to bring them out of bondage with a strong hand, and
God's gotta bring us out of the bondage of sin with a strong
hand. We can't remove the leaven within us while it's already
corrupted the whole lump. We're dead in trespasses and
sin. Sin is what we are, and that
lump has to be purged by the work of another. How shall we
purge out this leaven? How do we get rid of this leaven?
How do we see to it that we're sanctified? Well, here in Exodus
chapter 13, verse 13, I think we have a beautiful picture of
redemption. We see the only way that God
can save a sinner and not compromise his justice is found right here. Look at Exodus 13, 13. And every firstling of an ass
thou shalt redeem with a lamb. And if thou wilt not redeem it,
then thou shalt break his neck. And all the firstborn of man
among thy children shalt thou redeem. Now isn't it a wondrous
thing that the first thing that God mentions concerning redeeming
is an ass? And it's even more wondrous that
for that ass to be redeemed, it must be redeemed by a lamb.
Isn't that something? That's the gospel, isn't it?
A lamb for an ass. There you have divine substitution. It seems that just out of the
middle of nowhere, the Lord begins talking about the firstling of
an ass. Look at verse 13 again, and every
firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb. And if thou wilt not redeem it,
then thou shalt break his neck, and all of the firstborn of man
among children shalt thou redeem. Now how is it that this stubborn
ass gonna be redeemed? The same way that stubborn men
and women are. With a lamb. Redeemed with a lamb. That's
my title for this lesson. Redeemed with a lamb. Not just any lamb. The Passover lamb. The lamb of
God. The lamb slain before the foundation
of the world. And isn't it amazing, isn't it
wondrous to think that God will not leave his people helpless
in the matter of redemption. Not to leave us endeavoring to
do something that we can never do to redeem ourselves, knowing
that we're nothing but stubborn asses. God immediately confronts
us with the gospel of substitution. Right here in Exodus chapter
13, we see it again. God immediately shows us the
only way that we can be redeemed. How is this stubborn ass going
to be redeemed and sanctified? Only one way. And that's with
the lamb. Now first I want you to see that
this ass, this jackass, this donkey, was an unclean animal. The ass's name tells us something
about its character, doesn't it? It's stubborn, it's controlled
by its own will. It wants to do its own thing.
That's a very accurate picture of you and I. God is reminding
us here of what we are. How is such an unclean creature
going to be redeemed? God tells us the only way, with
the lamb. No other way. Well, is an ass
worth redeeming? God said, well, if you don't
redeem it, break its neck. It's worthless apart from being
redeemed. There's no good in this jackass
without redemption. And you know that doesn't even
begin to compare with the character of God's mercy, grace, and love
in giving his son, the spotless lamb, for me, the unclean act. If this ass is not redeemed,
it's good for nothing but death. And you and I, if we're not redeemed,
we're good for nothing but death. Why? Because the wages of our
sin is death and our souls deserve and should and shall surely die
without a divine intervention from God. Isn't it amazing that
in verse 13, the redemption of an ass precludes the redemption
of his children? It's mentioned first before the
children of men being redeemed. Isn't it amazing that it's the
same sacrifice that redeems both? That's much more than just a
coincidence. The jackass here is typical of
all men and women by nature. Some of you may be thinking,
preacher, did you just call me a jackass? Well, no, God called
us both one. That's what God says we are.
And God makes no apologies for telling us the truth. I'm so
glad God tells us the truth about ourselves. I think it was Brother Fortner,
who in dealing with this verse, said that he gave his apologies
to the jackass for comparing us to them. Job said that a man
is born like a wild ass is called. If you read about Ishmael in
Genesis chapter 16, it talks about him being a wild man. And
in the revised version, that word wild man is interpreted
to be a wild ass. That's what natural man is. Why would the Holy Ghost compare
natural man to a wild ass? Well, there are several reasons.
First, as I said, a wild ass is unclean. The law of Moses
states that the jackass is unclean. And Isaiah declared that we are
all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses are
as what filthy rags. In the scriptures, there are
three things in particular that are Mentioned as unclean in the
scriptures a minstrel woman and her minstrel cloth was considered
an unclean thing a dead body along with the shroud that covered
it was considered unclean a Leper and the rags that covered his
pulse covered rotting flesh was considered an unclean thing so
much so that they had to cry unclean everywhere that they
went and And all three of those things picture what you and I
are by nature, especially before a thrice holy God. And all of
our righteousnesses, all our coverings, self-made coverings,
our filthy rags, all our coverings of so-called righteousness are
as unclean as we are. So how's God gonna make us clean?
All we are and all we have is filthy rags, unrighteousness. How's God going to make us clean?
Only one way. With a lamb. A lamb for an ass. Nothing unclean can be of service
to the Lord until it's cleansed. Even the jackass could serve
the Lord if it could be redeemed. And God said that it could be. Even though it was unclean, even
though it was stubborn, even though that it was wild, it could
be made clean. God said it could be redeemed
with a lamb. And if not, you might just as
well kill it, break its neck, because it's good for nothing.
And we are like the jackass in that we're stubborn. A jackass,
good for nothing until they're broken. A couple weeks ago, we
were over at Chris and Amy's house for a little graduation
celebration for Will and Rusty, your brother, Sharon's brother,
was there. And we got to talking about Winford and Betty. And
Rusty began to tell me a story about Winford when he was up
younger man, that he had a donkey, and that he was going to shoo
this donkey one day, and the donkey just kicked the fire out
of him. Knocked him back several feet. Rusty said it was pretty
obvious that Winford was hurt. He said Winford got up, kind
of dusted himself off, walked over, picked up a hammer, and
hit that jackass right in the middle of his head and that jackass
fell to the ground, knocked him plumb out. Have you heard this story? So there's
my confirmation that it's true. He said Winford sat down visibly
in pain, lit up his old pipe, and he just waited. And he said
it wasn't very long that that donkey came to and stood up,
and Winford got up and went right back to shooing that donkey.
This time the donkey didn't resist. I wonder why. That was Winford's donkey. And
did Winford have the right to do what he did with that donkey
that belonged to him? Yeah, he did. Do you consider
what he did to be cruel? No, that's just the way you have
to deal with a jackass sometimes. It just is. You have to break
him. You have to show him who's boss.
And certainly, God has a right to do that with us. He has a
right to do what he will with his own. But isn't it amazing
that the redemption of the ass is tied to the Passover feast
of Christ. It reminds us of how God saves
and redeems us, the jackasses that we are. And the ordinance
of the Lord's table does the same thing. When we partake of
the Lord's table, in order for me, the jackass that I am, to
be redeemed, Christ's body had to be broken for me. And His
blood had to be shed for me. And I must partake of Him and
feast upon Him. And God sees His blood and He
passes over me. And the only way that I can be
saved is with a Lamb. Jackasses like us can be redeemed
with a Lamb. Not just any Lamb. The Lamb of
God. that taketh away the sin of His
people in the world. Behold the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold the Lamb of God. He takes away the sin. Not only
takes it away, He puts it away, never to be remembered again.
God cannot remember what is no longer there, friends. In Christ
we have no sin. He's the only one, He's the only
Lamb who in Revelation says, stands in glory as it has been
slain. By God's grace, I'm going to
keep looking to Him. How about you? Just going to
keep looking to Him. And when God sees His blood upon
me, He passes over me. A lamb for an ass, how appropriate
a subject.