Thank you. Good morning. It's good to be here, but every
time I'm here, it's always either too hot or too cold. Just seems the way it is. This
morning's message will be out of Exodus chapter 12. Exodus
12. And when I was preparing this, I was preparing it for my children,
two of them that aren't with me, they're all back at home.
And all the children that were in our church, they were just
on my mind. And I remember back to my youth, there were a lot
of messages where I heard the words, but I didn't know what
they meant. So I prepared this for children, and it's not as
if You know, the adults can just tune out. This is good for everybody. But I wanted the children to
be able to understand something that actually is very difficult
to understand. It's not something a child can
wrap his mind around very easily. Now, we'll be out of Exodus 12,
and this is a story about the first Passover. the first Passover
instituted in the time of Moses when the Israelites were slaves
to the Egyptians. And I wanted to mention first
two things. First of all, the word slay. Slay, not Santa's slay, to kill
someone, to slay someone. That is to kill someone they
want to, or in our times might be called murder, That's a word
that will appear here. And the second thing, the word,
something to describe Jesus. It says in the book of Revelations
13, he was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
That is from the beginning, he was the lamb slain. So let's
read starting in verse one of chapter 12. It says, now the
Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,
this month shall be your beginning of months, and it shall be the
first month of the year to you. So speak to all the congregation
of Israel, saying, on the 10th of this month, every man shall
take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a
lamb for a household. And if the household is too small
for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take
it according to the number of the persons. According to each
man's need, you shall take your count for the lamb. And this
part is important. Your lamb shall be without blemish. That is, without an imperfection.
A male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep
or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the
14th day of the same month and the whole assembly of the congregation
of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the
blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lentil of the houses
where they eat it. Now skip ahead to verse 12. God says, for I will pass through
the land of Egypt on that night and will strike all the firstborn
in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the
gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a sign
for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be on
you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Now God said,
when I see the blood, I will pass over you. That's a declaration
and that's a promise. Now why does God care about blood
so much? To answer that, we must know
first who God is. Now despite what you may see
or hear in the other churches or on TV, God is not an old man
with a long beard sitting on a big chair and he just watches
things happen. He doesn't watch things happen.
God is not a watcher. He is a doer. He is involved
in everything that happens. And he is active all the time,
he makes things happen and he can make things end. He created the stars, he created
the sun, he created the moon, this planet, and everything else
before anything was. There was nothing and then there
was something, that's what he can do. And he knows what has
happened, he knows what will happen. Because he is in control
of everything. And he even knows what your thoughts
are. Right now, back when you thought mom and dad didn't see
you. And later on, he knows your thoughts. And you cannot hide
anything from God. Secondly, God is king over all. He's not just king of the earth.
He's king of the sun, the moon, the stars. He's king in heaven.
He's king everywhere. There is no one better or more
powerful than God. He's right at the top. And that means God gets to decide
what is good and what is bad. That's not for you to decide.
That's not for elected officials to decide, the president or somebody
else. It's for God to decide. Now,
when something is bad, It is called sin. God calls it sin.
And when something is good, it is called righteous. Now God
is righteous, of course, which means he is good. And there's
no sin in him at all. He doesn't lie. He doesn't cheat. He doesn't break a promise. He
doesn't steal. And everything that comes from
God is righteous. And he doesn't like sin. It's
not something he not only doesn't tolerate, when he sees sin, he
must destroy it. Sin cannot be present with God. Unfortunately, that sin is in
every person and it says that in the Bible, it says that all
people are born as sinners. Not one has been born righteous.
not any sons of Adam, the first man. All people are born with
sin, even the president, the teachers, mommies and daddies,
cute little babies, they're all born as sinners. And everyone has sin, no one
is born righteous as it says in Ecclesiastes chapter seven
and verse 20. And if our lives were a TV show,
We would all be the bad guys. God would be the one good guy. So we all have sin in us. And
based on what I just said, that means God must destroy us. But
calm down. We're clearly not destroyed.
We're all here. But you have heard what happens if you die
with sin, haven't you? If you die, this body ceases
to live. What happens? If you die as a
sinner, you go to hell. And in hell, you burn forever.
That's just what it says in the Bible. And you burn forever because
you must suffer the consequences of your sins. There are no second
chances after you get there. There's no timeouts. And there
is no forgiveness. You don't burn away your sins
and then go to heaven. Once you're in hell, you're there
for good. So, why are we all alive right here, right now,
if we all have sin? Why does God allow even anyone
to live if everyone is a sinner? Well, the reason's this. Because
God loved certain people. and he wanted them to be with
him. And so he made a plan to save
some people and change them from bad to good, from sinners to
righteous people. But that plan that God made needed
someone who was righteous to begin with. He needed someone who was righteous
and perfect to sacrifice themselves for his people, the ones that
he chose. So what does all this have to
do with the blood of a lamb? How does that help God's people?
I mean, this happened thousands of years ago. Well, because this
story is about Jesus Christ. He doesn't appear here in name.
But Jesus Christ, God's righteous son, he was born that way and
he stayed that way. It's about him. And he's the
only person that can save sinners. There's no one outside of him.
Don't look to angels, don't look to anybody else. Just look to
that one person, it's real simple. And many of the stories in the
Bible, they are what's called analogies. They are stories with
people or things that mean something else. You take something from
that thing mentioned and apply it to something else. And sometimes
the people or things in these stories, they're symbols. They're
symbols. For example, you could say that
your dad is as strong as a big horse. Your dad's not a big horse,
but he's strong like a big horse. Big horses can pull heavy things
and they have lots of muscles and maybe your dad's unlike me,
I don't got him, but could be like a big horse with all that
strength, that strength is a symbol to show a part of your dad. Or your mom might be as sweet
as sugar. She's not made of sugar, but
she's sweet like sugar is sweet. These are just symbols. And in this story that we're
seeing in Exodus, the lamb is a symbol of Jesus Christ. Like that lamb that was slain
or killed for its blood, Jesus was slain for His blood. Because it says in 1 John 1 verse
7, It says the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from
all sin. There's nothing else in that
sentence that cleanses us from sin, it's just the blood. So can anything's blood be put
on the doorposts? No, because God said to use the
blood of a lamb. And in the story, God says that
it must be blood from a lamb, a young sheep without any problems. Just perfect. I don't know what
a perfect sheep looks like. I guess they don't have any spots
or anything like that. Maybe all white wool. Nothing, no other colors mixed
in. Now again, this lamb is just like Jesus Christ and he was
born of a woman, but his father was God. His father wasn't a son of Adam,
wasn't the son of a sinner. And he did not have any sin in
him. He was a perfect baby. He was
a perfect child. He was then a perfect teenager,
and he grew into a perfect adult. He stayed that way his whole
life. He did not sin at any time in
his life, even though he was tempted unto sin. The Bible says he was tempted
in all ways like us, but found without sin. So that time you
put your hand in the cookie jar and took one out, and you weren't
supposed to, he didn't do that. And that's
just a little thing. The big sins, as we call them. He didn't do those either. He
didn't hate. I don't know if there's a day
that goes by I don't hate something, hopefully not someone. You work
on it, but it never gets out. But Jesus, he was perfect. And God said, when I see the
blood, I will pass over you." Now in that sentence, who must
see the blood? It is important that God sees
the blood. It doesn't matter if your neighbor
sees it, or your parents. It doesn't matter if your friends
or your classmates see it. God must see it and then God
must accept that it is good and righteous blood. It cannot have any sin or guilt
in it or God will not pass over you and you will die. Now who or what provides the
blood that God wants to see? It isn't the sinner. It isn't
the man's, anybody in that man's household. It's not the sinner on whose
door the blood appears. And in fact, the sinner doesn't
even suffer a scratch or a bruise or a scrape. That sinner remains the same
before and after that lamb was slain. The sinner's husband or wife,
they're not hurt. The children in that household,
they're not hurt. The sinner doesn't get hurt at
all. But the lamb gets hurt a lot. The lamb dies in place of the
sinner. It's called substitution. Just
as Jesus Christ died in the place of God's chosen people. Now you
see in this story, God's not coming as if to visit a friend.
He's not bringing pie. He is coming in the power of
his wrath, it says. Now, wrath is a strong anger.
It's very violent. And God in his wrath is not trying
to give everyone just some bruises, just beat them up until their
sins are gone. Yeah, that's good enough. You've
paid for it with this pain. No, we know that God must destroy
sin utterly. He is coming to destroy that
sin even if that sin is inside a person. So how can God's wrath pass over
you if it is coming for your death? Because God's justice,
that's a sense of right and wrong, will not be satisfied and cannot
be satisfied if your sin is not punished and destroyed. Now this is where the blood of
the lamb comes in. In our story about the Israelites
slaying a perfect lamb, it is the blood of the lamb that is
proof that something was once alive and has been killed. That blood is the proof. When
everybody's living just fine, the blood stays in, it stays
inside. But when something is slain,
the blood is spilled. And in fact, it wasn't an accident
that the lamb died. It wasn't an accident that Jesus
died. Because it uses the word slain. That's to kill on purpose. So that was innocent blood. That
was perfect blood. The lamb had done nothing wrong. And that blood was shed for the
Israelites who had done a lot wrong. I don't know of any of
the stories you remember from the Bible or what you had been
taught. The Israelites did a lot wrong
before this and after this. So just as they should have died
that night for their sins, So should you and me die for our
sins. But if a perfect substitute dies
for you instead, you get to live. Now this is the great analogy
that our story is talking about. When the Lamb's innocent blood
is set upon your soul or your heart or your spirit, God's wrath
acknowledges Says I see that I see that God's wrath acknowledges that
a death has already occurred there Even though it wasn't your
death and So it is satisfied with that
death instead of yours You don't die and So you get to live and And while I want to stay focused
on this, there's a lot more to living than just surviving. To being a believer, that is. But it says when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. Do you believe that Jesus Christ
is your perfect substitute? The perfect lamb? Is Jesus Christ's blood on your
door? On your heart? Because if it is, then you have
nothing to fear from God's wrath. Because the wrath was satisfied
in the death of Jesus Christ, and God's wrath has passed over
you. Now we pass right on by that
phrase, nothing to fear. It's true. It's just like saying,
that dog is big, that dog is small. But to really think about
it, there's nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Not just death,
which is important, but even after life, after this life,
or when really the real life begins. But there's nothing to
fear in this life. We have God as our shield and
our exceeding great reward. The Bible says, what can man
do to you? But we need not fear death either. And since God's wrath has passed
over you this one time, doesn't mean it's coming back. It passes over one time. It'll
never come back your way and you will not be asked to offer
sacrifice again, to go get the blood of Jesus again. It's done. Done once and for all. So when I see the blood, God
says, I will pass over you. Those are sweet words not from
a wrathful God, from a father God, from a loving
God, who so loved his people that
he provided himself because you or I didn't make Jesus Christ
righteous. We didn't help him in anything.
God provided this sacrifice. Because He so loved His people. Blessed be His name. Amen.