Pesach/Passover

April 14-21, 2014

Nisan 14-21, 5774

We have just enjoyed celebrating Pesach/Passover and experienced the privilege of participating in a Seder meal in the home of Jewish friends for the first time. We have experienced Seder before; never in a home. This was our Seder year; a model Seder at the Shaaray Zedek Synagogue, then the Jewish home and finally in a Messianic Jewish Congregation.

The historical events that we celebrate at this time of the year are The Central Events in the LORD’s Redemption plan that includes all the regathering we have been discussing in the previous blogs; although He used the name El-Shaddai at the time He initiated His call to Abram in Ur of the Chaldees 4,000 years ago, He is the same Sovereign LORD who called Moses to confront Pharaoh with “Let my people go”.

Joseph, at the end of his 110 year life, addresses his brothers with the confidence that “God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. Between this conclusion of Genesis and Moses’ birth story, with which Exodus begins, many silent years of oppression befell the Hebrew people; a large segment of the 400 years the LORD had told Abraham would elapse between the cutting of the Covenant with Abraham and the actual possession of the Promised Land by his descendants.

In the events of Passover, the recently called Moses plays a central role as the Prophet of the LORD. At his call, the LORD reviews the history into which he will fit. As the prophet Amos tells us, “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets”, so the LORD prepares Moses by reminding him of His dealings with the people in the past and giving him an overview of what He will do with Moses as their leader; who, incidentally, like Ezekiel, is both a Priest and now called to be a Prophet.

The LORD prepares Moses with these words: “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty [El-Shaddai], but by my name the LORD [Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

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 judgement. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am 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.’”

Moses is to know a new dimension of God’s character expressed in the name, THE LORD [Yahweh]; a name not used before, but now that He is their REDEEMER, He reveals this new name to Moses.

Not only do they learn this new name for their God, but they are born as a nation. The rich symbolism of the Passover was deepened for me by our Seder host who drew our attention to the image of the blood surrounding the door, on the door posts, lintel and sill, through which, after a night enclosed in the “womb” of their home while the 10^th plague drops on Egypt because of Pharaoh’s “hardened heart”, they emerge, as through the birth canal, into the world as a NATION. This morning Moses becomes the leader of the newly born NATION OF ISRAEL whom he will lead through the wilderness, and Joshua will lead into “the land [the LORD] swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”.

This is the Nation that, as we have seen in the previous four blogs, the Sovereign LORD is regathering and restoring to “their own land”. They are being re-established in the LORD’s land for the purpose of Redemption.

I must re-quote a passage from Ezekiel because this connection is too essential to miss. As you remember from last week’s blog, the LORD concludes His words to Ezekiel with: “My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd … David my servant will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be among them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.” (Emphases, of course, mine).

King David, of course, has lived and died many years before Ezekiel hears these words from the LORD. As I noted in the 24/03/14 blog, the Sovereign LORD says that He Himself will be Israel’s Shepherd, and, later in the same chapter, that this Shepherd will be “my servant David”. So, in some mysterious way the Shepherd that is regathering Israel to their land is both the Sovereign LORD and “my servant David”.

I am not a theologian or a Hebrew scholar, but I do get rather excited by TORAH, the WORD; and, as a Christian, the opening words of the Apostle John’s Gospel are dynamite in the connections they make: “In the beginning was the Word/Torah, and the Word/Torah was with God, and the Word/Torah was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him is life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it”. The Apostle John, of course, is equating “the Word/Torah” with the coming of Yeshua HaMashiach, “the son of David” (in Mathew’s Gospel).

Ezekiel hears the Sovereign LORD say that with “their prince” David over them, the LORD will not only establish an “everlasting covenant of peace” with returned Israel, but, He says, “I will put my sanctuary among them forever”. To me this sounds thoroughly MESSIANIC because it is at this time that “the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever”. At this moment the nations certainly do not acknowledge this; but they will.

At the Seder meal, a chair and place are set, and the door left open for Elijah.

HaMashiach is coming!