Freedom

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Good morning Chapel family. I want to say a huge “Thank You” to everyone who helped make Chapel Kids Camp and Chapel Students Week a great success. Our staff worked overtime; our volunteer team was amazing. This was a unique year because we’re just coming out of the pandemic, but it was a really good year. Tons of fun; tons of spiritual seeds planted. Let’s just show our appreciation for our team!

Okay…we’re taking this summer to walk through the book of Exodus, and today we come to an event that is arguably the most important event in the entire Old Testament. It’s the event that the book of Exodus is named for. “Exodus” comes from a Greek word that literally means “a way out” or “a road out.” So after more than 400 years of slavery in Egypt, and more recently, after multiple unsuccessful attempts by Moses to convince Pharaoh to let the people go, God is providing a way out.

So we’re going to be in Exodus chapters 11 and 12 today. And I want to read through and get the highlights of this story—starting in Exodus 11, verse 1. I invite you to hear the Word of God…

1 Now the Lord had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. Go to verse 4: 4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.

Go down to chapter 12, verse 1: 1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. Verse 5: 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.

Skip down to verse 11: 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. 14 “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.”

Go down to verse 29: 29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. 30 Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house

without someone dead. 31 During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested. 32 Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”

Verse 37: 37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. Verse 40: 40 Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. 41 At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. 42 Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come. This is the Word of the Lord.

It’s impossible to overstate just how important this moment was. The tenth and final plague…the exodus out of Egypt…the first Passover. These are epic events. But the bottom line for the people of Israel was that they were free.

So what does this have to do with us? Well, every week we’ve been saying that Exodus is the story of God taking the people of Israel from here to there. From Egypt to their new homeland. So if you and I are followers of this same God, he does the same thing in our lives. He takes us from where we are to where he wants us to be. In order for that movement to happen for the Israelites, there were chains of slavery that needed to be broken. So you know what I’m going to say next, right? In order for God to move you from where you are right now to where you need to be, there are chains that need to be broken. There is slavery that needs to be dealt with. And that’s what this passage is all about.

So I’m going to split it up into three parts: The Need for Freedom, The Cost of Freedom, and The Celebration of Freedom. The Need, The Cost, and The Celebration of Freedom.

So first: The Need for Freedom. It’s obvious why the people of Israel needed freedom, right? They were slaves! They had lost their dignity; they had lost their autonomy; from the time they got up in the morning till the time they went to bed, they were owned by the Egyptians. So it’s easy to see why the Israelites were desperate for freedom. What’s not so easy to see is why you and I need it.

There’s a little phrase in the New Testament that helps define this for us. Listen to this principle found in 2 Peter 2:19…people are slaves to whatever has mastered them. We are slaves to whatever has mastered us. So the reason that you and I desperately need freedom—just as much as the Israelites did—is that we have this tendency to be mastered by things other than God.

A while ago I stopped at a red light and I wanted to take a left. The light turned green, and it looked like the guy who was coming toward me was letting me take my left in front of him. So I started to turn, and this guy leaned on his horn, and he cut me off, and as he was going by he leaned his whole upper body out the window and he said, “Have a nice day!” That’s not really what he said. You’ve been there, right! There’s no way the thing you did justified that kind of anger, and you get the sense there’s so much boiling under the surface, and it doesn’t take much to trip it off. That’s called being mastered by anger. And it affects everything you do—your relationships, your work, your driving… Because you’re a slave to whatever has mastered you.

Or maybe you’re mastered by the opinions of others. When people disapprove of you it just devastates you. So you have shaped your life to try to make yourself likeable and accepted by the people around you. And it’s slavery!

Or maybe you wake up every day, and you walk through every day, fixated on how your body looks. You obsessively check yourself in the mirror, and compare your body with other people, and you’re always making new commitments to eat better and work out more. You’re a slave.

Or maybe you’re mastered by online gambling, or online porn, or binge eating—you’ve resolved to stop so many times, and then you just do it again.

Or maybe you’re mastered by a good thing like work or cleaning your house.

So you can be a slave to bad things; you can be a slave to good things; and let me give you one more surprising thing you find in the New Testament: did you know you can actually be a slave to religion? Look at this—Galatians 5, verse 1: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You know what a “yoke” is, right? It’s that wooden thing they’d put over the neck of an ox to control it. And all through the book of Galatians, Paul is saying we can actually be enslaved by religion! And here’s how he defines religion: thinking I can make myself acceptable to God and more loved by God if I’m a good boy. If I go to church…if I volunteer and serve…if I give my money to the poor…if, every time somebody flips me the bird on the highway, I smile and say, “God bless you.” Which are all great things, right? But if I think I’m making myself more acceptable or more loved by God by doing those things—by keeping the rules—then I’m practicing do-it-yourself salvation. So on the days that I behave well, I’ll become a self-righteous jerk who looks down on all the people who don’t behave as well as I do, and on the days I don’t behave so well I’ll feel dirty and worthless. Either way, it’s slavery. It’s like a heavy wooden yoke around my neck—which is just as bad as being forced to make bricks without straw.

So…where do you see slavery in your life? I really believe that the more we know ourselves, we realize that all of us struggle with this—whether it’s being mastered by bad things, or good things that have become idols, or even religious things. And just like the Israelites’ slavery was confining and stifling , our slavery has the same effect on us. It controls us. It shrivels our souls. And that’s why we need freedom.

Point number two: The Cost of Freedom. So the first nine plagues didn’t work. Pharaoh’s heart continues to be hardened against God. So God prepares to bring this tenth and final plague, which involves the death of the firstborn son of every family in Egypt. That’s hard to stomach, isn’t it? And I have to remind myself that it’s God’s prerogative to give life and to take life away. I also need to remind myself that all throughout the Bible, when a baby or a child dies, that child is immediately taken to be with God in heaven. But it’s still hard. It’s disturbing. And I think it should be—because it reminds us that sin, and hardening our hearts before God, can have painful consequence—not only for us, but for our families.

So God warns that this final plague is coming, and this will be the thing that finally brings freedom. So he tells his people: here’s how you can avoid this judgment and be set free. Three things—all involving a lamb.

First, he says, the lamb had to be perfect. Did you notice it said that the lambs had to be “without defect”? So you couldn’t use an animal that was lame or diseased.

The second thing is this: the lamb had to be sacrificed. The lamb had to spill its blood and give up its life. So each family would slaughter the lamb and use it for a special meal.

And then here’s the third thing: The lamb had to be personally applied. See, it wasn’t enough just to sacrifice this animal! Each family had to actually take some of the blood and put it on their doorframe.

Now: there is so much theology packed into this—we could talk about this for hours. But let me just summarize it like this: the God of the Bible is perfectly holy and pure. And because of that holiness, by his very nature he must judge sin. And at this moment, every single person in Egypt was guilty of sin—Egyptians, Hebrews—everyone was in the path of God’s judgment. But God isn’t just holy; he’s also

merciful. So in his mercy, he provided a substitute to receive his judgment in place of the guilty person. And that substitute was a lamb. So God says, “If you personally apply the blood of this lamb to your home, I will pass over your house, and you’ll be safe, and that will open the door for your freedom.”

And sure enough, God is true to His word, and this horrible plague strikes the Egyptians, and the Israelites are kept safe because they have the lambs’ blood on their doors. And all of the Egyptians—including Pharaoh himself—are so distraught, and so overwhelmed by the power of God, that they say, “Please—get out. We give up! You win!”

And on that night, one of the most amazing events in the history of the world takes place. Remember: all of these people were born into slavery; they had lived their whole lives in slavery; and now they find themselves walking out of this prison camp to a new life and a new future. This is Louie Zamperini (if you read the book Unbroken), after being shot down over the Pacific and spending two years being tortured in a Japanese prison camp, walking out of the camp a free man. This is Andy Dufresne crawling out of the sewage pipe from Shawshank Penitentiary, standing in the rain, gloriously free. Only here, it isn’t just one person, it’s 600,000 men, plus women and children. This is one of the greatest moments in all of human history!

And God says, “In the generations to come, I never want you to forget the price that was paid for your freedom.”

Now: fast-forward 1,400 years. It’s around 30AD. The nation of Israel is still celebrating the Passover. So every Jewish person knows that God brought his people to freedom through the blood of a sacrificial lamb. Everybody knows that! And that’s why everybody is electrified when they see this teacher named Jesus wading through the Jordan River toward this wild man named John, and they hear John say, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

And then as you read the Gospels, and you watch the life of Jesus unfold, you start to see how He played that role of the Passover Lamb. Remember the requirements for the lamb? It had to be what? Perfect. Jesus is the only person who ever lived life the way it was truly meant to be lived. He loved perfectly. He served perfectly. Without sin. It says in 1 Peter 1:19 that He was a lamb without blemish or defect.

Secondly, the lamb had to be sacrificed. Despite his perfect life, Jesus was arrested, and tortured, and He gave up His life on the cross. It says in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. As a matter of fact, it was during the feast of Passover that it happened. Not a coincidence.

And there’s one more thing—you remember what it is? The blood of that lamb had to be personally applied. The people of Israel had to take some of the blood and actually put it on their door. You know what that means for us? It’s not enough to know that Jesus showed up…and lived a perfect life…and died on the cross. We have to make it personal! It says this in John 1:12…But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name. You have to receive him. You have to believe! You have to apply the blood to your life. And that’s a very humbling thing to do—because it means you’re admitting you’re powerless to free yourself, and you need the blood of Jesus to save you.

One of my favorite reminders of this comes from something that happened early in the life of Billy Graham. In 1955, he was a young man. And he was invited to speak at Cambridge University in London. Before he came, the Times of London began to run editorials about his arrival. One of them said this: “I’m sure Billy Graham is a very sincere person, but he’s a fundamentalist; he believes you

have to be saved by the blood of Jesus. And fundamentalist Christianity is bad for us. And besides that, it will never have an impact on the elite young men and women of Europe.”

Billy Graham read these letters, and he was intimidated. So he prepared eight messages—he was scheduled to speak eight nights—and they were very different from his normal messages. They were very intellectual, and very sophisticated.

So he got there the first night, and the place was packed—undergrads, graduate students, important faculty members. And that first night—Sunday night—he preached the message he had prepared, and nothing happened. And everybody knew it. Same thing the second night, same thing the third. No response. On Wednesday—the fourth night—he threw away his notes. And he said, “I’m just going to tell you what I know about the cross of Jesus Christ.”

There was a man there named Dick Lucas, and he said, “I’ll never forget that night. I was in the totally packed chancel, sitting on the floor… So dear Billy got up that night (the night he had thrown away his prepared messages), and he began at Genesis, and he went right through the whole Bible, and he talked about every single sacrifice you can imagine. The blood was just flowing all over the place—everywhere—for ¾ of an hour. And [the professors sitting near me] were terribly embarrassed by this crude proclamation of the blood of Christ. It was everything they disliked and everything they dreaded.”

At the end of the sermon, Billy Graham dismissed the audience, and invited anyone who wanted to stay behind to make a commitment to Christ. And that night, to everyone’s shock, 400 young men and women stayed.

And Dick Lucas remembers, years later, meeting a Cambridge grad who had become a pastor. And he asked this young pastor, “Where did your faith get started?” The guy said, “Cambridge, 1955.” And he said, “Where?” The guy said, “Billy Graham mission.” And Dick said, “What night?” “It was Wednesday.” “How did it happen?” He said, “I don’t know. All I know is when I walked out of there that night, finally I realized what it meant that Jesus Christ died for me.” He had been a good person! He had known the moral teachings of Jesus, but never had he realized how desperately he needed the blood of Jesus…until that night.

And Dick Lucas said, “It was unbelievable to the professors around me that a man like that, preaching a sermon like that, could have totally changed the lives of young men and women like that.” But it did! Because there is power in the blood of Christ.

There’s power in the blood of Christ to free you from whatever is enslaving you right now.

For example, if you are enslaved by religion—always driving yourself to be good, and earn God’s approval, but it’s exhausting, because you’re never good enough…look at the cross and say, “Jesus, you’re good enough. And you gave up your life—you spilled your blood for my not-good-enough-ness…and I’m going to rest in that. Instead of trying to earn God’s approval, I’m going to live today as a securely loved son or daughter of God.” Let the blood of Christ free you from slavery to religion.

If you are enslaved by the approval of others, and what people think of you, the world says, “Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks; it only matters what you think about yourself!” But the gospel says, “Don’t even trust what you think about yourself!” In fact, you might have the most critical voice of all! Base your self-image on what God says about you. And when you look at the cross, you see how he really feels about you. He was willing to give up what was most precious to him, to be reconciled with you. So let the blood of Christ free you from slavery to people-pleasing. Find your self-

image in the cross of Christ, and you will be free to love people and serve people, without desperately needing them to like you.

I truly believe the story of the exodus is so timeless because it’s a paradigm for what every one of us experiences. We become enslaved by sin in all kinds of different forms, and we can only be truly free by the blood of the lamb. There is so much power in the blood of Jesus Christ.

And when something is that important, you have to celebrate it. So the third and final point of the sermon is going to be all about that celebration. We call the celebration “communion.” So let’s take a moment to prepare our hearts for communion… Pause to prepare for communion.

So—point number 3: The Celebration of Freedom. When you read Exodus, don’t you get the sense that celebrating Passover was kind of a big deal to God? It’s hard to miss, right? This thing that had happened was so central to the identity of God’s people, He never wanted them to forget it. So God said, “When your children ask you about it—when they say, ‘Why is this night different from any other night?’ you’re going to have the opportunity to remind them what God did for his people.

So as Christians, what are we supposed to do with this? Well, do you realize that the night Jesus and his disciples gathered for the Last Supper was the first night of…what? Passover. So as faithful Jewish men, this was something the disciples of Jesus had done many times before—gathering to eat the Passover feast. But when they gathered in the room that night, it seems like something was missing. You know what it was? None of the Gospels mention that there was a lamb served at that meal. And I’m convinced that was because the true Lamb of God was actually sitting at the table with them.

The next day, Jesus would go to the cross and die for the sins of the world. But on that night, he gave his followers a new kind of Passover feast. He took bread, and he said, “This is my body.” He took wine, and he said, “This is the new covenant in my blood.” And he said, “After I’m gone, I want you to eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of me.”

Just as Passover reminded the Israelites how God had set them free, Communion is going to remind you how God sets you free!

Let’s pray and thank God for what we’re about to do…PRAY.

Before we receive the bread and the cup today, take a minute to think about what’s been enslaving you.

Maybe it’s a bad thing—addiction or anger or compulsive people-pleasing. Focus on that thing for a minute.

Maybe it’s a good thing—your job or exercise or a boyfriend or girlfriend. But you’ve become obsessed with it. Focus on that thing for a minute.

Or maybe it’s a religious thing. You’ve been striving to keep the rules and win God’s approval—and it’s exhausting. It’s slavery.

But here’s the great news: Jesus died to free you from slavery. He’s provided a way out—an Exodus—from that slavery! So when you eat the bread and drink the cup, I want you to just feel the freedom of Jesus entering into you. Feel his power breaking the chains that enslave you. Let yourself be released by the power of Christ.