You would take your Bibles and open with me again to the book of Exodus as we continue to work our way through this epic adventure story contained in God's word, which is more, of course, than a mere story. But it's history that God used to paint a picture of the redemption of his people Israel in a way that unfolds the redemption that he had in store for his church of all ages as well. We are in Exodus. Chapter 12, and we'll be finishing Chapter 12 tonight, and also be looking at verses 1-10 of Chapter 13. Beginning in verse 43 of Chapter 12, And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, This is the statute of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat of it. But every slave that is bought for money may eat of it. after you have circumcised him. No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house. You shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, Let all his males be circumcised, then he may come near and keep it. He shall be as a native of the land, but no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you." All the people of Israel did just as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day, the Lord brought the people out of Israel. Sorry people bought he the Lord brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts The Lord said to Moses consecrate to me all the firstborn Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel both of man and of beast is mine Then Moses said to the people remember this day in which you came out from Egypt out of the house of slavery for by For by strength of hand, the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. And on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. No leavened bread shall be seen with you. And no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory. You shall tell your son on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. You shall therefore keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year." The Passover was a feast of remembrance. That was its eternal design and divine purpose. It might sound strange to say that a feast that is designed for the purpose of remembering a specific event that took place within a specific time was planned before the event actually happened. But this feast was conceived of by God, and God never conceives of a new idea. Have you ever thought about that? If God knows all things, and if God is eternal, He cannot think of a new idea. because He already knows every idea, because He is eternal and His knowledge, His plans and His purposes are also eternal and never changing. This, the Feast of the Passover, was not something which God decided to instruct His people to do as a result of what He did in the Exodus, but rather this was something that God planned for His people to do from eternity past. but he only revealed it to his people within the due course of time. God knew exactly what his plan of redeeming man from their sin was long before sin ever even entered the world. As we know, scripture refers to Christ as the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. It was God's eternal purpose to send Christ into the world to be our Passover Lamb. Because of this, when God planned for his people to celebrate the Feast of the Passover, he was looking forward to what he would accomplish in Exodus, because this plan was in his mind eternally. And he was also looking forward to the redemption that was to be accomplished by Jesus Christ. So this Feast was designed and purposed not only for God's people to look back on what God did for them, and how God had rescued them from their slavery in Egypt. But this feast of the Passover was also designed and purposed by God to help God's people look forward to another event that was to come. The reality of their redemption from sin and death being accomplished by Christ Jesus on the cross, which had not yet been accomplished when he gave this feast as an ordinance for his people to keep. In God's eternal and unchanging plan of redemption, he saved his people from slavery in Egypt in order to instruct them about an even greater salvation from the slavery of sin that all men had been subjected to as a result of the fall of Adam. So the Passover was designed by God to help his people remember the past and to help to prepare them to begin to understand what it is that God had in store for their future. In the words of Charles Spurgeon, he says, we look upon the book of Exodus as being a book of types of the deliverances which God will give to his elect people, not only as a history of what he has done in bringing them out of Egypt by smiting the firstborn, leading them through the Red Sea and guiding them through the wilderness, but also as a picture of his faithful dealings with all his people whom By the blood of Christ, he separates from the Egyptians and by his strong and mighty hand takes out of the house of their bondage and out of the land of slavery. The Feast of the Passover is a type. Like we think of a typewriter, we have keys on it, which are a type. The keys are not the letter on the page themselves, but they are something that points forward to the reality of the possibility of this letter coming to fruition. Passover is a type, and it shows the pattern of salvation in which the blood of that which is perfect serves as a substitute for those who are not. Israel was to celebrate the feast of the Passover and then for seven days to observe the feast of unleavened bread, removing all of the leaven out of their houses. And it was with full and complete understanding of these historic and divinely appointed rituals that the Apostle Paul wrote In first Corinthians chapter 5, to Christians by the way, cleanse out the old leaven that you may become a new lump as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover land has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. He understood that what occurred in Exodus was a type communicating to Christians in the present truths about our God, about the way in which he saves his people. At this point in the book of Exodus, God has already spoken about how Israel was to celebrate the Passover feast several different times. Then we read about the actual historical account of the 10th plague occurring, which we looked at last Lord's Day, where God killed all the firstborn in Egypt And God's people were finally granted permission from Pharaoh to leave Egypt. And then in our text this evening, we read God telling us even more about the Feast of the Passover. He just keeps coming back to this subject over and over again throughout this section of Exodus, doesn't he? Why does God repeat himself so often about this Feast of the Passover? You ever ask yourself that question? For one, It certainly communicates to us that this feast was of primary importance to God. And he also gives us, in this particular passage, new details about how this feast is to be observed that he didn't give us in the previous sections. God was very meticulous in communicating to his people the details of how the Passover feast and the Feast of Unleavened Bread was to be observed and how it was not to be observed, because it pointed forward to an even greater act of redemption than the one that he accomplished for his people in Egypt. And the details are important to God so that the pattern of God's salvation might become known and understood by his people. Because we have already looked at many of the instructions regarding the Passover meal in the past several weeks, tonight I want to focus our attention on some of the specific commands that are given in order to help us, that were not given previously, in order to help us to understand their redemptive historical import. In our text this evening, we see that the Passover meal was one that was to be shared by all of God's people, eaten by only God's people, and also something that was to be explained to our children. and in particular. So, first of all, it was a meal to be shared by all of God's people. It was a meal to be shared. We read in verse 47 that all the congregation of Israel shall keep it. We also read, with regard to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that if anyone eats what is leavened from the first day till the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. In chapter 12, back in verse 15. Every Israelite was commanded to observe the Feast of Passover and unleavened bread, without exception. The salvation which God accomplished for his people down in Egypt was a salvation that was intended for every one of his people, and not one of them was to be excluded from it. This is why when the New Testament explains the doctrine of salvation, that it almost always speaks in the plural. rather than speaking of the salvation of individuals. For example, consider Titus chapter 3. There are many, many examples of this, but I chose Titus chapter 3. When the goodness of God and the loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Christ Jesus our Savior. so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Salvation is often spoke of in a corporate sense of all of God's people, because the salvation which God accomplished was intended for all of His people. All of these aspects of salvation—regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification—all of the things touched upon in this passage are things which God bestows upon every believer. These are all blessings from the Lord, which we all have in common with one another. Every true Christian shares every single aspect of the salvation that we each receive in Christ Jesus through faith. Therefore, when we celebrate a feast of remembrance of our great salvation, we are all to participate in it together. Our sharing of a common salvation unites and binds us together in a way that every Christian understands, and in a way that no unbeliever can truly understand, because they have not partaken of the actual salvation that the feast is pointing towards. Which brings us to the second point. This is a feast that was to be eaten only by God's people. That's how this section opens up. No foreigner shall eat of it. While every single member of God's people were commanded to partake of this feast, of remembrance, which also looked forward to the salvation which Christ brought to us on the cross. God also was careful to give special instructions that only God's people were to partake of it. This must have been very important for God, or he wouldn't have gone to such length to make it so abundantly clear in this section that if you are not of my people, you may not partake of this feast. no foreigner shall eat of it in verse 43 and again in verse 45 no foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. When it comes to God instituting ceremonies remembering his past work of salvation for his people and looking forward to his future work of salvation for his people all of his people are commanded to partake and eat while no one else was permitted to do so. Now, the question of who was allowed to partake of the Passover meal would have been a question that would have come up almost immediately after the people of Israel exited Egypt, because the Israelites were not the only ones who left Egypt that night. We read in chapter 12, verse 38, that a mixed multitude also went up with them, referring to people that were not of Abraham's descendants. Other people exited Egypt along with them. Some of them may have been Egyptians who had come to fear the Lord. And many of them, almost certainly, were other groups of people who had been enslaved by Egypt and thought that when the Hebrews were given permission to leave, that they should take this opportunity, which may never come again, to leave along with them. So the question would have naturally arisen, should we allow these foreigners who have come out of Egypt with us to partake of the Passover meal? And God answers that question very definitively in our text tonight. The answer was very straightforward and it was no. They are not allowed to partake of it. It was intended to be an exclusive feast, inclusive of all of God's people, exclusive to all who were not of God's covenant people. The question that comes into our minds is why not? open this up to unbelievers. The short answer is that they were not members of the covenant community. As we read, as our brother read, that the covenant that this community was in is referred to as the covenant of circumcision. Those who are not in covenant with God are not in the process of being saved by God, and therefore they should not partake of a feast which looks back upon the salvation that God has given to them because he hasn't given salvation to them. In our New Testament nomenclature, these people were not believers. Their exclusion from the Passover meal was not based upon race, but rather it was based upon grace, or the lack of grace. No one who had not yet placed their faith in the promises of God to save them from their sins, through the vicarious atonement of the blood of the Lamb, was permitted to partake of this holy meal designed for God's people and God's people alone. We know that one lamb was to be taken into each home by the father of the home and killed and cooked in a certain way. And then the entire lamb was to be eaten by that family. And it was not allowed to be shared with their neighbors. The only time it could be shared was if two families were too poor to be able to afford a lamb for each of them. Then the two families could join together under one roof in the same house and eat the meal together. But whatever was not eaten by morning was to be burned, perhaps in order to prevent non-believers from partaking of it. Israel was also commanded here not to break any of the bones of the Passover lamb. This may sound like a strange command to give, But yet this command was given very intentionally by God with purpose and design in order to teach us something that is true, that we need to understand. First of all, to not break any of the bones of the Passover lamb would show or demand of God's people to demonstrate a certain level of respect for this particular animal, which had given up its life to symbolically remove the guilt of sin from that family. Secondly, it was done in order to point forward to Christ in a prophetic way. For we know that when Jesus, the true lamb of God, was hanging on the cross, that none of his bones were broken. And it was an act of providence that this happened. For if he had not died, if he had died a half hour later, perhaps his bones would have been broken, along with those who were hanging next to him. This again was an act of God's providence to further communicate to his people that Christ was indeed the true Passover lamb. The New Testament goes into detail, very specifically pointing out the reality. Not a single bone was broken because it's important. And the only reason I can understand why that's important for us, because Jesus still would have taken our sins away if they had broken his bones. But it was to point out the reality that the Passover lamb that God had instituted in the Old Testament was pointing forward to Christ. That was the main reason why Christ never had any of his bones broken. I believe the Passover was not to be shared with those outside of the family house household not to be shared with foreigners living in Israel or sojourning along with them in the wilderness. The true church of God the Christian church today maintains the same restrictions when we come to observe the Lord's table. Every one of God's people are commanded to partake of the Lord's supper. While at the same time none of those who are not officially part of the covenant community are allowed to participate in it. The Lord's table is given for every believer. I have seen times when when a Christian, who was a member in our church in good standing, would pass the elements by and not partake. And then you ask them, why did you not partake of the Lord's table? And they would confess some particular sin that they had committed that week, that they were torn up about inside, and they felt like they had unrepentant of sin in their hearts, and they didn't feel that they were worthy to come to the Lord's table. They're commanded to come to the Lord's table. If you go through a particular week where you struggle with sin more so than other weeks, and we come to the Lord's Table that Sunday morning, and you sit there and you feel guilty for the sin that you had, that does not allow you to not partake of the grace that we are given in the Lord's Supper. The fact that you recognize your own sin more poignantly means that your need to partake of the Lord's Table is even greater. that week than other weeks. Never excuse yourself from partaking of the Lord's table. God commands all of his people to partake of it. All of his people. Yet he also says that no one who is outside of the household of God of faith made to participate in it. And for this reason, it is necessary even today for ministers to warn people not to receive the ordinances the elements of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, because it has always been intended for the people of God and only the people of God. That's why we fenced the table on Sunday mornings when we have the Lord's Supper. The Passover meal was only intended to be eaten by God's people. And likewise, the Lord's Supper is intended for God's people and no one else. It is only for those who have confessed their sin before the Lord and have publicly professed their sin or publicly profess their faith. in Christ Jesus, and have been baptized. In order to demonstrate and publicly profess that they have received salvation from the Lord. Those are the people that are allowed to partake of this sacrament. We cannot commune with Christ and rejoice in remembrance of what he has done for us in the past. And the Lord's table is a piece of remembrance. We cannot partake of a feast of remembrance for the salvation that we've been given in the past if we have not yet been given that salvation. Any more so than a foreigner who was not brought up out of the land of Egypt could partake of the Passover meal. It was to be observed by God's people and no one else. But what about those people who came out of Egypt with them who were not part of the covenant community. Those who were not born in Abraham's family They were still granted permission to partake of this gracious feast of the Lord given to his people but not until they were circumcised not until they entered into covenant with God not until they made a public profession of their covenantal relationship with the Lord in the Old Testament which at that point in time was the sign of circumcision. In our day, in our covenant that we are in with God in the New Testament, the sign which points to our covenantal relationship with God is a sign of baptism. This is precisely the meaning in verse 48 of if a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep or would desire to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all of his males be circumcised and then he may come near and keep it. He shall then be as a native of the land. There will basically no longer be any distinction between you and him. If they enter into covenant community with me, if they become circumcised, they are just as much a part of my people as you are, even though you are an ethnic Jew. So again, even here we see that the exclusion and the lines which God is drawing about who may partake of this feast is not based exclusively upon race, but upon grace. Likewise, those who desire to join a Christian church should not participate in the meal of the Lord's Supper until they have under undergone the sign of baptism, which is a public profession of their faith in the salvific blood of Jesus Christ in their own lives. Those people who came out of Egypt who were not born of Abraham could not partake of this this feast of God's salvation unless they first made this public profession of faith. And the same is true of us today. When a minister stands before the church and draws these lines, which we call fencing the table, saying that only those who have faith in the blood of Jesus Christ and have made public profession of their faith by being baptized into Christ Jesus and who either are or desire to enter into the covenant community of membership in a local church. We do not say this lightly. These are not things that when we stand before you and tell you these things, these are not things that we just made up because we think it sounds nice. We say these things out of a desire to remain faithful to what we are taught in God's word. And our passage tonight is one of those passages which we believe clearly teach us these things. When someone hears these words and realizes as we are telling them this that they are being asked to not partake of the Lord's Supper because either they're not baptized or they're not a member of a church and they're not in the process of becoming a member of a church. Sometimes people get offended by that. And we recognize that. And while it's not our desire in any way to offend non-believers. We don't want to offend them. We do not allow people who have not yet been baptized and publicly profess their faith in Christ to partake in a meal of remembrance, pointing back to the grace that they've been given in Christ Jesus. If those who are not under the salvific grace of God, those who are not truly saved, were to be allowed to receive this sign of a salvation that they have supposedly received when they were in fact not saved that would be a travesty. It would be a travesty because doing that whether it's considered politically correct or not. Would communicate to people who are not yet saved that they really are saved because they're being welcomed to partake of Jesus Christ in the same way that believers are. It would be a travesty. Because it would give people a false sense of security. Is it not better that people who are unbelievers feel uncomfortable every time we partake of the Lord's Supper and they are not allowed to partake so that they might be reminded I am I may not be a Christian. Think about those things. Think about the reality that I am a sinner and I am in need of a savior. And I've not publicly professed faith in God. I have not obeyed God's command to those who have been saved to become baptized. I have not joined the community of a church as a member, which God commands us to do. If I have not done these things, then I am being excluded. Yeah, it makes them feel uncomfortable, but maybe it should. Because sometimes it's in those moments of feeling uncomfortable that we recognize are the reality of our sin in a way that we wouldn't otherwise recognize it, or in a way that, speaking for myself, having grown up in a church, I always knew that I was a sinner. I always believed I was a sinner. I always knew that I needed Jesus to take my sins away. But if I never had moments where I was feeling uncomfortable, I probably wouldn't have come to a point when I said, you know what, I'm not really saved. But the fact that I wasn't allowed to partake of the Lord's Supper, Until I did make a public profession of faith and was baptized, I think was an act of grace and also an act of the church I grew up in obeying the word of God here. The Passover meal and the significance attributed to it helps us New Testament Christians to understand. The meaning and significance of the Lord's Supper, because it is It is almost one in the same meal, spiritually speaking at least. It was and is a meal which functions as an eternal sign of our salvation and the freedom that we have received in Christ Jesus, our Passover lamb, from the bondage of sin and death. It was also a meal that was to be explained We see again here repeated in our text that fathers are to teach their children the significance of these things and we are practicing these things because I was brought out of the land of Egypt by God, because we were given salvation. We read a few weeks ago how fathers were to teach children the importance and symbolism of the Passover lamb so that they would remember what the Lord did for them in bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. Furthermore, During the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which followed, the people were not to eat anything with leaven in it, symbolizing the importance for those who have been set free by the blood of the Lamb to cleanse their hearts from the leaven of sin in their lives. And it's an important thing to note that the Feast of the Passover would take place, and after that was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We do not clean up the sin in our lives in order to come to the Lord's table. We do not clean up the sin in our lives in order to be worthy of the grace that we're given in Christ Jesus. It's the blood of Christ Jesus which covers our sin, which enables us, for the first time, to be able to clean up the sin in our lives and to truly repent of our sin. And it is only in the strength of the Gospel and in the blood of Christ, and the strengthening power of the Holy Spirit, that we're able to repent of our sin. The Feast of Unleavened Bread came after the Passover Lamb. And we teach people who are Christians to repent of their sin, even after they are saved. And we do not tell people, repent of your sin and then come to faith. They are to repent of their sin and come to faith. But we don't say you can't come to faith in Christ Jesus until you repent of your sin. Because we know that our faith in Christ Jesus is really the beginning of a lifetime of learning to walk before the Lord in repentance. Overall, the Passover meal is chock full of symbolism, which points to a pattern of salvation which God has followed in saving his people from Egypt. A pattern that, if you look closely enough, you will see in the salvation that God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden, the salvation that God brought to Noah and his family, the salvation that God gave to Abraham, the salvation that God gave to Jacob and his sons in bringing them to Egypt. All of the times which God intervened into human history and gave to them salvation, there is a pattern which he always followed. And all of those patterns point forward to the reality. All of those patterns are types of the truth. Which is in Christ Jesus, so that those who were brought up being taught by their fathers. The reality, the significance of why are we having the Passover lamb because of this and here is the pattern and they were taught the pattern since they were young children in the hopes that when the reality came, they would see that pattern. in Christ Jesus and in what he did for his people on the cross. And they would say, I've seen this before. This is the pattern of how God always saves his people. But this one is different. This is no lamb. This is a perfect human being who is also fully God, who was sacrificed for my sin and through his blood has truly cleansed me from my sin. And I know the blood of bulls and goats cannot fully take away my sin, but his blood can. We teach our children the pattern of salvation so that they might recognize the truth of the reality of how we are saved in Christ Jesus. Let's bow together in prayer. Father God, we do come before you tonight again, and we give you glory and praise. And we recognize, Father, that your plan of redemption was an eternal plan. that you always had in your mind. And we thank you, Father, for all of the types and shadows of Christ that you gave to us and to your people in the Old Testament times, so that when Christ came and was proclaimed by the apostles in the New Testament, Father, we might look back on the way in which you had always saved your people. And see the reality that this is the truth. That Jesus Christ is the true Passover lamb. Father, we pray that you would impress upon our hearts the importance of the blood of the Lamb, especially every month as we partake of this meal of the Lord's table. And we pray, Father, that those in our congregation who may at times feel uncomfortable because they are being asked to not partake of it, Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would do a work in their lives and help them to recognize that they are not allowed to partake of this meal because they are not part of the covenant of grace. Father, we pray that you would convict them of their sin and their need for a savior and give them a desire and a joy to come to Christ in faith and to proclaim the joy of your salvation through baptism. And we pray, Father, that as we strive as parents to teach our children the things of the Lord, as we teach our children All of the Bible stories and all of the things that you teach us in your word about yourself, Father, we pray that they will see that you are a God who saves. You are a God who always saves. And we pray, Father, that they will come one day to meet for themselves the Savior and recognize that he is the truth, the way, and the life. Father, we pray these things in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.