Sanctuary - Exodus 12:21-30 & Revelation 5
September 30, 2012
There are times when we are faced with that which seems absolutely impossible from a human perspective; when what we encounter seems so much bigger than we are. In those times, in those moments, we may become overwhelmed by the seeming hopelessness of it all.
When I think of hopelessness I often think of Joseph – Joseph who was so despised by his own brothers that they sold him into slavery and told their father that he was dead. Joseph who is later falsely accused of a crime he did not commit and thrown into prison. Those must have been incredibly dark days for Joseph. How do you maintain hope when life goes from bad to worse, and from worse, to impossible?
Yet if we stop reading there we miss out on the most important parts of Joseph’s story. You see, God went on to use Joseph in amazing ways that none of us could have ever imagined. You probably know the story yourself – through a miraculous turn of events, Joseph eventually becomes Pharaoh’s right hand man, and during his lifetime the Israelites lived a relatively comfortable life in Egypt. What man had meant for evil, God had meant for a greater good.
But after the death of Joseph and his generation the people of Israel fell upon hard times. There rose to power in Egypt a Pharaoh who had no memory of Joseph and of his work on behalf of the Egyptian nation. Instead he looked upon the Israelites, saw they were increasing in numbers, and in his paranoia saw a threat. And so he enslaved the people of Israel and life became very hard for the generations that followed Joseph’s. And God had foretold of these things to Abraham, long before Joseph ever came on the scene, saying, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” [Genesis 15:13-14] What had God done? He had promised hope to His people so that in their darkest moment they would not lose heart but would instead call out to Him.
It’s very likely that at different times in your life that you may have experienced that sense of overwhelming hopelessness or helplessness that leads you to despair. A tragedy, an illness, a sorrow, a seemingly impossible situation – whatever the case – that burden of hopelessness is very real – you cry out for an escape, for some glimmer of something better, you long to find sanctuary from your troubles.
A few years you would have seen that hopelessness written on the face of a young teenager we met while we were on holidays. Sarah, never knew her dad. Her mom had her own set of problems and was in and out of relationships with men on a regular basis. I suspect that no-one, Sarah included, really knew who, Sarah, was. Many people knew of her. The police certainly knew of her. She had been in juvenile detention centers frequently and on more than one occasion spent time in jail. And it probably won’t come as a great shock to you to learn that before she was seventeen years old she gave birth to a son – yet another child who would never know his father. And if life seemed hopeless for Sarah before, what hope could the future hold for her now that she had a child? Although separated by thousands of years in time, Sarah shared that one thing with the Israelites – a sense of hopelessness in which they could see no way out.
The irony of it all is that at those times when we are at our worst, when the hour seems the darkest, it’s often when we see God at His best. It’s then that hearts that have been cold, and dark and dead cry out to Him for mercy and discover the wonder of God’s grace!
So it was for the Israelites. In their oppression they cried out to God and He heard their cries and He sent them Moses. Man’s ways have come up empty and left the people bitter and full of despair. But God has a plan and after God is done, what He’s about to do, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind, neither Egyptian nor Israelite, that God is indeed God.
The command God gives through Moses for the Israelites is fairly simple. Each household is to take a sheep, a lamb without blemish or defect, and slaughter it that night. They are not to break any of it’s bones but they are to take the blood of that lamb and paint the door posts of their houses with it and then they are to remain inside their dwellings until morning comes for the Lord himself is about to go through the land of Egypt bringing judgment with Him.
In Exodus 12:23 we read that, “When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and the sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and He will not permit the destroyer to enter [the houses of the Israelites to] strike them down.” The blood on the door posts acts as a seal of protection – they are sealed by the blood and protected from the horrible judgment that will fill the land that night. And as we continue reading in verse 29 we are told that the Lord did just that. “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. 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.”
Many would tell you today that sin is no big deal, that God really doesn’t care one way or the other about sin. Don’t believe a word of it. God takes sin seriously! Scripture says, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22) for our sins. God takes sin so seriously that His own Son, Jesus, had to die on the cross, to shed His own blood, that your sin and my sin, might be forgiven. When we sin we sin against the very blood and body of Jesus Christ who gave His life that we might have life! And yet our lives are ravaged by sin again and again when we choose to do life our own way rather than God’s way.
Let’s talk about Sarah again for a moment. What hope would you give Sarah of having any sort of a future? A seventeen year old single mom, with no job, no family to turn to, who hadn’t been in school for years and who is in trouble with the law? We are all familiar with the saying, “You reap what you sow.” Well Sarah was reaping in her life exactly what she had sown in her life. There is no doubt that her life was full of sin and on some level she even knew that. She knew that the life she was living would have filled God with sorrow. Life felt hopeless but in her heart she longed for hope.
And her story has a happy ending because she found the hope she was looking for! She found it in the very brokenness that had robbed her of hope in the first place. And she found it there because it filled her with sorrow and brought her to repentance. It brought her to her knees before God. All pride, all self-sufficiency, all sense of entitlement had been put to death within her. She had nothing left to do but throw herself at the foot of the cross and to cry out for God’s mercy.
And when we met her for the first time, you could never have guessed what she had experienced in her life. She was just the sweetest little thing. She was full of joy and life and hope. Just a few short weeks before that meeting she had been baptized. And she is hungry for the things of God. And she is actively seeking His righteousness in her life. She may not know her biological father, but she most certainly knows her heavenly Father, and she is discovering that He is everything her own father was not. Her life has turned around. She is now living with a couple from the church she attends. She is raising her son, she is taking correspondence courses to get through her schooling, and most importantly she is living for the Lord. And that’s what has made the difference in her life, that’s what has given her life and hope. And just as the Israelites found shelter from the wrath of God behind their blood stained door frames so too did Sarah find sanctuary in the blood of the lamb.
Christ is our Passover lamb just as He is Sarah’s Passover lamb. And just like the lamb the Israelites offered up that night so long ago, He too was without blemish, or defect, no bone in His body was broken, and it is through His blood that we find sanctuary from the wrath of God which our own sin brings upon us. But more than just sanctuary we find forgiveness. We find hope, and grace and eternal life as we appropriate the blood of Christ through faith. We are sealed by the blood for eternity. It washes us clean of sin and renews us in the eyes of God. Through the Holy Spirit, we who are redeemed, walk in newness of life in Christ. The Bible puts it this way saying that “while we were still sinners [so at that darkest moment of our lives when we were without hope] Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) For “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV84) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV84) This is a word of hope if there ever was a word of hope for us to hear!
When I looked into Sarah’s eyes that day, do you know what I saw? … I saw the new reality of that hope reflected there – there was joy – joy at the new life she had been given. If you look into the mirror, friends, what do you see? Is it the joy that revels in the things of the Lord or is it a look of hopelessness and lifelessness? Christ came that we may have life and have it abundantly. This is the life we are called to – one full of hope – not just for tomorrow – but for today!
Now in just a few moments we are going to share the Lord’s Supper together. It’s a living illustration if you will of God’s love for us and the fearsome consequences of sin. The bread is a symbol of the body of Christ given over to death that we might have life. It reminds us of the death that sin brings with it. The cup is a symbol of the blood of Christ – the blood that had to be shed in order that our sins might be forgiven. And they are for you to eat and drink this day, both as a reminder, but also as an expression of gratitude, for what God has done and made possible in your life – for the gift of new life in Christ Himself. … I’ll ask the servers to come forward at this time and to serve the elements for us as I read a passage of Scripture … …
“Then I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He came and took the scroll from the right hand of Him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.” (Revelation 5, NIV84)
[When Scripture done … music starts]
Let’s pray …. Jesus, this morning we say, ‘Thank you. Thank you again for what you’ve done. Thank you that you became our Passover lamb so that we would be delivered from our sins and the wrath of God would pass over us. Thank you for the new life we have in you. Your word tells us that as we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim your death until you come again. And we’re so sorry for any time that we’ve come to this table having forgotten or neglected you in our lives. For all those moments when we’ve strayed from the new life you’ve given us and embraced the ways of the old one. In you we find sanctuary and our salvation is complete but we’re still works in progress. I pray that you may make each of us tender and open to your word and to the moving of your Spirit that your purposes may be realized within us. Bless the bread and the cup as we share them with one another this morning as we remember you. Amen and Amen!
[Eat the bread and drink the cup.]
Stand with me as we sing our closing song ….
[Go immediately into the closing song.]
Benediction ….
