Isaiah 53 – Shadows of the Cross

It's fair to say that there are some uh events, uh, some dates uh that you'll never forget.

Uh in fact, there are uh it's highly likely that we won't forget this event uh anytime soon.

Uh probably our world will not forget this event.

Uh we all, if we are married, uh should at least remember our wedding anniversary, remember the birth of our children.

Uh, we remember family memorials.

You have those uh those set points in your family's life where you come together for a particular event to celebrate something, whether it's a birthday or uh a wedding anniversary, or even just remembering the the passing of somebody.

There are some events that are so earth-defining that it is uh impossible to forget.

In fact, nobody should forget them.

I think the one that is in most of our living memory is September the 11th, 2001.

Another earth-defining event is the one that we are in now.

It is perhaps something that we should not forget.

That we should continue to remember and to learn the lessons of.

This morning, in the passage that Duncan read, we are remembering an event that the people of God should never forget.

I say the people of God because this history isn't just the history of the Jewish people, it is our history by faith in Jesus.

And so it's something that we too need to remind one another of.

Verse 14 of the passage says, uh, this day shall be a memorial day and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations.

A statute forever you shall keep this feast.

It is something to be remembered forever.

Whatever happened on this night, it's something that we should continue to remind one another of.

In fact, it's so uh paradigm shifting that in verse two of chapter 12, it actually changes the whole calendar.

Verse 2, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you.

So this is New Year's Day.

This marks a turning point in your uh in your annual festivities, in your calendar.

That's how memorable it should be.

God is at pains to say, don't forget what I'm about to do.

Remember what I'm going to do, allow it to shape you, allow it to shape how you then go forward with your life.

I think that's an important lesson, isn't it?

Because one of the things that perhaps we uh implicitly or explicitly want to do with the season that we're in now is to move on and forget about it.

Maybe that's actually not what God wants us to do.

Maybe we are to remember.

To remember what God is doing in these days and to learn the lessons from it.

We are so prone to forget.

We want to forget.

And God says, no, don't forget what's about to happen now.

What does he want us to remember?

What does he want us to not forget?

Two things in this very long passage.

See, I'm really not dealing with at all.

Two things.

Never forget that God can be trusted.

Never forget that God can be trusted.

That's the first thing.

One of the reasons why people don't believe in God or struggle to believe in God or are struggling to believe in him at this time is because they ultimately don't believe that he can be trusted.

As Christians, we are not immune to anxiety and to fear.

We want to wrestle back control from God because we either don't think that he's big enough or interested enough to help, or that he doesn't love us, he isn't good.

We don't believe that he can be trusted.

What God is going to do now is to remind you that he is trustworthy.

Where are we at in the story?

We're kind of hopping about the Bible in this series, looking at different uh shadows of the cross.

So the cross is casting shadows back into the Old Testament, right?

And we're looking at uh passages that prefigure the cross of Jesus.

We looked at Psalm 22, uh, we looked at uh Genesis uh 21 and the sacrifice of uh of Isaac, and now we're in a different book of the Bible.

So where are we at?

Well, Abraham, who we looked at last week, was promised by God that he would be the father of many nations, that he would uh through Isaac give birth to a multitude, and the book of Genesis closes with 70 people down uh in Egypt, and between the close of Genesis and the start of Exodus, some 400 years have passed.

And now that seventy or so people have become a great multitude, about a million people strong.

So strong, in fact, that the ruling class in Egypt were worried about them overthrowing the government, and so they enslaved them.

God in the early chapters of Exodus chose a man called Moses while he was still an infant.

Chose him to lead the people of Egypt out of slavery.

And so he goes on that task and goes to Pharaoh, like in the movie Prince of Egypt, let my people go.

God says plague after plague after plague, and it looks at this point like Moses is a failure.

Because all that it has done is served to harden Pharaoh's resolve, to harden his heart.

The nine plagues seem not to have worked.

Looks like they've been a failure.

Doesn't it read a little bit like well, blood didn't work, so I'll try frogs.

Frogs didn't work, I'll try fly, that didn't work either.

You know, we're always going your plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D.

And now their freedom hinges on a lamb.

And it's blood.

Now their freedom hinges on some butchery.

And yet Moses believes God and commands the Israelites to act, and they do.

Why?

Because actually they know that God can be trusted.

You see, people think that faith is um a leap in the dark.

It's not.

Faith is a leap from the dark into the light.

We're surrounded by darkness and uncertainty and despair, and yet, in that context, in the context of our lives, and the context of what we're looking at here in Exodus, that's dark and despairing and hopeless, and God comes and God shines a beam of light.

That beam of light is his word.

He's as good as his word.

He has done everything that he said he would do.

The nine plagues have all been executed successfully.

He said they would turn the Nile to blood, and the Nile turned to blood.

They had nine good reasons to put their faith in God.

The nine plagues, you see, weren't actually solely for the Egyptians.

It wasn't solely so that uh Pharaoh would release them.

No, the nine plagues uh were for the people of God.

The nine plagues were for the people of God so that when it came to the tenth one here, when it came to the Passover and to the shedding of the blood of the Lamb, they would look back at what God had done in nine past uh instances and go, actually, God has done it in each of those times.

And so let's trust Him now.

They were for the people of Israel to show them that God can be trusted.

Because our God knows that our our hearts are trembling and that we need to look back and see things in order to be able to trust God now.

And so the Lord tells them to take a particular lamb and to slaughter it in a particular way at a particular time of the day and to take its blood and to paint it on the doorposts of their houses.

And their response is, because they've seen his past actions, that they trust him.

And they act that is they had faith.

That's what faith is, in fact.

Faith is the action taken on evidence driven by conviction.

Let me say that again.

Here's what faith is.

Faith is the action taken on evidence driven by conviction.

The people of Israel had seen how God had acted in the past, had seen that he was trustworthy, and so they placed their trust in him, and they acted by painting the blood on the doorposts.

And that action was an act of faith.

The nine plagues were evidence that gave rise to the conviction that God would do what he said, and so they acted on that basis.

Plague 10 was always going to happen.

It wasn't, you know, um, you plan, what's the tenth letter of the alphabet?

The alphabet.

It wasn't that that number or that letter plan.

It was always going to happen.

And the preceding nine plagues weren't primarily for the Egyptians, they were for the Israelites, so that they would trust God's commands and sacrifice the lamb at twilight.

It's no different for us.

Faith in God in the everyday, in the season that we're in, during this isolation and uncertainty and fear and death around us, faith in God is choosing to trust Him based on His past trustworthiness, on His proven faithfulness.

That's why we are never to forget this.

That's why we're to see this as part of our history.

So are you trust struggling to trust God right now?

Are you struggling to trust His faithfulness?

His trustworthiness, his goodness.

We look to his past actions in order to see that he can be trusted, and we stand at a better vantage point.

Because we look to the cross of the Lord Jesus, we look to the empty tomb, what we'll be celebrating next weekend.

We look to the one who died and now is alive.

And that gives us confidence that renews our faith.

In verse 12, he says, For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord.

It really is worth remembering and reflecting upon the fact that our God will suffer no rivals.

Those things that the Egyptians trusted, and I'm sure many Israelites trusted as well because they were a part of that culture too.

He's showing them those things can't save you, those things won't give you the security and joy and comfort and hope that you're looking for.

Ra, the sun god, I'm gonna block them out.

You worship the river Nile, I'm gonna, it's gonna stop refreshing you.

I'm gonna turn it to blood.

You worship Set and Anubis and all of the gods.

I am going to bring them all crashing down because they cannot save.

What is God teaching us?

What is God teaching us in these days?

As the entire global economy shuts down, as we're separated from one another.

As jobs and careers are under threat.

No.

It's God telling us that those things shouldn't be God to us, that those things shouldn't be ultimate.

Yes.

Yes, he is.

Our God will suffer no rivals.

You're wondering how to kind of process and think about all of the all of the prescriptions about leaven and how to sacrifice the lamb and the emphasis on all of the little details.

Think about it simply like this.

Our God sets the terms on which he will be worshipped.

We worship God on his terms, not on our own.

To worship the true God in the wrong way is also idolatry.

But he is showing us that he can be trusted.

Never forget that our God can be trusted.

Secondly, never forget your need for a substitute.

Never forget your need for a substitute.

A substitute is uh merely someone or something that stands in your place.

Q Sports analogy.

No, you don't you don't need it.

You understand it.

Something in the place of something else.

So what's the substitute here in this passage of the substitute?

Is the lamb, right?

The lamb is to be a substitute, a substitute for who?

For the firstborn.

It's either the firstborn will die, or the lamb.

The lamb is a death substitute.

Why?

Why does the lamb have to die?

Why is the lamb a death substitute who stands in the place for the firstborn in the house?

Well, I think very basically what this is teaching us is that the Israelites weren't in and of themselves any more superior than the Egyptians.

The Israelites in and of themselves weren't more morally virtuous than the Egyptians.

Like the rest of humanity, sin had taken hold of their hearts.

And so they deserved to die just as much as the Egyptians, but God had set his mercy on them.

And so had given them a way of salvation.

And that way of salvation was for God to provide them with a substitute.

That's what I think God is communicating in verse 13 when he says, The blood shall be a sign for you, and on the houses where you are, the blood shall be a sign for you.

Not primarily the angel of death, really.

The angel of death knows where they are.

God knows where they are.

God knows who uh what an Israel Israelite household is and and where an Egyptian household is.

No, the blood was to be a sign for them.

A sign of what?

A sign that sin always leads to death.

Sin always leads to death.

And they have a need.

They need to have their sin dealt with.

And it is dealt with by the Lamb.

God is graciously providing them a way to live.

Likewise, we are no better morally.

We're no more morally superior than our friends, family, co-workers who don't know Jesus.

There's beggars telling other beggars where to find bread, apparently.

We're clinging to our substitute.

The substitute had to be perfect.

You see the detailing in verses three to six.

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of the month every man shall take a lamb according to their father's house, a lamb for a household, and if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to each uh each can eat and make your count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old, you shall keep uh take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

Do you see how how exacting all of this is?

One per family.

If your family's too small, join with a neighbor.

Determine how much uh everyone's going to eat.

It needs to be a male, needs to be a year old, spotless.

Why?

Why does it need to be spotless?

Why does it need to be perfect?

Because an imperfect substitute can die only for its own sins.

But a sinless substitute, a perfect substitute, can bear the sins of another.

This idea of a substitute is inescapable throughout the Bible.

And wonderfully the idea grows.

Last week we looked at uh the the ram caught in the thicket that was provided for who?

For Isaac.

It was a one-to-one substitute, a lamb for Isaac.

But now here in Exodus, uh, what we read is that it's a lamb for a what?

For a household.

And then when we get to Leviticus chapter 16, uh when God kind of uh lays out the prescriptions for the Day of Atonement, it is a lamb for the nation.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

A lamb for an individual, a lamb for a household, a lamb for the nation.

Surely in some of our ears the word of John the Baptist begin to ring.

What is it that John the Baptist says when he sees Jesus for the first time at the start of John's Gospel?

He says, Behold, look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Isaac.

Household, nation, world.

This is a substitute we must never forget.

And as the story unfolds, we begin to realize that throughout the story of the Old Testament that lambs are not effective substitutes, and that they themselves point forward to a better one.

See, Jesus is the lamb without blemish.

He is therefore able to be that sin-bearing substitute.

It is his death that we are to remember.

It is his shed blood that we take refuge behind.

It is his sacrifice that causes God to pass over us.

And so we are spared judgment.

We've been transferred, as Peter would say, out of the dominion of darkness into the dominion of the Son whom he loves.

But through him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This is something that the writer to the Hebrews in the New Testament understood when he said that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin.

How do we know that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin?

Well, Hebrews gives us the answer.

We know that this sacrifice, the sacrifice of lambs and bulls and goats, could never deal with sin because they had to keep on doing it.

But when Jesus came, he died once for all.

That full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice.

He is the one who liberates us.

Not from slavery to an economic power, not from Pharaoh, but from our greatest enemies.

From Satan and from sin and from death.

He liberates us from those and brings us into relationship with our God.

People talk often in vague terms about faith these days.

Come back to the night of Passover.

What saved the Jews?

What saved the people of Israel at Passover?

D.I.

Carson gives us a helpful illustration.

He says it this way.

He says, imagine in the night before the Passover, in the land of Goshen, which is an area of Egypt where uh the Israelites were uh were based.

Imagine a conversation that takes place that takes place there the night before, where one uh Jewish dad says to another Jewish dad, well, are you are you nervous?

Are you nervous tonight?

And the other one says, Well, what is there to be nervous about?

Did you do what God commanded?

Did you sacrifice the lamb at uh at twilight?

Are you packed up?

Are you ready to go?

Have you painted the blood on the doorpost and on the and on the lintel?

And the other guy, yeah, but it's still scary.

I've just got I've just got one son.

You you've got you've got many children, and I'm a I'm a firstborn too.

It's scary though, isn't it?

Of course I painted the blood, I'm not an idiot.

Are you not worried?

And the other dad looks and says, Bring it on.

I trust the promises of God.

And then Carson asks the question, that night Which of the Jewish families was saved?

The answer is both of them.

Why?

Because the angel of death did not pass over them on the ground of the clarity or intensity of their faith.

The angel of death passed over them on the ground of the blood of the Lamb.

This is the basis of our insurance.

Is your faith weak?

Nah.

Is your faith shaken?

Nay.

What matters is not the strength, intensity, or clarity of your faith, but the object of it.

Are you trusting in Jesus?

That substitute that we all so desperately need.

We are prone to forget.

And so God encourages us to remember these things.

And we will this coming week as we come into what some call holy week, Good Friday this coming Friday, and then Easter Sunday.

We remember again what God has done for us.

But how can we remind one another in these days?

How can we remember together?

Let me give you uh just a couple of pointers as I finish.

Gather here with us to be reminded about what God has done.

I know it's not the same.

I know it's not ideal.

But it's not nothing either.

We might be bound to our homes, but the word of God is not bound.

And so make a point of coming here and being encouraged.

Come to one of the three prayer times.

There are different times of the week and different times of the day to try and catch as many people as possible.

We're back tomorrow night at seven o'clock.

Again, Wednesdays at three and Fridays at one.

Would you prioritize coming to one of those?

To be reminded in these fearful and uncertain times.

Take time to sing.

There are playlists that we have shared in the meetup group.

We can share them.

I think there have been actually shared on the city page as well.

You can scroll down and find that.

We can post again.

He doesn't know this yet, but I'm communicating to him now.

He'll post the city playlist, Spotify link on the city page.

And so sing.

Thrill your hearts with what God has done.

Remember who He is.

And singing is a great way of doing that.

Don't neglect your groups.

Again, I know they're not the same, but they're not nothing.

Log on to your community group Zoom.

Pray with one another.

Study together.

We'll be studying this week.

We'll be looking at this passage.

I'll be getting out questions tomorrow, just in time for uh for Young to study them because he likes to chase me to make sure that I get my questions out in good time.

And personally, what are you doing personally to remind yourself of the love of God in this time?

To remind yourself of his trustworthiness?

To remind yourself of your need of him.

Again, can I call to mind the ESV Study Bible app that has all the different reading plans in it?

Have you downloaded that yet?

Or the Explore Bible reading notes.

Maybe you'd grab people in your household or jump on Zoom with some others to go through some Bible study together or even to pray together just as a three.

It's great that we all come on, you know, 20 all of us.

But maybe we all need to be reminded and reminding one another in smaller settings.

Remember, our God is good.

He is trustworthy.

He is strong and mighty.

He suffers no rivals.

He hears the cry of his people.

That's what brought him to act here at Exodus.

He says, I've heard the cry of my people, Israel.

I've come to rescue them.

He hears our cries.

And so keep going.

Until the day when we're able to remind one another in person, gathered around the Lord's table, and we eat and are glad, and we lift our voices together.

Persevere.

Persevere until we see him.

Until we behold his face.

And all of this fades away.

Let me pray.

And then I will take any questions that you may have.

You might want to post them in the chat window now.

Let me pray.

Our Father, we do thank you that you are trustworthy, that you are good.

That we can cling to you even as other things these days seem to slip through our fingers.

Even though we are fearful and uncertain.

Help us.

Father, thank you that you not only show us our need of you, but that you meet that need with our glorious substitute, the Lord Jesus, that Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Help us to run to Him, to reflect upon what He has done, to swell our hearts with love for Him, to sing of Him, to sing to Him in these lonely days.

Give us your grace, we pray.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.