God's Deliverance: The Significance of Passover and Communion

### Bible Reading
1. **Exodus 11:1-10** - The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn
2. **Exodus 12:1-14** - The Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread
3. **1 Corinthians 11:23-26** - The Institution of the Lord's Supper

### Observation Questions
1. What was the final plague that God brought upon Egypt, and what was its significance? ([30:07])
2. How were the Israelites instructed to prepare and eat the Passover meal? ([33:13])
3. What does the blood of the lamb on the doorposts symbolize in the context of the Passover? ([36:03])
4. According to 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, what did Jesus say the bread and the cup represent during the Last Supper?

### Interpretation Questions
1. How does the final plague demonstrate both God's patience and His justice? ([31:42])
2. In what ways does the Passover foreshadow the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? ([37:14])
3. How does the act of reliving the Passover meal help the Israelites remember God's deliverance? ([44:18])
4. What is the significance of "remembering forward" in the context of both the Passover and the Lord's Supper? ([01:00:08])

### Application Questions
1. Reflect on a time when you experienced God's patience in your life. How did it impact your relationship with Him? ([31:42])
2. The Passover meal was a communal event that united the Israelites. How can you foster a sense of community and unity within your small group or church? ([54:41])
3. The Israelites were instructed to be ready to leave Egypt at a moment's notice. Are there areas in your life where you need to be more responsive to God's call? ([34:30])
4. How can the practice of communion help you stay focused on the hope you have in Christ? ([01:06:25])
5. "Remembering forward" means letting past experiences with God influence your future actions. How can you apply this concept in your daily walk with Christ? ([01:00:08])
6. The sermon emphasized the importance of teaching future generations about God's deliverance. What are some practical ways you can pass on your faith to the next generation? ([51:22])
7. How can you approach the Lord's Supper with a heart of reverence and gratitude, fully understanding the depth of God's love and the significance of His sacrifice? ([01:07:53])

Day 1: God's Patience and Justice
God's patience is evident as He gives Pharaoh multiple chances to repent before executing the final plague. This demonstrates God's desire for all to come to repentance, but it also underscores the necessity of justice and the acknowledgment of God's authority. Pharaoh's repeated refusals to obey God's commands led to the final, devastating plague—the death of the firstborn. This act was not just a display of power but a necessary step to fulfill God's plan for the Israelites' deliverance. We too are given chances daily to turn to God and live according to His will. Understanding God's patience should inspire us to seek repentance and live in obedience, recognizing that justice will ultimately be served. [31:42]

Exodus 34:6-7 (ESV): "The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.'"

Reflection: In what areas of your life have you been ignoring God's call to repentance? How can you respond to His patience today by turning back to Him?


Day 2: The Significance of the Passover
The Passover is a powerful reminder of God's deliverance. The blood of the lamb on the doorposts symbolizes the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. This event foreshadows the ultimate sacrifice of Christ and calls us to live in obedience and gratitude. The Israelites were instructed to observe the Passover as a lasting ordinance, a memorial of God's saving power. This historical event is not just a story from the past but a living reminder of God's faithfulness and the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ. As we reflect on the Passover, we are reminded of the depth of God's love and the significance of Christ's sacrifice. [36:03]

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (ESV): "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, 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."

Reflection: How does the symbolism of the Passover lamb deepen your understanding of Jesus' sacrifice? What steps can you take to live in obedience and gratitude for His ultimate sacrifice?


Day 3: Reliving and Remembering
The Passover meal was designed to relive the event of God's deliverance. This act of remembrance was to be passed down through generations, ensuring that the story of God's salvation was never forgotten. Similarly, our observance of communion is a reliving of Christ's sacrifice, reminding us of His love and our redemption. By partaking in communion, we are not only remembering a historical event but also experiencing a spiritual reality that unites us with Christ and with one another. This practice strengthens our faith and keeps us focused on the hope we have in Christ. [44:18]

Deuteronomy 6:20-21 (ESV): "When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?' then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.'"

Reflection: How can you make the act of communion more meaningful in your life? What specific steps can you take to ensure that the story of God's salvation is passed down to future generations?


Day 4: Community and Unity
The Passover meal brought the community together, uniting them in their common identity as God's chosen people. In the same way, communion unites us as the body of Christ, reminding us that we are all dependent on the blood of Jesus for our salvation. This unity strengthens our faith and our witness to the world. As we gather to partake in communion, we are reminded that we are not alone in our faith journey. We are part of a larger community that shares the same hope and salvation in Christ. This sense of unity is essential for our spiritual growth and our ability to impact the world around us. [54:41]

Ephesians 4:4-6 (ESV): "There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

Reflection: How does participating in communion with your church community strengthen your faith? What can you do to foster a greater sense of unity within your church?


Day 5: Remembering Forward
The concept of "remembering forward" means that our remembrance of God's past actions should influence our future actions. As we remember the sacrifice of Jesus, we are called to live in a way that honors Him and reflects His love to the world. This remembrance keeps us focused on the hope we have in Christ and motivates us to live faithfully. By looking back at what God has done, we gain the strength and perspective to move forward in our faith journey. This forward-looking remembrance is not just about recalling past events but about allowing those events to shape our present and future lives. [01:00:08]

Hebrews 10:23-24 (ESV): "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works."

Reflection: How can you let the remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice influence your daily actions and decisions? What specific changes can you make in your life to better reflect His love to those around you?

Welcome again, everyone. We're so glad that you're here with us today. Welcome, Smyrna Campus. We love you guys. Glad you're connected there, and everyone is connecting with us online.

I especially want to shout out to Sophia, who is Rose and Jim Keating's granddaughter, who's been with us through the summer. She's now back in the Phoenix area in Arizona and that 118-degree weather out there. But we celebrated her baptism last Sunday. We were so thrilled that she made that decision and wanted to do that while she was with us here. So let's congratulate Sophia one more time.

I also want to thank and congratulate Michael Scherer one more time. He mentioned that this is celebrating 28 years here at Lakeshore. He was the first staff member I hired after I had been here for a short time to come in and work with our youth program. He developed it from scratch and did a great job with that and has served us in so many ways over the years. So let's thank Michael Scherer one more time. He and his family have been a true blessing to us here all of those years.

We are continuing our series that we've been in for quite a while now, going straight through the book of Exodus. The theme for the series is "He draws us out to draw us in."

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been looking at God's answer to Pharaoh's question. Remember when they went to Pharaoh to say what God told him to say, to let his people go that they might worship him? Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey his commands? Who is this God? Who is your God that you think I, Pharaoh, who am a God myself, should surrender to and submit to that God?"

In answer to that question, over the last weeks, we've seen that God said, "Okay, Pharaoh, I will show you who the Lord is. I will show you who I am, the I AM God that I am."

So we've looked over the last two weeks at the first nine plagues that God sent to Pharaoh and to Egypt. In those plagues, God was showing his power, his authority, his control over the things that Pharaoh thought he had control over through the gods that they worshiped. They ruled over these things. And the Lord God is saying, "No, Pharaoh, I am the Lord God that you should submit to me. And I'm going to prove it to you."

Over and over again, God proved that through those plagues. He proved that he had control over all of nature, over all that was going on in the world, that he could even bring distinction between the Israelites and Goshen and the rest of Egypt. After the first three plagues, he separated them out. The Israelites didn't have to suffer the others.

So we pick up now after those nine plagues with the final plague. God had told Moses that Pharaoh was going to harden his heart. It was going to be a repeating thing, but that he was going to bring about one more plague that would be so devastating and so powerful that Pharaoh was going to relent and let the people go.

We know that plague as the plague of the firstborn in every household. It became for the Israelites the celebration of what is called the Passover. Passover is a great name for this celebration, for this memorial of what God was doing in this tenth plague.

So let's pick up in Exodus. Open up your Bibles there, Exodus chapter 11, beginning with verse 1. The tenth plague, the Passover, is talked about in Exodus chapters 11 through chapter 13. I'm not going to read all of that today, so I want you to take some time this week to go back and read through all of those chapters so you can get all the details of all that God was saying.

But we're going to pick out some highlights here and connect it to the celebration of the Passover and how that was looking forward, like all of Scripture in the Old Covenant does. It was looking forward to our celebration that we have every Lord's Day around the Lord's table that we call communion or the Lord's Supper. It is directly connected to the celebration of the Passover that God brought to the Israelites there in Egypt.

So let's pick up in Exodus 11:1. He says this: "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.'"

I want to stop there for a minute. He's saying, "There's just one more plague, Moses." Now, they've been going through a lot. You have to remember, there's been a lot that has happened leading up to this moment.

The reason I want to remind us of that is because sometimes people will look at God doing these things and bringing a plague like this one and think about the cruelty of God and how hard God is and how awful this was that they had to go through this. But remember that for years, through all of these plagues, God has given them every chance to relent, to repent, to change their minds about who God is and how they should respond to God.

You see, God is a patient God. He's given them a chance after chance after chance, just like all of us in this room today have been given by God chance after chance to surrender to his call on our lives. Every day of life is another chance that God gives all of us to listen and to surrender and to turn our lives over to him.

God does not act hastily. He does not react in anger. He has a plan and a purpose for everything that happens. And part of that plan and purpose, the Bible says, he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That's what God wants.

But when we refuse, when we neglect the opportunities and fail to respond, there is a time where God says, "Justice, because I'm a just God, justice must come and must be executed."

With these plagues, God has been saying, "Pharaoh, I've given you this chance. I've given you this chance. I've given you this chance. I've given you this chance. I've given you this evidence. I've given you this testimony. I've given you all these experiences so that you would know that I am the Lord God, the true God that has this kind of authority."

In Exodus 11 through 13, the story is told of Israel's salvation through this 10th plague in Egypt. The angel of death is going to pass through the land of Egypt and strike down the firstborn son of every household.

Let's pick up in chapter 12 of Exodus, in verse 1. Just read along silently with me here.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.

The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the 14th day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.

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. That same night, they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire with the head, legs, and internal organs. Do not leave any of it till morning. If some is left till morning, you must burn it.

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.

On that same night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals. I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.

He's answering the question that Pharaoh asked. 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.

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.

Now he goes on to give more details. This account of what's happening here is God working in a way that not only shows them who the Lord is, but it becomes a lasting remembrance and testimony for generations to generations to generations to come, even up until the coming of Jesus Christ himself.

This was a plague designed by God in his plan, in his purpose, to make that connection in their minds, that they could be reminded over and over again of how on that night, with that plague, they were to stay in their homes, and their homes that they stayed in were covered by what? The blood of the lamb. A lamb without spot or defect.

Are you making a connection? The blood of the lamb. A lamb without spot or defect. Are you making a connection? A perfect sacrifice for the sins of the people.

Here's something we need to remember. In conjunction with killing that lamb and putting the blood over the doorpost, we have to understand something. God is saying to the Israelites, if those homes don't have the blood—even in that Israelite home—what's going to happen? If so, that firstborn son in that household will die too.

You see, they weren't innocent either. We've talked about that in the earlier editions of this series. None of us are innocent either. What does the Bible say about all of us? We've all sinned; we all come short of the perfect glory of God. All of us need this covering, don't we? The covering of the blood of the lamb that was sacrificed on our behalf.

Now, as we talk about this today, I want you to remember the words of John when he saw Jesus. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, John the Baptist looked across the way and he saw Jesus walking across the area there. He pointed out to his disciples, "Look, look over there!" and he pointed to Jesus as he said, "Look, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world."

You see, this is not a random thing that's happening here in Exodus. This is God's eternal plan for the healing of the brokenness of the sins of the world, laying that foundation. He's preparing the way. He's making the connection for all of us, even today, that we could see the connection between the blood of the lamb covering those homes in Egypt to the blood of the lamb covering us today in our sin.

You see, God's purpose for Israel was that they would point the world to the Messiah when he came through all that he was doing with them as a people and setting them apart as a people. Even the hard things like this slavery in Egypt, even the hard things like the plagues that they had to go through, God is using it all to point people to him through what he's doing with them.

So when we are suffering through hard things too, we understand that God's plan and purpose is bigger than the hard thing you're going through. If we could use it in the right way, if we could let God work through us, even as we go through the challenges and the hard things of life, God can work through us to point people to him too.

Make the connection with what God is doing then. He's the same God today, just doing the same things today that he was doing then, to point people to him, to bring people to him, to draw people to him, to draw us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

And so God says for them, in conjunction with killing this lamb for blood to be put on the doorpost, to institute this family feast for the commemoration of that event. He says to them, "From this point on, there will be an annual remembrance of what I'm doing here. I want you to remember, but I don't want just you to remember and make that connection with the blood of the lamb. I want your children to remember. I want their children to remember. I want every generation moving forward to remember this connection between the blood covering and God passing over that home with his judgment, because that's exactly what he was going to do."

He was going to do it. He already had planned it even before the foundation of the world, that Jesus would be the lamb that would be slain for the salvation of all who would come to him.

So we're going to look at several passages of Scripture that reveal some of the purposes of this memorial, of the celebration of the Passover that he was instituting on that night.

Now remember, it's easy to read through this sometimes and not realize how awful that night had to have been. Even for the homes that had the blood covering, right? They had put the blood there and then they had to go inside their homes and not go back out again that whole night. Yet it says, in every household in Egypt, there was wailing and mourning and crying.

See, sometimes we forget too when we read about the death of the firstborn son in each household, we forget that means at any age in that household, if they were a firstborn son, they died that night. From babies up to the oldest in the house, if they were the firstborn, they all died that night without the covering of the blood of the lamb. They all had to pay the price and the penalty for sin and rebellion without the covering of the blood of the lamb.

Remember, God's a just God. Sin and evil do not go unpunished in God's plan and God's kingdom. Either there's the sacrifice that covers it and pays for it, or the person who committed the sin has to pay for it. Those are the only choices because of a just God.

And so because God is just, there was great mourning and wailing and suffering in Egypt that night. It says even from Pharaoh's household all the way down to the lowest servant's household, every firstborn in every household died that night. It was one of the most awful nights you could imagine.

Even for the Israelites inside their homes covered by the blood, they knew what God said was going to happen that night. They understood that. But don't you think, don't you think it had to be scary even for them? What's going to happen at our house even though we did what God said to do?

God was teaching them, and through them, he's teaching us. He's faithful to his promises. There's one more evidence because in every home that did what God said to do, and every home where they had the lamb's blood across the doorposts, in every one of those homes, no death entered that home that night. They were all completely covered and saved by the blood of the lamb.

That's why we can trust and have confidence in the faithfulness of God's promises to us, right? We've seen the evidence over and over again that God is faithful to the promises that he makes. And that if we will come under the covering of the blood, what can we count on God to do for us? To save us too. He keeps his promises. We can count on it. We can live with that assurance of the victory of the covering of the blood of Jesus every day.

We don't have to be afraid of the coming of Christ or our exit from this world into the next because of the covering of the blood of Jesus. And that's what he's teaching Israel that night.

So let's look at, there are really three purposes. There are more than that, but I want to point out three purposes of God saying to them, not only do this, but commit to making this an annual memorial celebration and feast that you have for the Lord.

There are three main reasons for that, and I want to connect them to why we do what we do every Sunday around the Lord's table.

The first purpose of the Passover feast is that it is to relive the event. By doing this memorial meal that they were going to be doing from that point on, they would be reliving the events of the Passover.

Let's go back to Exodus 12, verse 24. He says, "Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. When your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'"

Then the people bowed down and worshiped. It's clear that the observance of the Passover celebration was always meant to be a remembrance and a reenactment of what happened that night in Egypt for the Israelites.

It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration. It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration. It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration. It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration. It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration. It's a remembrance of the Passover celebration.

It's a remembrance of the event itself and a reliving of that event, even for those who weren't there when it happened. You see, that's the important connection too with continuing the memorial. It's that it was for those people who didn't experience that actual event that night, but who needed to hear about it, who needed to be taught about it, who needed to experience what it was all about and know what it meant to celebrate that Passover.

In Deuteronomy 16, in verse 3, Moses says this: "Do not eat it with bread made with yeast, but for seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt in haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt."

He's saying, "People, you need to celebrate what God did for you. You need to remember."

Part of the instructions on when they ate the meal that night before the death angel passed over was how they were supposed to do it: with their cloak tucked into their belt and with sandals on their feet. You know why? Because it meant they were about to be delivered. They were about to be freed from their bondage. They were about to experience God bringing them out of that into the promise that he made to them and the land that he was going to give them.

That was the connection he wanted them to make with this. And so from then on, every time they had the Passover, what were they supposed to do? They were supposed to eat it that same way. They had unleavened bread, which would be symbolic of two things. One, leaven represented sin in that culture, so no sin in the bread. But the other part was leaven would be what made the bread rise.

How many of you have ever made yeast rolls yourself, actually from scratch? Made yeast rolls? Anybody? I can remember as a little boy my grandmother would make yeast rolls. Here's what she'd do: she would get the dough ready and everything and separate it out, but she would put it out on the table in their dining room and cover it with something.

She would put it on the table and put it under that covering. What was happening? It would take some time, but the yeast was making the rolls rise, and then she would put that in the oven after it had risen. I don't know about you, but I love fresh baked yeast rolls. Man, I just love it. If I wasn't careful, I would be, you know, as wide as I am tall very easily just from eating yeast rolls if I had them available all the time. They're just great.

But here he's saying, "I don't want you to make bread the way you normally do. Don't put yeast in it because when Pharaoh says to go, you got to be ready to go. I want you to get out of that place when you have the opportunity."

Now, why is that a big deal? It's because he wants us to understand that when God makes his offer of salvation through the covering of the blood of Jesus, we need to go when we have the opportunity to go. And we need to go when we have the opportunity to go.

We don't need to wait. We don't need to put it off. We need to respond quickly. I know there are people who we've done this with something like baptism in our culture today where we've made it like a family event, and we want to set up the time and schedule it and all that where we have everybody together for the baptism.

Friends, that's not the way it was in the New Testament. In the New Testament, what it was connected to was being connected to the blood sacrifice of Jesus, where we're raised with Christ in the likeness of his resurrection. It's something that you do when you're ready to be freed from bondage into the freedom that he gives you through Christ, where you are released from sin and the penalty of sin.

That's not something you should put off. It's something that when you have the opportunity, you should go ahead and do it when you have the chance. That's the connection he's making here with tucking your cloak inside your belt and having your sandals on your feet and not putting leaven in your bread.

That's when God gives you the opportunity to be freed from your bondage. Go do it then. Don't wait. See, this is something God is offering in the moment, and you need to respond with the opportunity.

And so he says, "I want you to make this an annual memorial where you continue to do this." It's a reliving of that.

So the Jews from that time on, every year, would hand the zeal like eight or nine times every year. They would bend the hand and they'd help those benedicts. The main shepherds and the shepherds were the zealots.

You know, that's God talking to us about the action of our day. So that the Bou informação, that sacrifice that lamb and then take the blood from that lamb and dip hyssop into it, the plant as a hyssop plant, and dip that into the blood and then use that like a paintbrush to put the blood around the doorpost of the house.

Now, how they stayed in the house that night as God brought about his judgment and his deliverance from that bondage and that slavery, they would retell and relive the whole story of what God had done because every generation of people would have a temptation to do one of two things: to forget God and what God has done or to remember God and honor God with gratitude for what he's done.

And it hasn't changed with any generation of people in the world. Every generation, that's why it is so important to remember God and honor God with gratitude for what he's done.

Friends, listen to me. For you to have your family and your children and your grandchildren coming around this table to remember what Jesus, what God has done for us to deliver us, to free us, that's why we should not take lightly forsaking the assembly of the church and coming around the Lord's table.

It's too important. It's too much of a big deal for the generations coming behind us not to honor this the way God has asked us to, not to remember this the way God has asked us to. It is vitally important if we want our children and our grandchildren and the children and the generations coming behind us to know the salvation of the Lord that we need to have them participate in this regularly with us as a teaching tool, even when they're young, even when they don't understand what it's all about.

We start teaching them what God has done for us through the lamb and the sacrifice that he made for all of us.

So the Passover is first of all a reliving of the event that they were told to participate in regularly. Every time, every year at the same time, you come together and do this.

It's also, secondly, a reuniting of the community. The people of God are drawn together in community by the Passover meal originally observed in Egypt, and then it was observed in the wilderness as they traveled to go to the land that God was taking them to.

The Passover meal was designed to be eaten in the individual homes of the people so their family would get together and have this meal together. It was a bringing of the community together to celebrate the Passover. It was tethering together all the Israelites to their father's houses for that family clan to have it together.

And Exodus remembers lean on everybody's bones like they did the others on the other two crosses. Remember, it's picturing, it's foreshadowing what was coming, okay?

Now he's emphasizing here in Exodus that they are to do this together, that the whole community of Israel, he says, must celebrate it. You see, remembering what Jesus did was not supposed to be just between me and God. That's the way some people try to do Christianity today, try to do their faith today. "Oh, that's a personal thing. That's just between me and God." No, it's not.

It's not designed to be that. It's not designed to be done in community. That's how God designed it for us to practice our faith, is to do it together as a family and community with each other. That's why the church was established. That's one reason, one of the main reasons God put the church on earth, and so that that family under the new covenant would be brought together as a family on a regular basis for that community that he wanted us to have as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And what's the one thing we have in common? We're all totally and completely dependent on the blood of the lamb. Every one of us. We all have that in common. I don't care what background you got. I don't care what history you've got, where you come from, how you got to where you are today.

We all have this in common: we are lost without the covering of the blood of Jesus. But because you have come under the blood of Jesus and I have come under the blood of Jesus, that brings us together as family and community in Christ.

Where the Israelites were being taught, we have something in common. We, as a people, were redeemed and saved and delivered through the blood of the lamb. So when we come together, it was a uniting of the tethering together of the family of God through the Israelites.

It was an example for us to look at and to follow. Forty years later, Israel is given a slightly new direction on eating the Passover. They are instructed to eat the Passover in Jerusalem rather than in their separate towns.

Look at Deuteronomy 16, verses 5 and 6. It says, "You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the Lord your God gives you except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his name." This is as they're coming into the land that he promised them and they're establishing themselves there.

He says, "There you must sacrifice the Passover in the evening when the sun goes down on the anniversary of your departure from Egypt." In verse 11, he says, "Rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his name, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless, and the widows living among you."

Each year, they were to come together in that place he established, which was Jerusalem. So the annual feast of the Passover for the Jews began to be celebrated in the city of Jerusalem.

Not only were they coming together with their own family unit in their homes, now it was bringing the whole nation together in one place to celebrate and remember what God had done through the giving of the blood, the covering of the blood of the lamb that delivered them from their bondage, their slavery that they were experiencing there in Egypt.

So every year since then, as a nation, they have reunited around their common identity. They've been able to come together as the ones that the death angel passed over because of the covering of the blood of the lamb. They are the ones that the Lord spared and set that example for the whole world of what he would do through that plan he had to heal the brokenness of the world through the blood of the lamb that would be slain for all who have sinned.

What an amazing teaching tool this was, how God was using this.

Well, there was a third thing that the Passover remembrance did. It not only was something that reunited the community and relived the event, but it was something else too. It was a redirecting of their lives. Every time they took it, the people of God are redirected by Passover to live rightly before God.

When he instructs Israel on the feast of the Passover and of the unleavened bread, Moses tells the Israelites this in Exodus 13, beginning with a sign: "This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips, for the Lord brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand. You must keep this ordinance at the appointed time year after year."

Now, why does Israel have to be reminded so often? It's because they are very much like us. They would tend to go through these cycles where for a while they would remember, for a while they would honor God, but then they would begin to let it slide a little.

They would begin—and it was usually a gradual thing. It didn't happen all at once—where gradually they would let themselves drift further and further from God and the teachings of God and the instructions of God, and they would suffer terrible consequences for it.

Because when we don't follow God's plan, there are consequences that go with that. And when they would suffer those consequences, often God would allow that so they would remember. For a while, they would honor God, would get their attention again, and it would draw them back again.

But if they had this annual reminder of what God had done and of the price that had to be paid for sin and of the covering that everybody needed, this remembering would cause them to redirect their lives and get focused again on honoring God and thanking God, living the life God had called them to.

It would bring attentiveness to the promises and the events of the past in such a way that it would lead them to take the action in the future that God was wanting them to take.

There's a term that a lot of people use for that, and I like that term. It's called remembering forward. You might write that down; it's a good term. Remembering forward.

What that is talking about is how something you are, for whatever reason, it causes you to remember something. Oftentimes, it's something that you needed to know and be reminded of because when you remember something, it's something that you need to remember that it changes how you're going to move forward in your life.

Then when you're reminded of the faithfulness of God, of the love of God, of the provision of God through the blood of the lamb, of the covering of the blood and what it meant for your people, then it changes how you move forward with your life.

Because now, with that remembrance, you have gratitude stirred up again. You have a reverence for God stirred up again. You have a reminding of the consequences of not honoring God and how it brought you to that body of bondage in the first place.

It is a remembrance that changes your life moving forward, and that's exactly what Passover was for the Israelites. It's exactly what this remembrance was designed to do.

Now remember this: in Exodus chapter 2, we talked about this when we were in Exodus 2. It says God remembered his people and his prophet's promises. We talked about this fact. It didn't mean that God forgot what he promised.

The word used for remembered here is the same thing we're talking about here with remembering forward. It means that God never forgot that promise, but because of that promise and that he never forgot it moving forward, God was acting on that promise. He was doing what he needed to do to fulfill that promise. He was remembering forward.

That's the way God remembers. He remembers forward to the things that are coming, to the things that he's working on, to the things that he's leading us to. And that's exactly what he wanted this memorial to be for Israel, and I believe it's exactly what he wants the fulfillment of that promise to be in us and how we remember forward as we celebrate that direct connection we have to the Passover with what we call communion or the Lord's Supper.

You remember when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper where he was and what they were doing? They were having a Passover meal. That's when he instituted communion, what we know as communion or the Lord's Supper.

He said he wanted to have this meal with his disciples, his last time to have it with them here in the flesh while he was here doing his ministry. So he sent them into town ahead of time to get everything ready. What were they getting ready? The lamb and the bitter herb and all the meal preparations that needed to be made for the Passover remembrance.

That's what's happening when Jesus institutes what we know as communion or the Lord's Supper. It was during that meal, which was very elaborate and it had a lot of steps and stages to it because remember, they're retelling the whole story as they take the meal, as they eat the meal.

It was done in such a way that the story is retold again of what God did there in Egypt for his people. And it was while they were retelling that story, that's while they were talking about how they were told to take a lamb without spot and without blemish and to sacrifice that lamb to cover their homes with that blood, that Jesus stopped during the meal and he took bread.

He ripped it apart and he said, "I want you to take this bread and eat it. It's my body given for you."

Let's look at Paul's account of it in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23. He says, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you." So God gave him this to pass on: "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, right there at the Passover meal."

What's going on? Judas has already made the deal before they eat the Passover meal. He's already agreed that that night he would turn Jesus over to his enemies. He's already in contractual obligation to the enemies of Jesus to have him turned over to his enemies.

And yet who's still at the meal that night? Judas. He already knows what's going to happen. Jesus does. He knows he's going to be turned over to his enemies. He's going to be falsely accused on trial, the mockery of a trial that was done in every illegal way you could imagine, and that he was going to be taken and beaten and killed.

He knew that everybody having that meal with him that night was going to do what? Run and hide when that happened. Peter was going to deny him. But don't just put it on Peter; every one of those disciples was going to turn away from Jesus that night.

And in the middle of celebrating that Passover, remembering what God had already done to teach them about his faithfulness, Jesus is saying, "I want you to do this."

Now here's what happens. It says, "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'"

What was the Passover meal? A remembrance. So he's saying, "I want you to do this as a remembrance."

Now in the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me."

And then he says, "For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

What was the Passover? It was a proclamation of how God worked through the sacrifice of the lamb to put the covering on the homes to protect them and deliver them from bondage. It was a remembrance of all of that, and it was a proclamation of what God had done.

And he says, "I'm setting up a new memorial for this remembrance. This is a remembrance of what God is doing through me, and I want you to remember me now as that lamb."

He says, "Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until what?"

Remember the term "remembering forward"? He says, "I want you to remember while looking forward to what's coming next. I want you to remember this until what happens? Until Jesus comes back again."

So how long are we supposed to do this memorial? Until when? Until Jesus comes.

He says, "So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the very body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup."

For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

This has been one of the most misunderstood parts of Jesus' instructions. He's not saying you can't eat this until you get everything straightened out and you're worthy to be at the table.

Who's at the table that night? The very people who would forsake him. The very people who would turn their backs on him. The very people who would let him down. They're not barred from the table because of that.

If we had to be barred from the table because of our sin, who could be there? Not a one of us.

So it's not about us being worthy to partake; it's about us partaking in a worthy manner.

Well, what's the worthy manner? It's to truly remember. It's to truly remember what Jesus has done for you, what he's done for me. It's to truly remember all that God did throughout all of history to lead to that place where Jesus would come to be that lamb who would sacrifice himself and whose blood would be the covering for us.

It's to really remember that. Why do we need it? Because we're no better than the people of Israel. We tend to forget. We tend to move on in life. We tend to get focused on other things. We tend to let the world distract us from the most important things, don't we?

We tend to not remember that God's faithful, that he keeps his promises, and we tend to turn away when things get hard. We need this reminder. We need this remembering.

So he says, "Don't eat without discerning the body of Christ because if you do, you eat and drink judgment on yourself. You're saying to God, 'I don't even care enough to remember what you've done for me and that sacrifice that you made.'"

We offer communion at every service on the Lord's Day. There's good reason we do it every Sunday, and the main reason is we need to remember. We need to be reminded.

We need to have to stop and get rid of some distractions for just a few moments at least and go back to the cross and look at that sacrifice again.

There's debate in the church today about, "Well, how often should you do it?" There are people who criticize us sometimes for doing it every Sunday. They say it loses its meaning if you do it that often.

Can the body and the blood ever lose its meaning? People, no, it doesn't lose its meaning ever, no matter how often you do it. You may not focus on the body and the blood like you should, but the body and the blood never lose their meaning.

I don't know about you, but I need to be reminded even more than once a week, don't you think? That's the least we could do.

We have the example of the early church in Acts 20. We have a record of the early church as they met regularly. It says, "On the first day of the week." What was the first day of the week for them? Sunday, just like it is for us.

Now, I know we call it the weekend and we throw Sunday in on the weekend, don't we? But Sunday on the calendar is actually what day? The first day of the week. It was for them too.

On the first day of the week, it says, "We came together to break bread." To break bread was the term the early church started using for what we call communion or the Lord's Supper.

Why? Because on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and did what? He broke it.

Now, breaking bread sounds unusual to us because our bread normally you don't have to break; you kind of just tear it apart, right? Because we have leavened bread most of the time.

Though sometimes we do eat unleavened bread in different forms, unleavened bread, when you try to tear it apart, what happens? It just breaks all apart.

It was actually breaking apart when Jesus took that bread that night at the Passover meal. It was unleavened bread that they would have at the Passover meal. It would be like a hard thick cake of bread that you would rip apart.

Think about the symbolism of that with the body of Jesus as it was ripped apart by the beating with the whip and the nailing to the cross as it tore the flesh apart hanging there on that cross.

You see the symbolism there? And so the breaking of bread is that remembrance of the sacrifice of the body of Christ being given for us.

And so we need to discern, really think about that. We need to discern that.

On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread, and Paul spoke to the people, and because he intended to leave the next day, he kept on talking until midnight.

Now, I don't have to go anywhere tomorrow, so you don't have to worry about me going to midnight today, by the way. They probably met later in the afternoon anyway because for them, Sunday, the first day of the week for the Jewish community, wasn't a day off for them. That was a normal workday for them.

They probably got together after work, so give Paul some slack here. He probably didn't preach from 9 in the morning till midnight, okay? But he did try to pack in as much as he could while he was there.

Why? Because on the first day of the week, what was the practice of the early church? They got together, they sang praises to God, they spent time in his word and the teaching of the word, but what was their main reason for coming together? They came around the Lord's table to remember, to be reminded of the body and the blood of Jesus, of the sacrifice, of the need for the covering of the blood of the lamb without spot or blemish to cover us from the wages of sin.

The wages of sin is what? Death. But the free gift of God is what? Eternal life through whom? Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lord's Supper is where we remember the death and the resurrection of Christ. He's the first one to come, and he's the firstborn from among the dead, the Scripture says.

He's the one who fulfills all of God's promises, even the promise he made way back to Abraham. Remember, even the promise he made way back to the Garden of Eden when he said to the serpent, "One who is coming, you go strike this heel, but what's he going to do to you? He's going to crush your head. He's going to destroy your power, your ability to have control over the human race that God wants to be in fellowship with."

One is coming, and he's the one that he should be in fellowship with right here is the relationship he's going to have with us in the Day of OK?

Who's going to heal the brokenness that sin has brought into the world? And every time we come around this table, we are reminded.

We do it for the purpose of remembering what God has done for us through Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We do it till he comes again, which is a proclamation that Jesus did not just die on the cross and go to the grave and stay there.

Why would we keep doing this if Jesus stayed in the grave? If his body just decayed and rotted there, why would we remember that? That would not have accomplished anything.

So not only are we remembering, we are remembering forward to the fact that he rose from the dead. He's living and reigning at the right hand of the Father, and he's coming back to take us home again to be with him forever.

That's what we're proclaiming, and that's why to neglect this is a serious matter. That's why it's important for us to do this on a regular basis because if we don't, we are like the history of the human race. We will forget.

We will not give it the attention we should. We will not hold faithfully to the hope that we profess if we don't remember why we have the hope that we have.

If we aren't reminded of what it means to have this opportunity to come around this table and have a savior that we can remember who has loved us in this way that he would do this for us, every time we come, it bolsters our faith as we remember forward.

We anticipate the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let's pray together.

Father, we know that we've been reminded of how you work through such a powerful way there in Egypt and that final plague. You taught your people, you're still teaching us today that you've got a plan, and it's a good plan. It's for your glory; it's for our good that you would even work through the hardest of things to bring about our salvation and our belief in you.

We know that you've been reminded of how you worked through salvation, our redemption, the healing of the brokenness of our lives. We thank you that you were faithful to your promise to Israel, that you brought them out of that bondage, and that you taught us through them that lesson of how sin requires payment and how the blood of the lamb without spot or blemish was a price that was paid to free them from their bondage.

And how that was pointing ahead, and how as they remembered it, it was to be remembered forward to the coming of the one who would be the lamb, who would take away the sins of the world and deliver us once and for all, for all eternity, from the bondage of sin and death.

Father, I pray that if there's one hearing this message today who is still living under that bondage, who's still battling with that slavery to sin, that today you would help them to see that that blood of that lamb was given for them too, that it would bring them the freedom that they're looking for, that it would deliver them from the punishment of sin and death.

That maybe even today they would come surrendering to you as the I AM God who is the one who can give us life as you intended life to be. May someone today find the freedom that is found only in Jesus. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Today we're going to offer this time of invitation. If you're ready to come under the blood of the lamb of Jesus, you could take that step today by coming to profess faith and being baptized into Christ and rising up to a brand new life, free from sin and death forever.

Let's stand and sing together.

Name, everybody have a seat please except you, Abigail. Come on up here.

Abigail comes today to make a public profession of her faith in Christ and to be baptized into Christ. Amen.

I'm going to ask you if you would repeat after me a profession of your faith, okay?

I believe.

I believe that Jesus is the Christ.

That Jesus is the Christ.

He's the son of the living God.

He's the son of the living God.

And I do accept him.

And I do accept him.

As my Lord and my Savior.

As my Lord and my Savior.

Amen. God bless you. Thank you, Abigail.

I want you to go back, and Suanne will meet you right over there and take you back. We'll get ready and celebrate your baptism, okay? Thank you. That is amazing.

All right, I love it.

Yeah, Beth, come on up here. Bruce, come up here with her.

We love this couple. They are such an integral part of our church family, and Bruce has been serving with our children's ministry for a long time, and Beth helps out as well. We're just so thankful for that.

Week before last, Beth came and she said, "I want to be baptized." So we celebrated that. We already did a post on that and everything. She was baptized into Christ, but she wanted that the first opportunity on a Sunday that they could be up here together. She wanted to come say, "I definitely want to make Lakeshore my family, my church home."

So we want to welcome her as a part of our church family.

Yeah, Beth, I received your profession of faith when you were baptized, but for the benefit of our living God, and he's my Lord and Savior. Amen.

Welcome to our family. We're so happy. Thank you, Bruce. God bless you, man. Thank you.

We have a couple of other prayer requests too we want to share. Come on up. Daniel has a co-worker that was in a motorcycle accident. His name again was Dakota. We want to be lifting up Dakota in prayer, especially as he suffered some serious injuries there. Be praying for his family and the medical team that's working with him.

And come on up, Jeremy and Davida. I have a prayer request for Maya, who was it? Her dad, you said, went through some surgery and didn't make it through the surgery. So I want to be praying for her comfort, God's care and comfort for her and for that family as they go through that loss there.

Let's pray together.

Father, we're grateful for your care and your love. We pray for you and for all of your provision. We're grateful that even with an accident and loss of life, even through a surgery that was unexpected, Father, we know you weren't caught off guard by any of those things. You're there. Your presence and your power and your provision is there for everybody that's affected by these things.

We pray that they would turn to you, lean on you, and let your provision be the thing that brings them through it, not just to survive it, Father, but to be able to give you glory through it, that your glory would be revealed even through the hard things that we deal with in this world.

Father, we thank you that your provision is that even if we go through a surgery and don't make it, if we've prepared through Jesus and the offering you've made for us there, even that you use for something good. We praise you for the mighty God that you are. In Jesus' name, amen.

God bless you. Thank you. Amen.

At this time, as we're preparing for communion, we're going to have a time of, I mean, as we prepare for the baptism, we're going to have a time of communion together. So if you would go ahead and get out your communion kits.

I'm going to ask you if you would to go ahead and peel back the bottom part there. I call it the bottom. Some people call it the top. I think it looks like that's the top. That's the bottom. But you're entitled to your own opinion on that. It should not divide the church, okay?

All right. So tear that back. Get out the bread and then turn it back over there. Then you could peel back that layer for the juice.

Remember what Jesus said this represents. The bread represents what? Its body, which was what? Broken for you. That doesn't mean the bones were broken. We know they didn't break the bones. It means like the breaking of the bread, right? The tearing apart of the body that took place there.

This bread, when you take it, what are you supposed to be thinking about? The body of Jesus, the sacrifice that he made there.

When we drink the juice, what does it represent? The blood. What is it we all need for the payment for sin? The blood of the lamb without spot or blemish that was given for us.

This is the blood we remember that Jesus, the lamb of God, gave for our sins on the cross.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that as we come to this time in our service every Lord's Day, we are reminded of the most important thing in our lives. We are reminded of the most important thing in our lives. We are reminded of the most important thing in our lives. We are reminded of the most important thing we could be reminded of, the sacrifice that you made for us.

Father, there are other things that can get into our minds and cause us to be distracted, but none of those things even compares with the importance of what we're doing right here, right now, as we remember the body and the blood of Jesus.

So help us to focus, to properly discern what we're doing here in remembrance. And help us to remember forward that we keep doing this till we see Jesus on the clouds, coming for us to be with him forever.

It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Abigail, it's based upon your profession of faith that you do accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that I will baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of your sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

I'm telling you, being a pastor at Lakeshore, it's the most fun thing in the world. God's just doing this kind of stuff all the time, and we love being able to celebrate as God continues to grow the kingdom and add more people to the family of God.

Week in and week out, he's continuing to do that. Thank you for being here today. If you're a first-time guest, please be sure to stop by the information counter before you leave. We've got a gift we'd love to give you there.

We want you, if you'd like to continue your worship through the giving of an offering, we have an offering box in the back of the auditorium mounted on a post there. There's another one in the hallway as you exit.

So you can drop your offering in the top of the slot there on that box. You can also give online at lakeshorechristian.com or scan the QR code in your bulletin shell, and you can mail in your offerings to the church office.

Either way you do it, it's an act of worship, and it's a way to support the work of the kingdom of God.

This time, Jeremy's going to come up. He's going to close us out with our announcements and with prayer, and we thank you again for being here with us today.

### Quotes for Outreach

1. "You see, God is a patient God. He's given them a chance. After chance, after chance, just like all of us in this room today have been given by God chance after chance to surrender to his call on our lives. Every day of life is another chance that God gives all of us to listen and to surrender and to turn our lives over to him." [31:42] (23 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




2. "God does not act hastily. He does not react in anger. He has a plan and a purpose for everything that happens. And part of that plan, and purpose, the Bible says, he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. That's what God wants." [31:42] (18 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




3. "We can live with that assurance of the victory of the covering of the blood of Jesus every day. We don't have to be afraid of the coming of Christ or our exit from this world into the next because of the covering of the blood of Jesus." [42:52] (15 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




4. "When God makes his offer of salvation through the covering of the blood of Jesus, we need to go when we have the opportunity to go and we need to go when we have the opportunity to go. Don't need to wait, we don't need to put it off, we need to respond quickly." [48:18] (13 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




5. "We are lost without the covering of the blood of Jesus, but because you have come under the blood of Jesus and I have come under the blood of Jesus, that brings us together as family and community in Christ." [54:41] (14 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




### Quotes for Members

1. "God is saying to the Israelites, if those homes don't have the blood...even in that Israelite home... what's going to happen? If so...that firstborn Son in that household...will die too. You see, they weren't innocent either. We've talked about that in the earlier auditions. This series like none of us are innocent either. What does the Bible say about all of us? We've all what? Sinned. We all come short of the perfect glory of God. All of us. So all of us need this covering, don't we? The covering of the blood of the lamb that sacrificed for our behalf." [36:03] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




2. "God's purpose for Israel was that they would point the world to the Messiah when he came through all that he was doing with them as a people and setting them apart as a people. And even the hard things like this slavery in Egypt, even the hard things like the plagues that they had to go through, God is using it all to point people to him through what he's doing with them." [38:32] (23 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




3. "The first purpose of the Passover feast is that it is to relive the event. By doing this memorial meal that they were going to be doing from that point on, they would be reliving the events of the Passover." [44:18] (13 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




4. "The people of God are drawn together in community by the Passover meal originally observed in Egypt and then it was observed in the wilderness they traveled to go to the land that God was taking them to. The Passover meal was designed to be eaten in the individual homes of the people so their family would get together and have this meal together. It was a bringing of the community together to celebrate the Passover." [52:56] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




5. "The people of God are redirected by Passover to live rightly before God when he instructs Israel on the feast of the Passover and of the unleavened bread. Moses tells the Israelites this in Exodus 13 beginning with a sign: this observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips for the Lord brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand." [58:44] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)