The Reluctant God - Part 4 — G.W. North

Moses, the Passover, and the Birth of a Nation

Let's come to the word then, shall we? You will remember that last night we got to the end of chapter 11 of the book of Exodus. And I suppose you have already decided, as I have, that Moses' life is inextricably mixed up, purposely of course, with the children of Israel.

Through him, we may say, of course, that great phrase in Scripture has been brought into reality, that the nation was born in a day. Until the day that they came out of Egypt, Israel was not a nation.

They became a nation through the Passover and through the Red Sea. Until then, they were not. You may also remember, I hope remember is the word, that as it says in chapter 12, the Lord spoke unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year to you. Just as with the Lord Jesus Christ, who in his death and resurrection brought a spiritual nation to birth, so also in his life, death and resurrection, the Lord changed time.

We call it B .C. and A .D. So did Moses. I don't know whether you realize that. That until then, the Jewish calendar or the Israelitish calendar did not exist. That time, and that is life, began at this point for Israel in their history.

Now that's a tremendous thing. Here then is the greatness of this man Moses, whom God raised up to bring total changes into the world. Now you will remember that it's really through him we got this book.

Now I know he didn't write all of it, but it wasn't begun until Moses began it. And that in itself is a mighty thing. I hope you are beginning to get this man into true spiritual focus, so that you can see his greatness.

Jesus, of course, was greater than he. And his greatness was only that he was chosen of God to be, as it were, a forerunner. Not as John Baptist, not as directly as John Baptist that is, but he was a forerunner and type of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We shan't be able to take him in all the fullness of the life of Jesus that he typified. But tonight we have come to one of the great turning points of all history. Now also we come to the final dealings of God with Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

The Tenth Plague and the Final Judgment on Pharaoh

Hitherto, that is mostly last night, we were considering the terrors that took place under Moses' hand in Egypt. And we were seeing how that in those ten plagues, or the nine that we looked at last night, we are to see the tenth and final one tonight.

God showed what hell is like, not in all its intensity, but gave us a picture of the misery and of the torment and of the terror and of the death. And terrors and darkness and torments and everything, death itself on the cross for us.

That we might know hell, not even its beginnings, or, if you like, its foreshadowings on the earth. Now that's a very, very great and wonderful thing. Also, we saw, if you remember, we finished up on this note last evening, that here was the final word of Moses in chapter 10.

Pharaoh, verse 24, called unto Moses and said, Go ye, serve the Lord. Only let your flocks and your herds be stayed. Let your little ones also go with you. And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the Lord our God.

Our cattle also shall go with us. There shall not an hoof be left behind. And so we see that the greatness of the redemption that is revealed to us in chapter 12, with the beginnings of new life and the birth of a complete people of God, they include, and it includes, now let's everyone get this into our hearts, unless we miss the point.

It includes that you come out of the world and out from the devil's bondages and all his territory completely. Well, that's what it's about. If you miss that, you may think it might take the Lord ten years after you say you're saved, which you'll never persuade anybody that knows is true, if it takes ten years after that and still the world hasn't gone out of your system and the worldliness out of your homes and out of your relationships and all that.

Don't attempt to. You see, it's the Bible that shows it all up to be a mockery. It isn't that people judge you or anything like that. It's what we have the Bible for. It gives us eyes to see. It puts everything in perspective.

It's not left to the judgments or estimates of one man thinking about another's possessions or positions or anything. The Bible tells us. For you will remember that when they went out of Egypt, they never went out with much.

You do realize that, don't you? And it shows what redemption is all about. For you're told this. God says in verse 11 of chapter 12, Thus shall ye eat it. That is the Passover. Remember, let's get this into our hearts, beloved, in case we miss it.

The Passover Must Be Eaten

The Passover has to be eaten, not just believed in. The Passover was not just about sprinkling blood. It was about eating the lamb. The lamb was the Passover, not its blood. Now, we're going to see this very clearly and we're going to understand the truth.

Of course the blood was involved. Of course. But the lamb was the Passover and this is the way they do eat it. They had to eat it with their loins girded, with their shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hand.

That's how they would eat it. They weren't to be carrying their grand pianos around with them. They weren't to be carting out all this, that and the other. They weren't to have magnificent this and marvelous something else.

All their hard-earned homes and furnitures that they put their life savings and works into had to be left behind. I hope you've got this very clear so that you understand what it is God engages to save and redeem.

The rest you can load yourself with and load yourself down into carnality. Now, God has got to make this very, very clear because we're loath to believe it. Because we like the comforts that the world supplies.

We love them very much. I myself too like a warm bed. Now here is the thing that we've got to get hold of and get hold of completely so that we don't live lives of mockery. It was prayed, Lord we're going after godliness in our ears tonight.

All right. The scripture says that godliness with contentment is great gain. How true that is as well. Now in this twelfth chapter we're going to look at it in some detail in a moment. We're going to see God's further dealings with Pharaoh.

And not only in this twelfth chapter but in the fourteenth chapter too where we shall see these great words of Pharaoh's. Verse three. It's God telling Moses what Pharaoh's going to say and what Pharaoh's going to do.

Here it is. Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel they are entangled in the land. The wilderness has shut them in and I will harden Pharaoh's heart that he shall follow after them and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh and upon all his host that the Egyptians may know that I am Jehovah.

And they did so. Now let's all get this deep into our hearts as well shall we beloved that God is determined to be honoured with all his enemies. He's going to be honoured in the end whether it be Satan or anybody else who sets themselves up constitutionally to move against God against His will and against His people.

God is going to be honoured upon them. And this is the final phase of God's dealings with Pharaoh. As we read through this twelfth chapter and we're going to see its truth and I am reminded I have been all day and I believe I preached upon this about two clips ago so if any of you were there I won't apologize to you I will say that if I'm preaching over the same ground my good friend who's now in bed tells me I always preach it differently whenever I do it so that's that.

So I hope you won't be too bored you notice he stayed in bed and you must remember this it's about God dealing with Pharaoh on the terms that he explained in the beginning he sent Moses to Pharaoh and he said Pharaoh Israel is my firstborn let my firstborn go if you don't I'll slay your firstborn Pharaoh understood plainly what it was all about right from the beginning the trouble with Pharaoh is that like so many people many of them who call themselves Christians didn't know the day of his visitation.

What a terrible tragedy it was so that when God visits you remember that you must come right up and answer God. We sang I'll say yes Lord. I'll say yes Lord. What to if you'd have been in in Egypt in those days I wonder if you would have said yes yes yes.

For as I pointed out last night every plague except this last one was a plague that God visited in blanket wise upon Egypt. It didn't happen in Goshen the land where the Israelites were. They didn't have the frogs.

They didn't have the blood. They didn't have the locusts the scarabs or flies or whatever it were they didn't have these things. But when it comes to the Passover God never gave them blanket exemption the Israelites.

It was a very individual thing. And unless every Israelite had conformed to what God said also in their houses there would have been the death of the first born. Now when you come to this tremendous thing remember this in verse 30 of chapter 12 where we're told that Pharaoh rose up in the night he and all his servants and all the Egyptians.

And there was a great cry in Egypt it says there was not a house where there was not one dead. Now do not think that meant that every house only had one dead. For instance if there was in a house an old grey headed grey bearded man and he had been his parents first born he would have died but he might have been the grandfather in the family which would have meant that his first born would have died too.

And the son's first born they could have had three dead. In a home it says this there wasn't one home but there was one dead. Now keep that. This is absolutely devastating. I hope you let it grip your soul so that you understand what it is when God really moves now he only moved like this because of their grim refusal to do what God said.

Now let no one be afraid on this issue. But nevertheless we must face the thing very very clearly now then this great Passover of which we are going to read may I say I hope that every one of us knows at least something of the story.

One Lamb for Each Household

It is the wonderful time when A. Moses identified himself if I may put it this way perhaps that's too strong a word associated himself with the Lamb and redemption. For he went into the Israelites or gathered them together or however he got the information over to them.

I do not know. And he told them these words in these opening verses. When God said in verse 2 this month shall be unto you the beginning of months it shall be the first month of the year. To you he spoke.

And these are the things he said at God's command speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel saying in the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb according to the house of their fathers a lamb for an house.

And if the household be too little for the lamb let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls. Every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb your lamb.

It's good isn't it. In verse 3 you see it is a lamb. In verse 4 you see it is the lamb. And in verse 5 it is your lamb shall be without blemish a male of the first year. Ye shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats.

And you shall keep it up until the 14th day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lamb. So that's not what it says. Is it. It says kill it. And so our attention is being drawn to one lamb.

Because every household had to have one lamb. There must have been many lambs. But God is drawing our attention to one lamb. For that household it was one lamb. Now when God is speaking here he's drawing our attention to his household.

And for his household he supplied one lamb and only one lamb. And that's why it doesn't read kill their lambs. All the lambs were to be regarded as one. Listen. They were all to be chosen on one day of the month.

Verse 3. They were all to be slain on another one day of the month. They all had to be slain at one time. All the lambs had to be treated the same. We shall have directions about it in a moment. And they were regarded as one people doing one thing all at the same time.

Now that's a tremendous thing. Now when this happened was a wonderful occasion. The fourth the tenth day on which God told them to take the lamb must have been the day of the great plague of locusts. Do you know locusts?

The locusts came in like a cloud. I'll show you how I work that out in a moment the locusts came in like a cloud. And you remember last evening we were thinking this together. They absolutely finished off everything.

There was no hope for Egypt. After they had come. They cleared everything. They never left anything green growing. Nothing was a tremendous thing. And that was the day that was the tenth day on which God told them to take the lamb.

For after that there were three days of darkness. You will remember. And then on the next day the lamb was slain. The lambs were slain on the fourteenth day. What a tremendous and glorious truth it is for us to see.

The Egyptians may I say were in total darkness. The Israelites were in absolute blazing light. This was the great marvel of it that God put a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians as in all the other previous plagues.

And so it was that on the next day as the sun went down the lambs were slain. The blood was caught in the bowls and the blood was sprinkled on the side posts and on the lintels by the responsible people.

The lambs were roasted. Let's have a look at what it says. Shall we. Verse eight. They shall eat the flesh in that night roast with fire and unleavened bread. And with bitter herbs. Shall they eat it.

The Passover and the Royal Priesthood

Now this as we know was a feast of the Lord. They ate the lamb. The lamb was not burned on any altar. Neither was it handled by priests. There were no Levitical priests. Then. Aaron had not yet been elected.

The law had not been given directions for the tabernacle had not been shown and declared unto Moses. In other words it was the great thing that Peter says. Let's have a look and see what Peter does say shall we in his first letter and the first chapter where he tells I'm sorry.

The second chapter where he says in verse nine you and remember he's talking to newborn babes in verse two. One Peter two verse two. Verse nine talking to newborn babes. You are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood and holy nation and a peculiar people that you should show forth the virtues or praises things that should be praised virtues of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Now that's what happened. That was the chosen generation that God redeemed way back in Israel. They were the royal priesthood. Every man was his own priest. Every man slew his lamb. That was a tremendous thing.

Every man handled the blood this great blood of sprinkling. You will know that Peter talks about that in the first chapter. Chapter one verse two that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the father through sanctification of the spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

This is exactly what he is talking about. The father had chosen them. They were going to be the great nation. They were going to be called out of the darkness of Egypt into God's marvelous light. They were called to show forth his virtues and his praises.

You get that in chapter fifteen you remember that we read it on Sunday morning when they all got out and Moses sang his marvelous song and Miriam and the ladies followed afterwards. Well there you have it.

You see these great writers of the new testament were absolutely saturated in the knowledge of the old and they could apply its truth for what God did through Jesus Christ. He set out in pattern and type in the children of Israel especially through their great men as we are seeing tonight in Moses.

Now if I am going too fast or too hard for you to take it in shout out and we'll stop here then is the great and glorious truth that I have come to love. Now let everybody too get hold of this truth or let it grip your heart.

Redemption Is Rooted in God's Love

Especially if you're a person that has some difficulties on all kinds of levels. Perhaps I don't know. Remember this that in this chapter God is not dealing with sin. The sin he's dealing with is the sin of the devil.

He's not dealing with sin in his people. Let everybody get this deep be into their heart that he was dealing in this chapter with redemption. It was his great love for Israel that made him come to them and just redeemed them utterly.

There was no talk about confessing sin. There was no talk about anything like this. He was going to deal with that later. The whole glorious truth is this. God wants us to get it into our hearts. He says this Israel is my firstborn.

They're mine and I'm going to have them. And that's it. And the lamb was slain and the blood was shed so that God could have his people spirit soul and body. Or as we say lock stock and barrel. This was God's great intention.

Mmm. That's wonderful. Know this. If the devil's been getting at you if things have all been going wrong know this. The foundation of all salvation is this fact that God loves us completely and is determined to have us.

Let you let's get that right into our hearts. Let our hearts rest there. You see as we saw in Peter that we're called unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood. It's to be obedience in relationship to the sacrifice of Calvary.

It's to be obedience in relationship to the truth that God shed the blood of his son to have us amen so that he can say you're mine you're mine now. That's what he wants. He wants you to know that you are his now.

That is the desire of true love. He's not making big demands on you and not at the moment he brought in all his system. Later he educated them at Sinai into what he wanted. But here he's just saying look I'm going to get you first.

I'm coming in and I'm going to get you and I'm going to teach you about it all afterwards. That's glorious isn't it. Because so many people are trying to get their heads in first get their head full of teaching.

And they know all this and all that and all the other. And all they succeed in doing is getting themselves into a terrible mess and a maze in their mind. That's just like a wilderness barrenness and everything.

Why. Listen let the story come into your heart again. See this in verse 3. They're told that on this tenth day of the month they're to take every man a lamb according to father's house. Did you see that.

I slightly changed the wording. But that's what it is. It's the lamb for father's house. Amen. It's something between the father and the lamb. Or the father and the son as we understand it. And that lamb of course God's house and God's lamb it's all a tremendous large thing.

You know that God called Israel his house. The children of Israel were the house of Israel. They were God's house glory where God lived. That's what he's really talking about now. For his own house God has provided the lamb.

What a tremendous thing it is. They were to keep it up for four days. Well you will know that from the day of the Lord's anointing in Jordan until he went to the cross was almost four days. Or if you like it three and a half years a year for a day.

You know that's the bible system. If you are students especially of prophecy the day year truth. And so you have this reference to our blessed Lord Jesus Christ that he was slain in the fourth day or the fourth year of his glorious ministry among men now isn't that sweet.

You see it's all written down here. If these people had only read and understood their bibles properly it would be so tremendous. It was on this issue that the Lord Jesus said to a man he said art thou the teacher of Israel.

And you don't know these things Nicodemus. He should have known because all that Jesus was talking about was this Passover when he dealt with Nicodemus on the truth of new birth. That's what he was dealing with.

You should have known this. It's written into your scriptures. I think you know that the Lord's going to hold us all responsible too for what's written into our scriptures that is more particularly the New Testament.

I think he is. Don't you. Especially if we profess to be teachers or preachers we are to know and glory be to God. We can. Let's go on. In sixth verse we were told that the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel was to kill it in the evening.

You see it's between the two evenings. If you have a good bible it will give you that in the margin in that the Hebrew or the day out there used to start in the evening. The evening and the morning were the first day.

You remember in Genesis God started always in the evening. In other words it for us. If we'd have been Jews it would now be Thursday and not Wednesday. Our Thursday would have started at our sundown when the sun dipped down somewhere about half past five.

I guess over there behind Blackwood it gets round a bit further as the sun goes at least from as the days get longer at least from our point of view. But that's when Thursday would have started. If we'd have been Israelites you always got to bear this out.

When you're calculating the three days that Jesus lay in the tomb. What a tremendous thing it is. Because we're going to see I hope before we're through tonight. Perhaps. That's why I'm travelling a bit faster tonight that when they came up through the Red Sea it was on what we call Easter Sunday the three days.

You can get that by calculating the truth from Numbers 33. Write that down. We're not. We may not have time to look at it. But it will explain it all there. Moses carefully put it all down. I don't think he had any writing paper.

He certainly didn't have biros. But he got it down. Alright this is a wonderful truth. Now don't spend the rest of the evening gazing in there in case I give you some questions. And then you won't have heard a little bit what I've been saying.

You've got the chapter that's sufficient for you. Numbers chapter 33. We may have time to go there. But alright. And they shall take of the blood verse 7 chapter 12. And strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it.

And they shall eat the flesh in that night roast with fire and unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. They shall eat it eat not of it raw nor sodden at all with water but roast with fire his head with his excuse me with his legs and with the pertinence thereof.

And you shall let nothing of it remain until the morning. And that which remaineth of it until the morning you shall burn with fire. Thus shall ye eat it with your loins girded your shoes on your feet your staff in your hand.

And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt both man and beast.

And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are. And when I see the blood I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt.

And this day shall be unto you for a memorial. And you shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generation. You shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever. Now I want you to see that the Lord gave the blood of the Lamb to Israel for a token.

It shall be a token. A token from me to you says God. Don't worship the blood. Don't drink the blood. Don't waste the blood. Put it on the lintels on the side posts and on the lintels. I'm giving it to you for a token.

You put it on your houses for a token. It's a token to you that I will have mercy upon you and pass over you if and only if that you haven't come out through that blood sprinkled doorway into the world.

You're to stop in there shut away from the world so completely out of the world. And you're to stay in there. And the token of the blood from you to me. I'm giving it to you for a token. You use it for a token of your faithfulness that you are promising me that you are inside there with your loins girt your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand.

You're ready to go. You're aching to go. You're going to get out. You're waiting for the moment to go. You've got to the pitch. You've got to the place where you it's got to be. And the token that you are in there eating the lamb that's it.

If you don't eat the lamb the blood is not available for you. The blood was only available for the people that wanted the lamb and were going to eat the lamb with the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs.

Feeding on Christ, the Bread of Life

The roast lamb which speaks of the lamb's exposure to fire. Bitter herbs which speaks of the bitterness of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The unleavened bread which speaks of his sinlessness. I am the bread of life Moses gave you not that bread from heaven says Jesus.

Moses gave them unleavened bread. We know he gave it at the command of God. My father gives you the true bread from heaven he says except you eat my flesh. You see he's never away. He never is away from the truth that has been put into the old testament scriptures.

You must eat your flesh my flesh. You must drink my blood. Or else you have no life in you. Now this was what the blood was all about. This is what the Passover was all about. It was the Passover lamb.

And nobody has been Passover by God. That is their sins entirely forgiven unless they are eating the Passover lamb. That was the thing that God was saying. Are you inside eating my lamb. You remember the lamb was only taken and only to be taken.

As you look in verse 4 according to the number of the souls every man according to his eating not his feeling not his believing but according to his eating. That's right. What a tremendous thing. If you don't want to eat the lamb.

If you don't want Jesus inside you if you don't want to feed on Jesus you can't be redeemed. That's what we're being told. Redemption is not merely to save us from hell. It's not merely to save us from death.

Redemption is to bring us into fellowship with God feeding on the lamb. That's what it's all about. And unless you've seen this you'll never get right. I've said it isn't about believing more and more in these days.

I am coming to the point where I'm telling people to stop believing. You say well I've never heard that in all my life. Aren't preachers supposed to tell people to believe. No they're not. You see this is the real trouble.

What we're told what you're to be told is that you are to receive. People are struggling to believe. They're struggling to believe about this. Believe this believe something else. And I say to people when I come off this line you're out on a limb.

You've been chasing this one long enough trying to believe this way. You've been believing for years now. Stop it. It isn't a matter of you trying to believe. That's where the devil gets people. They can't.

Things go on in their minds. Contradictions flash up and the devil says this is a merry game. This one got them all going on. They're trying to believe this. They're trying to believe that. They're trying to believe the other.

Listen. All you've got to do is to believe that Jesus is the son of God and eat him. That's it. You've got to receive him. Simple. It's as simple as that. Stop trying to believe for this and believe for the other and believe for something else.

The devil's nearly driven you crazy on trying to believe. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Hope I can get this right deep into your hearts tonight. Course you can't get there. If you're a blaspheming atheist we know that there's got to be a conversion from that.

But when it comes to the point of wanting to be what God wants you to be. Stop trying to believe and start receiving. Start receiving. If you don't know how to do that come and see me afterwards. Alright.

The devil knows you know how to receive but he's blinded you to it. You see. But he knows. You can't believe. You've been brought up struggling with beliefs about this that and the other all the lies and one thing and the other says go on keep on believing.

And somebody else says come try and believe this. And trying to believe that and trying to believe the other. Listen. Receive. Enter in and come to rest and let your poor old mind stop all the nonsense.

Amen. I've often preached to you or if not to you to people that hell is going to be full of believers. There won't be one unbeliever in hell. You know that. Don't you. Even the devil for whom hell was prepared as a believer you do understand that he believes.

So will everybody else. They won't be able to avoid believing when they see the lord and have to drop down at his feet and acknowledge he's the lord. How can they help them. Anything. But believing then won't save them from hell.

Hell's going to be full up with believers. It's the receivers that God's after. Now once you get this into your mind you'll stop giving the devil chance to keep condemning you. You see. In other words it's whether you've really got an appetite for him.

It's really if you've got an appetite and you haven't had any food for about a week you make a beeline for every bit of food you can see now don't you. That is of course unless you're on a long fast pointedly.

But here is a tremendous thing isn't it. I think God's very sensible. Well he made us and so he knows. And his appeal in the gospel is to that. What's you going to eat. Man, woman, what are you going to eat here.

I've got some lamb for you. Do you want him. That's what it's all about. He was exposed to the fire of God's wrath and judgements for you. He took the bitterness of death and sin for you. He is the unleavened bread, the gift of God from heaven, now just eat him eat him.

Go on, go for him hallelujah. Embrace him. Love him in Lord I, glory. If you don't know how to do it, I don't know how you don't know how to do it but if you don't you come and see me afterwards, what a glorious truth this is beloved, that God is dealing with, if you stop worrying about the state of your mind and got down to the business of your basic primitive appetites you get somewhere now this is what God is talking about.

Hallelujah alright the blood is the token the blood is the token. And then well well I suppose we could we could really go on but perhaps we ought to just a little more here in this same chapter or at this point you remember in verse 14 that God said this was to be for a memorial and that they were to keep this as a feast unto the Lord.

I like this idea of feasting unto the Lord, don't you? Instead of complaining to him or all this business, I like this business of feasting unto the Lord. God wants you to have a real good feast on Jesus Christ, he'll love that you can do it unto him.

You haven't got to be thinking about anything you can really according to you just keep on eating and do that unto the Lord, you say really? Yes wonderful this is real. This is the way you get fat. Well, you know what I mean this is the way you get muscle on you, this is the way you grow, this is what God wants.

You don't think he's stupid, do you? Perhaps it's you that's stupid, so simple so basic, it's all slanted to our basic appetites all or a lot of it what we primitively are not what we are by education even biblical education it's a marvellous truth.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread and a Pilgrim Life

And then he says this it's got to be done forever, in verse 14 and he says seven days you'll eat unleavened bread even the first day you shall put away leaven out of your houses, for whosoever eateth leaven you've got leavened bread, but I think you'll find especially if you're using a new bread, it's just leaven.