Passover Types and Shadows

All right, while we're waiting for that to restart, let's go ahead and pray. Lord Jesus, again, we thank you for the gift of your

Son. We thank you for the gift of salvation and redemption. And we pray, Lord, as we open up the book of Exodus and begin to study the last plague, we pray that you would open our eyes to see how it connects to you and your sacrifice for our sins, as well as even the

Lord's Supper. We ask all this in the name of Jesus. Amen. All right, while we're waiting for that to get started, today we're going to be looking at the final plague.

The tenth and final plague is, let's just say, packed rich with biblical typology that points us directly to Jesus.

And let's see here. There we go. Positive things are happening over on the technology front.

Let's see if we can do this. If I use the laser beams for my eyeballs, I'm trying to think that that'll fix the problem.

My wife uses those all the time. All right, so our last plague is the death of the firstborn.

This is a plague that is a clear demonstration of both God's wrath and his mercy.

And this is one of those things that demonstrates to us the seriousness of our sin, the fact that God is both loving and just plays into this.

And so we're going to see God's judgment against those who persist in sin and unbelief and refuse to believe the word of the

Lord. They're going to be playing the part of the Egyptians and the Israelites. They are going to be saved.

But this is an important thing to keep in mind as we look at this text. And that is that although the

Lord is going to specifically make a distinction between Israel and Egypt, that distinction is made not by virtue of who they are, but by virtue of who has a substitute.

The best way to put it in this plague, there's going to be death everywhere.

There's death in Goshen. There's death in Egypt. But the nature of the death is going to determine whether you are judged or saved.

And so God is providing a substitute death for the Israelites. It's important for us to keep that in mind because all of this points to Jesus.

We'll look at the clear biblical passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that lays this out for us.

It's actually in the context, believe it or not, of sexual immorality, which I think is fascinating. And we will look then at the implications regarding the

Passover lamb as it relates to the Lord's Supper. And yes, there are implications. And there's even a baptismal typology in there as well.

It takes a little bit of study to dig it out, and we'll see if we can pull it out today. Here's what it says,

Exodus 11, 1. The Lord said to Moses, yet one plague more

I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here.

When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold and jewelry.

And Yahweh gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of his people.

A little bit of an aside here. Within charismatic circles, there is a doctrine that floats around and makes the rounds periodically.

And the doctrine goes something like this. I have heard a word from the Lord that the great transfer of wealth from the pagans to the believers is just about to take place.

And they will invoke this passage. The great transfer of wealth. Apparently, they think that this has some future fulfillment where pagans are apparently going to come knock on our doors and give us their bank accounts, which is nonsense.

Yeah, I know. Wow. I want to go to that church. You know, I hear about how the pagans are going to give me another 401k.

Yeah, no, that's not what this is about. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because we must continue to make a distinction between what are descriptive texts as opposed to prescriptive text.

A descriptive text is like this, a historical narrative. It tells us what happened. A prescriptive text tells us what we're to believe or what we're to do.

And there is no prescription here that says for you Christians in the 21st century, expect the pagans to show up and give you all their gold.

Well, if you were there, how old are you? I didn't know you were that old.

See, if you were there at the time and you were an Israelite living in Goshen, well, yeah, this happened in your history.

But this is not some promise that pagans are going to show up at your door giving you things. So if you ever hear a radio or television preacher talk about the great transfer of wealth from the wicked to the righteous, you know that you're listening to somebody who's teaching a false doctrine.

They're twisting God's word. We continue with verse 4. So Moses said, thus says Yahweh, about midnight

I will go out into the midst of Egypt and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor ever will be again.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, neither man nor beast that you may know that Yahweh makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

And all those, all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying, get out you and all the people who follow you.

And after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Then the

Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh and the Lord hardened

Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

Chapter 12. Let me get there real quick. Exodus 12. There. The Lord Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all of the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household.

And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

So now you see that God is basically setting up a substitute. There's going to be a lamb. The lamb is going to die rather than the firstborn and the lamb's blood is going to be used.

And you're going to notice that the lamb is going to be, well, sufficient for an entire household.

This would include infants. This would include the aged, the infirmed, those who suffer, you know, you can say a disability of the mind or even of the physical ailment.

Was this the 10th of January? No, actually Abib is going to be in the spring. So this is actually coming up to Jesus' crucifixion.

Jesus is crucified on the Passover. The Hebrew calendar is different than the

Julian calendar that we follow. So the Hebrews, they follow a lunar calendar and so this says that the first month of their year begins with this month.

And in that beginning of the year, then the feast of the Passover is to be recognized. And so this is going to fall in the spring.

It moves around though because the Hebrew calendar is based on a lunar cycle. The days move, you know, they're not fixed like the

Julian calendar. Yes, you're asking the right question.

What's the significance of unleavened bread? We're going to get to that in a minute. So hold the thought and I'm going to show you from 1

Corinthians 5 how we're to understand the unleavened bread. It's all typologically pointing to something.

So the note here is that this lamb is sufficient as a sacrifice to save an entire household.

Nobody is singled out and said, nope, this doesn't apply to you. We need to keep that in mind.

So, and if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish. A male, a year old.

A year old lamb is large, almost adolescent is the right way to put it.

A male, a year old, you may take it from the sheep or the goats and you shall keep it until the 14th day of this month when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

A little bit of a note here. Jesus dies at twilight on the Passover. What's happening while Jesus is dying, literally dying, with the people of Israel?

What are they doing? Killing their sheep. Fascinating.

You think that's an accident? It's on purpose. Now let me do a little cross -reference work here so we can kind of see how the typology works.

We're in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 1 Corinthians 5, and we're going to note that this is spoken in the context of the

Apostle Paul correcting the Corinthian church for not disciplining sexual immorality in their midst.

Here's what it says. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you of a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans.

For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn?

Let him who has done this be removed from among you. So yeah, you think that your church might have problems, right?

You know, we haven't had this one here yet, at least that I know of. So he then goes on.

For though absent in the body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of the

Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. Now this tells you what excommunication is really for.

If there's somebody who remains impenitent within the congregation, and rather than repent and be forgiven and bear fruit in keeping with repentance, they persist in sin when confronted, they risk being put out of the congregation.

And the purpose of that is so that their soul may be saved. Basically hand them over to the devil in order to teach them to not do these things.

The ultimate goal of church discipline is the sinner's restoration and salvation, not that they just, okay, well we can wash our hands of that person, they're gone.

That's not what that's about. And so this passage makes that clear. Now this is our context then, as we continue in verse six.

Paul says, your boasting is not good. They were actually boasting about the fact that this fellow had his father's wife.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? And so now we see leaven coming into play, and Paul is going to make this clear that this has everything to do with the

Passover. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? So cleanse out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. So 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.

So now you start to see what's going on here. So with the Passover, this is the feast of unleavened bread.

Get rid of all of the yeast. Yeast then is in typology symbolically pointing to sin.

Unleavened bread is sinless bread. Hmm, I wonder who that would be.

Notice I said who, not what. Sinless bread. Hmm, but I am,

Jesus says, I am the bread from heaven. He's unleavened bread. You see how this is starting to work out here?

Okay, so you get rid of the sin. You get rid of that's what that is pointing to. And then the explicit statement,

Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

The Passover lamb in the Passover points directly to Jesus.

It's a one -to -one typology, and it fits perfectly. Christ, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

The male sacrifice without blemish. You see how this all works?

So this helps us understand the typology going on then in the Passover.

So if a household is too small for a lamb, you share. Get rid of the, your lamb shall be without blemish.

A male, a year old, 14th day of the month congregation shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood of the lamb, put it on the two doorposts in the lintel of the houses in which they eat.

Let me show you what this looks like. So this is our Egyptian doorway here, and the two doorposts are on the side, the lintels on the top.

So the blood goes on the two sides. Here's our blood, and some on the top of the lintel.

Oops, it's starting to look a lot like a cross. And if you think about it,

I mean, the blood that's on the top, blood has a tendency to let gravity do what it does, starts to run down.

If it's running down, then visually you're already beginning to see a blood cross.

That is not an accident. That is exactly by design.

So even where the blood goes, hints at, connect the dots, this is pointing to Christ's cross.

Christ, our Passover lamb, has been flamed. So put it on the two doorposts, the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs. They shall eat of it.

A little bit of a note here. What are you supposed to do with your Passover lamb? Eat it.

Eat it. This has implications then regarding the Lord's Supper. Take, eat.

This is my body. Take, drink. This is the blood of the new covenant shed for you.

So we too also consume our Passover lamb in the Lord's Supper.

All of these things mesh together and gives us a fuller picture of what's going on in the

Lord's Supper and what Christ has done for us. And in a very real way, you can now start to see how this all works.

Israel is in slavery in Egypt under a false god king and false deities.

And that false god will not let them go. They cannot free themselves. So God steps in and through mighty acts of judgment, culminating in the death of the

Passover lamb, they are set free from the dominion of darkness. And right after that, they're marched out to the

Red Sea and baptized. Does this sound familiar?

You see, this is our story because we have been grafted into Israel. What was type and shadow in the

Old Testament is fulfilled and the reality is in Christ. And when you take the Old Testament and the

New Testament and read them together, you can see how they work together. A lot of Christians don't pay attention to the front end of the book.

They don't know what to do with it because they keep reading themselves into it. This isn't about you.

It's about what Christ is doing for you. And when you can see how this relates to him, now you can see how the whole thing works together from cover to cover.

So don't eat any of your Passover lamb raw. You're not allowed to have lamb sushi.

Don't boil it in water, but it needs to be roasted, its head and its legs and its inner parts.

And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until morning you shall burn.

In this manner you shall eat it with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and I will strike all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

And we've noted as we worked through the list of the nine plagues previous, all of the gods of Egypt who were tasked with the job of protecting the

Egyptians, they all failed miserably to protect the Egyptians against the one true God, Yahweh.

And so we can see here from this passage that all along God really has been executing judgments against the false gods, the idols of Egypt.

He says, I am Yahweh. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when

I see the blood I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when

I strike the land of Egypt. Now it behooves us to remember here what is taught in scripture regarding the

Lord's Supper specifically, but then how this relates to how covenants work.

And you're going to notice here that the blood is a sign. It's a sign, and when

God sees it, he's going to pass over and not destroy them. Now, it's going to require us to do a little bit of work in Genesis.

If you flip back with me to Genesis chapter 9 real quick, verse 8.

For our context, the flood has already finished. Noah and his family are out of the ark.

God said to Noah and his sons with him, behold, I established my covenant with you and your offspring after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, every beast of the earth that is with you, as many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.

This is a cutting of a covenant. Covenant is like a contract, and God is the one making the promises.

He's making the promises to all of mankind and to all of the animals. And in these days, a covenant has promises.

It has a sign, and the sign of the covenant causes one to remember the promises.

So here's, he says, verse 11. I established my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood.

Never again shall there be a flood to destroy all the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.

I have set my bow in the cloud. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all the earth.

When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

So you'll notice the way the covenant works. Promises, sign.

The sign recalls the promises. When the sign is seen, who's doing the remembering?

God is. That's the important part. Uh, the rainbow?

No, it's not a pride. Yeah, well, you're, you need to knock that off.

They clearly, they've hijacked it. So coming back. So coming back to Exodus 12, these, we were finishing with the words regarding the fact that they were going to see the blood and let me get there.

The blood shall be a sign for you. God says in verse 13, on the houses where you are, when

I see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you.

When I strike the land of Egypt, you notice there's a promise. There's a sign and God is remembering something.

This is covenantal talk. So God is coming through Egypt. He's going to visit every block.

Every neighborhood gets a visit from God. And as God is passing through, he looks at the door and if there's blood on the door, he moves on.

He passes over that house, goes to the next house, looks at the door. If there's no blood, he says, calls to the destroyer.

I wish I could do that whistle thing where, you know, I can't do that. Anyway, whistles for the destroyer, sends the destroyer in.

Firstborns in the house die. You see it? So he sees the blood and he says, the blood is a sign for you.

And when I see it, I'm going to do these things. Similar thing then comes into play in the

Lord's Supper. First Corinthians 11, starting at verse 17. Boy, these four

Corinthians, man, they had some serious challenges in their church. Let me tell you about their communion service.

Their communion service was a little bit screwed up. Not sure what liturgy they were following, but the poor, those who did not have good financial means in the

Corinthian congregation, were actually being barred from having the Lord's Supper. And those people who were having it, to help ensure that the poor wouldn't get any, would eat what was left of the bread and have enough wine for themselves that there were people actually getting drunk on the communion wine.

Okay, now that sounds like a really screwed up communion service to me. But let's take a look at what

Paul says to this. In the following instructions, I do not commend you because when you come together, it's not for the better, it's for the worse.

From the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among you. I believe it in part for there must be factions among you, in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

And when you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat for in eating, one goes ahead with his own meal.

One goes hungry and another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?

Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall

I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

Just a little bit of a side note, it's a little tough to get drunk on grape juice, just saying. So here we've got a problem.

They're abusing the Lord's Supper. They're abusing other people in the process of the

Lord's Supper and Paul is having none of it. And so Paul is going to correct them. We're going to fix this little problem.

And so Paul goes back to kind of the Vince Lombardi approach. The Vince Lombardi approach is, well,

Vince Lombardi would have held a football and said, gentlemen, this is a football. We're going to go back to basics. So he whips out his catechism, if you would, and goes back to the basics regarding the

Lord's Supper. Here's what he says, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered from you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

Some texts actually say broken for you to this in remembrance of me in remembrance.

What does that mean? Yeah, this is covenantal talk.

And the next part we'll point that out. This is covenantal talk in remembrance is covenantal talks.

It's not us going and thinking really hard. Oh, Jesus, that had to hurt. That's not really the point.

We're remembering the promises of the covenant, but more importantly, God is. So this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me in the same while. So he took the cup after saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So here we've got a covenant again. This is new covenant established on the night that Jesus is betrayed on the eve of the

Passover. Jesus is celebrating the Passover that night, but it's still the eve of the Passover on the eve of the

Passover. Christ fulfills all the promises, the type and shadow gives way to the reality.

He establishes the new covenant and he holds up a wine glass filled with wine and says, this is the cup of the new

Testament in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me. Who's doing the remembering?

God is. And what's in the cup? The blood of Christ.

So the blood is a sign to you. And when God sees the blood, what does he do?

He passes over. So think of it this way. Your mouth is the doorway to your body.

And so every single time we have the Lord's Supper, the blood of Christ is on our lips and on our tongue.

And God remembers his promises and he sees the blood of his son and he passes over and he forgives and he saves you.

The Lord's Supper is an amazingly beautiful, comforting gospel thing.

Can't get enough of it. Give me that blood to put on the door of my body so that Christ will pass over and forgive and save me.

And this is why you hear broken shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.

This is covenantal stuff here. These are the signs of the covenant for us to see and for God to see and to remember that you are in him.

You are forgiven. You are bled for you are died for Christ. Your Passover lamb has been slain.

Good stuff. Okay. The covering of your head has to do with a sign of marriage.

All right. It's a cultural thing. Back in the day, they didn't have these. They had head coverings.

A married woman would wear a head covering and an unmarried woman didn't wear a head covering.

And so the idea here is, if you look in the passage that's talking about the head coverings, is that the women are to put on their head coverings as a sign that they're married, specifically for the sake of the angels in the church and the angels of the pastors.

So basically it's saying, listen, I'm a married woman. I'm covering up as a sign of my husband's authority over me.

And only the unmarried women wouldn't wear those. So that was a cultural thing. Today we wear these.

That's really what that's about. Yeah, that's one of the texts you have to actually look at what's going on culturally and what's the principle in play.

And then do we have a parallel in our culture today? That's one of those texts where you sit there and go, okay, this has to do with a sign that a woman's actually a married woman as opposed to a non -married woman.

That's really the idea. Let's come back to our text in Exodus then. Verse 13, the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will befall you to destroy you when

I strike the land of Egypt. And to all of this, we say, amen.

And now we see how this kind of rolls into the new covenant and how this is all working together. This day shall be for you a memorial day.

You shall keep it as a feast to Yahweh throughout all of your generations as a statute forever.

You shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. Mark, you have, I think we got the answer to your question on that.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven out of your houses. That's get rid of all of your sin.

For if anyone eats what is leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

On the first day, you shall hold a holy assembly. And on the seventh day, a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days, but what everyone needs to eat and alone, that alone may be prepared for you.

They're basically saying on Christmas day, don't go to work, just make the turkey. That's what it's saying here. Cultural context translation, right?

And so you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. For on this very day, I brought your host out of the land of Egypt.

Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever. In the first month from the 14th day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening.

For seven days, no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land.

You shall eat nothing leavened in all of your dwelling places so that you shall, in places you shall eat unleavened bread.

And so you'll notice here that the unleavened bread typologically points to sinless bread, you know, that's the, it's getting rid of sin.

In a similar way, when we get into the part of the Mosaic covenant, where there's the distinction made between clean and unclean foods, it's kind of a similar theme.

And now that Christ has come, we can have bacon. So, amen. Verse 21,

Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, go select your lambs for yourselves according to your clans.

Kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop. Now, this is where, if you start to do the study in scripture on hyssop, you can begin to see that in some way, this is hinting at baptism.

I'll explain it in a minute, but watch what it says. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, touch the lintel and the two door posts with the blood that is in the basin.

None of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning for the

Lord will pass through and strike the Egyptians. When he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two door posts, the

Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your house to strike you.

You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the

Lord will give you as he promised, you shall keep this service.

Now, I'm going to make a note here. I want to come back and I want to grab this word, hyssop. Let's see if I can do a quick study on it.

Doesn't appear very often. Yep, here's our hyssop text.

So, we've only got 12 instances where hyssop shows up in scripture. And you'll notice in this context, the hyssop is dipped into the blood and the hyssop is used to mark the doorposts.

In Leviticus 14, there is literally a procedure given for the cleansing of a leper.

And there's even a washing that is involved and hyssop comes into play. I won't read it all out.

I've actually recently preached on this in a sermon. But hyssop plays a vital role in the of this washing water for those who have been cleansed from leprosy.

Fascinating how that comes in. And so, it's mentioned a few times in Leviticus 14 in relation to that.

It's again mentioned in Numbers 19, but I'm going to pay attention to the last few instances.

It makes its last appearance in the Old Testament in Psalm 51, verse 7.

Yeah, it sounds like baptism.

And not only that, not only does it sound like baptism, but because the hyssop is the thing being used and its real first referent is in relation to the blood of the

Passover, there seems to be a connection when you typologically point the dots together. Does that make sense?

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Hmm. What's on that hyssop that's going to clean me?

Blood. Right. Okay. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. And when

Jesus is being crucified in the Gospel of John, John records for us a jar full of sour wine stood there.

So, they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.

He's sitting there going, wait, you see it? It's kind of like all works together.

And then the last part, let me give a little bit more fuller context, is in Hebrews chapter 9, where it says, therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

So, the idea here is that sometimes you kind of have to pay attention to little elements within the typology and then see how they come into play.

So, the hyssop is used, put it in the blood, sprinkle the doors with it. The hyssop shows up again in Psalm 51, wash me with hyssop and I will be whiter than snow.

And then we see in Hebrews, the recollection of the hyssop is used with the sprinkling and the cleansing of people with the sacrifice.

And even Jesus, when he's hanging on the cross, has sour wine held up to him specifically using hyssop.

And you sit there and go, these little details can't possibly be a coincidence, because they're not.

Huh? A God -incidence. Right on. God -cidence?

It's not a coincidence, it's a God -cidence. That one would be.

Okay. So, the idea here is that probably the destroyer is going to be an angel who is the one who's tasked to be the one to actually do the executing.

So, we're most likely the destroyer is a particular angel that Christ has chosen for this task.

So, God doesn't kill them. No, it's not an evil thing. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Here's the fun part, is that we are not angels.

That is a species problem. And when we die, we do not become angels.

And the clearest text you can point people to would be like something like 1 Corinthians 15, talking about the resurrection, where it explains how when

Christ returns, we're all going to be raised from the grave. And we're going to be like Christ and his body.

So, in the intermediate state, we are like the angels. In this sense, we don't have bodies.

Okay. So, we'll be up in heaven singing, I ain't got no body. Sorry. Okay.

So, but that's an intermediate state for us. At the resurrection, we are resurrected and we have bodies that are just like Christ's.

And so, Christ is the God -man forever. And he sits on the throne of David forever. New heavens, new earth.

Angels are spirits. And so, we don't know how that exactly works and we know very little about it.

But there is no text that says we turn into spirits or we turn into angels. Nothing like that. So, when you see that, what is that?

That black and white Christmas program that everyone watches every year on television.

It's a wonderful life. When you hear a bell ring, an angel gets its wings.

You know, and you know, it's like, yeah, that's just really bad theology. Yeah.

It's a show. It's a show. Just don't go with the theology in it, you know.

So, yeah. So, the idea here is that no, we do not become angels.

Okay. Angel itself, the word means a messenger. And sometimes it's actually referring to a pastor.

So, like when Jesus appears to John in the book of Revelation and says to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, write.

That would be the pastor. When it's talking about a being that is an angelic being, which also appears in the book of Revelation, then those are the spirits, the seraphim and, you know, and things like that.

And so, that's a completely different group altogether. And the devil himself was part of that group.

And so, we are not transformed into a different species. And we are made a little lower than the angels in this lifetime.

And eventually at the resurrection, we're going to be on the same footing as them, equal before God, you know, in our creation as the angels.

We'll never be above them, and they'll no longer be above us. So, but that's in glory. You have asked the 24 million dollar question.

Okay. Um, this, oh man, a lot of ink has been spilled on this one. Nobody knows exactly how this works.

I don't know. Okay. Okay. So, here's how you have to start to think of that in these terms.

The universe has a beginning. Even the Big Bang Theory proves this. It has a beginning, which means it ultimately has to have an end.

So, when you think about the time -space continuum, where one thing happens after another, happens after another, happens after another.

That's how things work in time and space. This has a beginning. Eternity itself is not inside of time and space.

It's outside of it, which means eternity itself doesn't experience time like we do.

Okay. And if you're sitting there going, my head is blowing up. Mine too. I don't understand how it works. So, the angels are heavenly beings.

They're not part of time and space by their nature. They're created in eternity.

When? Well, when is a function of time and space. You see what

I'm saying? So, I don't know, you know, because now you're starting to mix metaphors.

Yeah. I'm sure that that's like on the top five questions when people get to heaven.

You know, it's like, hey, when were they? Yeah. Okay. So, the best I can do is that when they were created is a question that assumes they're made in time and space, but they're eternal beings.

So, that doesn't work. That's, you know, that's like saying, when was God created? He wasn't.

Okay. I'm not saying that they're eternal, but they were created in eternity, which I don't even know how it works.

I haven't experienced it. I have no way of comprehending it. I'm a man of the earth. Okay. I am looking forward to living in a new earth, world without end.

Good wine, good food, seeing the face of God. It's going to be fantastic.

Eternity is not our home. So, yeah. So, when were they created?

I don't know. We will say this, that the fall of Satan has to be sometime before the

Garden of Eden incident. You know, that's the best we can put it, but it doesn't say. We can't even put our finger on it.

Okay. Okay.

Now, we're going to note something here. As Lutherans, we are people of the book.

I'm going to begin to answer your question with a very important phrase that Lutheran theologians are supposed to follow.

Not everyone has, and this is where you get in trouble. The phrase is this, quod non est biblicum, non est theologicum.

That which is not in the Bible is not theology. So, here's the idea.

If I don't have a clear passage that says why God created them,

I have no idea, and speculating isn't going to help. It just is.

Okay. So, here's the idea. My wife from time to time expects me to read her mind. I am terrible at this, but I've learned to pick up on verbal cues.

There's certain words that mean I'm in trouble. One of them is the word fine. Okay, but here's the thing.

I can't read her mind. I am certainly not going to be able to read the mind of God, and so God has to reveal these things to me, and what he reveals,

I say, okay, I'm, that's what he said. What he doesn't reveal, that stays within his own mind and his own counsel, and it's not given for me to know.

So, as a pastor and a theologian, I am, my limits are as far as what scripture says, and I'm not aware of a biblical text that says why

God created the angels. I do know this, that currently the angels are ministering spirits, and they attend to our needs, and they protect us.

Scripture is very clear about this, and so God has chosen the agency, one of the agencies by which he meets our needs, is through these eternal spirits.

Now, I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's what they were made for. No, no, no, no, no, no, you're confusing yourself with God.

Yeah, there's a lot of things we will get to understand once the veil is lifted, and we can see

God face to face, and converse with him face to face, which we don't do right now, and I will say this, it's also clear that when we die, you can think of,

I think a good way to think of the angels, kind of a metaphor, would be they're kind of like God's navy, navy seals, and so as you're getting ready to die, and a regiment of God's navy seals, no joke, this is how scripture describes it, they will be there at your death and accompany you to Christ's presence.

Just give it time, we're all going to figure out what they look like. Yeah, right,

I have a general rule of thumb, and that is that anybody who says that I have a revelation from God, my first intuition is to say this person's got a problem.

Anybody claiming direct revelation from God, most likely, and I mean 99 .99999 % of the time when people are claiming to be hearing from God, they're not.

They're either hearing from their stomach, they're hearing, I say that just because, you know, their appetites seem to be involved, they're hearing from their stomach, they're either delusional, or they're hearing from the demonic, and here's the thing is scripture makes it clear that if somebody is claiming to have revelation from God, if these are really

God's, if it's a revelation from God, we are duty bound to believe and obey

God. Okay, that person has risen to the level of prophet, and notice the word that I used today, where Christ, I pointed out that all of the law and the prophets prophesied until John the

Baptist. This is done. So the end times are filled with, according to Jesus, false

Christs, false prophets. So if a prophet comes to us, you know, if I were to stand up on a

Sunday morning and say, you know what, I had this dream last night from God, and God told me these things. You need to quarantine me, and we're going to have to do some pretty, like,

IRS -level audits of my life and theology and stuff like that before we're going to say that's from God.

And all too often, Christians very foolishly, if somebody says

God told me, they say, wow, that's great, what did, it's like, yeah. Yeah, right, exactly, but it is.

That's it, it is. How do you make the distinction between the leading of the

Spirit and the prophet? Ah, well, here's the thing. A leading of the Spirit oftentimes, and this is, and here's what

I'll point this out. A leading of the Spirit is oftentimes the Holy Spirit inside of you, kicking you and saying, are you going to obey my written word or not?

Let me, let me explain. So there you are, you're in a situation, and you see a person over there, and you hear through their conversation that they are in dire financial need, and you're sitting there going,

I wonder if I should help that person. Well, what does the Word of God say? So now you have the

Holy Spirit inside of you going, hey, dummy, are you going to pay attention or not? If we've got to get to the prompting level, notice what he's prompting you on is what he's already revealed in his word.

Now, we say this, we also, I'll give you another example, and we'll end with this kind of concept for today.

In the Lutheran Church, we understand that it is God, the Holy Spirit, who calls men into the pastoral office.

Acts chapter 20 explicitly says this, and so here's how we kind of work this out.

There are a lot of guys who say, I think I might be being called to being a pastor, and some of them are, and some of them are not.

Now, when I first began to think, maybe I'm supposed to be a pastor, I went to my pastor, it was

Pastor Bill Swirla, and I told him, he said, just knock that off, just stop thinking about it, it'll go away.

Okay, so I knocked it off, but it didn't go away, and so I waited a few years and came back, and he says, no,

I really think I might, no, it's probably not the Holy Spirit. I mean, he's really did everything he could to, like, dissuade me from doing this.

Yeah, right, exactly, and so he was, and then he explained to me, like, all of the gory details of what it's really like to be a pastor, you know, thinking that'll cure it, right?

He loved his job, didn't he? Listen, if you haven't been in the office, there's no way to quite get it, okay.

I remember talking to him a few months ago, going, man, I remember what you told me. I wish I'd listened a little bit more.

It's a tough job, but anyway, so the idea is, I couldn't shake it, okay, and it's like, and not only that, it's like, things were going wrong in my life, where it's like, the only option is to go in this direction.

It's like, no, no, no, no, okay, so finally, I kind of gave up. It's like, all right, maybe

I am, and so here's the idea, that we call that the immediate call.

Somebody says, okay, I think the Holy Spirit's pushing me in this direction. All of this is scriptural, because God the

Holy Spirit calls men to the office, and the office has to be filled. There's a need, and God is the one, the

Holy Spirit, who gives teaching gifts and things like that, so you get a group of guys, who then go through the process of what scripture says, to be qualified to receive a call.

In order to receive a call, you have to study, show yourself approved, a workman who need not blush with embarrassment, who can rightly handle the word of truth.

This is going to require study, and presenting yourself for theological examination, and so they go through the process, they either go to seminary, or they study, they do some kind of a program, which then prepares them for the rigors of the office itself, and the easiest part of the job is the sermon.

It's the other stuff that's really hard, okay, so you have to be prepared for the whole gambit. Then the idea, then, is that once a person has done this, he has to present himself and be examined.

Do you really know your stuff? And in the AALC, we have a clergy commission, and it's basically, they give you a cigarette and a blindfold, and then they fire shots at you.

Some pretty tough questions, and the process is extremely intense to see if this person truly is qualified.

You're going to get theological questions, you're going to get hypothetical questions, you're going to get all kinds of questions like this, and if you can survive that, and the clergy commission says, yes, this man has studied, showed himself approved, and he is qualified to receive a call, then at that point, we wait, because the

Holy Spirit then works in a congregation. The congregation that has an opening, they get together, and they sit there and say, okay, well, here's our candidate, we've interviewed these guys, or this, whatever, and we think we want to extend a call to this person, and so we vote, and if the vote comes back, we're going to call that man, then we call that the immediate call.

The immediate call confirms that the man who believed he was being called into the office truly was.

So the two then meet, and we have something objective to work from. Does that make sense? And see, all of this we understand.

Scripture says the men are called into the office by the Holy Spirit. Straight up says that.

Okay, and the means that we've set up is like, just because somebody feels something doesn't mean that they're true, and there are a lot of men who wash out in seminary and other places thinking that they were being called into the office, when in fact they weren't.

Instead, the Holy Spirit worked through the process, which takes a long time, and I think it's good that it takes a long time, worked through the process to wash those out who were truly not being called.

Is it perfect? No, but it's worked for several thousand years.

Something very similar to this. Yeah. Now, okay, so here's the thing.

It's clear in Scripture, in 2 Timothy 3, that all Scripture is God -breathed.

It's profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, training in righteousness, so that the man, and you can say woman, of God is equipped for every good work.

The things that God is going to call you to do are true good works, and you should be able to find them in Scripture. God is not going to call you to sell all of your possessions and become a homeless person in order to minister to the homeless.

He's not going to have you do something absurd like that. Oftentimes when people think that the

Holy Spirit is calling me to do something, they'll say, I know it has to be God because it's crazy. It's like, what?

Yeah, I'm going to join a convent. No, that's probably not the

Holy Spirit. Our good works are done in our vocation as husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, employer, employee.

And so oftentimes people have these strange ideas, and they pin it on the

Holy Spirit, and they won't be dissuaded at all that this is not true.

Let me give you an example. Are you familiar with that television show, The Doctors? Have any of you seen this?

Recently had a girl on there, 15 years old. This girl believes that she had a revelation from God that she's going to give birth to Jesus, and she's a virgin.

I'm not making this up, okay? So she claims she's hearing from God. So she tells this to her mother.

Her mother thinks she's nuts, and makes her take a pregnancy test. And of course, she's not pregnant. The girl won't believe the pregnancy test, so she makes her take multiple pregnancy tests.

She continues to not be pregnant. Shock. And so her mother, like at the end of a rope, literally contacts the television show,

The Doctors, and says, listen, my daughter thinks that she's going to give birth to Jesus, and she's a virgin, and that she's pregnant right now.

Can you help? And they said, yeah, well, let's bring her on the show. We'll give her an ultrasound and show her the results. So they brought her in, gave her an ultrasound, and sure enough, there was no baby in her womb.

And the girl still won't believe that she's not pregnant with Jesus, because she claims she heard from God.

What do you do in a situation like that? She needs to go to the other program called The Psychiatrists, okay? I don't think that was her first thought.

Her first thought was to use this pregnancy test, but I mean, just, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I don't know.

That was a little off topic, but you kind of get the idea. Yeah, so. All right, we'll pick this up. I don't think we don't have, next week's the

Christmas program, right? So we don't have Sunday school next week. We don't have Sunday school on Christmas.