FBC Daily Devotional – March 2, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday to you. Hope your week has gotten off to a good start and you're entering into this new month with some optimism and enthusiasm and looking forward to all that the

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Lord's going to do for us this week. Well, today we're in the book of Exodus and chapters 12 and 13, and when

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I read the instructions regarding keeping the Passover and the

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Feast of Unleavened Bread here in these Old Testament passages, it reminded me that in the

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New Testament, we don't have any obligation to keep any particular holidays or religious festivals.

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In fact, in Colossians 2 .16, the Apostle Paul says this, listen, he says, He says, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a

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Sabbath. And what Paul is referring to there is all of the stipulations regarding the

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Old Covenant feasts and festivals and how they were to be conducted and all the little details associated with those things and even the keeping of them.

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Because the reality is, in the Old Covenant, God did give some very clear directions regarding keeping these feasts and festivals, and we come across a couple of these in today's reading.

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You have the Feast of Passover, which is immediately followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

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These eight days that are to be set aside every year, and this became one of the pilgrim festivals, one of the times when at least all of the men were supposed to leave their homes wherever they lived in Israel, and most of the time or oftentimes families would make this like a vacation, if you will, and they journey to Jerusalem and they'd celebrate

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Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And so what's interesting in this passage is the stipulations given, the directions given, and the purpose for it.

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So when you read this, did you notice how many of the things the Lord said, do this, do this, do this, because you were brought out of Egypt, to remember being brought out of Egypt.

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So Passover, for example, was to be celebrated every year to remind the

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Hebrew people of the Passover lamb and how the lamb had to be sacrificed, its life had to be sacrificed to spare the lives of their firstborn and be saved from the death angel that was going to come through Egypt.

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And then the Feast of Unleavened Bread that followed for the next seven days was to remind the people that you were delivered in haste, it was such a hasty deliverance that you couldn't even allow your bread dough to rise, you couldn't let yeast do its thing, you had to just take unleavened bread and flee.

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And so this would remind them of that. And then there's this interesting point that God gives for these feasts when he says, you know, you're going to do this, and in your generation, everybody will get it.

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I mean, everybody will get it. They've lived through this thing, and you're going to get it. But your kids are going to come on the scene, and they're not going to have any knowledge of this.

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This is not going to be their lived experience. And so you're going to gather your kids together, and one of these days your little three or four -year -old son's going to say, why are we doing this,

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Daddy? What are we doing this for? Why are we doing this? We didn't have a roast lamb last night, how come we're doing it tonight?

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Or man, I don't like this flat bread as much, how come the bread's so flat? How come there's no leaven?

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And your kids are going to ask questions, the Lord says. And when they ask, tell them.

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Tell them what great things God has done for you in delivering you from Egypt, in bringing you through the wilderness, and providing for you, and bringing you to the land of promise.

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So it was not only for the purpose of remembering, but for the purpose of instructing, so that the generations to come, as God says, will know that the

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Lord is God. And he says it in, let's see, where is it now?

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Verse 9 and 10, he says, It shall be to you a sign on your hand as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the

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Lord may be in your mouth, for with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out. Keep this appointed time.

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Keep this appointed time. So yeah, we don't have feasts and festivals like this that are mandated in the

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New Testament. In some cases, we can do the same kind of thing, but on a more individualized basis.

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Do you have any mementos, any, I don't know, special activities or things that you hold on to that you look at them and they remind you of what

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God has done? What God has done. In our house, we have stored away someplace, it's not out in the open, but we have kept it.

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What we have kept is a calendar from a period in our lives, in our family's life, when we were really in a pretty desperate situation.

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For several months, we were just amazed at how

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God continually provided, used different people, used different means to meet our needs.

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After a couple of things occurring like this, we said, we need to write these things down. So we wrote them down on a calendar and it was amazing.

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For several months, every few days, we had something else to add to that calendar. That's a calendar that we have kept.

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One day we'll pull that out and show our grandkids, this is what God has done for us. This is how

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God has shown himself to be faithful. So the Lord used the calendar of the

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Israelites and established some feasts and festivals so that they would never forget. I trust we're finding ways to remember what the

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Lord has done, how he has brought us somehow out of Egypt and delivered us and provided for us.

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Well, I hope that's an encouragement to you, get you to think about that anyway and do some reflection.

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What's the Lord done for you? What do you need to remember? So our

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Father and our God, thank you for your grace to us and thank you for how you have provided and you have called to yourself those who come to faith in Christ.

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And in that deliverance, there's also provision. We thank you for that faithful provision. I pray,

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Father, that we would often reflect, never forget, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.