New Year Meditations - Obedience

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. Exodus 12:1‭-‬2 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.12.1-2.NIVUK

For the next three meditations we will examine events so critical to Jewish thinking that they actually changed their calendar. This was their BC/AD moment. This was the time when everything changed. And they have plenty to say to us as we pass through the end of one year and the beginning of the next. The first of these is the institution of Passover. This is a tremendously important event, still marked now by Jews across the globe. It is equally as significant for us as Christians. Jesus was crucified during Passover. The Last Supper was not, as we might be led by modern ritual to believe, a sharing of morsels of bread and a little wine. No, this was a feast - the Feast - Passover: Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.’ Luke 22:7‭-‬8 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/luk.22.7-8.NIVUK

The Passover feast has tremendous significance for Christians too as Jesus is the Lamb of God who is sacrificed to prevent His people from receiving the punishment for their sin. But at the same time, there is something a little peculiar about Passover. You see, the Jews were about to leave Egypt in haste, in a hurry. God's punishment of the Egyptians with the final plague on the firstborn was opening their window of opportunity to leave. And yet, what we see in Exodus 12 are instructions for the institution of a feast, including some fairly prescriptive instructions on how to cook the lamb and who can and cannot eat it. The whole thing seems a little strange. If you're leaving in a hurry, why spend so much time passing down a recipe for roast lamb? But thinking like this would miss the point. Yes, the elements of the meal are highly symbolic and point like a compass needle to what God will do later through Jesus. However, the Jews did not know that at the time, and neither did God explain it to them. In order to benefit from all the blessings and salvation that came through Passover, the Jews had to do one thing: obey. And Exodus states that for once in the life of this fractious, ill-disciplined and bad-tempered community, that's exactly what they did: All the Israelites did just what the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. Exodus 12:50 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.12.50.NIVUK

What happened because of their unanimous obedience? They were delivered from slavery: And on that very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions. Exodus 12:51 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.12.51.NIVUK

Their deliverence came because God opened a way for them by His grace and they obeyed His call. Still today, Jewish families play a little game where they hide some yeast in their house in the run-up to Passover and get their children to find it. This is based on the command that there should be no yeast among them: For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day until the seventh must be cut off from Israel. Exodus 12:15 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/exo.12.15.NIVUK

Before they could leave slavery, the Jews were called to be absolutely scrupulous with their obedience to God, ridding themselves of even the tiniest shred of disobedience. As we approach the end of an old year and the start of a new one, it wouldn't do us any harm to learn the same lessons about obedience and disobedience. We too can spend time cleaning house, going through the habits and responses we have picked up throughout the year and ridding ourselves of anything where we have been disobedient to God. They received freedom from slavery as a result of God's grace and their obedience to Him. Who knows what blessings could await us if we do the same?