Eat it in Haste

With Passover approaching, I'd like to talk about something that occurred to me last year around this time. One of the points that is typically accentuated around Passover is the admonition found in 1 Corinthians about the serious ramifications of eating it:

1 Corinthians 11:27-29
Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.

This is why only those who have shared in Christ's death through baptism (and thereby entered into the new covenant) are permitted to partake in the Passover observance, and even then we must pause for introspection every year to purge out the spiritual leaven before doing so. 


That's the backdrop for what I want to talk about. I was reading the account of the first Passover in Egypt in Exodus 12, where I found that just after God tells the Israelites what to eat and how it is to be prepared, He says the following in verse 11:

Exodus 12:11
This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.

If we continue in verse 12, it says "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn," and then later on in verse 31 we see that Pharaoh called Aaron and Moses "during the night" to tell them to leave, and in 33, "the Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country." You could say that God was simply telling them to be prepared to come out of Egypt (i.e. come out of sin), but consider the fact that they were commanded to put on these garments BEFORE THEY ATE. Surely they would have had plenty of time after the meal to put their traveling clothes on before the Egyptians had time to realize what had happened; therefore, there is significance in the fact that God wanted them to do this before they ate, and there is a message here for us today.


Let's look closer at each of these elements in Exodus 12:11. First of all, notice that they were to be wearing a cloak. What could that mean? Where else in the scripture is a cloak mentioned? Isaiah 59:17 describes God preparing to pour out his wrath on the wicked and redeem those who repent of their sins, and it says 

Isaiah 59:17 
He put on righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped Himself in zeal as in a cloak.

This is the cloak that God wants us to put on each year before Passover, to renew our zeal for His way of life. As the first Holy Day of the year, following that long winter lapse following the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day, it is important that we not be spiritually diminished and that we take the opportunity to get zealous for our God. Let us not just put on that cloak, but as it says in Isaiah, be WRAPPED in it!


Ephesians 6 gives us instruction on the “full armor of God,” in which we find details on the meaning of the sandals and the belt mentioned in Exodus 12:11. Note first of all that the cloak is to be "tucked into your belt," which in Ephesians 6 is called "the belt of truth." Our zeal must remain firmly grounded in truth, as Paul warned about in 

Romans 10:2-3
For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

While we are to yearly put on our cloak of zeal, we must be careful to put on our belt, renewing our foundation of knowledge in God's truth. It is crucial that we "know the righteousness that comes from God," and submit ourselves to that righteousness.


Also in Ephesians 6, we find some information about the sandals that God tells us to have on our feet: they are called the "readiness that comes from the gospel of peace" in verse 15. Therefore, God wants us to be READY to eat the Passover with the assurance of our convictions given by the PEACE that comes from the GOSPEL of his coming kingdom, which we show our commitment to through our baptism and our partaking in the Passover. Furthermore, it says just before then in verse 15 that this readiness is to be "fitted" to our feet - this is indeed a very important part of our preparation for Passover, that we make sure that our sandals are well-fitted each year, making adjustments if necessary.


Finally, it says in Exodus that we are to have our staff in our hand. What is the significance of the staff? When David went up to fight against Goliath, he carried his staff with him. Notice the following excerpts from the account in 1 Samuel:

1 Samuel 17:40-46
Then [David] took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream... [and] approached the Philistine... He said to David, 'Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?'... David said to the Philistine, 'You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down... and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel'

Though we are admonished in Ephesians 6 to take up the word of God as our sword in spiritual battle, the story of David and Goliath teaches us also that there are sometimes when only God can fight for us. David, therefore, took his staff - not a weapon of war, but the tool of a shepherd. Surely he must have known as well as Goliath that the staff itself was of no avail, as Goliath even made fun of him for bringing it out. The staff represents our trust in God that even as a shepherd leads and cares for a flock of sheep, God leads and cares for us. 


As we saw earlier, the apostle Paul warned in 1 Corinthians against eating the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. Just before that, he also said the following:

1 Corinthians 11:23-26
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Passover is God's designated way for us to proclaim the death of our Savior until he returns. It is a death that we share in through baptism, as Paul points out in Romans:

Romans 6:3-4
Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.

For the Passover, we are each to take up our staff in our hands, putting our faith in God to do for us that which we cannot do on our own. In particular, we cannot earn our salvation, for which Christ died as our Passover. No matter how zealous we are, how well we know God's truth, and how ready we are for His coming kingdom, Christ had to die for our sins as our Passover Lamb, that we would have salvation unto eternal life. The staff that we are to take up is not a weapon, but a sign of our faith in what God and Christ have done for us in giving us access to the gift of eternal life. Let us remember this as we take up our staff this year, assured in our unwavering faith that one day we will receive that gift, and then, as it was for David and the Philistines, so it shall be that "the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel." Let us put on the right spiritual attitude as we observe these things in remembrance of Jesus. Let us be prepared to partake of it in a worthy manner with zeal, steadfast in our knowledge of God's truth, with readiness for his return, and unyielding faith that God will carry out all that he has promised. As it says in Exodus 12:11 - "Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover."

Stand in the Gap

I read Ezekiel 22:30 last night, which says in the NIV

"I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none."

As I was driving to school today, this scripture resonated in my mind. Let's break this down. First of all, we see that God is searching for someone who will "build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land" - but what does that mean?

Let's consider the wall first. If we turn back to Ezekiel 13, we find that God had Ezekiel prophesy against the false prophets of Israel, one of the reasons being, in verse 5, that they "have not gone up to the breaks in the wall to repair it for the house of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD." Verse 10 elaborates with the indictment that "when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash," and God then goes on to make it clear that whitewashing this wall is of no avail. So what does the context tell us about what the wall might be? 

Because the false prophets are charged with not repairing the breaks in the wall, it stands to reason that, firstly, the wall is something that already exists but is deteriorating and, secondly, that it is the duty of prophets (i.e. spiritual leaders) to repair this wall. Furthermore, we see that it is the duty of the prophets to build a strong wall, and not simply build up a flimsy wall and then make it look nice by painting it white. What was the purpose of walls in those days? Walls were primarily a tool of defense; they were the foundation of a city's protection from invading forces. The wall in this scripture symbolizes the righteous attitudes of the people, since this is truly the only protection that anyone has from God's judgement. The duty of the prophets was to speak the words of God to the people, so that they may repent and turn to follow Him as they should. The "breaks in the wall" are the sins of the people, and the job of the prophets was to repair the relationship of the people and their God. False prophets, however, would allow the wall to become weak by not proclaiming the things sent to them from God, but instead giving people made-up visions and feeding them flowery words to make them feel better about their current state of affairs - thus "whitewashing" or "glossing over" their vile actions with false prophesies. 

Therefore, in searching for someone who would "build up the wall," God was looking for a leader with the guts to stand up to the people, to decry the wrong that they knew they had done, and to remind them that they should repent and return to God. There is no way that anyone can take on this responsibility unless they themselves are following God's way.

Now lets consider the gap. We've established already that the weakness of the wall signifies a distancing of the people from the law of God, and therefore a distancing from God Himself. This is the "gap" - the space that had grown in between the covenant people and God. God searched for someone to stand in that gap, to be the bridge by which the people could cross back to the ways of their Creator. 

There has been a long history of men that have stood in that gap. Notably, there was Moses, who interceded for Israel when they turned to idolatry while he was up on the mountain. God wanted to utterly destroy the people of Israel and start over with a new line of people descended from Moses, but Moses begged and pleaded that God would continue to work with them. Many of the judges stood in the gap in their day. Elijah stood in the gap. These were men who answered the call of God by walking upright in the midst of wickedness. 

Now I'm going to emphasize another peculiarity of this verse - note that it doesn't say that He was looking for someone to "stand in the gap" - it says He was looking for someone to "stand before Me in the gap." To me, that makes the requirement so much more powerful. It accentuates the point that in order to be the one to stand in the gap, you have to be willing to stand before God on behalf of people who do not deserve His mercy (I say that they do not deserve His mercy because of the fact that the people knew better.) These were God's covenant people, and they knew better than to partake in the idolatry and sexual immorality that they were practicing, as well as the desecration of His Sabbaths; and yet they did it anyway. Because God could find no one to stand in the gap in this case, the people of Israel had to endure his wrath. I have no doubt that there have been multiple times throughout history when God has looked for someone to stand before Him in the gap. Indeed, there are times yet to come when he will look for someone to stand in the gap and build up the wall.

So now that this is understood, I can tell you what I was thinking about this morning that inspired this whole discussion. What meaning can there be for us today in this scripture? Jesus describes the end-time pouring out of God's wrath in Mark 13. In particular, notice in verse 20 that "If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them." And now recall what Jesus said in Luke 18:8 - "when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Clearly, God is counting on his church to be there to build up the wall and stand before Him in the gap at the time of the end. 

What can you do to be building up the wall today? Don't whitewash the wall by justifying actions that you know are wrong - examine your life, ask God to search out the evil in you and give you the strength to cast it out so that you can be blameless. 

What can you do to get ready to stand before God in the gap? God does not measure us simply by what we don't do, but also by what we do - consider the description of the righteous man, who saves his soul, in Ezekiel 18:5-9. Notice that in verse 7 that he doesn't just refrain from robbery, he also gives to the poor. 

Therefore, prepare yourself by committing your life to God's service. When you see an opportunity to serve God, take it. If you see a way that you can do something to help someone, do it. Ultimately, there will come a time when God's judgement against this sinful world will not be stayed, and it will be as it says in Ezekiel 14:14, that even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the country that God has set his hand against, they each would only be able to save themselves by their righteousness. Be ready.