In The Wilderness: The Provision of Passover

To Numbers 9:1 through 14 and we're gonna read the ESV version. We like to read together in this church which is a significant thing. We do that partially because you can get a sense—when somebody's up reading, it sounds like they are in charge, it's their words. But this is the word of God we read together because I need to hear it as much as you do. So read loudly so I can hear you because I need it this morning.

And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt saying, "Let the people of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time according to all its statutes and all its rules, you shall keep it. So Moses told the people of Israel that they should keep the Passover, and they kept the Passover in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight in the wilderness of Sinai according to all that the Lord commanded Moses. So the people of Israel did. And there were certain men who were unclean through touching a dead body so that they could not keep the Passover on that day. And they came before Moses and Aaron on that day. And those men said to him, 'We are unclean through touching a dead body. Why are we kept from being the Lord's offering at its appointed time among the people of Israel?' And Moses said to them, 'Wait that I may hear what the Lord will command concerning you.' The Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Speak to the people of Israel saying, if any one of you or of your descendants is unclean through touching a dead body or is on a long journey, he shall still keep the Passover to the Lord. In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight, they shall keep it. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break any of its bones according to the statutes for the Passover, they shall keep it. But if anyone who is clean and is not on a journey fails to keep the Passover, that person shall be cut off from his people because he did not bring the Lord's offering at its appointed time. That man shall bear his sin. And if a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the Lord according to the statute of the Passover and according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute both for the sojourner and the native.'" — Numbers 9:1-14

Lord God, we pray that you would bless this reading of your word, that you would open our eyes and hearts to it, and that you would transform us by it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Remembering in the Wilderness

I'm kind of excited about this passage actually because this is a passage that is really about remembering. I've noticed something about myself lately and maybe some of you have noticed—I know some of you have noticed. I'm kind of becoming a forgetful person. I really struggle with scheduling things and details. In fact, there's one of our elders who I think is convinced that as a practical joke, I keep making these mistakes, but it's not a practical joke. I'm really just forgetful.

The other day, I had on my calendar a meeting and it just said "James Sutton." My dad's name is James Sutton. My son's name is James Sutton. My name is James Sutton. I was like, "Who is this? What is this? Who am I supposed to be meeting with someone?" Turns out it was a haircut. I totally missed the appointment. I had to go back later in the week. I did eventually get it.

I think often about the movie Memento. Do you remember that movie in the nineties? It's a Christopher Nolan film. This guy named Leonard had retrograde amnesia. He couldn't remember that he had retrograde amnesia because he had retrograde amnesia. So he tattooed on his hand, "Remember Sammy Jenkis," who was a guy that he remembered had retrograde amnesia. So every time he went to the bathroom, washed his hand, he'd see that tattoo and he'd go, "Oh yeah, I have retrograde amnesia." I'm not really sure how that worked, but it reminded him of his forgetfulness.

The people of Israel throughout the book of Numbers are incredibly forgetful. That's one of the things that you see over and over and over again. It's part of their character. And guess what? So are we. Have you noticed your forgetfulness? Has it started to show up on your calendar with the weird appointments that you make for yourself that you're like, "What is this?"

Let me tell you how that looks for us. We get out of this place and we go out into the world and we start to forget who we are. We start to forget what's important. We start to forget where we are going. We forget all of those things, don't we? And then we come back here and we are reminded. And then we go out and we forget and come back and we're reminded. And sometimes little things throughout our week will remind us.

We try to remember. We have different kinds of rhythms that we try to remind ourselves of. It's just like the people of Israel. And God gave them an incredible gift in an annual meal that was designed to remind them of all of these things.

So what I want to look at in this passage is three things specifically that the Passover did for the people of Israel. It helped them to remember the past. It helped them to remember the present, and it helped them to remember the future. And that's a very curious phrase, but we'll get to it. Remember the past, remember the present, and remember the future.

We have a parallel to the Passover, which we celebrate not annually, but every week in this church. It's the Lord's Supper. So as we look at remembering the past, remembering the present, remembering the future and how the Passover helped them, we're also going to look at how the Lord's Supper helps us. Okay? So that's our outline. That's where we're going this morning. Let's dive in.

How the Passover Helped Them Remember the Past

First of all, how did it help them remember the past? It's easy to forget, I think, and be unsympathetic to a group of people who had no photography. Right? Like, they didn't have films. They didn't have the internet. They didn't have a lot of even written records to remind them of past events. And so this meal, the Passover, which is actually commanded by God in Exodus chapter 12. So I'd really encourage you if you really want to dive into this, go back to Exodus 12. That's where you see all the statutes and things that God commanded them to do with regard to the Passover.

We don't see it in this passage in Numbers nine, but it's referenced. He says, keep the Passover the way that I said to do it. And if you go back, what you see are all these food pictures. Like they had this mixture of chopped fruit and nuts and cinnamon that they would eat and they go, oh, this is like the mortar that our former masters used to make us make to build their temples in Egypt, you know, that when we were slaves, it reminds us of that, right? It was all sorts of little things like that throughout this Passover meal that were designed to remind them of their situation of the horror of Egypt and also this amazing deliverance of God.

When you do a Bible gateway search for God's mighty arm, if you look in the Old Testament, almost all of those references to God's mighty outstretched arms hearken back to his work in the Exodus. The plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, right? The pillar of fire. Do you remember all those stories? Like, that was an incredible time for the people of God. Can you imagine having experienced something in your life like that?

I remember I was preaching on the Passover once at St. David's, the school that I used to work at, and I was trying to bring this home for the kids. I was like, just imagine, right? Like you're in carpool, right? And all of a sudden the Lord outstretches his mighty arm. Right? And plagues start coming down. There's a pillar of fire moving through the carpool line. Like, you look in the rearview mirror and there it is. It's the kind of thing that you go, this is not something I'm ever going to forget. Right? This is a powerful display of who God is.

And why did he do it? He did it for his people. And he didn't want his people to forget the message of his actions in that moment. And so the Passover pointed to all sorts of different aspects of that, pointed to his power, pointed to his deliverance.

He reminded them, first of all, of who they were. They were the special people of God. God doesn't extend his mighty arm just for any old body. He does that for his people. He does that because he loves, because he cares. That is something special, something incredible, something extraordinary, right? And so it reminded them like you are not just some any old nomadic people wandering through the desert. You are a people who are special to God. Remember what he did? Remember the plagues? Remember the Red Sea? Do you remember that?

It also reminded them of his faithful love. He didn't neglect them in Egypt. He didn't forget about them. He remembered them. He didn't forget. He's not forgetful. He didn't forget about the promises he made. He fulfilled them. He showed up. And he's been doing that forever and ever. It reminded them of how strong his commitment to them was. Reminded them of their being loved by this God. And it reminded them of his power and his might. They're not loved by just some person that can't do anything for them. They're loved by a God who has a mighty arm that he sometimes outstretches when he wants to impress upon people the power that he has, when he wants to act. Right?

And so as they were eating this meal, they would have been reminded of that. Especially in this passage, this is the first time that Passover is celebrated.

Passover is probably the longest-running celebrated holiday in the history of the world, apart from things like New Years and the passing of seasons. But as a religious ceremony, Passover has been the longest running. It's been kept every year since this passage in Numbers. This was the first one. And as these people were eating that meal, they would have remembered. As they were eating the lamb, they would have remembered the blood on the doors. As they were eating the unleavened bread, they would have remembered the haste in which God brought them out of Egypt. They would have remembered all of that. But future generations would remember it because of the preservation of that meal.

God wanted them to never forget. Never forget who you are. Never forget how much I love you. Never forget how strong I am. Once a year, I'm going to command you to feast together and remember this. There are lots of ways that we remember things, but the things we really cherish, we remember in meals, don't we? Think about birthdays and anniversaries. You go out for a meal. You celebrate. God's reminding them in ways that are positive. This is a positive reminder of this truth about God.

The Lord's Supper and the Greater Passover

In the Lord's Supper, we see the continuation of the Passover. Passover was celebrated by Jesus and the disciples. When the Last Supper happened, what they were celebrating was Passover. What Jesus does with the disciples is he's remembering this past deliverance of God's people from Egypt even as he's doing the act of a greater deliverance. That's what Christ did. He was the greater lamb. The book of Hebrews and all of the New Testament authors make a big point of saying we're done with Passover. Passover has morphed into something even better—something called the Lord's Supper, which centers our focus and gaze on what Passover was meant to point to all along: Jesus, the Son of God, who offered himself as a sacrifice for us. He was the Passover lamb that spared us from the angel of death and set us free from the powers of sin that we are ruled by in this world.

The Lord's Supper is the new Passover, the new, better Passover. And what does it remind us of? The same things. It reminds us: Who are you? When you come to this table, you are to remember that you are a people that God did something extraordinary for. He outstretched his mighty arm and offered himself as a sacrifice, and in doing so, struck down our enemies and set us free. You're not just any old people. You're a special people whom God has redeemed. Remember. Don't forget.

We're reminded that we're loved. If God gave his Son, if he gave himself up as a sacrifice, then he loves you. We forget that, don't we? Sometimes we go through our wilderness life. We see things that are painful, that are hard, and we start to think, does God really love us? Look at what he did for you. Remember, he loves you.

Thirdly, are you safe? Sometimes we go about our wilderness life and we start to see all sorts of things going wrong, and we start to wonder, is this outside of God's control? Not only do we question whether he's good, but can he pull off all of the things that he's promised? When we look back and remember what he's done—God becoming flesh, all the miracles he performed, him dying and rising from the dead—we worship a God who raises people from the dead. Can he redeem the things that are going on in your life? Yes.

The Lord's Supper invites us to remember the past, to remember the great things that he's done. There was a member in our church years ago, and he was having a hard time in life. I remember going on a walk with him, and he was telling me about all the different hard things that were going on. He said, "I just don't think I believe in God anymore." I said, "My friend, what about the things that he's done for you? What about the redemption that he's brought in your life?" He said, "I just don't see any of it anymore." I said, "You can't think of any redemption that God has done in your life? Like nothing redeeming?" I was heartbroken. He said, "I can't think of anything." I said, "What about that whole thing—dying and rising from the dead—that Jesus did?" He said, "Yeah, well, that, but I don't really... that's so far back. I don't really see it."

The Lord's Supper invites us to connect with that past event in an intensely personal way and invites us to see all of the ways in which that past redemption actually applies into our hearts and lives now.

When we come to the Lord's Supper, one of the applications that I hope you will do from this sermon is that you will come remembering the redemption that God has wrought in your own life and how He is connected—Christ's death and resurrection with your situation. Where is the death and resurrection of Christ shining gospel light in your life? Where is that happening? Where has that happened in the past? Would you come celebrating that in the Lord's Supper?

I'm happy to say about my friend that there's a happy ending. After years of wandering from the church, eventually he came back. He longed to be back a part of community and he didn't come back to this church but he came back to another one. And he called me and he said, "I see it now. I see it weekly. The redemption of God and I need to see it weekly and it's a blessing."

I think about the movie Ratatouille. I watch a lot of kids movies—I have five kids. Remember that one? At the end of the movie, there's the food critic who comes in and he tastes the dish at the end and he's instantly transformed back to his childhood. That's a picture of what is supposed to happen at the Lord's Supper. This incredible moment where we take a bite and we remember who we are, we remember who loves us, we remember how powerful He is. It takes us back to our childhood, our infancy as humanity—one that was in a loving, perfect relationship with an all-powerful God who cared for our every need. That's what this is meant to communicate emotionally to you. When you take it, does it bring you back? Do you remember? Do you remember the past?

The Present Dimension of Passover

But the Passover isn't just meant to remind them of the past. It's also meant to remind them of the present. I was alluding to that a little bit, but note several things. Sometimes the people of Israel—not so much in Numbers, but in other points—they get lost in the past. They're like, "We're the chosen people of God, and so we're the chosen people of God." The Pharisees are an example of this. They're so caught up in the rules and regulations and kind of observance of the memories of the past that they really can't see what's going on in front of them, even to the point when the Son of God actually shows up. They're kind of like, "Nope, you're not the Son of God. We're the authorities and we know all of these things about the past and so you're wrong."

Jonah did this too. Remember our study of Jonah? He was so caught up in who we are and what happened in the past that he couldn't see what God was doing with the nations in front of him, the redemptive work that God was doing.

But I want you to notice several things about this passage. This passage is great. Notice that Passover, first of all, is a commandment of God. God's not just showing up and saying, "Hey, this happened a year ago, so you probably haven't forgotten yet. Just remember to celebrate this later when you start to forget." No, He says, "Do it. Celebrate the Passover. Keep the Passover. It's a commandment. It's not optional." The language of "you must do this" is all through here. God isn't just like, "Hey, this is kind of important, maybe a suggestion, kind of a present from me to you, optional." No. He's like, "Do it. Do it now because what I'm doing in it is important." Do you see? It's about the present. It's not just about the past.

Notice also the boldness of these guys in this passage. At first blush, I was reading this passage kind of preparing for this, and I'm like, "Okay, so these guys show up and they're like, 'Hey, God. I know Your statute says not to touch dead bodies or we would become unclean and then we have to go through this ritual cleansing before we can do things like celebrate Passover. But we went ahead and we touched the dead body. But we think we should be allowed to do this anyway.'" It's pretty bold. When you look at the Old Testament in general, moments like these, you start to get a little nervous for the people who are being that bold before an all-powerful, holy God who has made commandments and they're just kind of frivolously saying, "Let's set this aside."

But when you think about this, their boldness makes a lot of sense, especially when you think about it in the light of what we know about the character of God. What are they asking for here? They're asking for more of God. Do you see? Their request is like, "We want to feast. We want to celebrate what You've done, Lord. We want to be with You in this meal even though we are tainted by the fallenness and brokenness of this world. Give us more. Please."

Now, think about Jesus, the life of Jesus.

There were all kinds of people who were unclean, who were sinful, who had all kinds of wrong that should've had no business being in the presence of Jesus. And you know how many of them that he turned away? Zero. Even the little babies who were unclean because they had like pooped on themselves and were totally distracting and crying. He's like, bring 'em on. Anyone who wanted him, he invited in. So the boldness of their request is absolutely in the character of God to grant it. It's not surprising. You want more of me? Here's more of me.

Notice also the expectant patience of Moses. Moses isn't like, "No, we have the stipulations. You shall not partake of the Passover. We understand God's past regulations. We are applying them correctly now. Please refer to BCO 20 three-five." That's a Presbyterian joke for those of you who are new. He didn't do that. He said, "You know what? God might be calling us to amend the BCO. God may actually be doing something now that is different than what he had done in the past. I will wait patiently to hear from him. I will seek the Lord and I will listen to what he says and we will do that."

Notice that. What do these bold men and Moses all have in common? They're living in the present. Here's what I want you to see: I think we have the ability to approach this Lord's Supper and remember the past. I think some of you could probably get up here and on some Sundays explain it just as well as I could—the connection to the past events of Jesus Christ. I get to do it because I'm ordained. It's an amazing privilege and it makes me tremble every time, but we know it. We know the past.

But I think some of us graduate from this, don't we? "Oh yeah, I know about that." So this is the part of the service where everybody gets up and kind of runs up and takes a little thing. And then we get our food and go back and sit down, and it's kind of boring and distracting really. It's like, "Sutton's rambled on and we just want to get through this and get home and get lunch." Because we know, don't we? We're some of the smartest people in America here in Raleigh Durham. We know about the Bible. We know about this stuff. We don't need the Passover.

But do we come with the expectation that God is doing something now? I know some of you do because I see you weeping. Like sometimes I weep. I know that some of you do because when we couldn't do it because of COVID, we all came back and we were all weeping. What would it look like for us to actually show up and worship and expect that the thing that God commanded us to do, he might actually do something good for us in it? What would it look like to have that expectant patience of Moses? Like, "God's gonna speak to me in this Lord's Supper." What would it look like to have the boldness of these men? "I don't get it, God. I don't see it. I don't see you at work. I don't understand what's going on, but I'm still coming. I want more of you. Give me more of you, God, please."

I wish we came like that. Most of the time, I think we think of the Lord's Supper as an afterthought. But if we came expectant like these men, if we came boldly expecting Jesus to work in this instituted meal that he's given us as a gift to remind us, maybe he'd be up to something in the present. He certainly was in the people of Israel. God's salvation isn't just a past event. He is at work now. He is at work when we get together, when we study his word, and when we partake of the supper together.

Remember the Future

Alright, my last point is that the Passover is designed to help them remember the future. That's a curious phrase. But I have in mind two pieces of English literature that I find fun. One is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. There's a conversation she has with the White Queen. Some of you who've read it may remember this. The White Queen remembers the future and the past, and she also often gets kind of confused. She'll scream about a bad event that's about to happen because she remembers it. And Alice says, "Well, you know, why are you screaming now? Why not after it happens?" She screams about pricking her finger before it happens. Alice is like, "Why would you do that?" And the White Queen says to Alice, "It's a very poor sort of memory that only works backwards."

Why would you wait to scream until the bad thing happens? So think about that for a second: "It's a very poor sort of memory that only works backwards."

The other piece of English literature is T.H. White's The Once and Future King—his presentation of Merlin in that story. You might remember the Disney movie, The Sword and the Stone.

It's based on T.H. White's The Once and Future King. Merlin remembers what? He remembers the future. So when he meets Arthur for the first time, he's weeping because it's the last time he'll see him.

Right? The Lord's Supper and the Passover before it. And the Passover—we see it clearly pointed to all sorts of things that they never could have anticipated. You can look at the actual elements of the Passover and you see all kinds of Jesus as Christians. They have to eat this lamb that was slain. They don't break any bones. There's unleavened bread that talks about the haste with which they were delivered. There's all these things that we can see very clearly was setting Jesus up to talk about the work that he was doing in saving us from our sins, from the bondage of the world, and redeeming us.

All of that was there. Do you think they saw that? Do you think if we had sat down with some of the people in the wilderness and said, "Hey, what do you think this is building to?"—they would probably be like, "I don't know, getting into the promised land." But honestly, the people in Numbers had trouble seeing that far into the future. They were always saying to God, "Did you bring us out here just to kill us?" They had so much trouble foreseeing what Passover was foreshadowing. They couldn't even see into the promised land, much less into a meal with Jesus every week that proclaimed our deliverance from all sin and death. That was something that was so far from them and so now, but it was foreshadowed, right?

You know what a foreshadow is? Okay, well, I do a lot of droning now—sunsets again. It's a morning and evening thing for me right now. One of the things that I like to do is kind of back up on a building while watching the sun. And what's kind of cool is you can see—if the sun's behind you—you can see the shadow of the building before you see the building. Right? That's what Passover was for the Lord's Supper. They could see the shadow of it. They didn't know what it was. It's just this shadow, and then as they move through time, it suddenly came into focus.

We know, brothers and sisters, because Jesus has told us in Revelation what this foreshadows. It foreshadows a heavenly feast that goes on for eternity, celebrating a wedding—a marriage, a love story between us and God. Which, by the way, is how the Old Testament prophets talked about the deliverance from Egypt. They talked about it as a wedding.

The Notebook

You know, just to kind of wrap this up, there was a movie in the nineties—I like nineties movies. I wasn't going to use this one because it's kind of sappy. In fact, it was mentioned to me that I should use it and I was like, "No, I'm not going to use it," but I'm going to use it. The Notebook. You remember The Notebook? That's funny because it's about memory, right?

In The Notebook, James Garner plays older Ryan Gosling, and he's meeting with this woman and he keeps telling this story of a love story between this guy and this woman—it's Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. As you're going through the story, you start to suspect, "Hey, maybe there's more to this story than it's just a story. Maybe there's a connection to this couple."

The climactic ending of The Notebook is this scene in which, after this long day of telling this story, all kinds of romantic walks and kind of walking by the lake, James sits down with his wife who doesn't remember that any of this happened. All of a sudden, it breaks through and it dawns on her and she's like, "It's us. It's us." And he starts weeping and she starts weeping and they're immediately drawn together. It's this incredibly romantic scene because it's this old couple being really sweet to each other.

She says, "How long do I have?" And he says, "I don't know. Last time, it was five minutes." She said, "What happened to me?" He said, "You went away for a little while, but now you're back." And then he puts on some music and they dance. And then she forgets again.

Brothers and sisters, how long do we have? It's about us. I don't know—last time it lasted about ten minutes. What happens to us? We go away, but we're back. While we're here, let's dance. Let's remember that this is a story about us, about God's love for us, about who we are, about how great he is, how powerful he is, how safe we are in his arms. For the moment while we can, as we celebrate this supper, let's dance in the beauty and splendor of his favor, knowing that one day it won't just be five or ten minutes. It'll be an eternity, and it'll feel too short to unpack all the beauty of his love.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this supper.