Beginning of Passover

November 10, 2013 Background Scripture: Exodus 6:2 – 30; 12 Lesson Passage: Exodus 12:1 – 14 The Passover observance is an ordinance of Judaism that is unlike any other. Although the Christian Communion or Lord’s Supper ordinance was derived from the Passover, the two are strikingly different when one considers their purpose and ceremonial procedures. The Lord’s Supper was instituted by Jesus as he and his disciples celebrated the Passover on the evening he was betrayed. Jesus used some remnants that remained from the Passover meal but not remnants from all of the ingredients that were required for the Passover celebration. It is true that the Passover foreshadowed the Lord’s Supper but yet the Passover remains unique in its meaning, celebration, and its participants. The Passover was and is an observance that celebrates a defining time in the history of the Jewish people. That time is marked by undeniable involvement of the one true and living God in the affairs of His chosen people, the Jews. Through a display of nine national disasters that were prophesied by Moses to Pharaoh, God exacted an open attack against all the gods the Egyptians were worshiping. The tenth and defining blow came on the night when God sent a death angel to kill all first born of humans and animals throughout the land of Egypt. The only exceptions would be those who remained inside of their dwellings which had been anointed with blood from an unblemished lamb that was killed on that evening according to God’s instructions. On that night, the death angel passed through the land of Egypt but when he came to those dwellings which were anointed with the blood, he passed over them and the occupants were not harmed. The meat of the lamb that was slain was roasted and consumed with bitter herbs and unleavened bread by the occupants that evening. The celebration commemorating the night the death angel passed through the land but passed over the dwellings anointed with the lamb’s blood was commanded by God to be observed the first month of the Jewish calendar perpetually. The Passover meal was to include roasted lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread. The Passover celebration was to be a continuous reminder to the Jewish people of God’s miraculous deliverance of their ancestors from Egyptian bondage. Jesus, like other Jews, celebrated the Passover every year. On the night that he was betrayed by Judas, Jesus was celebrating the Passover along with his disciples. As the Passover meal came to an end, Jesus took some of the unleavened bread and the wine they drank with their meal and used those simple elements to institute what we know as the Lord’s Supper. There was no reference to the bitter herbs or the roasted lamb at this point. The Lord’s Supper commemorates a greater deliverance. This deliverance is for people from all nationalities and languages. It is a deliverance from the eternal death penalty of sin. This deliverance is for whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord for forgiveness of their sins. This deliverance does not benefit people simply because of their association within a house with a group. Each person must accept the deliverance for himself (herself). When the death angel passes through God’s creation, those who are under the blood of Jesus will be passed over. The Lord’s Supper is personal. The Passover is a historic Jewish memorial celebrated by the Jews and it had its beginning in the land of Egypt. Robert C. Hudson October 29, 2013

God Prepares for Deliverance

November 3, 2013 Background Scripture: Exodus 1 – 4 Lesson Passage: Exodus 3:7 – 17 It may serve us well to examine the unifying topic of this lesson before we look at the text: God Prepares for Deliverance. For clarity sake, let me state: God is always prepared. There is never a time when God is not ready to act. We often misconstrue the time of our preparation as a delay to act on God’s part. God is always prepared. The time factor that occurs between prayers and miracles can be attributed to God preparing people, places, or situations that He chooses to use. We only need to note that mankind was created after everything else was created to see that God does not require people to do anything. The preparation for this deliverance has indeed involved people and situations. Unbeknown to Moses, God had concluded eighty years of preparing him for the task of leadership. Likewise, God had made it known earlier that the iniquity of the Amorites had not run its course. And finally, apparently the Hebrew slaves had not been previously conditioned to cry out to God in sincerity and faith. Certainly it would not take God four hundred years to respond had their ancestors been as fed up as the current group who were facing genocide at the decree of Pharaoh. So God says: I have seen the affliction of My people and I have heard them cry out to me because of their taskmasters. God went on to tell Moses that He knew the sorrows of His people. God was and still is a heart-examining God. So now, people and circumstances are properly prepared for God to deliver the Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage. This could be accomplished in a moment or an instance but that would probably not cause some people to express glory to God. The Egyptians worshiped many gods and a total deliverance of the Hebrews would require that God bring judgment upon each one of the Egyptian gods. Moses needed to know that God had already prepared him for the task of being the leader and Law-giver. Again, I will add that Moses’ preparation took eighty years. The first forty years was spent learning the ropes inside Pharaoh’s home. The second forty years was spent learning how to responsibly tend to someone else’s (his father-in-law, Jethro) flock in the wilderness. At eighty years old, Moses was now prepared for the task whether he knew it or not. Of course, eighty years old does not seem like the optimum time to start a ministry. Moses acted like many of us today. Moses did not jump at the opportunity to get this assignment. Rather, he tried to get out of it. He did not put his last forty years together with his first forty years to see the big picture. Instead, Moses asked the question: Who am I to deliver them? Obviously everybody doesn’t immediately cry out: “Here I am. Send me.” If Moses is going to take on the task of delivering people, he would need a little more assurance that this was indeed God speaking with him and not his mind playing tricks on him. Leading the people of God is not a trivial task but a weighty responsibility. Moses’ time had come and it was important for him to know that God was prepared for deliverance. Robert C. Hudson October 26, 2013

Blessings for Ishmael and Isaac

October 20, 2013 Background Scripture: Genesis 15 – 17; 21:9 – 21; 26:1 – 25 Lesson Passage: Genesis 21:12 – 14, 17 – 21; 26:2 – 5, 12, 13 It’s always refreshing to see a potentially bad situation end on a positive note. I am not suggesting that life in this world should always end: “… and they lived happily ever after.” But there are some bad situations that we get into that only God can get us out of them. Such was the case with Abraham’s family in the text of our lesson. After God’s initial promise of an heir for Abraham, apparently Sarah did not see how she could be a part of the fulfillment of such a promise. Therefore, she unselfishly offered her maid, Hagar, to her husband so that God would bless him with an offspring through her. It was thirteen years later that Sarah learned that she would give birth to an offspring for her husband as well. Oops! As an older woman (75 years old) who had been barren all her life, perhaps Sarah thought she was the reason her husband did not have an heir. Little did she know that God made everything work together for good. Her situation could not, and indeed, would not prevent God from carrying out His plan for Abraham’s life. Since she apparently did not know this or maybe knew it and refused to believe it, she decided to help God deliver on His promise to her husband. Her plan seemed to work fine for thirteen years. Then God reappeared and reaffirmed His promise but this time He made it clear that He would deliver without any schemes on their part. There were no apparent problems yet. However, after Sarah gave birth to Isaac, she no longer regarded Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, as such a great idea after all. Abraham found himself in the midst of a homemade dilemma: Sarah refused to allow Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, to continue to live with them. Sarah understood that such an arrangement would make Ishmael the heir to most of what Abraham owned. How could the son of a servant have privilege over her son who she carried and gave birth to? According to their custom, Ishmael would legally claim a double portion of whatever Isaac inherited as long as he stayed around. The only way out of this was for Abraham to disown Ishmael, his first born son, and send him away. What an awful dilemma this was for Abraham—and an uncomfortable one for Ishmael I might add. How do you choose between your first born son and the son born to you of your wife? To make matters worse, the first born son was the result of a plan hatched by his wife. This is where God stepped in. (Cue the Hallelujah Chorus!) God declared that He would bless both sons because both of them were Abraham’s offspring. God advised Abraham to listen to his wife and send Ishmael and his mother away. To ease Abraham’s pain because of their departure, God promised to provide for Ishmael and He went on to tell Abraham about the offspring that would come from him. On the other hand, Isaac was the heir God promised Abraham. As time progressed, God renewed the promise to Abraham that the blessing would indeed pass down through Isaac and his offspring would be nations. After Abraham died, his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came together and buried their father. God continued to bless Ishmael and Isaac because they were both Abraham’s seed. Robert C. Hudson October 9, 2013

The Blessing Passes to Jacob

October 27, 2013 Background Scripture: Genesis 27, 28; 32:22 – 30; 35:9 – 15 Lesson Passage: Genesis 28:1a, 10 – 22 God’s promise to Abraham included a blessing that would pass from generation to generation. In last week’s lesson we saw how God’s promise had become a family dilemma when Abraham and Sarah agreed to help the process by bringing an Egyptian woman, Hagar, into the picture as a surrogate mother to bear a child to be an heir for Abraham. Unbeknown to them, the child born of this arrangement, Ishmael, was not the heir that God promised Abraham. So when God returned with some clarity about the heir of promise, Abraham found himself with a serious family dilemma. God made it clear that the blessing would pass from Abraham through the heir of promise, Isaac. After Isaac became an adult and married, another dilemma quickly emerged: his wife gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Again, there was a legal custom of that day that the first born of the twins would become the heir. The first born, Esau, had the legal right but his fleshly desire for food exceeded his spiritual desire for the birthright. On the other hand, the second born, Jacob, had the desire for both the birthright and the blessing and he was willing to go to extremes to get them. After taking advantage of Esau’s worldly desire to trick him out of the birthright, Jacob then turned his attention to the blessing. With guile and help from his mother, Jacob tricked his aging father, Isaac, into praying the blessing upon him. Jacob is a good example of someone intercepting a blessing. Jacob was true to his name. He was a trickster. Although his method of receiving the blessing was through guile, nevertheless, God honored the fact that Jacob had received the blessing through their father, Isaac. In our lesson today, God confirms to Jacob that the blessing of Abraham would transfer to him and his offspring. A multitude of people would descend from him. Even better, through Jacob’s offspring, all families of the earth would be blessed. The same night in which the blessing was confirmed to him, Jacob also received the assurance that no matter where he decided to go, God would be there to protect and keep him. God promised to not forsake Jacob until He had fulfilled the promise He was making to him. Jacob graciously accepted God’s promise and in return he promised to reverence God as his God and to be obedient just as his grandfather, Abraham, by giving back to God a tenth of all that God would give him. It should be noted that God did not endorse Jacob’s action of tricking his brother out of the birthright nor was it an endorsement of Jacob’s lying to his father to trick him out of the blessing that was due his brother. Rather, God endorsed the prayer of Isaac because Isaac carried the blessing of Abraham within him. Therefore, when Isaac prayed that the blessing would be transferred to Jacob, God honored Isaac’s prayer. When Isaac learned of the error he had made, he quickly acknowledged that in spite of the way it happened, Jacob would indeed be blessed because of his prayer. In our lesson today, God answered the prayer of Isaac and the blessing of Abraham passed to Jacob. Robert C. Hudson October 10, 2013

A Promise to Sarah

October 13, 2013 Background Scripture: Genesis 17:15 – 17; 18:9 – 15; 21:1 – 7 Lesson Passage: Genesis 17:15 – 17; 18:9 – 15; 21:1 – 7 Some things in life are so amazingly unbelievable that all one can do is laugh. Coincidence cannot explain it away and neither can luck take credit for it. Some miracles can only be accepted as just that—a miracle. Such was the case when God announced to Abraham that He was going to give him a child by his wife Sarah. The fact that the bible gives the details of Abraham’s reaction to the announcement is comforting to me in that it lets me know that I am not alone in reacting in such a manner. When Abraham heard the news, he fell on his face and started laughing. It’s true. That is precisely what is written in the text. What would make a person laugh at a statement that God makes? The fact that the statement is so incredibly unrealistic will do it. Abraham was an old man. He was ninety nine years old when he received this news and his wife Sarah was eighty nine years old. The news was: Your wife is going to give birth to your baby next year. I can imagine that the preposterous nature of the news hit Abraham before he had time to brace himself or think about his reaction. How could he keep from laughing at it? Abraham just fell on his face and let it out. Now, think about this the way Abraham might have. Sarah had been barren throughout their marriage and, according to the bible, she was now beyond menopause (Genesis 18:11). How else do you react to that kind of news? God, as only He can, gave even more details about the baby. The baby will be a boy and from him shall come kings of people and indeed nations. As he laughed, Abraham was probably waiting for the punch line. But in the mean time, Abraham proposed to God a more “workable” solution. God could just take the boy that Abraham had fathered with Sarah’s maid, Hagar, and work His divine plan through him. This boy, Ishmael, was already thirteen years old and almost old enough to start his own family. This would be a much “easier” task for God. Of course God doesn’t need any help so He dismissed Abraham’s offer of an easy way out. The Lord left but apparently Abraham did not share this little information with Sarah. When the Lord returned, He asked about Sarah’s whereabouts. He reminded Abraham again about the promised child by Sarah. This time Sarah heard it and had a very similar reaction as her husband. She was amused by the prospect of such a thing happening to her. Unlike Abraham, Sarah was confronted because of her laughter and she denied it. The Lord rebuked Sarah for her dishonesty. Nine months later she gave birth to Isaac. At the time Isaac was born, Sarah laughed again but this time it was out of joy—and not derision. For she said, others will now laugh with me also. Whether it was meant to be humorous or not, Sarah did not react as though the miracle was in the functioning of her womb but that Abraham could father a child in his old age (Genesis 21:7). Not many women in the bible received specific promises from the Lord. Sarah received a promise and she had the last laugh as a result of it. Robert C. Hudson October 2, 2013