ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #39 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> In Verse 24 it says, "You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever." Since that is a clear-cut and direct command from God, why don't Christians today obey God's command and observe this feast? Assuming there is a sound reason for not performing the ceremony, what then do we say about those who do observe a seder meal? >> That's a very good question, Nick, since it leads us to the point where we can see how Christians can and should appropriate the Old Testament, especially places where there are commandments like this. I think the basic answer to your question is that Christians can and, in fact, do observe this ritual. We do it every Sunday when we come together to worship the Passover lamb who was sacrificed not only to deliver Israel from bondage but to deliver all creation from the bondage to sin and death and the Devil. Saint John's Gospel reminds us that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the Passover lamb, the fulfillment of the Passover lamb. What we would call the anti-type of the type given here in Exodus. For example, in John Chapter 1 Verse 29 we read "The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'" And again, a few verses later "He looked at Jesus as he walked and he said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God.'" But John isn't the only one to make this connection. St. Paul makes it, too. In I Corinthians Chapter 5, Paul makes a connection between what Christians do when they come together in the name of the Lord and the celebration of the Passover festival. He makes this point in passing while talking about something else. But the connection is, nonetheless, apparent in the text. Here in I Corinthians 5 -- and I'm not going to read all of these verses. But I'll just pick out a few phrases for you. St. Paul says in I Corinthians 5:4, "When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus" -- and then skipping a few verses he talks about cleaning out the old leaven. And he says, "As you are really leavened for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival not with the old leaven but with" -- and so forth. So he connects the celebration of the Passover festival with what Christians do whenever they assemble in the name of Jesus. So I think that the truth is that Christians do keep the Passover festival. We don't keep it once a year. We keep it once a week. We keep it every time we gather in the name of Jesus to praise the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But really more than any other book in the New Testament, the book of Revelation emphasizes this point about Christ being the lamb who is slain but who is victorious and who is worshiped and adored by the host of God as they are gathered to his thrown. So I don't think that Christians have to -- you know, have to be apologetic about this point. I think we can recognize that while we are not commanded by God to keep this annual festival every year, these -- this is one of the commands from which Christ has set us free. At the same time, we do, in fact, keep it. Not in the same way. But in a way that underscores the fulfillment of God's original intention in the Passover in the first place. So Christians can and do keep the Passover whenever we worship the lamb. And we should understand that this is what we are doing. We are fulfilling God's command that we keep this festival. Because the purpose of the Passover festival in the end was not just to remind the Hebrews of what God had done for them in the past. But it was also to point them ahead to what God was going to do in Christ for all mankind and for all creation. So you ask about a seder meal. Having said all of that, I think we can see that there's certainly nothing wrong with Christians participating in a seder meal or any other Passover situation or Passover celebration. As long as we don't lose sight of the fact that this is not something done just a long time ago. It's really more than a memory for us. But something that points us to Christ and his victory. This is not something that we do just once a year, but something that we do every time we join the saints gathered around the thrown of God worshiping the lamb. In fact, I'll say one more thing about this. There's a very real sense in which Christians are the only ones who really can keep the Passover properly. Because they are the only ones who fully understand the real implications of the Passover in God's redemptive plan. Contemporary Jews who keep the Passover are really only kind of keeping it halfway. They are remembering what God has done in the past, but they fail to recognize what God is doing in the here and now. They fail to recognize the significance of this event for them and for their salvation. Because the ongoing significance of the Passover is only seen and understood in Christ's fulfillment of it. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***