17 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. 18 In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. 19 For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. 20 Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”
21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. 23 When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.
24 “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28 The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. (Exodus 12:17-28)
When we think of Egypt in a biblical sense we immediately associate it with the Old Testament, the fathers of Israel, and bondage. Rather, I encourage you to remember “God” and his mighty acts when you think of Egypt.
In the bible, Egypt is mentioned just over 600 times in 565 verses. In most of these verses God called the Israelites to remember what he did “when he brought them out of Egypt” and he kept his covenant with the Israelites, who often rebelled against him.
In recent times the country is known as Egypt, but it has uncertain origins, and in Greek was pronounced, Ah-ee-goop-tos (for Aiguptos). But in Old Testament times, the Israelites called Egypt, Mizraim (mits-rah-yim), meaning “two Egypts”, for the upper and lower reaches of the Nile River. However, Mizraim is formed from a Hebrew word which means, to hem in, or to cramp or confine, or to distress. To the Israelites Egypt was a place of boundaries and limits; a place of slavery and oppression. Egypt to an Israelite was big trouble.
The first mention of Egypt is in Genesis ten, in the genealogy of Ham. Ham brought Noah’s curse upon himself by looking at his father’s nakedness and not covering him when Noah was sleeping off the wine he had drunk.
Later on, Abram took his wife Sarai to Egypt during a drought, but left in disgrace after he told Pharaoh that his wife was his sister. Pharaoh took Sarai as his wife and soon found out she was, in fact, Abram’s wife when he became inflicted by diseases. (Gen 12:10-20)
And then there is the story of Joseph and his brothers, who sold him into slavery and ended up being Pharaoh’s right-hand man — the second in charge of all Egypt. After his father Jacob and the entire household move to Egypt, the bible falls quiet for four-hundred years after Joseph tells his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Genesis 50:24)
During these four hundred years, Pharaoh and Egypt’s favour turn to hatred and oppression over the descendants of Jacob and his sons. As Israelite numbers grew, Pharaoh ordered every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile. So God raised up Moses, the child of a Hebrew slave, hidden in a floating basket in the reeds of the Nile. He was rescued and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter in the house of Pharaoh.
Moses killed an Egyptian and fled after Pharaoh sought to kill him. While he was in the wilderness God appeared to him in a burning bush and commanded weak unconfident Moses to go back to Pharaoh and demand Pharaoh let God’s chosen people go.
Pharaoh was no match for the God of the Hebrews, even though in Egyptian thought he was the son of “Re” the Egyptian sun-god. So while Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let the Israelites go because he thought he was god, God commanded Moses to pronounce plagues on Egypt.
Pharaoh was finally broken on the night of the Passover, when God sent the destroyer to kill the firstborn of Egypt. Pharaoh’s son, who was also seen as a god, was killed with all the Egyptian firstborn by God Almighty.
Out of slavery came freedom — freedom through the spilling of a lamb’s blood, on the cross members and sides of the doorframes to each house. God’s word was no match even for Pharaoh as God saved his people and called them to remember the night when they received their freedom. In the years after they celebrated what God did in Egypt, through the festival of unleavened bread, and the retelling and teaching of the “Lord’s Passover”.
God had promised this freedom to Abram over four-hundred years earlier, and God delivered on his word. He promised to Abram and Israel, if they keep all his statutes and laws they would live in the land of milk and honey — a sample of paradise on earth, where God would be their God, and they would be his people.
However, even as the prophets constantly reminded Israel of the bondage and oppression in Egypt, and God’s saving work, they struggled to keep the law and teach their children, and often turned against God throughout the lifetime of the Old Testament. Then God and his word fell quiet for four-hundred years, yet again.
Although Egypt is mentioned over six-hundred times in the Bible, in the New Testament, Egypt is spoken of only twenty-seven times on nine occasions. At the coming of Christ, after the four-hundred year silence something had changed. Egypt is rarely mentioned and the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, isn’t mentioned at all in the New Testament. Why?
It’s no accident that Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with the infant Jesus in Matthew’s gospel account, written to teach Jews, Jesus of Nazareth was their King and Son of God. Only in Matthew chapter two is Egypt mentioned anywhere in the gospels.
When Jesus came to the cross it was the Passover, and the feast of unleavened bread. It is not just a coincidence that Jesus broke bread and gave the cup of wine to the disciples and said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” And that his blood was spilt on the cross and flowed down his sides.
It was not by chance the preparation for the Passover meal occurred at the same time as the disciples prepared for what is known today as the Last Supper. It is no fluke in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke that Jesus eats the Last Supper on the night when Jews ate the Lord’s Passover meal and remembered God giving them freedom from Egypt. It’s no human apparition in Holy Communion we to remember what God did for us on the cross, and receive the promise of Jesus in bread and wine!
And in seeming contradiction in the gospel of John, it’s no mistake that John has the preparation for the Passover on Friday afternoon, when at about 3 pm the lambs were being slaughtered for the Passover meal, rather than Thursday afternoon as in the other gospels. Did not the Lamb of God die on Friday afternoon so the destroyer passes over us? This is God’s new covenant give and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins?
All of us have now crossed over from Egypt; cleansed of the devil’s oppression under sin through the waters of the Red Sea; through the waters of baptism. Now God lives with us in the wilderness, leading us like he did with those he led out of Egypt, towards the land of milk and honey.
But even greater than the promise of the covenant, in the Old Testament, is that we get a foretaste of paradise as God gives himself to us in the new covenant. We receive “manna from heaven” in the body and blood of Jesus Christ in bread and wine.
So when you think of Egypt think of the bondage God has freed you from, and walk with him in the wilderness, in the hope of eternal life in the land of milk and honey, our heavenly home, face to face in the presence of God. Amen.
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