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The Gospel According to Moses: Discovering the Lost Language of Salvation—September 29, 2002

Exodus 12:1–13

1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.

5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.

8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over a fire—head, legs and inner parts. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 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.

12 On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”

This is the Word of the Lord

We’re looking at the life of Moses in the book of Exodus. We saw last week at one point Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, asks the question, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him …?” What he’s saying is, “Everybody has their own religion. Everyone has their own gods. Everyone has their own faith. Who is your God? What is so unique about your God? What is so unique about your faith that I should embrace it?” That’s what he’s saying to Moses.

There is probably no better answer to that question (what is so unique about this God and what is so unique about his ways and this faith?) than this famous passage (the Passover) because for those faiths that accept the biblical vision of ultimate spiritual reality (Judaism and Christianity), this is the center of it.

For Jews, the Passover meal is the central thing that makes them who they are. For Christians, a revised Passover meal, the Lord’s Supper, is the central act of Christian worship. In other words, when Pharaoh asks the questions, “What makes this faith so unique?” and “What makes this God so unique?” here it is, but look at what is at the center of it. Look at what is at the center of this thing: the bloody death of a helpless victim.

There is no other religion like that. At the very center of the center of biblical faith, of the biblical vision of ultimate spiritual reality, is the bloody death of a helpless victim. Why? What does it mean? Here’s the answer. We need to look at this passage which tells us about the offering up of the lamb, but in order to understand the passage or the account we have to put it into the context of the story of the Lamb, which is a Bible-long story which goes from the very beginning to the very end.

As a matter of fact and as I want to show you, the story of the Bible, the narrative, and the plotline of the Bible essentially is the narrative or the story of the Lamb. We want to understand the account of the offering of the lamb first. Then we need to put in the context of the whole story of the Lamb. Lastly, we need to spend some time to do what John the Baptist said which was to behold the Lamb. Let’s look at the offering of the lamb, the story of the Lamb, and the beholding of the Lamb.

1. The offering of the lamb

What do we see in the passage? Here’s what we see. First of all, God has called Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, over and over again to release the Hebrews from their grinding poverty and slavery into which the Egyptians had put them. He calls Pharaoh to let them go. Pharaoh refuses, and a series of plagues have come which we looked at last week.

Finally, the final stroke. What is the final stroke? It’s right here in verse 12. God says, “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn …” What’s interesting is there’s another reference. It’s not in this passage we read for you. It’s over in verse 23. In verse 23, it’s Moses speaking to the Israelites about the Passover night.

Moses said, “[The Lord] will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.” The destroyer. Last week we, at great length and therefore I cannot recapitulate, talked about a simple fact or even law of the universe, and that is when you violate God’s design for creation or design for your body or design for relationships, you unleash forces of disintegration and chaos.

We said this is always true, and it even happens now even at this level. If you overwork, if you make your career an idol, there is breakdown. Eventually, there will be physical breakdown and emotional breakdown and spiritual breakdown and relational, family breakdown and all that sort of thing. If you just hold a grudge, if you refuse to forgive somebody and you hold a grudge, doctors and counselors and common sense tell you there is breakdown. There’s disintegration, social and spiritual and emotional and physical and so on.

When God says, “That night the destroyer will come,” what he is saying is, “I have, as it were, scrolled ahead in time and on one night, in one place eternal, divine, judgment-day justice is coming down. There’s going to be a temporary, preliminary, but devastating judgment day. Not just the forces of destruction, disintegration, and chaos that are out there in general that whenever you disobey the design leads to disintegration and chaos, but for that one night, down will come the destroyer.” Wow. A preliminary, temporary judgment day.

The second thing God says when he speaks to the Israelites is, “I’m about to unleash the most inexorable, irresistible, unstoppable force in the universe: the destroyer. It is going to go through the greatest military and political power the world has ever seen, Egypt. It’s going to go right through it like a knife through hot butter. There’s only one thing that will protect you. There’s only one way you can face the ultimate force of the universe. A lamb.”

“A lamb? I’m going to be protected by the ultimate force in the universe by Fluffy and Muffy, the weakest, meekest, and mildest kind of creature possible?” God says, “Yes. The only way you’re going to be able to face this ultimate force in the universe is I want you to kill a lamb, eat it with your family, and put the blood on the doorposts.” That’s the Passover.

Obviously, this is at very best confounding and at very worst deeply offensive to the average, modern person. The only way it will become less confounding, hopefully (certainly), and less offensive, hopefully, is if you put it in the context of what I already referred to as the Bible-long story of the Lamb.

In other words, this particular passage we read, as famous as it is, will make no sense unless you put it into the context, because the story of the Lamb is an enormously long and astounding story with many chapters. What do I mean by that? Let me go back and show you what the chapters are, at least some of them.

2. The story of the Lamb

First of all, the very first chapter in the story of the Lamb in the Bible is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Genesis 22. Abraham has a son he loves, Isaac, and in Genesis 22, he hears God speak to him. God says, “Offer up your only son as a sacrifice to me.” Modern people believe Abraham must have felt, obviously, anguish, and it’s clear from the story he feels anguished.

Modern people say, “I know why he’s so anguished.” Modern people say, “He must have thought that was a monstrous command! He must have thought that was an insane command!” The answer is no. If you believe that, it’s because you don’t understand the historical and cultural context of Abraham.

There’s a man named Jon Levenson who is a Jewish scholar and teaches at Harvard. He’s written a book called The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son which does a wonderful job in a very scholarly way of putting it into context, so we actually have a pretty good idea of what Abraham was thinking, and it’s not that.

Here’s the context. Ancient people in ancient cultures did not have aspirations for individual prominence, individual prosperity, or individual success. That’s not what you hoped for. That’s not what you aspired to. You aspired for the success and the prominence and the prosperity of your family. You didn’t think in such individualistic terms. In ancient cultures, you wanted your family to succeed.

Secondly, in ancient cultures, if some member of the family failed or acted in a very shameful way, the entire family was responsible. If one person acted shamefully, that shame belonged to everyone. Modern Americans, Western people, and especially Americans, even more than Europeans, are the most radically individualistic people. This is the most radically individualistic culture ever.

We feel like, “If some member of my family acts in a shameful way, that’s them. It’s not me! I’m my own person. I’m setting my own course for life, and I don’t want to be held responsible for what they have done. I’m not responsible for what they have done. I am my own person. I am deciding who I want to be.”

I think it’s going to become clear, and I’m sure a lot of you already have recognized this, that this is an unbalanced position. Our radically individualistic, American, Western culture is unbalanced about this. As you get older, one of the most disconcerting sort of things is you come to realize you are much, much, much more, inescapably much more, a product of your family than you thought.

What you are, both good and bad, is not as attributable completely to you. Much of it is attributable (good and bad) to your family, to what they did and what they didn’t do in you, with you, and beside you. After the Columbine atrocity, even in the most radically individualistic culture in history, it was virtually impossible not to look at the families of the two guys who did all the atrocities and say, “There’s responsibility there, either active for what they did with the kids or at least passive for their neglect.”

It was universal. It was unavoidable. They felt it. Everybody else felt it. In other words, the idea that you’re an individual and there’s no relationship between you and the rest of your family is probably unbalanced. Most cultures in most centuries have had a more balanced understanding of individual and collective responsibility.

Having said that, let’s go back. In ancient cultures who didn’t think of themselves as individuals but as families and at a time in which the firstborn got the whole estate, God sent a message that was unmistakably clear to them but is opaque to us. In the book of Exodus 22, and in the book of Numbers 3 and 8, there was a message God sent which was opaque to us. Here’s what it is.

He said over and over again in the Mosaic legislation, “The life of every firstborn is mine unless you redeem.” Every year they had to put up so many shekels. There was a redemption price on the head of the firstborn of every family. Their lives are forfeit unless they’re redeemed. That’s what the Law of Moses said.

To us, that’s completely opaque, but it was an unmistakable message to ancient people who immediately understood, because in the firstborn all of their hopes were embodied. All their hopes for themselves and for their families were embodied in the firstborn. God was sending an unmistakable message, and that is that there is a debt over every family on the face of the earth.

There is a debt of sin. There is a debt that is owed God on every family on the face of the earth. Your firstborns are liable for the way in which you are living, and their lives are forfeit unless they’re redeemed. That doesn’t make any sense to individualistic Americans, but when you begin to understand …

What that means, and it’s very, very important to understand, is when God said to Abraham, “Offer up your firstborn as an offering to me,” if Abraham had heard the words, “Go into the tent and kill Sarah,” Abraham rightly so would have said, “I’m having a hallucination,” or “That’s a demon, because God would not call me to do something absolutely at variance with his righteousness and with his Word and his will.”

When God said, “Offer up your firstborn,” Abraham did not say, “What a monster!” Abraham realized God was calling in the debt, that God was doing something he had a right to do, that Isaac was about to die for Abraham’s sins. Oh, Abraham struggled, of course, but he didn’t say, “How can you be so unjust?”

What Abraham was saying in his heart was, “How can you be both just, which you have a right to be (you’re a just God), and still a God of grace? Because you’ve promised great things to happen through me and my son in the world. How can you be both just and justifier of those who believe? How can you be both just and a gracious God? How can you be a God both of justice and a God of the promise? How can you do it?”

As he was walking up the mountain, the emotional hot peak of the account of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 comes in verse 7 and 8 where Isaac looks down and says, “Father, the wood? The fire? The knife? Where is the lamb? Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham looks at his son and says, “God will provide a lamb, my son.” What Abraham was saying is, “I hope with all my being you will not have to die for my sins, though that is just. I, with all my being, hope God will provide a lamb so my little lamb won’t have to die.”

A lot of people say, “I really object to this. I don’t believe this.” By the way, I’ve had people tell me “That’s primitive and obscene.” Pardon me, but calling an idea a name doesn’t disprove it. What are the objections to it? I think there are two objections to this whole idea that there is a debt of sin and we all deserve judgment. There are two objections. Let me give you the two of them.

The first objection goes like this. They say, “I don’t really believe. I think you’re extreme when you say every single family, everybody on the face of the earth, cannot pass judgment, that every single person on the face of the earth has this debt and is not living right. I don’t believe that.” A lot of people say, “I believe I’m supposed to find my own standards, and I have the right to determine what’s right or wrong for me.”

Okay. Let’s be postmodern for a moment. Let’s say there are no transcendent, moral absolutes that everybody has to be judged according to, whether you believe them or not. Let’s not say anything about that. Let’s be postmodern. Let’s just say around your neck there is an invisible tape recorder and the only thing that tape recorder ever picks up are things you say other people ought to do. It only picks up standards you call people to ascribe to.

In other words, it only picks up your moral standards. If, at the end of your life, we were to take that tape recorder off and say, “Let’s evaluate your life,” there’s not a person on the face of the earth who could live up even to that. Let’s not go to the Ten Commandments. Let’s not go to the Golden Rule. Let’s just go to your own standards you have chosen.

There is no one on the face of the earth who could face an evaluation of how they’ve lived their lives. No one has lived properly. No one can pass any kind of moral evaluation of any sort. Some people say, “Okay. All right. Here’s the thing I don’t understand. This idea of a debt that has to be paid for. Surely, if there is a God, God can just forgive it. Surely, if there is a God, God can forgive. He can just forgive, can’t he?”

Listen carefully. The answer is no. What I mean is no, he can’t just forgive without payment. I beg you to think about this with me for a minute. This is very important to understanding this whole thing. First of all, let me ask you psychologically, if someone really, really wrongs you, what happens?

I would suggest unavoidably there is a debt. There is something between you and the person who has seriously wronged you, and it can’t be wished away. It can’t be ignored. It’s a debt. I’ll show you what I mean. There are only two things you can do with a debt. The only way to get rid of the barrier is, on the one hand, you can make them pay it down.

In other words, you can hurt them. You can berate them. You can find ways of making them suffer. You can exclude them. There are all sorts of things. As you see them paying it, you sense the debt being paid down, and at a certain point it’s gone. By the way, the Bible says if you do it that way, if you make people pay for what they have done, it will turn you into a hard person. It will dehumanize you, but that’s not our subject today.

Nevertheless, you can make them pay it. On the other hand, you might say, “Why don’t you just forgive?” Okay. That’s the right thing to do, but let me tell you what forgiveness is made of. To forgive them means when I want to hurt them, I don’t. When I want to slice up their reputation in talking to other people, I don’t. When I want to just think hateful thoughts about how they have done these awful things and what awful people they are, I don’t.

If you refuse to do that, you’ll find as time goes on your anger slowly subsides. Why? Because you’re paying the debt down yourself. You are paying it down. It’s costly. It’s difficult, but the fact of the matter is it doesn’t go away. There is no way emotionally or psychologically, when a real wrong is done, that can just be forgiven. Somebody has to pay the debt. They have to pay it, or you have to pay it. Somebody must pay it or the barrier is there.

Let’s think about it sociologically instead of psychologically. Let’s just say we find a man (definitely he’s done it) guilty of some horrible crime: serial rape and murder. What if a judge says, “Well, he’s sorry for it, so let’s let him go free”? Right away, the reason there would be outrage is if he doesn’t pay, society will pay. Right?

To let him go free means, first of all, the victim’s lives are devalued. In other words, if there’s no payment, it means their lives and the things they’ve lost are worthless. Secondly, if he goes free, society will pay, because this will just go on. It will just go on. There’s no deterrence. This person will go on, perhaps, doing it, or other people will go on doing it because it wasn’t punished. In other words, either he pays or we pay.

Psychologically and sociologically there is no such thing as a really serious wrong that can be forgiven without payment. Somebody has to pay it. Somebody has to experience the pain. Somebody has to bear the price. Somebody. If it’s true even we, in spite of our rhetoric, cannot avoid that, there’s no such thing as a wrong that can just be forgiven without somebody paying …

If even we, with our imperfect and fuzzy moral senses, sense that, how much more would God sense that at the cosmic level? Therefore, what this means is Abraham knows this. Abraham is not a modern American individualist. He knows this. He’s not naïve about these things. He knows God created us, God sustained us, and therefore, we owe it to him to live for him completely, but we don’t.

Secondly, we owe it to our neighbor to treat them the way we want to be treated ourselves, but we don’t. We don’t even come close. As a result, none of us have lived the way we should. These are serious wrongs we’ve done against God and our neighbor, and as a result, there’s a debt, and God has the right to call for it.

At the last minute, God says, “Abraham, don’t do it.” Yet, the lamb never shows up. Abraham’s chapter ends, and we say, “This makes us feel good,” but wait a minute. There are a few unanswered questions. There’s a debt, but the lamb never shows up. There’s a ram who gets caught in the thicket, and the ram is sacrificed, but more as a thank offering because the fact of the matter is there’s a debt, God has a right to the payment, but it doesn’t get made, so where is the lamb?

Chapter 2. Moses. Again, God claims the life of the firstborn. Now are you beginning to understand it? Can you get out of your own culture and historical moment enough to understand it? He claims the right of the firstborn again, and again, he says, “The only hope is a lamb.” Now in the Passover chapter of this story, we see two extremely interesting principles played out. The two principles are the principle of spiritual egalitarianism and the principle of spiritual substitutionism. They’re astounding.

First, the principle of egalitarianism. Not in this passage, but over a little later in 12:22, God says to the Israelites, “After you put the blood on your door, not one of you shall go out of your house until the morning.” Do you know what that means? If you’re reading this chapter, it goes right by and you don’t even think about it. Do you know what this means? It’s an astounding thing.

What he is trying to say is the destroyer is not coming just for Egyptians. The destroyer is no respecter of persons. This is what is so amazing. He said, “Look, Israelites. You are the oppressed; they are the oppressor. You worship the true God; they worship idols. Yet in yourselves, if you were to meet judgment tonight, you would find, whether it’s on the Ten Commandments, whether it’s by the Golden Rule, or whether it’s by the tape recorder standards, you would be lost tonight. In yourself, you are absolutely no better than the Egyptians.

In the final spiritual analysis, if you, the morally ethical, the biblically righteous, the doctrinally proper, go out tonight and try to meet judgment on your own and you do not sit under the blood … If you go out there on your own, your race, your pedigree, your ethnicity, your religion, your beliefs, your doctrine, your ethical behavior, none of that will help you. You will be as lost as the people in the world who you disdain the most, the Egyptians.” That is an amazing statement. There’s the principle of spiritual egalitarianism.

Secondly, there’s the principle of spiritual substitutionism. What is the hope? In every single house in Egypt that night (I hate to say it this way, but I have to do it just to be vivid here), there was either a dead son or a dead lamb. It was one or the other. In other words, the lamb got what the son deserved. The lamb was a substitute. The lamb paid the debt so the firstborn did not have to pay the debt for the family.

Every firstborn son in every Hebrew home looked at the table and saw the lamb and said, “The only reason I’m not dead is because that is.” There are people today who say the whole principle of substitution is not credible to them, but I would just beg you … Hopefully, I’ve done this well enough. I’ve created the context for this urge, for this appeal.

I would appeal to you to consider whether it is not your ethnocentrism, your cultural narrowness, or your feeling like the American understanding of legal responsibility is the only one (“The radical individualism of the culture in which I live is obviously the right one.”). I would like you to try to get out of yourself for a moment. We’ve already talked about the fact our culture is actually kind of unbalanced in this way.

The simple fact is we know there’s a debt. Emotionally, psychologically, and socially, there is a debt. We have not been living as we should, and just as the guilt of some can be transferred to one in the family, that one can pay the price for the family. The principle of substitution is not credible to us largely because our American individualism kind of blinds us to it.

Would you for a moment say maybe what most cultures and most centuries have understood and what the Bible says is true, that it is possible, that rather than me paying my debt, someone in solidarity with me pays it for me? It makes sense. It’s a beautiful thing, and most people in most places can understand it. Americans have a lot of trouble doing it. Would you just try to get out of your culture for a moment and recognize the fact this is what the claim is?

When you put egalitarianism and substitutionism together, you have an amazing statement, and that’s what this is. Do you know what the statement is? This passage is saying this is not the last chapter. Do you know why? Yes, the Israelites are politically and economically the victims, and yet, when God says, “If you go out from underneath the blood of the lamb and face judgment on your own, you will be smitten tonight,” what he’s actually saying to them is this.

“Even though I am delivering you tonight, it’s not the ultimate deliverance you need. You are still in a debt of sin. You need a deeper deliverance than the one tonight. As important as the one is tonight, as incredible as this one is, you need another one. As important as this lamb is, you need another Lamb. As important as this deliverance is, you need a deeper one, a more radical salvation, because you have a bigger debt. You have a bigger problem. You have a bigger and deeper kind of spiritual bondage.”

Scroll forward to chapter 3. Jesus Christ, on the night in which he was betrayed, celebrates the Passover meal. He asks his disciples to come together and says, “Let’s celebrate the Passover tonight.” They all get together for the Passover and when Jesus Christ stands up, there are two enormous shocks.

First, when Jesus Christ stands up to begin to speak, everybody said, “Okay. He’s in the place of the father.” At the Passover meal there is a presider, and his job is to stand up and explain the meal. If you go through the rest of chapters 12 and 13 of Exodus, it actually gives the presider some ideas on this. He’s supposed to get up and he’s supposed to explain the meal.

Jesus Christ gets up, and what do we expect to hear him say? What did the disciples expect to hear him say? They expect to hear him say, “This is the bread of our affliction. Our ancestors suffered in the wilderness so we could be free.” Instead, he gets up and says, “This is my body. This bread is my body.”

What he’s saying is, “This is the bread of my affliction I am going to suffer to give you the ultimate freedom, freedom not just from physical and political and economic bondage but from sin and death itself.” That’s the first shock, because when he says, “This is my body,” in the place of the presider at the Passover meal, he is saying, “Now it’s my suffering that’s going to be the ultimate liberation for you.”

Here’s the second shock. When he stood up, the disciples looked down … There are three things you have at a Passover meal. You have the unleavened bread. There’s Jesus breaking the bread. You have the four cups of wine. There’s Jesus Christ pouring out the cup, obviously. Then there’s the lamb. There’s no reference to a lamb. There’s no lamb. “What kind of Passover meal is this?” say the disciples. There’s no lamb on the table.

Do you know why? Because the Lamb was at the table. The lamb was deliberately removed from the Passover meal because Jesus Christ is saying, “Tonight, I am the lamb. My death is the central event to which all of the history of God’s relationship to the world has been moving. Tonight, I am giving you that ultimate salvation even Moses understood that Passover was pointing to when God said, ‘I’ll take you out politically, but if you get out from under the blood of the lamb, you still have a debt of sin on you. I’m removing it tonight.’ ”

3. The beholding of the Lamb

In other words, he says, “This night is really a night unlike all other nights.” This is the reason why John the Baptist looked at Jesus one day and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!”

In other words, John the Baptist was saying, “I get it! I get it! Our firstborn sons were not saved because of the death of some wooly, little quadrupeds, no matter how cute. Our firstborns were saved because God has given up his firstborn.” That’s the answer to Abraham. God was saying, “Abraham, I’m going to walk up a mountain with my Son, and I’m going to lay the wood on him, and nobody will be able to say, ‘Stop.’ Abraham, the reason your only beloved son won’t have to die is because mine did.”

One commentator puts it this way. “When the ultimate beloved child cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ the Father paid the price in his silence.” Behold, the perfect Lamb. John 19:33 pointed out Jesus’ bones were not broken. Why? Because it had to be a lamb without spot and blemish. Matthew 27 pointed out Jesus died just at twilight. Why? Because the lamb was to be slain at twilight.

Abraham’s first chapter of the lamb said there is a debt, Moses’ chapter of the lamb said a substitute can pay for it, and Jesus’ chapter said, “It’s me. It’s God’s only Son.” Of course, there’s one more chapter, you know. Go to the book of Revelation where the Lamb is on the throne. Let’s close like this. Do you remember when John the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God …”? Do you know what that means? He doesn’t just mean, “There’s the Lamb of God.”

“Behold the Lamb of God” means, “Think! Realize it! Take it in! Look! Look! Look! Look!” He’s not just saying, “Oh, there’s the Lamb of God.” He says, “Think about it. Realize it. Grasp it.” Do you? If you are exploring Christianity, if you’re somebody who is sort of looking into Christianity … The one question I get over the years of New Yorkers, and it’s an absolutely natural question for people who are exploring, is to say, “I do not understand why Jesus had to die. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Behold the Lamb of God in three ways. Here are the answers. First, do not let your American individualism obscure what the Bible says and what most cultures believe, and that is, because you have wronged God and your neighbor, there is a debt that must be paid. Don’t let that be obscured! There is a debt that must be paid. When the ultimate beloved Son cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” the Father paid the debt in his silence.

Secondly, Jesus had to die. If you don’t see that Jesus had to die, it makes no sense of the accounts of his life. Look at the Gospels and you’ll see in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus crying out, almost losing it. Look at the gospel accounts. Jesus Christ on the cross crying out, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Do you know what you see? Here’s what you see.

If you are making up a faith, if you are making up a religion and you are just fabricating stories about the founder of your religion and about his life, you would never in a million years put those things in. Never! You’d never have him crying out. You’d never have him saying in the garden of Gethsemane, “Lord, can I get off the hook?” You’d never make that up.

Thousands of people, men and women, have faced executions better than that. Since you would never make those up, they must have happened, and since they must have happened or they never would have been written, there’s no other way to account for them. He must have been forsaken. God must have forsaken him.

Since he was forsaken and he was, by all accounts, the most wonderful man who ever lived, his life was so wonderful, why would he have been forsaken? He must have been in our place. Do you get that? He must have suffered and cried out. Therefore, he must have been forsaken. Therefore, he must have been your substitute.

If you don’t believe Jesus Christ had to die for you … If you say, like a lot of people in New York say, “I believe in a God who just loves us; I don’t believe in a God of wrath who Jesus Christ had to assuage through his propitiatory death. I don’t believe in that. I just believe in a God who loves,” ironically, with all due respect, a God of more wrath than yours is necessarily a God of more love than yours.

It’s one thing to have somebody say, “I love you.” It’s another thing to really show it. I have never felt more loved in my life. A lot of people said they loved me. I got sick and all kinds of people (my family, you, the church) … I’ve never been more loved in my life. Do you know why? Because I never had more people doing things for me.

A god who says, “I love you,” but you don’t have Jesus and you don’t have the cross, it’s never going to electrify you. It’s not going to change you. You’re never going to be transformed by that. You have to have a God who shows it. Therefore, ironically, the God of the Bible, the God of more wrath than your generic god, is a God of more love.

Why did Jesus have to die? It’s the only way to make sense of the historical accounts. Secondly, it’s the only way to be transformed and the only way to deal with the debt. Some of you say, “Well, I am a Christian,” and if you are a Christian then here’s what it means to behold the Lamb of God. If you look at what he’s done, it will transform your attitude toward other people.

Even a Hebrew is no better than an Egyptian if you buy this understanding of the Passover God, the God of the cross. Do you realize that? You are no better than anyone else. It totally transforms your view of others. I’ve had people say, “Well, if you think you have the truth, that’s going to make you an oppressive religion.” It all depends on what you think the truth is.

What is the truth? The truth is the cross, the Lamb. The truth is Jesus Christ dying for people who didn’t believe in him. If you see that, it makes you know you are no better than the people you disdain. Only in him, are you loved. Think about that! If you take the cross in and the Passover in, it will radically transform your way of looking at others.

It will radically transform your way of looking at glory and achievement. In New York, glory and achievement is acquiring. The cross says glory and achievement is serving, is giving, and is giving away. It radically changes your whole understanding of life.

Thirdly, it radically changes your view of suffering. Because the most undeserved suffering in the history of the world, the most apparently senseless suffering in the history of the world worked out to the most good. That’s going to completely change your attitude toward your own suffering.

Some of you say, “Okay. If I really beheld the Lamb of God, my attitude toward others would be totally different. My attitude toward my life would be totally different. My suffering would be totally different, but it’s not.” Just remember one more thing.

You should eat the lamb with others (fellowship groups). You eat the lamb with others. Christianity is an eternal Passover meal in which you get together with other Christians (other people who have had the same experience) and you say, “Why did this happen? What does it mean?” You behold the Lamb of God together until it sinks in and you’re transformed.

Do you know if you stopped an Israelite in the desert of Sinai and you said, “What are you guys and what are you doing?” Do you know what they would have said? They would say, “Well, I was an alien in a foreign land under penalty of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb, and even though morally and racially and ethically I could not save myself, I was saved. Now, I’ve been brought out, and God is in our midst, and even though I know looking around here this is a desert in a wilderness, he’s taking me to the Promised Land.”

Do you realize that’s exactly what a Christian says? Exactly. Because everything in the history of the world, everything in the history of the Bible, all climaxed on the day Jesus Christ became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Let’s pray.

Father, we ask you would help us to understand why Jesus died, to understand why Jesus had to die. We thank you, because we behold him as the Lamb, we are new people, utterly new. Our attitudes toward others, our attitudes toward ourselves, and our attitudes and our relationships to the world, our suffering, and the circumstances of our lives are radically transformed.

We have to admit as Christian friends and brothers and sisters here this morning we don’t live in accordance with that because we don’t behold it deeply enough. We pray you would teach us how to eat the meal, as it were, together in community, telling each other what this means until we are transformed into the likeness of your Son, in whose name we pray, amen.