4: The Eleventh Sign

[00:00] Stephanie: Welcome to Season 2, episode 4. We are continuing our series on Lessons from the Wilderness. Hello, my Father.

[00:09] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be together always.

[00:12] Stephanie: Yes. And we’re both wearing blue, so matchy matchy today.

[00:17] Marcus: Yeah, I’m trying.

[00:21] Stephanie: It’s a good color, and you’re very bright and happy. I like it. So today’s icebreaker. Sweet or savory?

[00:30] Marcus: Yeah. I wish I could say otherwise, but I’m definitely a sweet guy.

[00:35] Stephanie: You are a sweet guy. Yes. I know whenever people ask me that, my instinct is that I’m probably sweet. But then I think about things like, my favorite fruit is salted grapefruit. That feels like more of a savory thing in terms of sweet things. I don’t know, but I mean sweet.

I’ll actually say, I don’t know why I want to bring this up, but I was with a friend one time, and she was making oatmeal, and she made a savory oatmeal. When we talk about brain science and seeing things for the first time, your mirror neurons, I was like, “You can do that? I’ve only ever made sweet oatmeal.”

[01:18] Marcus: I will say my favorite entrees have these very savory sauces on them, but by and large, yeah, definitely got a sweet tooth.

[01:29] Stephanie: Sweet is good. If you are with us on YouTube, let us know in the comments. Are you sweet or savory?

All right, Father, last week we talked about the eleven signs, more commonly known as the ten plagues, and the last sign is Passover. So this episode, we’re going to talk more about Passover. It’s extremely significant historically, symbolically, religiously, all the things. So let’s start narratively. What happened?

[01:58] Marcus: What happened? This is the final plague, as they’re typically called in English. This is the last sign, and this one is totally separate from all the others. We said there were eleven because it starts with the snakes and you’ve got three, three, three, and now we get to Passover. Passover clearly stands apart because it’s not just a sign, but it is introducing the climactic event.

It’s introducing the most theologically significant part of this and it is establishing a practice. This is going to become a festival for the rest of time. It says right in the text, “Do this forever,” which is interesting, because, as we’re going to see, there’s a lot of overtones to this, not only theologically, but related to emotional healing. I think that when it comes to the Passover in the text there are a couple of highlights.

First of all, I was reading through this again recently, and it just hit me. It’s like, how did I ever miss this? But it’s like it could either be a sheep or a goat. And that never occurred to me because we’re so used to the idea that Jesus is going to separate the sheep from the goats someday.

[03:10] Stephanie: It’s the Passover lamb.

[03:13] Marcus: It’s the Passover lamb, and that surely goats are evil somehow, but that’s not actually true. It just means it’s got to be one year old. One year old, either a sheep or a goat. And it’s also interesting that built into this is an element of taking care of one another at a community level. So if your family couldn’t afford a lamb, then your wealthier neighbor to the side was supposed to include your family.

And also, you weren’t supposed to go cheap on this. You were supposed to actually measure out what is a proper portion of lamb. You weren’t supposed to waste the lamb. You weren’t supposed to go really short on it. There’s very specific things about it. But it was the event that was going to get the people of Israel out of Egypt. And I think most of us know that story. So I won’t go into too much more of it.

[04:06] Stephanie: Yes. Read it for yourself if you want the full narrative. It’s a grand, unfolding story. Symbolically, then, this is a story of…

[04:17] Marcus: So symbolically, we’ve been talking about the wilderness and mediocrity theme, where Egypt represents slavery, it represents abuse, It represents all the hardship of the world. And so Passover is the escape from slavery. That is, God gets you out of it, there comes an end.

I think of people I’ve known who were religious, it’s going to sound bad, but their families were generational satanists. And so there were times where the abuse they went through didn’t stop until they escaped from their home and so there was this escape then things stopped. Now, there were other times where people finally got old enough, they were able to stand up and put a stop to some things.

But there is this idea of the Passover as a picture of escape, a picture of rescue, a picture of the beatings stopping, so to speak. The evil things are not going to happen anymore so there is this sense of amazement. What is it that brings this to an end, that brings the slavery to an end.

Some of us, when we think about emotional healing, that’s all we think about. We think, “Okay, how do we get this to stop? And once that stops, I’m good. I don’t care if I get anything else.” But God has this much fuller picture where he not only wants to get you out of that situation, we then get to this idea, that what’s happening in the Passover is what’s referred to throughout scripture as “the Day of the Lord”. There is a coming, the day of the Lord at the end of the age.

But there are many what we call “days of the Lord”. Any day of the Lord is a day when God is intervening. It’s sometimes called his visitation. God visits. So when God visits, it is good news and bad news. When God visits, it is good news for those who are being abused and those who are being oppressed and those who are suffering at the hands of injustice. It is bad news for those who are oppressing the poor. It is bad news for those who are doing the abusing.

So I sometimes think of all days of the Lord as this two sided coin. On the one side of the coin, there is fire, there is judgment, and on the other side of the coin, there is salvation. It’s the same exact picture that you see on Passover and that is, for the Egyptians, this was really bad news. What’s interesting is, the text connects it directly to the gods of Egypt, like, “Bad news for the gods of Egypt, you’re going down.” And there’s bad news for the people of Egypt. Bad news for Egypt as an entity. But it was good news for those whom they had been oppressing because they were able to escape.

[07:12] Stephanie: So this is our first big salvation experience in this journey.

[07:16] Marcus: Yeah, this is a big salvation experience. Obviously, it’s going to climax at the Red Sea, which we’ll talk about, I think, next week.

[07:24] Stephanie: Yes, I’m excited for that, too. So then, theologically, what are we learning about salvation from this?

[07:33] Marcus: Theologically, there are a lot of images built into Passover. First one is, it’s a lamb. That immediately makes us think of Jesus. In fact, the apostle Paul says very clearly in one Corinthians that Christ is our Passover lamb. I think it’s 1 Corinthians 5:7. It says, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” And it’s interesting that Jesus was sacrificed essentially at the very end of the day, which in Jewish culture would have been around 6:00 p.m. If you think about it, that’s right around twilight. Well, it says in the text that the lamb was to be sacrificed at twilight.

And so there are all these layers of images that connect what was happening with Passover to Jesus, including this idea of Jesus being a substitute. There is the idea that the blood of the Passover lamb is what created salvation from wrath. And in the same way, there is probably, more accurately, salvation from destruction. The Lord himself was going to go through the land. He would see where there was blood. And when he saw blood, he would pass over the house.

In the same way, when we are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, there is blood that marks us. And God sees the mark and he says, “Okay, destruction will not come to this one.” So we are saved from destruction. That doesn’t always mean God’s angry at somebody. It means that they are under the judgment of destruction. So what’s really fascinating about this is this idea of grace. It’s a wonderful picture of grace.

And I’m going to jump ahead to another story in the Old Testament of Mephibosheth.

[09:23] Stephanie: Yeah.

[09:24] Marcus: Can you say Mephibosheth? I have trouble with that one sometimes.

[09:26] Stephanie: Mephibosheth.

[09:27] Marcus: There you go. Yeah, that word. So Mephibosheth was the son of Jonathan, and Jonathan was David’s best friend. And what’s interesting in that story is that David says, “Is there anybody from the house of Saul that I can show favor to?” And essentially, Mephibosheth is given Saul’s estate. He’s given a place at David’s court. He’s given a place at David’s table, meaning he’s provided for for the rest of his life from government funds. And here he is. All these wonderful blessings are given to Mephibosheth.

And here’s the question. Did Mephibosheth do anything to earn it? No, nothing. He was simply the son of David’s good friend, Jonathan. David and Jonathan had entered a covenant together and so on the basis of that, simply because he was, in a sense, in Jonathan, he got all of these blessings in the same way that we in Christ get all of these blessings. They’re given to us by grace.

Well, the Passover is also a picture of this. Passover is this idea that God sees the blood, sees the mark, if you will, and that’s all it takes. There’s no investigation, like, “Well, are the people in there really living worthy? Are they really in there?” It’s like, “Is the blood covering this or not?” And it helps us understand that this is what’s happening with Jesus as well.

So there’s this theological significance to the whole thing that really comes out clearly when we begin to understand what the blood of Jesus does for us and what it means for him to be the lamb of God.

[11:11] Stephanie: I love that you brought up Mephibosheth. So many good things. So what do you see the Passover doing then, as setting up for the rest of the healing journey?

[11:24] Marcus: So Passover is the start of the healing journey. When they get out of Egypt, they’re still victims, right? They still have that victim mindset, and their identity is slave now. They’ve just been broken like that. Slavery has been set free. This is their emancipation proclamation, if you will, and they are leaving where they have been enslaved and they’re going someplace else. So this is the start of the journey.

What we’re going to see in the journey, though, is that while they are no longer technically slaves, they still think like slaves and they still act like it. And one of the things that God’s going to do is, he’s going to take them out into the wilderness. He’s going to take them into boot camp. If you think about the purpose of boot camp, one of the main purposes is to tear down one identity and build another one. And it is to stop thinking like a civilian and start thinking like a soldier.

In the same way, Israel’s boot camp is going to break them of this slave mentality, this victim mentality. In fact, I’ve heard people talk about a victim spirit that often goes with people who have been abused. It’s this idea that says, “I am not worthy, I am less than, I am defined by what’s wrong with me.”

In extreme cases, this can turn into a form of narcissism, because what happens is you actually define yourself by your problems. I think Jim Wilder would call this skunk narcissism. Skunk narcissists are like, “I am special, but the thing that makes me special are my problems.” And so what can happen with a victim spirit is that I’m afraid to get over my problems. I’m actually afraid to get healing because that’s actually what gives me my identity.

[13:09] Stephanie: So what are some practical takeaways that people can take away?

[13:14] Marcus: Practical takeaways to take away. Hopefully they keep them, but, okay.

[13:18] Stephanie: Department of redundancy department. Yeah.

[13:20] Marcus: The practical takeaways on the Passover thing, first of all, I think it’s just understanding grace. Understanding what Christ actually did for us is a beautiful picture of that. One of the reasons it’s an eternal practice, it’s an eternal sign, is because it points so clearly to Christ and what he did, that it goes on forever. And so as Christians, every time we take communion, at some level we are remembering Passover as well. And that’s because it’s the blood of the lamb that is the heart of both things.

So practical takeaways are, it helps us theologically to think through what Christ did for us, it helps us understand that God does want to rescue us from things. He doesn’t want to leave us in a place of persecution forever. And it’s going to look different for different people, but God is a God who saves and delivers and rescues, and the Passover story is the ultimate example of that kind of salvation.

[14:18] Stephanie: Huzzah! Well, I just want to take a moment to invite our listeners: If you ever have any questions or icebreaker ideas or testimonies and stories of how you’re using the podcast or how the podcast has helped you, I am inviting you to check out On the Trail Mailbox. There is a link where you can submit that feedback.

I’ll have that posted in descriptions and my Monday emails. If you’re not already receiving my Monday emails, you can sign up for the Deeper Walk email list. Every Monday I send out a podcast email with encouragement.

Father, any closing thoughts for this episode?

[15:07] Marcus: Well, one of the things we’re doing by walking through this journey is we want to come back to the idea that God is a God who heals and he is a God of redemption. One of the things we know is, we all have hardship in this life, we all go through hard things. What we understand is, whether it’s the creation account itself, which is basically a redemption story, whether it’s the Passover story, God keeps embedding this theme of redemption in story after story in the Bible.

It is this theme that no matter what I’m going through, God sees me, God hears, and in this case, if you’re familiar with Immanuel prayer, “I see you, I hear you. I know how big this is. I’m happy you’re bringing it to me. I’m strong enough to do something about it.” Well, that model actually is kind of anchored in the Passover here.

[15:56] Stephanie: Can you actually dwell on that briefly because you just spelled it out, but if people don’t know what you’re talking about…

[16:02] Marcus: Yes. Immanuel Prayer is from the book, Joyful Journey that was co- authored, and the idea is to practice a mutual mind state with God. How do I get myself in sync with God’s thoughts? The idea is to step out of your own perspective for a moment and put yourself in God’s perspective of what he would be saying to you.

The steps that they use are to write as if God is speaking to you:

• I see you. “I see you sitting at the table talking to your daughter.”
• I hear you. And that is, what is your heart request? What’s going on inside? Like, “I hear you asking, I’d really like to get free from this thing going on in my life.”
• And then I know. “I know how big this is. I know how long this has been going on. I know what this means to you. I get it.”

All these steps are found in the Passover story. They’re all found in Exodus. When God sends Moses to the people, he says to him, “I have seen my people’s suffering. I have heard their groaning. I have heard their cry for help. I know what’s going on here.” And then the idea is, “I will be with you.”

So he doesn’t use the word happy, but you get this theme going through that, and then finally, clearly, “My arm is not too short to save. I am strong enough to do something about this.” And so I think it’s for people who are familiar with the Immanuel prayer pattern. I think it’s helpful to know the connection it has to the Passover account.

[17:32] Stephanie: And people can use this to process things from just your daily connection to God all the way through pressing into freedom.

[17:43] Marcus: Exactly. So it’s meant to be a daily journaling process, but it can also be used as an emotional healing process.

[17:51] Stephanie: Beautiful. I like that we ended with that tool. Thank you so much, Father.

[17:55] Marcus: You’re welcome, Daughter.

[17:58] Stephanie: Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend.

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Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.