Passed Over

We all know about the first passover spoken of in the book of Exodus.

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. 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. 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.

~ Exodus 12:21-23

This time when I read the passage it leaped out at me--Jesus is my passover lamb. In this case in Exodus, the angel was coming to smite those who had done wrong. But God commanded the Israelites to put the blood of a lamb on their door so that they would not be killed along with the Egyptians. Think about it--even from that time, thousands of years before the Savior, God was giving signs for us. The Israelites would never even understand the significance of what they were doing at the time. Jesus's blood has protected us, God's chosen people, from being punished along with the unbelievers.

I have heard that before, but this time it really meant a lot to me. And here's the part I didn't notice. In Psalms 34:20 it says, "not one of His bones shall be broken" talking about Jesus. Then in Exodus 12:46 God says not to break any of the bones of the passover lamb. Whoa. Isn't it so amazing how God uses these things to speak to us, thousands of years later, just to remind us how mighty He is?

Stories

Today Stuart McAllister, one of RZIM's speakers, was on at apologetics. He spoke more wonderfully than usual of Ravi Zecharias. I used to wonder if the littler evangelists knew what it was about the great evangelists that made them excellent speakers. Now I know that they know :)

One of the things he mentioned about Dr. Ravi was that he uses stories perfectly. It's true--he always has a story and it ties in perfectly to what he's saying, and he can explain his whole point with that one story. It's really amazing--it makes him easy to understand, and you can see how the point applies to real life just because he told the story.

Stories are amazing things. Dr. McAllister talked about movies, and what great conversation they are, and about WHY they are such great conversation starters. It is because the story is usually one of hope. He used Finding Nemo as an example. It's not just a story about fish. The son gets taken away, and the dad goes off and braves the ocean to find his son, and all kinds of things happen, and OH WE'RE GONNA DIE, and then..........they're reunited and live happily ever after. WHY do we love stories like that? WHY do stories work as such openers, hooks, and attention grabbers? Dr. McAllister says, "The stories we love only work because there's a primal story from which they draw their power".

"If we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in."

~C.S. Lewis

We need to see THROUGH beauty to what beauty points to.

My new favorite quote

I heard my new favorite quote in apologetics this week. You shall hear it at the end--no skipping :) Let's start with a passage from John 11.

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. "Take away the stone," he said.

"But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."
Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Let us compare this with Jesus's resurrection in John 20...

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."

There are a few major differences in these resurrections. First and most obvious: Jesus was God, Lazarus was a man. But notice that in Lazarus's case, the previously dead man walked out, all wrapped up in grave clothes. When the disciples walked into the tomb, the grave clothes were still there. Now you don't see this when you just read this the first time, but I have heard Christian historians who know how dead people used to be wrapped up say that, from their recorded position, the cloths had not been moved at all. But notice, the rolling away of the stone happened in both occasions. Lazarus needed the stone to be rolled away so that he could come out. But evidently, Jesus went right through the clothes, so obviously he didn't NEED that angel to go up and roll the stone away.

And now my new favorite quote:

The stone to Jesus's tomb was rolled away not to let Him out--but to let us in.

A Wise Servant

I just saw the movie Gladiator. There is one part in which Maximus the victorious general is talking with the emperor, who is sure he is dying. He has a son who is sure that he shall be the next emperor, and everyone else naturally assumes the same. But the emperor has other plans - he knows his son is not fit to rule and will be a tyrant, while Caesar wants Rome to be a democracy again. He asks Maximus to take the throne for him. At first the general's response is, "with all my heart NO" but he ends up agreeing because of his love for the emperor. The son of Caesar is outraged, and... well, the rest is not important right now.

Today I read Proverbs 17:2 - "A wise servant will rule over a disgraceful son, and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers."

I love finding these little parallels from the Bible to... anything else! I think it's so much fun to see a verse and have it remind you of something you've seen or have had happen. But you know what? God said it first! He didn't copy anything, everybody else copies from God! :D

Rather cliche, don't you think? :P