Passover and Exodus

      The call of Moses and the Exodus story, like Abram’s story, are very well known; I won’t go into details here, either. We are more concerned with what Passover brought about-the Exodus. Passover is one of three major festivals which required pilgrimage to Jerusalem (they are still major agricultural festivals and are still celebrated today). The other two are Weeks (Pentecost) and Booths (Tabernacles). Passover and Pentecost have been fulfilled in Christ. Interesting to note-the Tabernacle was the first place where God came to meet with God’s people after they left Egypt. Will the fulfillment of Tabernacles mean the permanent dwelling of God on earth? Remember this. It will be important later. 

Passover itself will become the celebration-and remembrance-of Israel’s liberation from slavery, the event by which Israel becomes a nation, God’s chosen people. It is hard-impossible, perhaps-to overstate how crucial to Israel’s identity ‘God’s chosen people’ is (again, keep this in mind; we will come back to it when we get to Romans). Israel was not just wandering around in the desert. They were being formed in the desert; formed into the people who would fulfill God’s vocational command to be made in God’s image and reflect God’s nature. This was how the promise to Abram would be fulfilled as well:

“I'll make you famous;

you'll be a blessing.

...All the families of the Earth

will be blessed through you."

Israel will accomplish this by bearing God’s image and demonstrating God’s likeness, by being the place where God comes to dwell with God’s people, which was God’s plan from the beginning. Freed from slavery to become God’s chosen people Israel would show the world the benefits of worshipping the one true living God. Freed from slavery to become what we were created to be all along. Freed from, to become....remember this too. This is important-crucial, in fact-to understanding the cross and resurrection.