Amen, chapter 13 of Exodus, if you remember chapter 12 was when the Passover took place,
the Passover was explained, so chapter 13 picks up from where that left off three weeks
ago.
It says in verse number one, the Lord spake unto Moses saying, sanctify unto me all the
firstborn whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of
beast, it is mine.
Now the first thing I want to show you in this chapter is how the Bible defines itself.
There are going to be difficult words when you read the Bible, but typically the Bible
defines itself really well.
Let me just show you how to compare verse two to verse 12.
You can actually define some of the more difficult words here.
It says in verse two, sanctify unto me the firstborn whatsoever openeth the womb.
Now jump down to verse 12.
It says, thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all that openeth the matrix.
You can see that that statement is pretty much the same except a few words have been
substituted.
Instead of saying, sanctify whatever opens the womb in verse two, it says in verse 12,
set apart whatever opens the matrix.
That tells us that sanctify, which is probably a word that a lot of people aren't familiar
with out there in the world just living their lives outside of church, but what does sanctify
means?
It means set apart.
That's not very difficult, is it?
Because it's right there in the same chapter.
Then matrix.
A lot of people might look at that and say, oh, there goes the King James Version again,
you know, using outdated difficult words, but right there it's defined for you that
the matrix is the womb.
And you'll probably be familiar with this in Spanish as matrice.
It's almost the same.
And not only that, but you can see right there in the word M-A-T-R like maternal or something
like that.
You can see that root word of mother there.
matrix is the womb, okay?
And then sanctify means to set apart.
Also, if you study the word sanctify in the Bible, you'll see that sanctify means to make
holy.
You know, you could think of it as to saintify, right?
To make something holy.
So what does holy mean?
Set apart.
What does it mean to sanctify something?
To set it apart, if you let the Bible define terms for themselves.
So when God says I'm holy, what he's saying there is I'm different.
I'm set apart.
I'm not like any other God.
My thoughts are not your thoughts.
He's holy because he's on another level.
And when he says be ye holy as I'm holy, he's telling you to be different from the world
around you, to be set apart.
That's what it means to be sanctified, that you're not just like everybody else, okay?
So that'll help you with defining words.
And the King James Bible contains difficult words, but it contains very few archaic words.
A lot of times people will accuse the King James of using an archaic word simply because
the King James is using a difficult word and they have a very small vocabulary.
But there's this thing called a dictionary, all right?
And some people never look things up in the dictionary.
I literally probably look things up in the dictionary every single week of my life.
Even just all this being a conversation with someone, if I'm in a conversation with someone
and someone uses a word and I don't know what it means, I just pull out my phone and just
type it into the dictionary right there because I want to know what that means.
If I come across words that I'm not familiar with in conversation or in books, I look them
up in the dictionary.
It's a great tool.
I don't do that with the Bible just because I've been reading the Bible a long time, so
I'm familiar with the Bible's terms.
But outside the Bible, use a dictionary for crying out loud.
And when you run into something difficult in the Bible, a lot of times a dictionary
can clear it up right away.
And a lot of these so-called archaic words are not archaic at all.
It's just that some people's vocabulary is pretty small.
For example, here's another one that people will bring up as archaic where Jesus says
that he's the one who searches the reigns and the hearts.
He searches the reigns and the hearts.
He said, what are the reigns?
Well, if you go to dictionary.com and type in reigns, the number one first definition
that comes up is kidneys.
That is the first definition on dictionary.com, which I think is the best dictionary.
This message is brought to you in part by dictionary.com.
But anyway, the kidneys.
So when he talks about searching the reigns and the hearts, the Bible uses things like
your reigns, your bowels, your heart, talking about the seat of your emotion, right?
Because we think with our brain, but also we feel things in our body, don't we?
You know, if you get scared or if you get really happy, all manner of emotions are felt
more in your gut than in your head.
So the Bible often talk about the reigns, the bowels, the heart, things like that.
And you know, when someone has kidney problems, they might have renal failure, right?
So there's the reigns there that the Lord is searching.
Or like, for example, shambles, whatsoever is sold in the shambles, you know, don't ask
any question for conscience sake.
Look up shambles, dictionary.com, boom, it'll tell you it is a meat market.
It is a place where a butcher sells meat.
And so people just want to dumb down the Bible.
Here's the thing about the Bible.
Some passages in the Bible are difficult and I'm glad they are because if the whole Bible
were written on a really simple level, it would get pretty boring to read after a while.
So the Bible contains a lot of difficult sections and it's not the King James' fault that it's
difficult.
It's just that it was difficult in the Hebrew, it was difficult in the Greek, it's difficult
when you translate it into English, the Bible says that there are some things that are hard
to be understood.
And so we just need to continually grow in knowledge, study our Bibles, learn.
And the best way to learn is to compare scripture with scripture like we just did where we compare
verse 2 to verse 12.
So he says here, sanctify unto me, he's saying set apart unto me all the firstborn whatsoever
openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast, it is mine.
Now why is it his?
The Lord just finished killing the firstborn in the land of Egypt.
So here the children of Israel are, so journeying the land of Egypt, God kills the firstborn
as a judgment upon Egypt but if they had the blood on the doorpost, then the death angel
would pass over them, hence the name Passover, and when he passed over them, then their animals
and their children were spared, whereas the firstborn of man and beast of the Egyptians
died.
So because the man and beast of the Israelites were saved because of the application of the
blood, now they belong to the Lord, okay?
So he killed the Egyptians but he says now your firstborn son and the firstborn of your
flocks belongs to me, I own them, set them apart for me because they are mine, all right?
Now let's keep reading here, in verse 3 it says, and I'll get back to that as we get
to it in the chapter, and Moses said unto the people, remember this day in which ye
came out from Egypt out of the house of bondage, why?
For by the strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place, there shall no leavened
bread be eaten.
This day came ye out in the month, Abib.
He's telling them don't forget about this day, remember this, and the reason they should
remember it is because what God did was so amazing, you know, by strength of hand he
brought them out of this place, and I think the spiritual application for this today would
be our salvation, we should never forget about the fact that we're saved, we should always
look back on our salvation and think about what an amazing thing it is, how great it
is to be saved, what a miracle it is that sinners such as ourselves could be saved simply
by putting our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and his shed blood, thanks be
to God for his unspeakable gift, and we don't want to forget that, sometimes it's easy to
get down in the dumps and depressed and everything, but if you stop and think about the fact that
you're saved, that could really cheer you up, because things could be a lot worse, amen?
And we've really been delivered from a lot by being saved.
So the Bible says in verse 5, it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land
of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Hivites and the Jebusites,
which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou
shalt keep this service in this month.
Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to
the Lord.
Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and there shall be no leavened bread be seen
with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters.
Now what is the deal with the unleavened bread?
Why have unleavened bread?
Well of course this pictures the body of Jesus Christ.
So we had the blood upon the doorpost representing the blood of Jesus, but then they were also
supposed to eat the meal of the Passover, which obviously the lamb that they ate also
represented the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the unleavened bread represents the fact that Jesus Christ was without sin.
He was totally sinless, and when they would break that unleavened bread, that was a picture
of Jesus Christ's body that would be broken one day.
The thing about unleavened bread is that it's very crunchy.
So you don't tear it, but you would actually snap it or break it.
And so that's why unleavened bread.
Because number one, leaven is a picture of sin, and number two, because that snapping
effect is to picture the broken body of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, you know, 1,500 or so years later, he's going to sit with his disciples at the
Last Supper and break bread with them, unleavened, and say, this is my body which is broken for
you.
This do in remembrance of me.
And so that's what this remembrance has to do with.
Remembering Christ, remembering salvation, remembering the fact that he died on the cross
for us, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us.
And the unleavened represents sinlessness, okay?
Now why is that?
Well, because leaven is similar to bacteria, okay?
Leaven or yeast is similar to bacteria in the sense that it multiplies at an exponential
rate.
And if you leaven something, the Bible says a little leaven leavens the whole lump because
of that exponential growth and multiplication.
So this is a picture of how sin corrupts something thoroughly.
So if you just get a little bit of sin, it can actually corrupt everything.
It will multiply in your life exponentially.
One sin will lead to another, and then you get sin in the church, and it starts to spread
throughout the church.
And so the Bible's warning us about how sin just spreads, how contagious sin is.
That's the picture of sin being represented by leaven.
So it says, don't have it in your house.
Don't have it with you.
Eat unleavened bread seven days to remember this day.
Verse eight, and thou shalt show thy son in that day saying, this is done because of
that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt.
And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand and for a memorial between thine
eyes that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought
thee out of Egypt.
So when he says here, it shall be a sign for thee upon thine hand and for a memorial between
thine eyes that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth.
This is similar to other passages of scripture.
Keep your finger here and go if you would to Deuteronomy chapter six.
Keep your finger there in Exodus 13, go to Deuteronomy chapter six.
And in Deuteronomy chapter six, he talks about remembering the word of God and passing it
on to your children.
He says in verse five, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with
all thy soul and with all thy might.
And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt
teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine
house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest
up and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates.
And obviously what this is saying here is that God wants us to remember his word.
He wants us to think about it, to talk about it, to constantly read it, to have a copy
of it with us.
But it's so amazing how the Jews today are so blinded how they misinterpret this scripture.
And the Bible says that when they read the Old Testament, they have the veil over their
eyes and that that veil is removed only when they turn to Christ.
So the Christ rejecting Jew is unable to comprehend even the simplest scriptures of the Old Testament.
He's blinded.
He cannot see them.
It's impossible for him to see them just like it's impossible for a blind person to see
things, right?
If you put a bag over your head, you're not going to be able to read the Bible with understanding.
So they actually take this in a super literal way where it says, you know, it's going to
be as frontlets between your eyes.
They put the word of God on a microfilm, you know, not really microfilm, but they write
it in a super tiny script.
They put it in a little box and they attach the box to their head.
Who has ever seen the Jews where they have this little box attached to their head and
they literally, in the synagogue, you'll see pictures or videos of them with this little
box attached to their head going like this with a little box on their head and they don't
get it.
Or like when he says, write it on the doorpost of your house.
What they do is they have a little tiny scroll, again, like a microfilm of God's word.
They roll it up and they put it in a little case and they attach it to their front door.
You can't see what's inside it.
It's rolled up in a little container.
Who's ever been on Sony?
You've seen those little diagonal canisters attached to the doors.
Instantly, you know, this is a Jewish home.
You'll see a lot of them in Southern Tempe, other places.
But when you see that little diagonal canister or cylinder, folks, that is ridiculous.
The whole point of him saying, write it on the doorpost of your house, he's saying so
that you see it every time you go through the door.
And look, Christians get this right.
Isn't it amazing how Christians can understand the Bible and Jews can't?
So basically what will happen is you go into a Christian home and you go to leave and what
do you often see above the door as you're leaving?
What types of things do you see?
Really call out to me some text that you might see above the door.
What is it?
Maybe the Ten Commandments.
You'll see somebody's posted by the door.
Or how about this?
What?
Yeah.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, right?
What else?
Yeah.
Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
You know, we could go on and on.
John 3 16 will sometimes be above the front door or whatever the scripture, ask and ye
shall receive, seek and ye shall find, you know.
Whatever the favorite verse, you know, the Lord bless thee and keep thee and cause his
face to shine upon thee or whatever.
They'll always have the word of God on the wall, in the kitchen, right?
In the schoolroom, up above the door.
Sometimes on the outside of the house you'll be walking in and you'll see a scripture on
the outside of the house.
Why?
Because they get it.
The Jews are hiding God's word under a bushel.
They bury it in a canister.
They put it in a little box.
And who in the world would be so foolish as to strap a box to their head and think that
that's somehow going to give them some kind of a spiritual blessing by putting a box with
God's word in it?
When he says it's supposed to be as frontlets between your eyes, when he talks about it
being on your head, here's what he's talking about.
You're looking at it, like it's in front of your eyes.
He's saying, you know, keep God's word in front of you.
You know, put it on the wall.
And when he's talking about having it in hand, this would be like a pocket New Testament
with you.
Sorry, Jews.
You know, pocket New Testament, amen.
You know, and Psalms, you know.
So you know, you got the little pocket New Testament, you got it in your hand.
But even if you don't have a New Testament, let's say, you say, well, Pastor Anderson,
you know, this is back before the printing press, so they didn't have little pocket vest
size, you know, Torahs to put in their pocket.
But I'll tell you what, people have been reading and writing since the dawn of creation.
You think reading and writing is a new thing?
So even if somebody didn't have the whole copy of the Mosaic law in a nice little bound
format, you know, I guarantee you that they could pull out some kind of a material and
write down the word of God.
I don't care if it was on a clay tablet or whether they wrote it on papyrus or whatever
they wrote it on, whatever animal skin or whatever.
Look, they wrote things down.
Okay.
And they could bring part of the word of God with them.
I'm not saying that they had, you know, how blessed we are to have the whole thing on
our phone, to have the whole thing in a little pocket size New Testament or even a full Bible
in small print that we can take with us, keep it at hand, keep it in front of our face,
talk about it, quote it, write it on the wall.
So they're misinterpreting it big time.
By the way, this is one of their favorite passages because a part of being Jewish is
that every single day they chant certain vein repetitions.
And one of the vein repetitions that they chant every day is Deuteronomy six, verse
four, where it says hero Israel, the Lord, our God is one Lord, except they don't chant
it correctly.
So every day they wake up by corrupting God's word.
Every single day they quote a scripture wrongly.
So what they do is they take out that second Lord, instead of saying the Lord, our God's
one Lord, they're just like the Lord God, the Lord is one.
So they make it this PN to the oneness of God because they deny the Trinity.
They deny the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
They deny the Lord Jesus Christ.
So every day they just do this little oneness thing where they delete from God's word and
proclaim oneness.
God is one.
Totally changing the meaning of what's said here when he says the Lord, our God's one
Lord, you know, there's only one Jehovah.
There's only one Lord, but it's not saying that he intrinsically as character has this
attribute of being one.
Sorry.
He is three Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
These three are one, but God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.
So anyway, let's get back to the passage, Exodus 12, or 13, sorry.
I wanted to point that out to you though, how they take this passage in Exodus 13 and
Deuteronomy 6 and they miss the point.
When the Bible tells us in verse 9, it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand and
for a memorial between thine eyes that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth.
He's talking about having God's word at hand, having God's word in front of your eyes, writing
it down, taking it with you and talking about it, quoting it, memorizing it.
That's what he's getting at here.
Verse 10, thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year and it shall
be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites as he swear unto thee
into thy fathers and shall give it to thee that thou shalt set apart, excuse me, set
apart of the Lord, all that open at the matrix and every firstling that cometh of a beast,
which thou hast, the males shall be the Lord's.
Okay, so here we see the firstlings mentioned and all throughout the Bible we'll see these
terms firstlings or first fruits and what this is referring to is the first crop of
the season and the first animal that's born of your cattle.
The firstlings or the first fruits belong to the Lord.
The Bible says in Proverbs chapter three, honor the Lord with thy substance and with
the first fruits of all thine increase.
Give unto God the first.
That's why we tithe in the New Testament.
We give 10% unto the local church.
That's our first fruits, our first things.
Even Abel all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible brought unto the Lord of the
firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof.
Now what is being symbolized by the firstlings or the first fruit?
Why is God so interested in the firstborn or what does this represent?
Well what's represented here is that Jesus Christ is the firstborn.
Jesus Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection.
Now we talk about Jesus being the only begotten son of God, right?
John 3 16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
But then also the Bible calls Jesus Christ his first begotten.
It calls him the firstborn among many brethren and it calls him the first begotten of the
dead in Revelation chapter one, the first begotten of the dead.
Let me explain to you why.
Is that Jesus is the son of God for more than just one reason.
More than just one reason.
There isn't just one reason why Jesus is called the son of God and truly is the son of God.
There are actually three reasons why Jesus is the son of God, okay?
One of those reasons is that when he was born on this earth, he did not have an earthly
father, right?
He was born of a virgin.
Therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God,
right?
Because God is his father, no earthly father, therefore he is the son of God.
But here's where the fools who twist scripture will take this off track.
They'll say, well, that's the only reason that he's the son of God.
So then they'll claim that before Bethlehem, he wasn't the son of God.
In the Old Testament, he wasn't the son of God.
Sorry Nebuchadnezzar.
He looked in the fiery furnace in Daniel 3.25 and said the form of the fourth is like the
son of God.
But they don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God in the Old Testament, that
he somehow just became the son of God only when he was born of the virgin Mary.
And really what they truly believe, these oneness Pentecostal types, is that that's
when Jesus came into existence.
Before that, it's just God all by his lonesome in the Old Testament.
Don't let it confuse you that it said let us make man in our image.
Or our likeness.
But truly Jesus Christ is the son of God for more reasons than just the fact that he didn't
have an earthly father.
That is one important reason.
But here's another reason why Jesus is the son of God.
He is also the son of God because he was resurrected from the dead by God.
So this resurrection is called Jesus being begotten.
That's why the Bible says in Acts 13 that God raised Jesus from the dead as it is written
in the second Psalm, thou art my son, today have I begotten thee.
So when the Bible says thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee, thou art my son,
today have I begotten thee, that is referring to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That is a specific day when Jesus Christ was begotten and that's why the Bible calls him
the first begotten from the dead.
Now is he the only person who's going to be resurrected from the dead and glorified in
a brand new changed body?
No.
But he's called the first fruits of the resurrection.
See the Bible talks about how as in one man sin entered into the world and one man came
death into the world but then the Bible says also by one man comes the resurrection of
the dead in 1 Corinthians 15 and how every man in his due order is going to be raised
of those that are saved.
The Bible says Christ is the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming
and then come at the end and death is going to be defeated and so forth.
So the Bible tells us that when Jesus Christ was risen from the dead that was him being
begotten.
Now this should not come as a big surprise because the word beget simply means to bring
into existence or to cause to exist.
So if I beget a child, that child came into existence because of the fact that I had that
relationship with my wife that caused that child to exist, to come into existence.
I begat those children.
So when God begat Jesus Christ from the dead he's basically bringing him into existence
because the Bible says in Revelation 1 I'm he that liveth and was dead and behold I'm
alive forevermore amen and have the keys of hell and of death.
Now when someone is dead the Bible will often refer to them as not being.
Now obviously they do have an existence, don't get me wrong, but they don't have the same
existence as a person who's alive.
That's why the Bible said of Joseph, you know Joseph is not or the beast that is not and
yet is in Revelation 13.
So there's not the same existence for the dead as for the living.
So Jesus Christ being brought back from the dead, being brought back into a living existence
is called being begotten.
So when we got saved, when we believed on Jesus Christ, we were begotten by God.
That's why we're called the children of God, right?
And we are the sons of God, the Bible says, behold what manner of love the father bestowed
upon us that we should be called the sons of God.
And the Bible also talks about us being begotten again unto a lively hope.
It used the term born again, it also used the term begotten again because when our dead
spirit was quickened or resurrected, we were begotten, okay?
So that's why Jesus is the first begotten because he is the first fruits of the resurrection.
We were spiritually begotten when we got saved, but we have not been fully begotten yet because
our bodies are still unredeemed, aren't they?
Our bodies are still unsaved, our flesh is still unsaved.
So at the resurrection, then the full package will be redeemed and our bodies will actually
be resurrected just like Christ.
But Christ is the first one who is resurrected from the dead to die no more.
People like Lazarus and others who were brought back to life, they weren't necessarily resurrected,
they were more, in a sense you could say they were resuscitated.
Now obviously, I don't want you to get me wrong, they were truly dead, of course.
I'm not saying that they were just swooning or in a coma.
But what I'm saying is that when they were brought back, it's sort of like when a person's
resuscitated in the sense that they're going to die again.
Lazarus isn't still alive, okay?
He died again.
I'm sure that they waited a little while before they did the funeral just to make sure he's
not going to keep coming back.
But after four, five, six days, they had the funeral, he's dead, he's buried, he's still
there, okay?
So the only one who has been resurrected never to die again in a glorified form is Jesus.
And then afterward, it'll be those that are Christ at his coming.
And then at the end, after the millennium, there'll be a second resurrection.
So we see here that Jesus is the only begotten in the sense that he's the only one who was
born of a virgin without an earthly father.
I mean, there haven't just been all kinds of virgin births throughout history, have
there?
So the one that was born without earthly father, virgin born Jesus, he's the only begotten
in that sense, okay?
That took place 2,000 years ago.
But in the sense of the resurrection, he's the first begotten because that's not unique
to him.
He's the first begotten and then others will follow as far as even being physically risen
from the dead.
Then there's a third reason why Jesus is the son of God, and that is the fact that he enjoys
an eternal father-son relationship with God the Father.
So in that sense, he has always been the son of God.
He always will be the son of God.
And the proof for this, there's much proof for this, but John chapter 17 makes it crystal
clear about the father loving the son before the world even began and how they shared glory
before the world began.
And so the father and the son, they go all the way back, all right?
They go way back.
So Jesus is the son of God for three distinct reasons, okay?
He has a unique father-son relationship that is eternal, that goes all the way back to
the beginning.
He has always enjoyed that father-son relationship.
There's been a relationship between the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost eternally.
Number two, he was born of a virgin, which makes him the only begotten son of God.
And then number three, he was resurrected from the dead, which makes him the first begotten
son of God.
So this symbolism here represents the fact that Jesus is the first begotten.
So the firstling or the first fruits, that pictures Jesus because he's the firstling.
He's the first fruits of the resurrection.
He's the firstborn among many brethren, the Bible says.
So look what the Bible says in verse 13.
Let's read verse 12 again.
Thou shalt set a part of the Lord, all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that
cometh of a beast which thou hast, the male shall be the Lord's.
Verse 13.
And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb.
And if thou will not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck, and all the firstborn
of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.
So here's what's going on with this.
So let's say they have a cow, right?
The firstborn cow is given unto the Lord.
The firstborn sheep goes to the Lord.
The firstborn goat goes to the Lord.
These are animals that God can do something with.
These are animals that the priests in the temple, they can offer these things as animal
sacrifices unto the Lord.
They can eat these things, and they are going to be useful to them.
Okay, that makes sense.
The ass, on the other hand, is not something that's going to be given unto the Lord as
an offering.
So God does not want an ass for an offering, okay?
So instead of that, but you know, if they have an ass, and they're going to have the
firstborn of the ass, what we'd call today a donkey, what you would think of as a donkey
is what the Bible calls an ass, if you had an ass and it gave birth, okay, what you would
do with the firstborn of that is you would redeem it, all right?
Now let's talk about what it means to redeem something, okay?
To redeem something is like an exchange that is made, okay?
And to use a modern example, when you have a bottle that can be recycled, it says on
the bottom of it, California redemption value, five cents, Michigan redemption value, Hawaii
redemption value, and it's five cents or 10 cents, meaning that you can exchange the bottle
for the money.
It has a redemption value where you turn it in, it gets reused, recycled, and you get
money in return.
So the main use for this in the Bible and throughout history when we use this term redeem
is, for example, with a servant or a bond servant, or let's say a prisoner of war, okay?
Let's say you go out to battle and you take a whole bunch of prisoners of war, right?
Well, let's say one side really wants the other side.
They want their POWs back from the other side, right?
So I've got a loved one.
Let's say my son goes off and fights in a war, and my son is a POW in the enemy camp,
I want to get him back.
So here's what I would do.
I would bring money and I would redeem him.
I would say, hey, I'll give you this amount of money so that you give me my son back,
or I'll give you cattle, or I'll give you gold or silver, or whatever the monetary unit,
and I'll get my son back.
That's me redeeming my son.
Because if I don't redeem him, well, what are they going to do with him?
They're probably going to kill him, right, the enemy army, or at least they're going
to put him in a concentration camp or make him a slave or something, right?
So I don't want my son to be killed, I don't want him to be a slave, I don't want him to
be in prison, so I want to redeem him so I have to pay to get him back.
That is called redemption, okay?
Or let's say someone is sold into slavery and someone buys them out of slavery.
They pay the owner so that they can free them or get them released and back to their family
where they belong.
That is called redemption, redeeming them.
And if you study the word redeem or redemption throughout the Bible, you'll see it's used
for servants or even a piece of land.
You know, if you want to redeem that land, you pay money to get it back to its rightful
owner, to its family, to its home, where it belongs.
That is what redemption means, okay?
So the Bible says here redeem the ass.
What it means there is you're not going to give that to the Lord, what you're going to
do instead is you're going to give the financial equivalent of what that ass is worth.
You're going to give that money instead of giving the actual animal, you're going to
give money instead.
You're going to give the value so you're redeeming it, meaning that you get to keep it.
You're going to use that animal to plow your field or whatever you use it for and you're
going to pay the money as a redemption, okay?
Now it says if thou wilt not redeem it, if you don't want to redeem it, for whatever
reason you don't want to redeem it, meaning you don't want to pay the money.
Like let's say I don't have a lot of money and I don't really need another ass in the
house so let's just not redeem it.
He says okay, if you don't want to redeem it, then you just break his neck because you
can't just keep it because it belongs to the Lord.
So you either have to pay the redemption for it or you break its neck.
I think this is a great symbol of what happens when you don't get saved because when we get
saved it's called being redeemed.
I have a song I love to sing since I have been redeemed.
How many songs do we sing like, blessed redeemer, redeemed how I love to proclaim it.
We talk about being redeemed as being saved.
Well look, the picture here is if you don't get, you're that ass and if you don't get
redeemed you get your neck broke, which is a picture of the fact that you die and go
to hell.
So this is a picture of redemption or death.
Those are the two choices, right?
You get redeemed or you die.
You get saved or you perish, right?
You believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you be saved.
He that believeth not shall be damned.
So that's what's pictured here with breaking the neck of the ass that is not redeemed.
It says in verse 14, it shall be, we're going to talk a little bit more about redemption.
It says it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come saying what is this that thou
shalt say unto him by strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt from the house
of bondage and it came to pass when Pharaoh would hardly let us go that the Lord slew
all the firstborn in the land of Egypt both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of
beast therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix being males but all
the firstborn of my children I redeem.
So the firstborn animals, they just are given to the house of God, right?
So they take their cattle and sheep and, you know, oxen or goats or whatever the animal
and whatever the first thing is, they bring it down to the tabernacle and they give it
to the priest.
They give it to the Levites and say, hey, this belongs to God so I'm dropping it off
here at the house of God but thank God they don't have to drop their firstborn son off
at the house of God.
You know, they don't want to drop their firstborn son off at the house of God and the Levites
don't want all the firstborn sons getting dropped off anyway because then they're just
running some kind of a daycare or something, right?
So God is saying, look, your firstborn son belongs to me but you're going to redeem it,
okay?
Just like you're going to redeem the ass, you're going to also redeem your sons, okay?
You're not going to drop them off at the house of God so you basically are going to give
the value of your sons.
The way that God did this though, instead of them having to pay to redeem their sons,
what they ended up doing was they ended up having the Levites stand in for the firstborn
sons.
So basically they count up the firstborn sons and then they count up the Levites and it
turned out, you know what, this is almost a wash and then they just kind of paid the
difference, all right?
Who remembers that Bible story?
You know, it's kind of an obscure passage.
But anyway, so the Levites end up belonging to the Lord, serving him, doing his work and
so forth, standing in for the firstborn son.
But the firstborn of my children, he said, I redeem and it shall be for a token upon
thine hand and for frontlets between thine eyes for by strength of hand the Lord brought
us forth out of Egypt and it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go that God
led them not through the way of the land of Philistines.
So before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit more about redemption.
Flip over if you would to 1 Corinthians chapter number 6 in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians
chapter number 6 and there are lots of verses where the Bible talks about us being redeemed
by the blood of Christ.
So basically the payment that was made, because remember redemption involves a payment.
You redeem the ass by paying money.
They redeem the firstborn son by paying money.
You redeem prisoners of war by paying money.
You redeem slaves or lands or houses that have been repoed.
You redeem them by paying money, right?
You even redeem bottles with what?
Money, okay?
So we were not redeemed though with corruptible things like silver and gold.
The Bible says we were redeemed by the blood of Christ.
So the blood of Christ was the payment that our redemption depended on, okay?
But here's the thing about being redeemed.
When God redeemed us, it's sort of like when a family member redeems their POW son or when
someone redeems their servant or someone redeems anyone, okay?
Is that they're basically purchasing them and they basically come home to their rightful
owner or the rightful family or whatever, okay?
So when God redeemed us, he's not just redeeming us in the sense of he pays for us to be set
free because we're enslaved to sin, we're in the bondage of sin, we're doomed, we're
like a prisoner of war that's going to get wiped out, okay?
He didn't just redeem us by just paying our bill and then just sort of turning us loose
and just saying, all right, you're on your own.
You're totally independent now.
That's not the way this thing of being redeemed works because look what the Bible says in
1 Corinthians chapter number 6, the Bible says in verse 19, what?
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which you have
of God and you are not your own for you are bought with a price.
This is referring to our redemption.
We are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which
are God's.
So now that we've been redeemed, now that we've been purchased, God owns us.
Now God is the rightful owner all along, sort of like if there was a house that got repoed
and then you pay to get it redeemed, it's going back to its rightful owner, it's going
back to the original owner.
Well we, when we get saved, when we get redeemed, we now belong back to the original rightful
owner which is the Lord.
We're supposed to be the Lord's in the first place, right?
To earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
And you know, when we were a little innocent baby, we belong to the Lord, right?
But then we sin and our sin separates us from God and we end up being alienated from God,
we end up being strangers to the covenant, strangers to the promises of God, we're at
enmity with God in our sinful condition, right?
But then Jesus Christ is the ransom.
This is another word that's associated with redemption, a ransom is paid to get the redeemed
POWs back.
So Jesus Christ is the ransom.
The blood of Christ is the ransom money that pays for our redemption and so now we're back
to belonging to God again, you know?
We belong to him, he owns us and so the Bible says, look, you're not your own.
And a lot of people say, well, it's my life, I'm going to do whatever, not if you're saved,
it's not.
Now, if you're not saved, yeah, you and the devil can go make plans for your life and
eat, drink and be married because tomorrow you die.
But if you are saved, you are bought with the price.
And in fact, the apostle Paul's a little bit aghast if you don't know that, what?
No you not, that you're not your own, right?
You're bought with a price, you've got to know that your body is the temple of the Holy
Ghost which is in you, he owns you, you are his dwelling place, you are his possession,
you are his son.
Look, just like my sons, let's say my son was kidnapped and I paid the ransom, I paid
the redemption, I got my son back, does that mean now my son is just a free agent to go
do whatever?
He still has to obey dad, he's back in his native family, he's happy, you know, not to
be tied up anymore somewhere and in bondage, but now that he's home, hey, he's still my
son, we're the sons of God, we're owned by God and so we are obligated to obey his commandments.
We're obligated to obey.
Now you say, wait a minute Pastor Anderson, you know, I thought salvation is a free gift,
you know, how can we be obligated to do anything?
Look, salvation is a free gift, being redeemed is a free gift, meaning he pays everything
to redeem us.
So he pays 100% of the bill to redeem us and we never have to pay back, it's not like okay,
I'll pay you back God, let me just spend the rest of my life working on it.
We were out soul winning today and we asked a Methodist, we said, you know, how do you
know you're on your way to heaven?
He said, we said, what do you have to do to be saved?
And he said, well, you gotta have a ticket and I said, well, how do I get a ticket?
He said, you spend your whole life working on that ticket, you know, earning that ticket.
What in the world, what kind of a ticket is that?
I guess you just gotta buy it like when you get there or something, you just earn a bunch
of money.
Well, guess what?
When you walk up to that ticket counter, Mr. Methodist, you're not gonna have enough money.
It's gonna be insufficient funds and you're gonna swipe your little works ATM card and
it's gonna come up that your account is overdrawn, right?
And it's gonna say, please see cashier and the cashier is Apollyon and he's gonna throw
you into hell.
I'm serious.
Yeah, please see cashier inside, Mr. Abaddon, hello, my name is Abaddon.
He's gonna throw you into the hell, okay?
The angel of the bottomless pit.
And so the thing is, you know, our works, our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
You know, let's say we're kidnapped and we say, I've got money.
No, we don't, right?
Dad's gotta bail us out because he owns the cattle on a thousand hills and the wealth
in every mine.
But actually the only thing that could purchase our redemption is the blood of Christ.
And our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
The blood of Christ is the only thing that can redeem us, right?
So he redeems us totally for free.
It's a free gift.
We're not saved by works.
We're saved by believing in Christ.
And once we're redeemed, he's never gonna turn us back over to the kidnappers.
He's never gonna turn us back over to the, oh, I don't like your attitude, son.
You're going back to North Korea.
I mean, do you really think that that's what God's gonna do?
Would you do that to your son if your son disobeys?
You know, I redeemed you from a North Korea prison camp.
You're going back, son.
Here, do we still have the phone number of the kidnappers?
Let's send you back to the drug cartel because you are, you know, you broke my rules.
That's foolish, isn't it?
Oh, you're going back into slavery.
Where is that?
Did we still have the phone number of that slave trader?
We could turn you over to him.
And it's like, no.
But what would we do?
We would discipline him.
So getting saved is free.
Staying redeemed is free.
Keeping your salvation is free.
Staying redeemed is a foregone conclusion because he gives unto us eternal life.
We shall never perish.
No one can pluck us out of his hand, but whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourges
every son and we receive it.
So yeah, we've been redeemed, we're purchased, we're a child of the king, and it's a great
privilege to be a child of the king.
It's great to be in the royal family tonight, amen?
And we are the sons of God, but being in the royal family comes with some responsibilities.
And there are rules, and if we break the rules, he will chasten us, he will discipline us,
he'll give us the spanking, but he's not going to send us back.
We've been passed from death unto life, we shall not come into condemnation.
So the fact that we've been bought with a price and that God owns us does not contradict
the free gift of salvation.
Being redeemed is a free gift, but don't misinterpret that free gift as, oh, now I'm
just like an independent free agent.
What do you want to be like a Mormon where you're a god of your own planet?
Is that what you think it means to be saved?
You could be a god of your own planet?
Because that's what it sounds like when you say, well, I'm going to do whatever I want.
Folks, that's not the way life works.
That's not the way life works.
You're either serving sin or you're serving God.
It's not like, well, I'm not going to serve either one, I'm just going to do my own thing.
Doesn't exist.
Does not exist.
Doing your own thing does not exist.
No man liveth unto himself.
No man dieth unto himself.
When you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
When you serve righteousness, you're free from sin, okay?
But you're going to serve somebody, friend.
Choose you this day whom you will serve, but you're going to serve somebody.
I'm just going to do my own, okay, so you're going to be your own god.
Because the only one who doesn't serve anybody is God.
And Mormonism isn't true, so it's not happening for you.
There is no star-based collab.
It doesn't exist.
So when you're redeemed, you're owned by God, you're bought with a price, so therefore you
owe it to him.
It's your reasonable service to present your body a living sacrifice unto God.
Holy, acceptable, it's your reasonable service.
So the Bible tells us here after the talk on redemption, it says in verse 17,
It came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way
of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.
For God said, Lest, peradventure, the people repent when they see war, and they return
to Egypt.
There's so many great things we could learn from this verse.
This is a great verse.
The shortcut to the promised land is right through the land of the Philistines.
If you look at a map, Egypt to Israel is a pretty short trip, just right through the
land of the Philistines, right through what today is known as the Gaza Strip, right?
Right through there, Sinai, Peninsula, and then right into the Gaza Strip.
But God didn't bring them that way.
Remember eventually they end up crossing the Jordan River from the east because they go
around.
And the reason why he didn't bring them that way is because the Philistines are going to
put up a fight.
And he knew they weren't ready for that, and he thought when they see war, they may repent
and turn around and want to go back.
So he said, let's bypass that.
So what we can learn from this is that God is not going to tempt us above that we're
able.
God knows what we can handle.
And just studying Exodus, even just today reading my Bible in Exodus, the thing that
was jumping out at me, I was reading some of the later chapters today.
I was reading chapters 16, 17, 18, 19 around that region.
And when I was reading it, the thing that was jumping out at me is it seems like God
is kind of like pushing the Israelites to their absolute limit all the time of how long
they can go without water, you know what I mean?
Just kind of how much they can handle.
He kind of pushes them, right?
I mean, we're going to get to that in subsequent weeks.
But he pushes them.
You know, it's easy to say like, you idiots, didn't you see God part the Red Sea?
But you know, if you haven't drunk any water in a few days, but then again, they're wrong.
God's right.
So that shows us we need to quit complaining about stupid stuff.
When you haven't had any water in a few days, then start complaining and then God will still
get mad at you.
You're not allowed to complain, amen?
So basically, you know, God's kind of pushing them to their limit.
But when it came to going through the land of the Philistines, he knew they weren't ready
for that.
So he bypasses that.
Now he does bring them into battle with the sons of Amalek in chapter 17.
So it's not that he wants to just shelter them from all conflict, because he brings
them in to the battle with Amalek and they fight against Amalek and that's where Moses
had to hold up his arms and people had to hold up his arms for him, Aaron and her, because
his arms were heavy.
So God isn't going to shield us from all the battles.
He's not going to shield us from every fight.
He's not going to shield us from everything that gets ugly.
But what he will do is not tempt us above what we're able.
So he knows what we can handle.
And sometimes he'll push us pretty hard, but he wasn't just going to keep driving them
and then they're all just going to die of thirst.
And he's just like, why didn't you guys say anything?
You guys weren't thirsty?
You guys are thirsty?
Why didn't you say something?
He knew what they could handle and he was just testing them.
And if you look at that story, the water was like right around the corner.
When they start freaking out and getting mad, they were like right before the watering hole.
The darkest hour was just before the dawn that was about to break.
And if they would have just hung in there and just kind of put their heads down and
pushed through, they would have gotten to the water.
God's not going to tempt us above that we're able.
And that's one thing that we can learn from this verse.
Another good thing that we can learn from this verse is that we can understand what
the word repent even means.
A lot of people think repent and then they just insert these two words of sin.
So they just build in this definition.
When they see repent, they'll build in of sin.
But are they repenting of sin here?
In fact, here he's afraid that they're going to repent of something good.
Here repenting would be a bad thing because they're doing the right thing.
They're going out of Egypt.
They're going to the promised land.
He said, I don't want them to repent.
Why?
Because repenting here would be to stop doing the right thing.
Because repentance is just a turning or a change.
It could be a change of mind.
It could be a change of action.
Change of what you believe.
You say, well, how do I know what repentance is?
Context.
If he says, man, you worshiped all these dumb idols.
Repent.
What's he telling you to repent of?
Oh, well, that's easy.
You know, I've got to turn from all my sins.
I've got to stop drinking, stop smoking, stop fornicating.
That's ridiculous.
He's telling you to quit worshiping idols.
Oh, you don't believe in Christ.
Repent and believe the gospel.
There he's telling you to repent of unbelief.
Elsewhere he tells them repent of idolatry, repent of a false god, repent of a false religion.
If somebody's going to get saved, typically they have to repent of a false religion.
Most people aren't just a blank slate.
If they're worshiping Buddha or they're worshiping Hindu gods or they're worshiping idols and
statues and graven images, they're going to have to turn to God from idols.
That's repentance there.
But this repent of your sins salvation, the problem with it is that it's basically a thinly
veiled work salvation because then it's like, oh, you have to stop sinning and keep God's
commandments.
Can you explain to me why that's not works?
Well, it's not works because God did it through you.
Okay, God did it through me but it still works.
We're not saved by works.
Okay, we're saved by faith alone.
All right.
Well, I couldn't have done it without God.
So you know, that's how I got saved by all these works.
I'm wrong.
You're not saved by works.
You're saved by faith, not works.
And that of course, that's another sermon that has been preached many times.
So you know, we see what repent means.
If they repent, they're just going to change their mind and say, let's go back.
Isn't that what it means here?
Like when they see war, they're going to be like, all right, turn this thing around.
That's repentance, okay.
But God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea and the children
of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt and Moses took the bones of Joseph
with him for he had straightly sworn the children of Israel saying, God will surely visit you
and you shall carry up my bones away hence with you.
And they took their journey from Succoth and encamped in Etham in the edge of the wilderness.
And the Lord went before them by day and a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way.
And by night and a pillar of fire to give them light to go by day and night.
He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before
the people.
Let's have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the redemption that we have in Jesus Christ, Lord.
Help us to realize that we're bought with a price.
Help us to glorify you in our body and in our spirit which belong to you because you've
redeemed us with the precious blood of Christ and it's in his name we pray, amen.