Weekly passages: Exodus 10:1-13:16; Jeremiah 46:13-46:28; Luke 22:7-30; 1 Corinthians 11:20-34

Many of us know very well the story of Passover and Jesus' fulfilment of it at the Cross. There is an easy and comfortable certainty to it because we view it through the lens of victory. God rescued his people from Egypt; Jesus' death was not a defeat but the key to eternal life.

We read about our redemption as though from the comfort of a worn, favourite armchair. But it's a story that should have us on the edge of our seats; it should make us tremble with awe and wonder and delight.

Recapturing Passover

To recapture some of that excitement, let's think about the dynamics of these events. If you were to predict the outcome of a poor and stammering slave leader, a loathed keeper of livestock, approaching the mightiest king on earth, the all-powerful leader of the known world, whose word was absolute law, with a request for the slave's people to be set free, you would correctly predict that he would be rebuffed at the very least, likely punished or killed for insurrection.

The idea that Pharaoh would agree to let the Hebrew slaves go seems laughable. Humanly speaking, it was impossible, but this is a story that subverts ideas of strength and weakness: the possible and the impossible are turned on their heads.

The story of Passover is one that subverts ideas of strength and weakness, turning the possible and the impossible on their heads.

The Lord graciously offers Pharaoh a chance to do his bidding and then shows him what real power is. Pharaoh can command men, but the Lord commands the laws of nature, weather systems, the sun and even death itself.

He does it so he can perform miraculous signs and prove himself to his people for all generations, so that they will tell their children and children's children, even till the current generation, what the Lord did for Israel in Egypt: "that you may know that I am the LORD" (Ex 10:2).

Strength of Heart

Pharaoh can issue orders to people but, most miraculously of all, the Lord commands men's hearts and so he hardens Pharaoh's heart. Ironically, the word used for hardening is chazak, whose root meaning is 'strong'.

Pharaoh's strength of heart was an illusion, a desperate weakness that led to destruction.

Curiously, the same word, chazak, is used of the Lord's mighty hand in Psalm 136:12 and also Deuteronomy 26:8 describing the Exodus. So the same word is used to describe both human and divine strength. We bear the hallmark of the divine, but human strength only prospers in the will of its author, our Creator; to try our strength against God's strength is a tragic misjudgement.

Human strength only prospers in the will of its author, our Creator. To try our strength against God's strength is a tragic misjudgement.

Strength Through Weakness

The way to be strong is to acknowledge our weakness, submit to God's strength, and in doing so gain a measure of his extraordinary strength. Paul had the revelation of strength through weakness:

...for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)

Knowing weakness is a prerequisite for experiencing God's strength. God himself won salvation through apparent weakness, seemingly defeated by death. Shed blood, the ultimate sign of defeat, destruction and death, became for God's people the sign of hope, victory and life.

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. (Exodus 12:13)

The root verb for pass over (pesach) also means to leap, hop or skip over, to spare.

The Jewish commentator Rashi notes that the blood was within the house, not on the outside, interpreted from the blood being a sign "for you" in the verse above. It was for the Israelites, but others could not see it. God knows those who belong to him. Rashi suggests that the Israelite houses were among the Egyptian houses, but God knew which house was daubed with blood on the inside.¹

The sign of Messiah's blood covering our weakness, exempting us from death, is a sign we carry on the inside. Only God can see it. We may exhibit evidence of it, but only God knows the heart.

God himself won salvation through apparent weakness. His shed blood, the ultimate sign of defeat, became for God's people the sign of hope, victory and life.

Assertions of Strength

Our accompanying New Testament passages about the Passover and the New Covenant derived from it, taken from Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11, remind us of human weakness in light of Messiah's strength. In Luke 22, no sooner has Jesus announced the New Covenant in his blood than a dispute arises among the disciples about who is the greatest. In other words, who is strongest? Jesus has announced a covenant founded in submission and his disciples are asserting their strength.

1 Corinthians 11 warns of eating and drinking from the Lord's table in an unworthy manner because doing so will cause weakness and illness, even death. The cup of the Lord's victory, his power made perfect in the weakness of the Cross, becomes a destructive strength, a cup of judgement, for those who drink from it unworthily. However, believers are judged for discipline and correction "so that we may not be condemned along with the world" (1 Cor 11:32b).

God's Discipline

How many of us are eating and drinking at the Lord's table unworthily, harbouring unconfessed sin, secret strongholds of wrongdoing? "But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined" (1 Cor 11:31-32a).

Jeremiah similarly speaks of God's people being restored but also disciplined. God promises to punish the nations who have come against his people, but his people will also be punished:

I will discipline you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished. (Jer 30:11)

We cannot mock God or presume upon an easy grace. We cannot trust in our own strength, harbouring strongholds of resistance to his will and areas of stubborn, hard-hearted pride because this hardness, the same hardness Pharaoh had, resisting God's will, is destined to be crushed by divine strength: "Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed." (Matt 21:44). Jesus spoke this against the religious leaders of his day: "When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them" (Matt 21:45). It's an image taken from the punishment of stoning: a person would usually be thrown on to stones from a height and then stones would be dropped onto him. Either way he would die.

All must face the judgement of the Lord Jesus – his punishment is an unstoppable force that cannot be avoided except through repentance and faith.

Let's come to him afresh, acknowledging our weakness, trusting in his strength, remembering the extraordinary cost: the one who laid the foundation of the earth, whose strength is inexhaustible, becoming weak, overcome to the point of death, for our sake.

Author: Helen Belton

References

1 Zornberg, A G, 2001. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Shocken, New York, 170-171.