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Commemorating Deliverance

God has called His people to remember how He freed them slavery

• Walking with God // God's Deliverance
• Adam R. Cole // April 10, 2009

With the lighting of candles, His holy presence fills the room. The soft embers of the flame within the stillness emit a sense that, indeed, He is with us. A prayer/blessing is said over those candles and the night itself, thanking God for the night, welcoming Him into the gathering, and praising Him for His plentiful provisions. And with that the Passover Seder has begun.

More prayers are to follow, one over the wine, and then another one over a cracker-type food called matzah (unleavened bread). On the table is a plate with an assortment of edibles, from egg to parsley to a shank bone. Their meaning is described as the Seder continues.

Passover is not only a time of celebration but also one of commemoration, where Jews all over the world recount how God freed them from being slaves in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. The Lord raised up a great leader, Moses, to go to the pharaoh and demand that his people, God’s people, be let go. Though the pharaoh initially refused, God’s wrath of 10 plagues convinced him otherwise. The final one, the killing of the firstborn son, finally convinced the pharaoh to let the Jewish people leave and return to their homeland in what is now known as Israel. The Lord would end up parting the Red Sea for His people and leading them through both wilderness and desert before delivering them to the land filled with milk and honey.

God instructed the Jews then how to keep the commemoration and commanded them to observe it year after year, as a reminder to where they once were and where they now where, on account of Him: from slaves to free.

The Passover Seder is an ordered ceremony, one where everything flows in a very specific order. Various foods are symbolic for what the Jewish people endured. They eat matzah because during the time of the exodus, they did not have time to let the bread rise.

The tradition had been a yearly event for me and my family growing up. I looked forward to sharing the meal with my parents and to participate in something that brought out my Jewish heritage. I never really made much connection to God and His deliverance but instead connected more with the story overall and the triumph of the Jews over those that had oppressed them.

Today, as someone who has experienced personal deliverance, the salvation of God through His Son Jesus Christ, I connect on a much deeper level to the story of Passover. The difference now is that I see it less as a story of the Jewish people, less about their victory, and more about the sovereignty, power, and love of God.

I first started my journey with Jesus four and half years ago. I had been sort of shell-shocked in how my life had fallen a part due to the rampant sin that defined my existence. Seeking answers and hope, I took an invitation to attend a young adult service passed on to me by someone who I had waited on at the restaurant I was working at. I experienced something powerful there, a love and a light that made me want to keep searching. I would end up joining the Navy almost immediately thereafter and kept that journey going through the chapel system of military life and then on to church communities wherever the Navy sent me.

This year I experienced Passover, from start to finish, for the first time since giving my life over to Jesus Christ. It was refreshing to bring home the memories and that heritage. The Seder this time around felt like a true act of worship, because of the way that it all was reflected back up to the Lord. I weaved in a few New Testament scriptures, relating how Jesus Christ became the Passover lamb for us, the same one that spared the Jews of the 10th plague (killing of the first born son) by putting that lamb’s blood on their door posts.

In so many ways, the Lord has me—and all of us that find faith in Him—on a journey like the Jews, as He led them each and every step to their final destination. I’ve seen Him part seas for me and bring manna from heaven. Why does He do it? The same reason He did 4,000 years ago is the same now: because He loves us, loves all of humanity. The only thing He asks in return is that we love Him with the same heart.

May we never forget the redemption of the Jews. But instead of paying attention to a moment that happened yesteryear every year, its important to look and see God’s deliverance in us each and every day.