God's Calendar Evangelist Joanna Pae - Shiloh Sunday service - 17th January 2016

Exodus 12:1-3

"The Passover Lamb

12 Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. 3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household."

Only when we understand God’s calendar, we can prepare for the day of liberation

Whenever God performs anything, He performs what He had predestined and executes it at the precise time that He set beforehand. Hence, God is in full control of both the world history and redemptive history. This is clearly seen in today’s main text. When God’s calendar was revealed to Israel, it proclaimed the day of liberation (Passover) for His own children and the day of judgment for the Egyptians who oppressed God’s children. If the Israelites didn’t accept God’s calendar and live by it, they couldn’t have prepared the lamb that would save them from the fearful judgment of death (Exod 12:3, 6, 12). We must understand God’s calendar so we can also prepare for the Second Coming and the End Times (1 Cor 10:11).

God’s precise plan and timing through the ten plagues

In order to deliver His chosen people from Egypt on the very day He foretold (Exod 12:41; Gen 15:13), God executed the entire ten plagues at His precise timing. Hence, the ten plagues that fell upon Egypt were not random natural phenomena or fiction; they were actual historical events executed by God’s power and sovereignty. Many theologians nonetheless estimated that the plagues took around 9 months (Keil & Delitzsch) and the plague of blood alone took about 3 months (Kitchens) based on natural phenomena. However, the Bible presents all the information we need to calculate the actual time the plagues took (i.e., Exod 7:25). Since the Israelites left Egypt on the next day after the Passover, on the fifteenth day of the first month (Num 33:3), we can count backwards from this day to calculate the specific dates for each of the ten plagues. Amazingly, we can see that God destroyed Egypt, the most powerful country at the time, in just 20 days, from the 25th of the twelfth month until the 15thof the first month, in order to deliver His people!* Furthermore, the 15th day is precisely at the end of the 430 years of slavery (Ex 12:40-41), which is a perfect fulfillment of what God promised to Abraham more than 600 years ago (Gen 15:13). This shows that God has been counting each and every day to deliver His people, and He is working in our history even today to bring salvation to us according to His precise plan and timing.

*For more information on the calculation, please refer to the Shiloh sermon on Jan 17, 2016.

Purpose of God’s calendar is to give a new life

Since the Israelites had to live by the Egyptian calendar which had a 10-day cycle, it was impossible for them to keep Sabbath, the seventh day to worship God (Deut 5:15). As result, their lives were drowned in idolatry of many Egyptian gods (Rev 11:8). God clearly said the purpose of the exodus was to serve God. He said to Pharaoh: Let my people go, that they may serve Me (Exod 7:16).Thus, by receiving God’s calendar, the Israelites were no longer enslaved by the Pharaoh or Egyptian gods. They were now new creation who could serve the true God, the one and only Creator (2 Cor 5:17). Hence, receiving a new calendar from God was as significant as Jesus Christ’s birth, which divided our history into BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini: in the year of the Lord). We must also examine our lives as Christians and ask ourselves: Am I truly living in AD or BC?"

Conclusion

In the year 2016, let us live by God’s calendar and make sure all our days will be in the year of the Lord (AD). When we live according to God’s calendar, God promises that His terror will go ahead of us and we may truly live a healthy and victorious life in all that we do (Exod 23:25, 27-28).

Created with images by tigerlily713 - "calendar date time" • Daniel Waters, Co. Sligo, Ireland - "Time"

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