We are, of course, only a week away from Passover (next Thursday evening, April 5th) and the beginning of God’s Holy Day season for 2012. 

Historically this was the time of the Exodus when the children of Israel came out of Egypt.  This story was recounted by Hollywood in the classic movie The Exodus.  As a young boy this film captivated me, in part because it was one of the few movies that depicted a Biblical theme without huge doctrinal flaws in it.  What is interesting to me, in part, about the Exodus story is that many forget that Israel suffered the first three plagues along with Egypt.  Have you ever wondered why God did that?  What did Israel do for God to “punish” them with the Egyptians – after all weren’t they still slaves and their lives regulated by the Egyptians?

I believe that God let Israel go through the first plagues with Egypt because they (Israel) had become comfortable being slaves in a foreign culture.  God wanted Israel to become so fed up with being in Egypt that they would be happy to leave (which they were for a time).  There are some great lessons in that for us because we can lapse back into being comfortable with the world around us thinking “that’s just the way things are.”  We can become use to people lying to us in business, we can become use to the heart-breaking statistics of crime rates and abortion rates, we are used to promises from government officials that are never fulfilled – and on the list goes.  Are we fed up with the world yet, yearning for the time for Christ to come back and set it all right, or do we want to see our kids grow up first or want to be married first or want to finish college first or any number of other things first?

The Passover observance and the following Days of Unleavened are a rehearsal of the continual process of coming out of sin through the washing we receive through the sacrifice of Christ.  For now we stay in this “present evil world” (Galatians 1:4) suffering at times with the nation around us as a result of the choices made apart from God’s way of life.  By observing the Holy Days God has revealed in His Word, we also rehearse a better world to come after many more “plagues” to come.  Like the ancient Israelites, we too will go out with a high hand, not because we rejoice for the suffering of the world around us, but because we see God’s hand in the eventual deliverance of all of mankind as He begins His work with a “little flock” (Luke 12:32).