Bitter Herbs
Exodus 12:8 On this night you must roast the lamb and eat all the meat. You must also eat bitter herbs and bread made without yeast.
This whole notion of “sin” … well, it’s not particularly popular in this day and age. And yet, you and I both know that when we do something wrong, it has consequences. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.
Yeah, sin has bitter consequences no matter how alluring the temptation may have been earlier on. We can’t talk about Easter without talking about our sin, because that’s the very reason that Jesus, also called the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, died on that Cross: to pay the price that God’s justice demands for our sin.
Over the last few days, we’ve been reading about the rich symbolism of the Passover meal – the Passover Seder, as it’s called. Because when God set His people free from slavery in Egypt around a millennium and a half before Jesus was crucified, He commanded them to slay a lamb and paint some of its blood on their doorframes so that the angel of death, in the last of the ten plagues upon Egypt, would pass over their house, protecting them.
Then they were commanded to eat the lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread before escaping on the morrow, pursued by Pharaoh’s great army.
Exodus 12:8 On this night you must roast the lamb and eat all the meat. You must also eat bitter herbs and bread made without yeast.
Bitter herbs, eh? But why? Well, it’s a rich symbolism that wouldn’t have been lost on those Israelites because the experience of being slaves to Egypt was a terribly bitter one.
And it’s a reminder to you and me too, that the bitterness of our slavery to sin is not something that we want to hang on to. That’s why Jesus came – the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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