New Beginnings

Dec 31

Joe Florestano
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve 18

Cycles in Nature

Any attempt at understanding the human condition must invariably begin with the simple-yet-profound confession that man is created by God in his image and in his likeness. This is also to say that man is a part of God’s glorious creation. The human being then is born into, and also struggles with, this tension for his or her entire life: that we long to be with God, reconciled to our Creator, yet we also exist in a temporal reality among the rest of God’s creatures. In his mercy, God has made many provisions to this tension, including making the nature of our earthly habitation a reflection of himself. This is what people mean when they say they experience God in nature—that its order and beauty satisfy, in a small sense, belonging that God has placed in their hearts.

Every society and every people group in the history of mankind has observed the patterns of nature, and for most of human history those observations have been the basis for religious and spiritual developments. When God ordered creation, he arranged for nature to follow cycles of death and rebirth. We see it all the time, right? Every evening the Sun dies and is reborn in the morning. Every month the moon slowly dies into nothing then slowly is rejuvenated until it reaches its maturity, only to cycle back again. And every winter we watch as trees lose their leaves, animals become scarce, and the elements make the outside world inhospitable for a period of time. Then in the spring, an explosion of life, the essence of rebirth. And so every ancient society in history recognized these patterns of nature, and so every society came up with an idea of a new year, a point at which to reckon the rest of the year, a point at which, “That’s the old year; this is the new year. This is where it starts.” And most of the time this centered around the agricultural cycle, or the weather cycle, or the heavenly lights, equinox, solstice, these kinds of things.

And in the ancient collective imagination there was no distinction between the natural and the spiritual like we have today. It’s kind of hard for us to get out of this modern and post-modern mindset that we’ve all kind of grown up in, that there’s the spiritual and there’s the natural. That distinction didn’t really exist in ancient times. And when I explain this to people, here’s the example that I tend to use:

There’s a word in in Hebrew, in biblical Hebrew, and the word is rûaḥ—or rûḥa, one of those two—and that word in the Old Testament gets translated as “wind;” it also gets translated as “breath;” it also gets translated as “spirit.” So you could feel the wind outside and that’s the rûaḥ, or you could breathe and that’s “ḥ,” the rûaḥ, or a spirit that animates something—that is also the same thing. And if you were to be teleported back in time into ancient Israel, and you were to be conversing with an ancient Hebrew, and they use the word rûaḥ, and you ask them, “What did you mean by that? Did you mean the, like the natural, like the wind, or you talking about a spirit? What exactly are you talking about?” I think they would be… I think they wouldn’t know what you’re asking them. I think they’d be like, “What are you talking about? I said what I said, and if I didn’t mean that, I’d have said something else.” But if you really pressed them on it, they would say, “No, it’s just rûaḥ. I meant what I said.” It means all of those things all at once.

And so because of this idea that the natural and the spiritual were so linked—more than they are today—the ancient people came up with gods to represent these natural cycles, these cycles of death and rebirth that are seen in nature. And surely when we look at these ancient civilizations—you know, in the ancient Near East, and in Egypt, and all over the place—you have these pantheons of gods, and some of these gods would have been actual demonic forces, and some of them would be just completely man-made. You know, “I’m gonna paint a face in this rock and say, ‘That’s gonna help me with my crops,’” right? But it’s this idea that spiritual things representing natural cycles. And so in this way natural realities become religious liturgies.

And really that’s why we celebrate New Year’s on January 1st—tomorrow, right? We got… new year starts tomorrow—that’s really because of this whole thing. It comes from the ancient Roman calendar, or more specifically the Julian calendar. Julius Caesar in 45 BC instituted the Julian calendar, and Julius Caesar—you remember your high school English class, Julius Caesar, “et tu Bruté?” Stab stab stab. Same guy? He was working off the ancient Roman calendar that used Januarius as the first month of the year. And Januarius was named after the Roman god Janus who is the Roman god of beginnings, endings, and transitions. So it’s this idea that we have this spiritual reality, and we’re gonna name it after this month that’s gonna begin the civic and liturgical year. And so we still we still have our first year the month is January, named after a Roman god. Did you know that? We’re basically celebrating a pagan holiday tomorrow. Yay us!

Before you history nerds get mad at me—I don’t see Graham McGrew in here, but he’s gonna get mad at me if I don’t mention that we don’t actually use the Julian calendar; we use the Gregorian calendar that was modified about 1600 years later by Pope Gregory XIII. So there’s that.

Shift to the Supernatural

Why is Joe going on and on about nature and calendars and Roman gods and whatnot? The point is this: that in all of this, human beings have decided over and over again in history to reckon their years and lives according to creation rather than the Creator. Right? With observing the natural cycle of things, assigning it spiritual realities, and then assigning a calendar to go along with that, we’re looking at nature and saying, “We’re gonna reckon our lives based on this,” and go no higher than that. And here’s the crazy thing, is that even animals are capable of doing that, right? Birds fly south for the winter. Some animals hibernate in the winter. Fish swim to their ancestral hatching locations every year. To an animal’s non-sentient mind, nature is its highest authority. They are not capable of seeing nature as anything other than predictable patterns. They can’t see the Creator; they can only see the creation. And I love this quote by GK Chesterton, one of my favorite authors, in describing the monotony of nature. Here’s what he says:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but [he] has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

That’s a beautiful thought, isn’t it? It’s beautiful because we don’t serve a God that just winds up nature and lets it go and then kind of kicks back, right? We see in Scripture constantly God is intervening in nature, and he’s interceding on our behalf. He’s active in his creation. But to an animal, being merely a natural being, can’t reason that out. He can’t have these transcendent thoughts that Chesterton is having here. But God wants so much more for us than animals. Doesn’t he say exactly that in Luke 12:24? Jesus says, “Consider the ravens: they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” And if you woke up this morning and forgot about how special you are in God’s sight, there you go.

So in scripture, what I think we see is an invitation to shift our alignment from the natural to the supernatural, all right? We’re not animals. We’re special in God’s sight. We’re created in his image. So we’re gonna shift our alignment from the natural to the supernatural, and that’s gonna bring us to our scripture today. You’re like, “Finally Joe. Let’s get to the scripture.” Yeah, we’re gonna be in Exodus chapter 12, so if you have your Bibles go ahead and work your way to Exodus chapter 12, right at the beginning at verse one.

Context of the Scripture

As you’re finding your way there, as you’re working your way there, I’m gonna kind of set the stage for what’s happening—the context of Exodus chapter 12. What we have here is Israel, God’s chosen people, have been enslaved in Egypt for over 400 years—specifically I think it’s exactly 430 years at this point that they were slaves in Egypt. Do you realize how long 430 years is? Do you know what was happening 430 years ago? William Shakespeare was still cranking out plays in ye olde England, right? Four hundred thirty years ago, not only did the United States of America not exist, but none of the thirteen colonies even existed yet at that point. I want to say—I was looking this up earlier—I want to say that the first colony, their charter was in 1607; someone can correct me if I’m wrong. “Jeez Joe, enough with the history lessons. We get it. You like old stuff.” Four hundred thirty years they’ve been in Egypt, and God chooses Moses to lead the people out of Egypt, out of slavery, out of oppression, and into the land that God had prepared for them. Obviously Pharaoh’s not cool with this. “No, you can’t go. You can’t walk out with my free labor force. No!” So Pharaoh opposes Moses leading God’s people out of Egypt, and so God sends plagues on Egypt, right? And so far, by the time we get to chapter 12, there’s been nine plagues so far: you got locusts, darkness, the Nile turning to blood… six others I can’t remember. But look, you can turn back a few pages and read later if you want. You can read about this, you know? Or if you don’t want to do that you can watch The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, or if you don’t want to do that, you can watch The Mummy with Brendan Fraser. Any of those would be great options. If you’re gonna watch The Mummy, invite Theresa over, she loves that movie.

But there’s been nine plagues so far, and the tenth plague is gonna be the one that finally breaks Pharaoh. It’s gonna be the one where Pharaoh finally goes, “All right, look, go. Moses, take your people, get out of here, I don’t care. Just leave.”

“Okay, fair, but we’re gonna take some gold and silver on our way out.”

“Yeah, I don’t care what you take. Just get out of here. We’re done with this.”

And the final plague, the tenth plague, is the plague of the firstborn, where the firstborn of every household is going to die. That includes Pharaoh’s household, all the way down to the lowest servant, the firstborn of that household is going to die. Even the livestock too. The firstborn child of every household is going to die except for those of Israel, for a reason I will explain in a moment.

This final plague is going to allow Israel to plunder Egypt and walk out free and clear. Think about that, a nation of slaves plundering the greatest empire in the world at the time and just walking out. It’s amazing. How cool is God, right?

Passover

To commemorate this deliverance that is about to happen, God institutes the Passover, all right? And this is where we pick up in Exodus chapter 12, and I’m just gonna read the first two verses right now:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.”

Pause. I’m not gonna read the entirety of chapter 12. I don’t want you to think I’m just like cherry-picking scripture to make it say what I want to say. Verses 3 through 23 are gonna describe what they are to actually do, alright? And they’re instructed, each family is to take a lamb—a one-year-old, spotless, unblemished lamb—slaughter that lamb, eat it, and then put the blood on the door frame of their house. And then it goes on to explain the lasting ordinance when they celebrate this in coming years that they’re gonna eat unleavened bread for seven days. But the reason for the blood on the door frame is that’s gonna be the indication that when the Spirit comes through Egypt, and it’s going to all of the houses and killing the firstborn, that the Spirit’s gonna pass over those houses that have the blood of the spotless lamb on the door frame. Because if Israel is obedient to God and does what he tells them, that is going to save them from this plague. And I’m gonna skip ahead to verse 24. Twenty-four through 28 says this:

“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.

I want to go back to verse 2. “This month is to be for you the first month.” In Matthew Henry’s commentary, he says this: “They had hitherto begun their year from the middle of September, but henceforward they were to begin it from the middle of March, at least in all their ecclesiastical computations.” Note it is good to begin the day, begin the year, and especially begin our lives with God.

Here’s the thing you gotta remember, is that at this point in redemption history, Israel’s religious calendar was not in place yet. The feasts, the festivals, the regular daily sacrifices, none of that was instituted yet at this point. Worship of Yahweh up till this point is a little bit ambiguous. You read through Genesis, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you see them building altars and sacrificing to God, but there’s really no, like, set commandments that we see in scripture. It’s a little bit like, “How do we do this?” But God is about to establish his Law through Moses, all right? The first five books of the Bible are called the Torah. “Torah” just means “law,” so the first five books of the Bible is God telling his people how he is to be worshipped, and the narrative parts of those five books are the basis—kind of the “why?”—whereas the instructional parts of those books are the are the “how?”

So God, through Moses, is about to establish his law for his people. And he wants to do it, he wants the religious observances to begin with and center around this moment—divine deliverance from bondage. He says, “This is gonna be your starting point right here. What I’m about to do this Passover, what’s about to happen, this is where we’re gonna start. Everything I’m gonna tell you about how you are to worship me, it starts here.”

The Eucatastrophe

This moment is so huge for God’s people. The word that I would use to describe it is a word that was coined by my favorite author of all time, J. R. R. Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings. He coined the term “eucatastrophe,” and that that prefix eu- being like a negation before the word “catastrophe.” The eucatastrophe is the sudden turn in a story, an unforeseen victory, deliverance against all odds, when the hero of the story—they don’t know what’s gonna happen, but then something happens outside of their control, and boom it all comes together. How’d that happen? No idea. That’s what eucatastrophe is, and Tolkien himself said that the birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the incarnation, the sudden turn. And if you’re curious about what Tolkien said the eucatastrophe of Lord of the Rings is, it’s when Gollum attacks Frodo, ring falls in the Crack of Doom, Sauron’s dead, yay good guys. Okay? So when you’re done watching The Mummy just go ahead and watch Lord of the Rings, all right? It’s gonna be twelve hours well spent.

This is Israel’s eucatastrophe. This is the turn. This is where they’re gonna begin their worship of God.

Only by the Blood

And do not get confused about what Passover is, all right? Passover, or the plague of the firstborn, it was not just supposed to be judgment on Egypt. It was judgment on everyone. “What do you mean by that, Joe?” God wasn’t just picking Israel rather than Egypt. Israel was guilty too. “Where are you getting that from?” I’m getting that from Ezekiel chapter 20 verses 4 through 10. Ezekiel was a prophet much much later on in Israel’s history—in fact, during the time of Babylonian exile—but when God spoke to the prophets, he didn’t just speak to them about future things or current things, he also spoke to them about past things. And this is gonna be—this might change the way some of us think about this story of the first Passover. So again, this is Ezekiel chapter 20 verses 4 through 10:

“Will you judge them? Will you judge them, son of man? Then confront them with the detestable practices of their fathers and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On the day I chose Israel, I swore with uplifted hand to the descendants of the house of Jacob and revealed myself to them in Egypt. With uplifted hand I said to them, “I am the Lord your God.” On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of Egypt into a land I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands. And I said to them, “Each of you, get rid of the vile images you have set your eyes on, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

“‘But they rebelled against me and would not listen to me; they did not get rid of the vile images they had set their eyes on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and spend my anger against them in Egypt. But for the sake of my name, I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations they lived among and in whose sight I had revealed myself to the Israelites by bringing them out of Egypt. Therefore I led them out of Egypt and brought them into the desert.’”

So Israel was guilty. They were worshiping the idols of Egypt. They deserved to be part of this plague too, every bit as much as Egypt, but God provided for them in the form of a spotless lamb. When blood covered the doorposts of Israel, it covered their sin as well. And that’s what you can’t forget here is that the blood, the blood of the lamb, and nothing else, is what saved Israel that day. It wasn’t God saying,
“I like Israel better.” It’s not what’s going on. It’s not that the people of Israel did better things than the people of Egypt. It’s not, “Oh, they’ve been slaves for so long, let’s even things out a little bit.” No no no, it is the blood of the lamb, in obedience to God, which was what saved them that day.

It is not a coincidence that Jesus’s death and resurrection coincided with Passover. That was not some weird little coincidence; that was very intentional. Pastor Steven just went through a series in the book of John, right, and did you notice that a lot of those passages were conversations around the dinner table at the Last Supper, right? They were celebrating a Passover, right? Jesus and his disciples. And Jesus was communicating to them in that moment that when we look back at Passover, what was happening there at the first Passover, that’s what’s happening right now, because Jesus was the Passover lamb, and just on a cosmic scale rather than on a local scale. Jesus was the Passover lamb. He was the blood that covered the doorposts and covers over our sin. He’s our eucatastrophe.

Second century bishop Melito of Sardis says it this way:

The mystery of Passover is old and new, eternal and temporal, corruptible and incorruptible, mortal and immortal in this fashion: It is old insofar as it concerns the law, but new insofar as it concerns the gospel; temporal insofar as it concerns the type, eternal because of grace; corruptible because of the sacrifice of the sheep, incorruptible because of the life of the Lord; mortal because of his burial in the earth, immortal because of his resurrection from the dead. The law is old, but the gospel is new. The type was for a time, but grace is forever. The sheep was corruptible, but the Lord is incorruptible, who was crushed as a lamb but who was resurrected as God. For although he was led to sacrifice as a sheep, and although he was a lamb without voice, yet he indeed was not a lamb. The one was the model, the other was found to be the finished product.

We can’t forget as we read this story in Exodus that this is—yes it’s the turning point for Israel, where Israel’s calendar begins, where they are to reckon their days and reckon their worship of God—but ultimately is looking forward to what Jesus would do on the cross and be our Passover lamb.

A New Starting Point

Verse 2 says again that “this month is to be for you the first month.” And so what’s happening here is, God is inviting Israel to shift their thinking from the natural to the supernatural. Up until this point their calendar had begun in, I think like September or something, but God is saying, “No no no, this is gonna be so big, this is so huge, this is so vital to the identity of who you are as my people, that you’re gonna begin your calendar right now. We’re gonna start everything with right here, Passover, and we’re gonna celebrate it every year because of this deliverance, because of this eucatastrophe.” That’s the invitation for Israel, and for us it is to shift our thinking from the image or shadow to its fulfillment in Jesus. What this verse is saying is, “Use this moment as your starting point,” and if you want a concrete example of what that looks like, just ask any recovering alcoholic or addict how long they’ve been clean, and more often than not, you’re gonna get a very definite answer: “I’ve been sober this many months. I’ve been sober this many days. I’ve been sober this many years.” That’s because when people experience that deliverance, they reckon their lives from that point, from that deliverance. I’ve talked to people that have said things like, “That last, you know, big thing that I did, that’s when I realized, okay, it’s time to go to Teen Challenge, or it’s time to get cleaned up. It’s time—the moment when I experienced God.” They reckon their lives from that point, and a lot of them will celebrate the anniversary of being sober. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what we’re talking about. God wants them to commemorate this deliverance. This is where you’re gonna begin everything, from this point.

God’s invitation for us is the same as his invitation to Israel: to shift our calendar and our focus. Since we’re not bound to the Mosaic Law, right—because that’s been… the Law was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; we’re not bound to the same Law that Israel was—January 1st is as good a time as any to reflect on what God has done to give you new life in him. It’s as good a time as any to reflect on the eucatastrophe, where God gave you the sudden turn the deliverance.

“Hold on Joe, didn’t you say that January is a pagan holiday? Didn’t you just say that, that the god Janus, and…” Yeah, well, we can redeem things that have pagan roots. Isn’t that what Pope Gregory XIII did when he, you know, modified the calendar? “Hey Gregory, isn’t that isn’t that a pagan name you’re using there?” And he goes, “Yeah, it’s ‘cause my God beat up those gods and stole their calendar.” It’s not an exact quote, but I’m sure he said that.

Reflect on What God Has Done, Is Doing, and Will Do

So we can use this moment, December 31st and January 1st, to look back and refocus our lives, and reflecting on New Year’s is not unique to Christians, all right, because even the secular world understands that there’s got to be a moment of reflection here. I got apps sending me notifications all the way through the month of December telling me to reflect back on my year. Duolingo sent me an app saying, “Hey Joe, look how much Hebrew you learned this year.” And that’s sweet of you to say Duolingo, but if you drop me in the middle of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem I’d be walking around to people saying, “?אַתָה מְדַבֵּר אַנגלִית” which is Hebrew for, “Do you speak English?” So, okay. Yeah, thanks Duolingo. Spotify sent me a notification saying, “Joe, look at all the music you listened to this year. This was your favorite music. Wow, you listened to a lot of Hootie & the Blowfish.” Well, yeah, because my taste in music is firmly stuck in late 90s rock. Facebook sent me notifications saying, “Look at all these great posts you made that people really liked, and don’t you feel good about yourself?” Thanks Facebook for the validation.

But all of these are examples of “Look at what you have done. Look at the things that you did and reflect on that.” Instead, what we have here in scripture, what this verse is saying, is to look at what God has done. What has he done? And I could think about my accomplishments this year, and there have been a few I guess, or I can look at the two or three times that Megan and I looked at our expenses and income, looked at each other, and said, “I have no idea how this is gonna work, but God’s been faithful every time, and he’s gonna be faithful again,” and sure enough he was.

Maybe you experienced something similar this year. Maybe you’ve had relationships that you have had deliverance from, whether it’s an unhealthy situation, or maybe it is a restored relationship, and you look back and you’re like, “I had no idea how that was gonna get fixed, but somehow it’s better, and it’s not because of what I did. It’s all from God.”

Or maybe your faith has been shaken this year. Maybe things have happened where you’re not quite sure that you’re as solid with God as you once were. Earlier this year I had an interview, and it was over Zoom because everything’s on Zoom nowadays, and it was… the purpose of the interview was ministry related, and they asked me to just give my testimony, and okay, I have my basic points when I give my testimony. And I’m talking to these people I’ve never met in my life, I’m talking over a computer screen, and I’m giving my testimony—this happened to be at a point where I was in a rut; I was in a bit of a spiritual dry spell—and I’m giving the testimony that I’ve given my entire life, and I just start breaking down in tears. And I’m not really much of a crier myself, and all of a sudden I’m just like sobbing in front of these people I’ve never met before. It’s super, like, embarrassing and weird, but the Spirit met me in that moment, and God was saying to me, “Look, I know you haven’t been feeling me lately, but I’m here,” and that was validation.

Maybe you had some spiritual dryness this year, or kind of these desert moments where you’re not as strong in your faith or don’t feel it as much as you once did, and maybe you’ve experienced deliverance from that, or maybe you’re in the middle of something where you haven’t had that deliverance yet, that eucatastrophe, but you know that God is faithful. These are things that we should be reflecting on this year—not our own accomplishments, but what God has done—what he has done, what he is doing, and what he’s gonna continue to do. That is the invitation of this of this verse, when it says, “Let this month be the first month of your year.”

Don’t think I forgot about the last verses, verses 24 through 28; I didn’t. And I want to revisit them here. It says,

This refocus and reshifting from the natural to the supernatural needs to become both a habit and a testimony. This scripture talks about, you know, telling it to your children—and now you know, not everyone has children that they can talk to about these things, but everyone has a sphere of influence. You should be talking about how God has delivered you. The interview, cry, sad sad sad, but spiritual rejuvenation that I talked about like a minute ago—I was telling that to a friend like a few days later, and he goes, “Joe, I think—this seems like a simple solution to me—I think you just need to talk about your testimony more.” I was like, “Oh, yeah, you’re probably right.”

We should be talking about it, and we should be letting it shape the way we approach situations, all right? Because we’re not going into situations as believers, as redeemed in Christ, not knowing what the outcome is going to be, right? We know that God is faithful, we know that he delivers, and so we don’t need to be afraid. It should shape the way we think about everything. And New Year’s is a good time to consciously reflect on those things, because it gets hard in the humdrum of the year, when things are just going on and on and on, and it’s hard to kind of break out of those ruts. Right now, today, tomorrow, is a great time to look back and think about what God has done, what he is doing, and what he’s going to do. And let that refocus become both a habit and a testimony.

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