Isaiah 1:1-20: White as Snow

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 12 Jan 2014 and Alberni Valley Ministries, 07 Sept 2025, by Captain (Major) Michael Ramsay.

This is the 2025 Version. The view the earlier version, click here: 

https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2014/01/isaiah-11-20-white-as-snow.html

 

Isaiah Chapter 1 has often been compared to a courtroom scene as Isaiah uses much of the same language that one would hear in an ancient near east indictment. It is the first week of school. This passage can be compared to  a student coming before the principal in the days before they banned the strap[1] As a parent of three grown (or almost grown) children this reminds me of when your children are in trouble. The exasperated parent in the opening verses (1:2ff) calls out:

 

Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!

For the Lord has spoken:

“I reared children and brought them up,

but they have rebelled against me.

The ox knows its master,

the donkey its owner’s manger,

but [my daughter] Israel does not know,

my people [my children] do not understand.”

 

Mom or Dad continues,

Woe to the sinful nation [family],

a people whose guilt is great,

a brood of evildoers,

children given to corruption!

They have forsaken the Lord;

they have spurned the Holy One of Israel

and turned their backs on Him.

 

Now this is where it gets interesting. God is obviously being compared to a judge ordering corporal punishment or more likely - with this language of the family here - a parent who physically disciplines his children.[2] God is portrayed as one who has been provoked to this quite severely. Isaiah says, Verses 5-6:

Why should you be beaten anymore?

Why do you persist in rebellion?

Your whole head is injured,

your whole heart afflicted.

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head

there is no soundness—

only wounds and welts

and open sores,

not cleansed or bandaged

or soothed with olive oil.

 

And then Isaiah tells us what he means by this analogy of God having the transgressor beaten. He says:

 

Your country is desolate,

your cities burned with fire;

your fields are being stripped by foreigners

right before you,

laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.

Daughter Zion is left

like a shelter in a vineyard,

like a hut in a cucumber field,

like a city under siege.

Unless the Lord Almighty

had left us some survivors,

we would have become like Sodom,

we would have been like Gomorrah.

 

Let’s stop and think about this for a while because it raises a number of really serious questions:

 

1. Does God condone beating children or other offenders?
2. Does God beat us into submission through events in our life?
3. Is God picking on Israel? Does He pick on us?

There will be a fourth question that we will look at too:

4. Does God want more from us than just to worship Him?

 

We will come back to these questions but first let us look a little bit at the historical context of this text. Isaiah the prophet lived in the 8^th Century BCE. He lived 700 or so years before Christ. He and his wife were both prophets (8:1-4)[3] and he had a number of disciples who worked with him (8:16-22) and they probably carried on his prophetic work long after he had received his ‘Promotion to Glory’. Isaiah is mentioned elsewhere in the books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in our Bibles (2 Kings 19:1-7, 14-37; 20:1-11; 2 Chronicles 26:22, 32:9-33). And Verse 1 of Chapter 1 of Isaiah tells us that the part of the book to which we are referring is ‘The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah’.

 

At this time in history the regional superpowers are Egypt to the southwest and Assyria to the northeast of Israel and Judah who are, with others, stuck right in the middle as they vie for military, political, and economic power in the area. Israel and Judah, as this prophecy is being spoken to them, are extremely vulnerable to attack. Israel will actually be wiped out by the Assyrians right around this time, in 722 BCE. This brings us back to Isaiah’s prophetic warning to the people of Israel and Judah.[4]

 

As we have said, Isaiah uses the language of a parent applying corporal punishment – spanking or more – to his children. From this language arises then our first three questions that we are looking at:

 

1. Does God condone beating children or other offenders?
2. Does God beat us into submission through events in our life?
3. Is God picking on Israel? Does He pick on us?

 

Does God here condone beating children or other offenders (like they cane people in Singapore, for example)? No, He doesn’t. But neither does He condemn it here either. God isn’t actually addressing the best way to discipline your children at all in this pericope; God, through Isaiah, is merely drawing an analogy that everyone listening to his prophecy at this time and place would understand. If this pericope were penned in our contemporary Canadian culture, Verses 5 and 6 probably could read:

 

O Canada, why should you be in timeout anymore?

Why do you persist in rebellion?

Your whole day is spent in that timeout chair,

You are grounded for a week

From the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed

there is no TV, video games or friends—

only sitting in the timeout chair

not moving or talking

or doing anything but homework.

 

God is not addressing corporal punishment specifically here. He is talking about the importance of a parent disciplining his children. And we know that a loving parent does teach his children right from wrong. A loving parent does discipline her children. Proverbs 24:18, which my mother used to quote for me many time growing up, reads:

 

Whoever spares the rod hates their children,

but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

[Spare the rod and spoil the child]

 

The parent who loves their children disciplines them. The one who hates them does not. This is what God is talking about in our text today. God says to the people of Israel and Judah: 'Look at all of these things that are happening to you now', Verse 7:

 

Your country is desolate,

your cities burned with fire;

your fields are being stripped by foreigners

right before you,

laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.

 

Take this as a warning, God says. Like a parent, He says, ‘now think about what you have done. This should be an opportunity for you, my children, to think about what you have done and make the necessary changes before it is too late and something really drastic happens.’

 

God isn’t beating His children into submission; God is disciplining them before they - through their actions - cause real problems for themselves. God is warning them and hopefully they will heed His instruction so that they will not force their own destruction upon themselves. What Israel and Judah are experiencing is a direct result of their blindly acting out on their own without taking care of their little brother or sister. God isn’t picking on Israel at all; as a matter of fact He is telling Israel to smarten up and to stop picking on her little sister or there will be real problems.

 

God doesn’t pick on us either in our lives. Many times, if the hardships in life that we are experiencing are the natural results of our own actions, then indeed we should take them as an opportunity to change before our own actions result in our own destruction. However, we must not forget that when in the New Testament Jesus’ own disciples make the theological error of the prosperity heresy, asking, John 9:2, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” When they say that sin is the reason the boy is blind; when they imply that anything and everything that we don’t enjoy in life is condemnation from God, Jesus rebukes them. John 9:3, “‘neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’”

 

God doesn’t punish us ‘willy, nilly’. He isn’t a vengeful God like the mythological Zeus sitting on a cloud with a thunderbolt waiting to zap us whenever we do something wrong. Quite the opposite; in our pericope today, God is compared to a loving parent who needs to discipline His own children before they race off to their own destruction.

 

That brings us to Verses 11-17. My own children of course are very near perfect and almost never needed correction or discipline…but occasionally if Susan or I pulled one of them aside and have to discipline them, she may protest: What did I do? It was my sister that did that. I didn’t do anything wrong! It wasn’t my day to do the dishes or do some other chore that isn't done! It’s not my fault! She hit me first... She told me to do that… I didn’t do anything wrong! I was just nicely doing my chores, doing my homework, minding my own business when all of a sudden that favourite mug of yours just jumped off the cupboard and broke all by itself. I didn’t do anything wrong! It's not my fault! You're picking on me! It’s not fair!

 

Israel’s complains: ‘Why are you disciplining us? We didn’t do anything wrong: we always observe the Sabbaths and other occasions, we always come to the Temple, we always offer You sacrifices, we always pray; so why are you picking on us, God? It’s not fair. That brings us to our fourth question: does God ask more of us than just to worship Him? Do You, God, always appreciate our worship even? God’s reply, Verses 11-15:

 

“The multitude of your sacrifices—

what are they to me?” says the Lord.

“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,

of rams and the fat of fattened animals;

I have no pleasure

in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

When you come to appear before me,

who has asked this of you,

this trampling of my courts?

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.

Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

I hate with all my being.

They have become a burden to me;

I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

 

This is significant. The children of Israel are praying; they are going to church, going to the Temple; they are offering sacrifices; they are spending time with God; so, is praying, reading your Bible and worshipping in church? God says ‘no’. He wants you to love Him AND your brother.

 

Many times in the Scriptures God tells us that He doesn’t want a proverbial Christmas card from us if we are going to refuse to be nice to our sister. He says, ‘don’t give me a hug if you are just going to turn around and bop your brother on the head’. He says, ‘I don’t want your praises if you are going to keep picking on your little brother and your little sister.’ He says, ‘You say you love Me but that is not true; if it were true that you love Me, you would be nice to my children; if it were true that you love Me, you would love your brother. If it is true that you love Me, stop picking on your sister![5] Verses 16 and 17:

 

Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

stop doing wrong.

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

 

This I think is very important for those of us who are here today. Jesus says, Matthew 22:37-38 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” But He doesn't end there. Verses 39 and 40, Jesus says, “...‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

 

Jesus says, Matthew 5:23-24, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”

 

Jesus says, in the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:12, ‘forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who have sinned against us.’ And Jesus says, Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

 

Jesus says again, Matthew 25, just like in Isaiah 1, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did not do for me (v.41).’ So ‘…depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (v. 45)’.  But “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world (v.34).’” For, ‘truly I tell you, whatever you did do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did do for me (v.40).’”

 

This is very important for us in the churches: when we gossip about others, when we complain about others, when we won’t sit with others, when we won’t talk to others, when we won’t go to church or to a certain event because someone else is there; when we are mad with our brother; when we don’t forgive our Christian sisters, when we do this, God is as exasperated as any parent.

 

God just wants us to love one another like any parent just wants their kids to love each other. And of we do that – love god and love our brother and sister – He tells us that all our sins – whatever they are – will be forgiven. God always loves us and wants to forgive us and Isaiah 1:18-19a,

 

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”

says the Lord.

“Though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red as crimson,

they shall be like wool.

If you are willing and obedient...

 

Let us pray.

 

www.sheepspeak.com  

 

 

[1]Cf. Alec Motyer, J.: Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1999 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 20), S. 50

[2] Cf. Gene M. Tucker, NIB VI: The Book of Isaiah 1-39, (Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tenn: 2001),53.

[3] But Cf. John H. Tullock and Mark MacEntire, The Old Testament Story, (Pearson Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2006) 214 where they argue that Isaiah 8:3 may not be designating his wife as a prophet but rather as the wife of a prophet.

[4] Cf. By Captain Michael Ramsay, Isaiah 1-39: 1^st Isaiah, Later the World. Presented to Swift Current Corps on January 10, 2010. Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2010/01/isaiah-1-39-1st-isaiah-later-world.html

[5] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, ‘Isaiah 1-39,’ Westminster Bible Companion (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 1998), 17-18

Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 9:10-12, Micah 6:8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10: HMCS Merciful: Stone Catcher Cruise.

 Presented to TSA Alberni Valley, 30 August 2025 by Major Michel Ramsay

 

 My parents took Susan, our kids and I on an Alaska cruise to celebrate their 60^th anniversary. It was great. We were able to see wonderful scenery in Glacier National Park and elsewhere. We were able to see whales – so many whales – and other wildlife. It was good celebrating with family. It was fun to do the activities on ship and explore Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. The girls and I really enjoyed the trivia – especially music trivia - nights. We even won two of the contests and received plastic tulips as a prize! Heather and I were able to be part of a show in Skagway where they invited us up on stage. We also met some very interesting people – One lunch I sat with a lady from Japan who studied at Regent College in Vancouver and is currently working on her PHD on Malachi – she spent 10 years translating Bibles in Uzbekistan. It was certainly providential to have her sitting next to me at lunch one day. She told me how one of the Bible translators working with her, an Uzbek, was not a Christian. They weren’t allowed to proselytize; however, during their time immersing themselves in the Bible; he gave his life to the Lord.

 

Many things from this trip could be possible sermons. The beauty of nature and creation is always a good theme. And launching from the testimony of the Bible translator, one could easily speak about Doctrine One of The Salvation Army (We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice) or Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes..."

 

One thing that is a natural analogy is the nature of cruises in general. There are so many people on the trip from all over the world. I met people from Germany, Japan, Columbia, Philippines, South Africa, the UK, the US and elsewhere. People were from different walks of life and different ages. This reminded me of the Kingdom of Heaven and how, Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 

I was also reminded that as is pointed out in Ecclesiastes 9:2-3: 

 “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good,

so with the sinful;

as it is with those who take oaths,

so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:

The same destiny overtakes all.”

 

It doesn’t matter what people do on the cruise – there were more activities than one could possibly do even if they wanted to do them all. Some people could have spent the whole time in their rooms; some people could have gone on every shore excursion - dog sleds, helicopters, hikes – or visited every museum or saw every show. Some people could have eaten and drank so much that they couldn’t move whereas others could have spent their time doing abs workouts and Tai Chi. I could easily make the point that this is what life is like. We all board the cruise ship of our life and we are all going to get off – the revivalist would then ask us this question, when your temporal cruise ends, what will your eternal destination be? This is important. I myself am drawn to holiness / social justice themes these days; concentrating on what you do while you are on the cruise of life rather than where you will exit the ship because I truly believe that Salvation is a relationship (with God) rather than merely a final destination.

 

About that: I have shared with you this summer many books I have been reading: about Truth and Reconciliation, and prison reform and other social justice issues. If I have gone overboard (pun acknowledged) I do apologize. I do believe that we are called to live holy lives serving God, showing love, mercy to our neighbour. One book I have been reading is ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson, a death row lawyer who helps people who can’t afford lawyers in the USA. He shared a number of stories about his clients: some guilty, some innocent; Some who were spared execution; some who weren’t. I read stories of children who lived 40 years in prison to finally have their sentence overturned and be released. There is one amazing story of Walter, who was wrongfully committed and was almost executed but they were able to save him. There were also hair-raising stories of people who could prove they were innocent but were still executed. There was one story of a man who never matured beyond the equivalent of a young child who was convicted of murder and spent most of his years in prison in solitary confinement and who truly believed that when/if he was released, he would go to live with his lawyer. One execution, that of Mr. Dill, hit the author, his lawyer, quite hard… (288-289)

On the phone with Mr. Dill, I thought about all of his struggles and all the terrible things he’d gone through and how his disabilities had broken him. There was no excuse for him to have shot someone, but it didn’t make sense to kill him. I began to get angry about it. Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right? I tried not to let Mr. Dill hear me crying. I tried not to show him that he was breaking my heart. He finally got his words out. “Mr. Bryan, I just want to thank you for fighting for me. I thank you for caring about me. I love y’all for trying to save me.”

 

This next part really resonates with me in my role as a Salvation Army Officer. I truly feel sometimes as the Mr. Stevenson writes:

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore.

For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice.

I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff.... And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this?”

It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken, too.

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.

… We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.

But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

 

Like me, Mr. Stevenson says:

I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations—over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

All of sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

 

My friends, I almost wept as I read all of this; because this is what my life as a Salvation Army Officer often feels like. I see so many people broken, needing mercy, and it makes me cry when we as a society, or I, as a person, don’t offer it.

 

I read one part in this book where Mr. Stevenson’s client was being released after many years of wrongful imprisonment and he said he should have felt happy – but he felt angry that Walter, his client, had to suffer for many years and even though he was released, his years can never be returned to him. My heart was in my throat. I have felt that anger on behalf of our friends here and at the Bread of Life as they receive justice delayed, knowing many will not even experience that. I have like Mr. Stevenson felt I wanted to quit some days.

 

He tells another story. This one is about a lady he encountered in a courtroom. The first time she was ever in court was after her young grandson, whom she loved more than anything else, was murdered. Mrs. Macmillan prayed to the Lord repeatedly. She sat through the whole trial of the three young men convicted of killing her son. When they were sentenced to die in prison, she cried. A lady came to comfort her asking which one of the convicted boys she was related to – none, the victim. They sat together for two hours in silence. Mrs. Macmillan then began coming regularly to court. She said,

          “It has been wonderful, Bryan. When I first came, I’d look for people who had lost someone to murder or some violent crime. Then it got to the point where some of the ones grieving the most were the ones whose children or parents were on trial, so I just started letting anybody lean on me who needed it. All these young children being sent to prison forever, all this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they’re not even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don’t care. I don’t know, it’s a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.”

 

She is referencing the woman caught in adultery and how the Lord required that they let the woman go. Mr. Stevenson said to a congregation once, “But today, our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion…we can’t simply watch that happen…. we have to be stone-catchers.” Mrs. Macmillan doesn’t have the power of the Lord or the judges to release people but she can catch the stones we throw at each other. We can all do that. We are all called to do that.

 

Mr. Stevenson recalls again the night his friend was killed:

 

On the drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution. I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with scripture (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

 

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

 

I turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home, I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.

 

Today, I confess to you that this is a burden on my heart. I feel for all our employees who are struggling with addiction, mental illness, and trauma; my friends who steal from our Thrift Store to feed their addiction. Our folk at the Bread of Life and The Salvation Army shelter who have left us to go to prison, the hospital or the funeral home. My heart breaks for the many people struggling whom I know personally and who we live and work alongside everyday. I just hope that I will always remember to extend the mercy that I know that I don’t even deserve to everyone I meet. After all, we are called to be stone-catchers. It is my prayer that we will all do just that and show just mercy.

 

Let us pray.

Exodus 12:24-28: Remember the Plan

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, 17 August 2025, Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 06 July 2014 which was based on an earlier version presented 01 July 2012 by Major Michael Ramsay.

 

This is the 2025 Version, to see the 2014 Version click here: 

https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2014/07/exodus-1224-28-remember-today.html

 

To see the 2012 version, click here:

 https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/06/exodus-1224-28-remember.html 

 

Our team has been working away with the fires. The other week our team was in Qualicum feeding people. This week we were coordinating our fire response here – concerned about a possible evacuation and how to get all our people out. I spoke with the City, ACRD, media, and TSA EDS quite a bit – planning for possible evacuations, etc.  The TC called us on Friday morning, along with the DC and others to thank us for our work. With all the work with the fires the past weeks I was reminded of a fire story I heard a few years ago from a member of my Rotary Club in Swift Current Saskatchewan. Dave told us this story of a family vacation in Acapulco in 1968:

 

Dave and his wife were on holiday in Mexico. They check into their hotel. They are near the ground floor and there are these little lizards - Geckos or something else – climbing all up the walls; so they speak to the hotel and ask to be moved as far away from the lizards as they can, up to the top floor. They do move up to the top floor. This turns out to be a mistake. In the middle of the night, they are woken up as people are running through the halls screaming. Some girls from Quebec tell them what was happening: the hotel is on fire. The stairs, they are concrete for the top few floors and then wood beneath and the wooden stairs are ablaze. The girls from Quebec jump over the railing from the 10th storey or more up and plunge all the way down. Dave and his wife and his two sons, aged six and nine, are trapped. Without thinking they run to the elevator but the door closes with people inside it just before they get there. Actually I think Dave may have even gotten his hand in the closing door but they don’t catch the elevator, which is good because we know what happens to people in elevators in a fire. Dave and his family are trapped. They try to tie sheets together to scale down the outside of the building but as Dave is heading over a balcony, it is good that he has an arm linked through the railing because someone unties the sheets. He then climbs down the side of the balcony and swings onto the balcony below. His wife then drops one of his children for him to catch and then the other and then she scales down as far as she can, then falls and Dave catches her legs and pulls her in. They do this until the third story or so of the building when they run out of balconies. Dave then throws one child down onto a straw thatched roof, hoping that will break his fall. He sees the boy fall through the roof and run away; so he throws the other son down who makes a new hole as he crashes through the thatched roof. He runs to safety. His wife jumps next and Dave is able to scale a palm tree to the bottom. They are injured but they survive. It was quite a tale to hear. They survived by the grace of God but others on their floor who leapt over the railing or who took the elevator did not.

 

What had happened was, apparently there was a dispute between two ownership groups – one local and one foreign – the foreign group was residing in the hotel on that day and some local people had attacked the hotel with Molotov cocktails – hoping to collect insurance, I believe.

 

It was quite something to hear. There is more to his story too. One of his sons had a piece of the thatched roof he fell through stuck into his foot. The other had a twig protruding from his neck with blood spurting out. They were okay though. There was another miracle in this story. Dave and his wife recognize this as a miraculous salvation. When Dave and his wife were climbing down the balconies to escape the flames, they left somewhere her straw purse with their passports, money, plane tickets, and the like. The next day Dave went back and began looking in this burned-out hotel building for this straw purse. God saved it for them. It was on a balcony on a burned-out floor but this straw purse with its contents was still there. God protected it and God protected them. God was there for them in the midst of this ordeal.

 

It is the same with the Hebrews in our text today and with us. This week we have been planning for if we have to evacuate (due to the fire) the people who sleep at the TSA shelter and eat at the Bread of Life Centre. There are a lot of moving parts to consider in evacuating our 70 to 90 regular diners plus sleepers. Even mores so, can you imagine what it is like for Moses and Aaron as they plan to evacuate up to a million people from Egypt?!  And we have the fires to consider but they had a number of plagues (like covid maybe) only they just kept coming and each one was more awe-inspiring than the previous one.[1]

1.     The Nile turning to blood (7:14–25)

2.     Plague of frogs (7:25–8:11)

3.     Plague of lice or gnats (8:12–15) [2]

4.     Plague of flies or wild animals (8:20–32)

5.     Plague of pestilence (9:1–7)

6.     Plague of boils (9:8–12)

7.     Plague of hail (9:13-35)

8.     Plague of locusts (10:1–20)

9.     Plague of darkness (10:21–29)

I still remember vividly the closest thing to a plague of darkness I ever experienced: when we lived in Swift Current. I still recall that darkness that swept over a corner of the city: at noon it was all of a sudden as dark as night. I have not seen anything like that before. It was an ominous and fear-provoking as the blackness approached – you could see it coming toward you and you could see blue skies fleeing from its presence. We went to pick up Rebecca for lunch from school (she was in grade 3 or 4. I think). There was a tornado warning. The school had announced that the children were not to go outside. Some students, of course, were pressed up against the windows to see what was happening, others were in tears hiding safely under their desks. Today many in our community are concerned about the fires. The feelings of fear and awe, of terror and wonder, that people were having today and on that day are probably a reflection of the intensity of the emotions that would be swirling around the Hebrews like a funnel cloud as they experience the power of God through the first nine plagues and as they prepare for the final plague, the tenth plague: The Angel of Death (11:1–12:36).

 

It is in the context of them huddled in their houses preparing for Death’s arrival that our pericope is found. In the opening 13 verses of this chapter, God tells Moses and Aaron exactly what is about to happen. Just like a Forest fire evacuation alert or order: ‘Get ready’, God warns them, ‘the Angel of Death is coming’.

 

Now I have been in a lot of conversations this week with The Salvation Army, the city, ESS. And just like we have emergency disaster plans that we are to follow here in Alberni and in The Salvation Army when disaster strikes, God in our text is giving Moses and Aaron their instructions as to how to save themselves and their families when the Angel of Death strikes at Goshen, in Egypt. I don’t know if anyone here has ever huddled in a storm cellar or has been forced to take shelter or head beneath deck on a boat being tossed about in a storm, but I imagine that it is the same feeling. The people take all the right steps and now they are just waiting hoping and praying for Death to pass.

 

Today, with the fires raging near town, each one of us is supposed to have a ‘go bag’ ready as the fire might be coming. There are things we need: passports, documents, pictures, water… make sure your car has gas and if you don’t have a car that you have another way out of town! I have binders full of the city’s and the Army’s plans of what we need to follow in the event of a disaster: flood, fire, road closure, … God in Exodus gives Moses and Aaron a disaster preparedness plan (including the go bag directions) for the impending strike by the Angel of Death. It looks like this. Picture with me - you and your family – you have received your disaster preparedness plan from your leaders. Disaster is going to strike, you are fearful (even more than now with the fire near) and you are in awe as you await the Angel of Death who you know is coming to claim many on this very night. On this very evening as Death is approaching; this is the plan:

·       You are to take a lamb or a kid to share as a meal with everyone in your household. If there aren’t enough of you in a household to eat a whole lamb, you must share it with your closest neighbour (12:3-4);

·       The animal must be 1 year-old and without defect (v.5);

·       You have already been taking care of the animals for 14 days in preparation for this day – now everyone in town is to go and slaughter the lamb at twilight (v.6);

·       You will then – this is important – take some of the blood and put it on the sides and the tops of the doorframes of the houses where you will eat the lambs (v.7);

·       Then you will eat the meat roasted over a fire with bitter herbs and bread without yeast and you must eat it all. You may not leave any of it until morning! If there are leftovers, you must burn them (vv. 8-10);

·       When you are eating this meal, you are to eat it with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on, and your staff in your hand (v. 11). In our language today: you are to have your coats, hats and shoes on and your car keys in your hand. You are to be ready to go. You are to eat it in haste because it is the LORD’s Passover.

 

God tells Moses and Aaron that as the people follow this plan they will survive the impending strike by the Angel of Death. Then God tells them, ‘You must never forget this night. You must remember how I saved you.’ I imagine this evening must be as clear to those who experienced it as the images were to Dave and his wife of that night climbing down the side of the building – and Dave’s wife, she’s afraid of heights. I imagine that every time they think about this night, they remember every feeling that was racing through their heart and mind and I imagine that they’ll never forget it.

 

I remember when I was in Nipawin, SK and a building exploded right behind The Salvation Army downtown. My office shook. It felt like a truck had struck it. With others, I headed outside to see what had happened, I saw injured or dead or dying people lying on the ground as the flames began to engulf the downtown. My children and everyone around on that day have stories surrounding those moments. We all here today remember Covid! I imagine each of us have had times like these that will never leave our minds.

 

The thing with these events as real as they are to us, they are not as real to people who don’t actually experience them and as time passes people tend to forget the important lessons that come from them. I had the honour of speaking at a 70^th anniversary of D-Day memorial. For hundreds and thousands of soldiers present on June 6, 1944, as long as they lived, this is a day they never forgot; but if I were to guess I would say that less people across this whole country officially commemorated the anniversary than lost their lives on that one day. Remembrance Day and the Legion remind us of the horrors of war, lest we forget. It is no coincidence that as more and more of our veterans pass away, that there are more wars in our world than before – and wars the involve the Superpowers too. People forget and then another generation experiences the same horrors.

 

As the Hebrew families of our text are sitting in their houses awaiting the impending calamity, God tells Moses that they are never to forget this day.[3] They are to remember it forever. They are to tell their children and their children’s children. This should a permanent feature in their school curriculum, so to speak. It should be like our annual Remembrance Day ceremonies and there are some elements that must be observed. As far as the Passover remembrance ceremonies, they are to incorporate some of their Emergency Disaster Preparedness Plan into a ceremonial dinner, and they are not have any yeast in the house for seven days prior and they are to eat only unleavened flat breads. Then God tells them, Exodus 12:24-27:

“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.

 

One reason that the people were to remember this was so that they would not forget what the Lord had done for them in the past and another reason is to wait for a future deliverance. As this ceremony developed over the generations, it came to incorporate an act of ceremonially ‘looking for Elijah’. This is because tradition later stated that Elijah must return before the Messiah is to come.

 

Now Elijah did return and the Messiah did come and when he did Jesus the Messiah celebrated this very important Passover remembrance with his disciples and he uttered the very important words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” This is, I think, a big reason why God wanted the Passover ceremony etched so deeply in the minds of humanity for so long because just as when the Egyptians lost their firstborn sons, God saved His people through the blood of the Passover lamb; so when God gave up His firstborn son –Jesus Christ – He saved us; His people, all His people, He saves us all through the Blood of the Lamb.[4]

 

This is the most important event in the whole history of the world: The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God, through the giving of His only begotten Son has made it – just like with Exodus and the Angel of Death – so that none of us need to perish but all of us can have salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is important to remember.

 

This is why we come to church, this is why we go to Bible studies, this is why we pray, and this is why we read our Bibles; this is why we have our Mercy Seat, and this is why every year we celebrate Good Friday and Easter. That is why we are here today: because just as God offered salvation to all His children from the Angel of Death and the plagues; so too He offers salvation to all of us from Sin and Death and relief in everything that is plaguing us. As that is the case, it is my hope and my prayer that if any of us have not yet implemented our eternal disaster preparedness plan, that we would delay no longer and that we would all experience that salvation both today and forever more.

Let us pray.

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[1] Cf. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/E. The Passover (12:1-28)/1. Preparations for the Passover (12:1-13), Book Version: 4.0.2. for more detailed list.

[2] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 113: In the evening: literally ‘between the two evenings’. Jewish scholars are not agreed as to the exact meaning. The phrase is also used of the time for the regular evening sacrifice (Exod. 29:39) and of the time for lighting the lamps in the meeting-tent (Exod. 30:8). The orthodox piety of Pharisaic Judaism understood the meaning as being between the time in the afternoon when the heat of the sun lessens (say 3 or 4 p.m.) and sunset. Other groups preferred the time between sunset and dark, or other similar explanations.

[3] Thomas W. Mann, “Passover: The Time of Our Lives.” Interpretation 50, no. 3 (July 1, 1996): 240-250. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 241-242: The Passover narrative is arguably the most important section of the entire book because it is primarily here that the experience of exodus is communicated not simply as a moment in historical time (in the past) but as a perennially recurring moment in the present life of those for whom the story is sacred.

[4] Norman Theiss, "The Passover Feast of the New Covenant." Interpretation 48, no. 1 (January 1, 1994): 17-35. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 17: In the eyes of the first three evangelists and Paul, Jesus construed his last supper with the twelve disciples as the fulfillment of God's plan to inaugurate a new Passover meal. In this new meal, Jesus interpreted his death as a new Exodus in which the new people of God were liberated from all that enslaves them and freed to serve God in holy living.