Connecting Past and Present

Because we live so long after the events recorded in Scripture, it can be easy for us to disconnect ourselves from the people of biblical history, thinking that what happened to them is vastly different from what has happened to us. Of course, that is true in an important sense. None of us today are ancient Israelites, and we have not lived in Egyptian bondage. Yet the Bible will not let us view ourselves as wholly absent from the great events of salvation. By faith, we participate in the great liberation of God’s people.

We understand this from texts such as Exodus 13:3–16. In our study of verses 3–10, we saw how the generations of Israel after the exodus from Egypt were to explain the Feast of Unleavened Bread by speaking as if they were actually present when they departed the land of the Nile. Centuries after the exodus, Israelite fathers were to tell their children, “It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt” (v. 8). Later Israelites were not to say that the exodus was salvation for that first generation only but were to see it as salvation for later generations also. Today’s passage uses similar language. Verses 14–15 indicate that in explaining the redemption of the firstborn, later Israelites were to speak of the rescue of the ancient people as something that happened also to subsequent generations. Salvation is to be viewed not merely as a past event but as a present reality because later generations are part of those things that God does for His people across the ages. We see this even in the new covenant. In Romans 6, Paul tells us that by faith in Christ, signified and sealed in baptism, we died and rose with the Savior such that even right now we are dead to sin and alive to God. By faith, we are united to Jesus, and thus we were with Him in His death and are now with Him forever in His indestructible life (see also Heb. 7:16).

Many old covenant rituals and feasts made evident to later generations of Israelites that they were part of the exodus no less than the generation that lived in Egypt in Moses’ day. Redeeming the firstborn through the death of a lamb in place of another or through the payment of a sum (Ex. 13:11–16; Num. 18:15–17) vividly recalled the death of the Passover lamb in place of the Israelites (Ex. 12) and connected later generations to the past event. Similarly, the new covenant sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper connect us to the greatest act of salvation so that we are reminded that we enjoy its benefits in the present.