series: Romans

title: 12 The Culmination

date: April 7, 2019

teacher: Jacob Bender

scripture: Romans 3:21-26

In celebration of passover, practicing Jews do something called the seder (which means “THE ORDER”) - in which they eat a meal walking through what took place those many years ago when God rescued them from the hand of the enemy, and He did it in a way that made it very clear “I am God… and these are my people.”

And during the seder every year, everything happens in the EXACT SAME ORDER.

There were four different cups that you would drink from AT DIFFERENT TIMES throughout the meal, they are known as “the four cups of passover”

The symbolism behind the four cups comes from Exodus 6:6-7, which is God making a promise to Moses THAT HE WILL REMEMBER THE COVENANT THAT HE MADE WITH ABRAHAM. We will get into that covenant more over the next couple of weeks, but the passage we are looking at today really flows right from chapter 3 and goes all the way through chapter 4 which is ALL ABOUT ABRAHAM.

But in Exodus 6, Israel is still in slavery in Egypt, even though God had promised that he would give them the land of Canaan. So He says, it’s time to leave Egypt.

And this is what it says:

““Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.””

In this passage is what the sages called “the four I will’s” - and the four cups of passover represented each of these statements: