Holy Week - It Would Be Enough

As we observe Holy Week, and contemplate the cross and all that Jesus has done for us, I want to challenge us to shift our focus off of what Jesus has done to Jesus Himself. What He has purchased for us comes out of who He is. And this is shown through both the Gospels and the story of the Exodus out of Egypt. When we start to read the Word by first examining what Jesus is trying to reveal to us about the Father and His character, it changes everything. Including how we pray. 

At the beginning of this episode, I recite the Dayenu, a prayer designed to remember all the amazing things the Lord did for Israel when He delivered them from Egypt. Perhaps as we look at this amazing rescue and see the character of the Lord who redeems us, we can write our own Dayenu. Exalt the Lord for all the things He has delivered us from, because of who He is. I pray this episode encourages you as you consider Jesus, His beauty, goodness, faithfulness, and love...and write your own Dayenu in praise of Him.

The Dayenu Text

The Dayenu - Disciples (The Chosen, YouTube)

The Women's Dayenu (The Chosen, YouTube)

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:07

If he had taken us out of Egypt and not made judgments on them, it would have been enough for us. If he had made judgments on them and had not made judgments on their gods, it would have been enough for us. If he had made judgments on their gods and had not killed their firstborn, it would have been enough for us. If he had killed their firstborn and had not given us their money, it would have been enough for us. If he had given us their money and had not split the sea for us, it would have been enough for us. If he had split the sea for us and not taken us through it on dry land, it would have been enough for us. If he had taken us through it on dry land and not pushed down our enemies in the sea, it would have been enough for us. If he had pushed down our enemies in the sea and had not supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years, it would have been enough for us. If he had supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years and had not fed us the manna, it would have been enough for us. If he had fed us the manna and had not given us the Shabbat, it would have been enough for us. If he had given us the Shabbat and had not brought us close to Mount Sinai, it would have been enough for us. If he had brought us close to Mount Sinai and had not given us the Torah, it would have been enough for us. If he had given us the Torah and had not brought us into the land of Israel, it would have been enough for us. If he had brought us into the land of Israel and not built us the chosen house, which is the temple, it would have been enough for us. That, my friends, is called the Danu, and it is a prayer written in the late eighth century by a Jewish rabbi who then disseminated it, and it has been read now for over a thousand years at different Passover satyrs as the story of the Exodus is shared. And you might wonder why during the week of Passover, where as Christians we where we, you know, focus on the crucifixion of Jesus and what he has done, why would I read a Jewish prayer like this? And that's a really good question. The reason I'm reading it is even though this prayer is not scripture, what I appreciate about it is it looks at the Exodus. It looks at what the Lord did for the people of Israel to save them from the hand of their oppressor. And it remembers. It remembers the things that the Lord did to ensure that his people were delivered from a pharaoh who had distressed them and oppressed them, a Pharaoh who, previous to the one who would not let them go, had killed their firstborn children and killed their firstborn sons, who was afraid of how great and powerful Israel was and then turned around and made them slaves. And there's so much to the story of the Exodus. There is so much that the Lord has done. But I want to focus in on the principle of the Dianu, the act of looking at what the Lord has done and who he is, and remembering it in such a way as to give him praise and thanksgiving for what he has done. And I ran across this prayer from the chosen, and it's it's a powerful moment in season five, episode four, where the disciples recite the um the Dianu. But what's actually particularly powerful to me is when the women sit with Jesus a few days before Passover and they recite their own Dianu. They write their own and they thank Jesus for the things that He has done for them. And so today, my friends, as we sit on the Wednesday before Jesus is crucified, we are a smack dab in the middle of Holy Week. I want to encourage you to think about Jesus. I want to encourage you to think about what he has done for you, how he has revealed himself to you, how he has drawn you to the Father, how he has given you his spirit, how he has opened his word to you, what he has saved you from, what he has delivered you from. And at the end of this episode, I am going to share my own Dian U that I wrote, and I want to encourage you, even if it seems like strange or silly or you know, it's kind of like what is she saying? I want to actually encourage you to write your own, your own psalm of praise, as it were, to the Lord, to remember who he is and the things that he has done for us. And if you want to see the Dianyu recited by the disciples or by the women, I've linked both of those video clips in my show notes, and you can watch them on YouTube. But the reason that I'm bringing this up is I've been thinking a lot about this holy week. And one thing that has stuck out to me aside from this prayer, which I have been thinking about and noodling on for the last couple of months, is I've been reading through Exodus and then also reading different accounts of the Holy Week in the Gospels. And as I've read, I I have been asking the Lord to help me see the parallels between these two events, right? The first Exodus, the first salvation, if you will, of Israel out of bondage, out of slavery, into the Lord's the Lord's promised land eventually. And how things in the Exodus truly mirror Jesus coming down, Jesus becoming fully human, even as he was fully God in the flesh, that Jesus heard the cry, the Father heard the cry, the Holy Spirit heard the cry of sin-oppressed men and women throughout all of the ages. And and he chose to come down to his people and lay himself down and sacrifice himself that we might be cleansed, that we might be redeemed, that we might be sanctified, that we might know deeper than any human knowledge could ever share with us, that we are loved, that we are called, that the Lord has purpose for us, and he desires us to know him and to be with him. And so as I go through this today, which I'm going to talk about some stuff from Exodus chapters one, two, and three, and then also a little bit out of Luke 19, I want to challenge you, and I want to challenge myself that as we talk about these things and we study the Lord's word, that we think about areas of suffering and affliction that we have found ourselves in, areas of oppression, areas that at the time that we were so deep in their darkness, we never thought we would be delivered, and yet Jesus moved for us. Areas that we might still be wrestling with. Because my friends, I one thing that I have been wrestling with as life continues on and and grief becomes this strange, um, strange, not friend, but strange, what would I call him it companion now in life's journey, is that I'm not sitting around crying and grieving every day, but the ache of missing people that I love, the grief and the loss of two family members close together, the loss of of other things, the loss of the way I thought life would look, that in the grief and in the struggle, in some of the things that I am wrestling with, areas of sin that I am asking the Lord to help me, to help me overcome, that I would I would take a moment more than a moment, and take my eyes off the situation that I want him to move in, and instead turn my eyes on him, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, that I would fix my eyes on Jesus and that you would fix your eyes on Jesus. And in fixing our eyes on Jesus, that we would ask him to reveal himself to us. And so I've, like I said, I've been reading in Exodus 1, 2, and 3, because it's it's where I feel like the Lord's led me. And a huge part of the reason why I'm I'm reading that is because I am asking the Lord for his deliverance in some areas. I'm asking for his move. I I want to see his hand work, I want to see him come through for me, right? And again, it is it is a privilege as his child to be able to ask him for these, for these things. But as I've studied Exodus 1, 2, and 3, I have really felt the Holy Spirit convict me and challenge me to not look so much at what the Lord did to deliver Israel, but to look at the character of the Lord and what he reveals about himself in his deliverance of the people of Israel. And so I want to read just a couple of sections out of Exodus 2 and out of Exodus 3, because there's just so much in the things that the Holy Spirit gave Moses and the experiences that Moses shared with us about his own life are incredible. But I want to focus on two particular passages in the account of the deliverance of Israel. The first is after we kind of get a rundown, right, the basic rundown of Moses' history, we read that he flees to Midian after killing the Egyptian overseer. And we find that he settles with Jethro, and Jethro gives him Zaporah to marry, and then Moses has a son. But then he adds this little paragraph at the end of chapter two, and it's verses twenty-three, twenty four, and twenty-five. And it says, Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. And as I read that, I'm like, man, Lord, that's just so the A, the the wording and stuff that is that was used is so fascinating to me. But there are a couple of things that stand out to me about the Lord here. First of all, Israel is groaning because they are in bondage, they are desiring freedom. And their cry comes up to the Lord and he hears them. And he remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I was joking with my mom when I was talking through this episode. Like the word remember doesn't mean like the Lord is like patting his pockets. Like, where did I put that covenant? Didn't I make a covenant with some guy? Abra, yeah, right. But that's not what the word remember here means. What it actually is is signifying that the fulfillment of time had come of what the Lord had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What he had promised to Abraham is that his descendants would eventually inherit the land that Abraham had sojourned. And but it would take time, that they would be in slavery for four centuries, and and that the Lord would have to do things in order to free them from slavery in order to then move into the promised land. So the Lord heard heard their groaning, he remembered the covenant with Abraham and with Jacob and with Isaac. And then the Lord looked upon the children of Israel, and the Lord acknowledged them. And Francis, this is what I'm talking about. When reading the word, when we read it first to really understand the Lord and his character and not just what he does, we we gain so much understanding. But even more than that, the Holy Spirit, who has has written the word, he wants to deepen our understanding and our revelation and our knowing the Lord, not just knowing about him. And when I read this, it was just, it was so beautiful to see, you know, this is an account that is real and it true, it's it happened to real people. And and in reading this, when I see that the Lord hears the groanings of Israel, he hears the they're crying out because of their slavery, that the Lord hears me when I cry out to him. He considers me when I cry out to him. And what was his response to them? It wasn't cruel, it wasn't just, well, suck it up, cupcakes, because you know, you're just gonna have to figure it out. No, he considered them and he acknowledged them. And then he started moving to set about his sovereign plan to deliver his people. And that's the second section that I want to read is is when Moses encounters the burning bush, which like when I talked about Exodus 14 a couple weeks ago, um, there's a preincarnate appearance of Jesus. The angel of the Lord is in the burning bush. And and that's called a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus. And yeah, the Lord calls out to Moses and he says, Moses, Moses. And I love that again, it because it makes me think of Jesus in the New Testament, Martha, Martha, Simon, Simon. How many times he he doubled up the names of people he called out to when he was talking to them. And there are a couple of things in this encounter that I love. First of all, when the Lord calls Moses, he says to Moses, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. And I think that's really important because when we look at Moses's brief history, we know he's born to a Hebrew family. He's born in Goshen. But because of the edict by Pharaoh to kill all of the firstborn male children of Israel, and and all of them, I think it's actually all of the male children, not just the firstborn, which would make sense because Moses was the thirdborn. Anyway, um, he is he's saved by his mother, he's put in a basket, he's floated on the Nile, and he is picked up by Pharaoh's sister, I believe. And nope, Pharaoh's daughter, doing good. Every once in a while, I start to mix up what I've read in scripture, and then it's like my mind twists it with watching the Ten Commandments, which is not scripture. So Pharaoh's daughter saves Moses. So he was born a Hebrew, raised an Egyptian, kills an Egyptian because he sympathizes with his Hebrew brothers and sisters in their slavery, runs to Midian, which is neither Hebrew nor Egyptian. Like he's he's been a nomad, he's not fit in anywhere. And I love that the first thing that the Lord does when he calls Moses is to say, I am the God of your father. You are mine, you belong to my people, you're part of my chosen people, but you belong to me. So I think that that's really beautiful. And then he tells Moses, who is on his face before the Lord, um, I have seen the oppression of my people. Then he tells Moses, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Pazites, and the Hives and the Jebusites. Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And again, so what are we seeing about the character of the Lord? I have seen them, I have heard their cry because of their sorrows and their tasks master taskmasters. And so what does the Lord say? I am coming down. I have come down to deliver them. And yes, the Lord is absolutely sending Moses to be the spokesperson of his deliverance, right? He Moses is tasked with delivering the people by the power of the Lord. But the Lord fills his mouth. He tells them, tell them, I am that I am, has sent you, right? And he then encourages them, go to the elders of Israel. This is chapter 3, verse 16. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, appeared to me, saying, I have surely visited you and seen what is done to you in Egypt, and I have said, I will bring you up out of the land of affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites to a land flowing with milk and honey. Then they will heed your voice, and you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and this is what's important. The Lord God of the Hebrews has met with us, and now please let us go three days' journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. And the Lord goes on to tell Moses, surely the king will not do this. He will harden his heart, and all sorts of things are going to have to happen. But what I find so powerful about this section of scripture is again how the Lord reveals his character to us. I have heard your cry. I have heard your cry under your has your harsh taskmasters. I have heard the cry of your oppression, and I am coming down to deliver you. This is exactly what Jesus has done. He has heard our cry in our sin, the cry of our misery. And some, you know, it doesn't even particularly say that the Israelites were crying out to the Lord. They were just crying out. They were just crying out. And there's so much that we that we just cry out about. And the Lord has said, I will come down. I will take on human human flesh, and I will preach my father's gospel. I will give you words of life. I will I will absolutely show you what it means to walk in my father's love and my love, what it means to live according to the kingdom of God, to do his will. And I will willingly, willingly be obedient unto death, even death on a cross. That way, through my person and my blood and the power of my resurrection, and by me giving you my spirit, you can walk in newness and life. But even more than that, you can know me. And that was the whole point here is the Lord was calling Israel out of the slavery of Egypt. And before yes, they were called to a land flowing with milk and honey. They were called to a great and vast land. But the first thing they were called to do was to meet the Lord in the wilderness. And that was always the point. Yes, they were going to inherit land, but the Lord wanted his people to know him. And he wanted his people to have the revelation of his word, of his law, to know his expectation of them and why he had called them, why he was going to use them as a sign to nations, why he was going to eventually bring Messiah through Israel. All of these things. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And there are a lot of people online who have done amazing research, go into why people were um waving palm branches and the significance of the word Hosanna and all of those things. But what caught my eye was verse 37 in Luke 19. So Jesus is on the donkey and he's going down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. And Luke tells us then as he was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. And it really struck me, and it goes back to what I was just talking about. The disciples, and not wrongly, you know, the Pharisees are crying out to Jesus, and they're like, Tell your disciples to shut up and stop talking. And Jesus says, if they were to stop praising me, these rocks would cry out. But I also think what's interesting is that the disciples are praising the Lord for the mighty works that they had seen. But later, when Jesus is talking to them in John 14, 15, and 16, he starts to go in depth in some of his teaching the night before he's crucified. And he talks about, I and the Father are one, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through me. And Philip says, Lord, show us the Father. It's an and it's enough for us. And Jesus is like, What? You know, he says he says to Philip, Have you been with me this long and you still do not know me, Philip? Don't you know that if you have seen me, you have seen the Father? And said, Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me, he does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. And tying those two scriptures together, it really struck me, you know, how many times I have seen the Lord work in my life. He has done mighty and amazing things in my life. But the purpose of those works is to show me his character, is to show me what he's like, is to drive me to the word so that I can know him more deeply. And that's, I think, is part of what Jesus is saying to Philip in John 14. Why are you questioning what I'm saying to you now? How many times, and John really gives us a lot of this discourse where Jesus is consistently talking about I am in the Father and the Father is in me. I mean, John 5, John 8, I think John 6 as well, where Jesus has talked and preached and taught about the oneness and the unbreakable unity between him and the Father. And now that he's drilling down into that with the disciples, Philip's like, well, just show us the Father, Lord, it's enough for us. And and Jesus challenging Philip to say, you've seen all the things that I have done, all the works that I have done in my father's name. Why is it that you now cannot hear what I am saying to you and grasp the depth of what I am saying to you about the oneness of the Father and I? You should have, you know, if you can't hear my word, then at least believe the works. Go back to the works that I've done and see, see how the works that I do line up with what I am saying to you. And connecting that with Luke 19, you know, we can worship the Lord for the great and mighty things that He has done. You know, just like that prayer that I read at the beginning, and it's a beautiful prayer about all that the Lord has done for Israel. But where I really felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit in my life, and especially in times where I am wrestling with my own sin, when I am walking through times of suffering or affliction, when I am battling through my own grief, that I have a tendency to cry out to the Lord and ask for his deliverance, which again is not wrong. We can cry out to the Lord and ask him to deliver us. But I really feel like the challenge from the Lord to me, and I want to lay it out there for you as well, is to not merely look at him for what he can do for us and what he has already done, but to look at him because of who he is, and to see that all of the things that he does for us, the magnitude of the work that he has done, means nothing if it doesn't come out of the very goodness and character of the Holy One of Israel, of Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, out of the Holy Spirit, who is our advocate in the spirit of truth. And that's what I want to encourage you with this holy week, my friends. As we look towards the crucifixion of Jesus, don't hop over it to, you know, Good Friday happened, but Sunday's coming. I think we need to sit. And we need to look at the cross of Jesus. We need to look at Jesus Himself. And yes, we needed to be saved. We need to be saved from our sins. But I think sometimes we put the wrong emphasis on that phrase. Oh, thank you, Jesus. He saved me for my sins. I think we need to switch it up a little bit. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me from my sins. Because it is only through Jesus that we are saved. It is only through Jesus that we are delivered. And yes, we needed to be saved from our sins, but but there is no other way that could have happened than by the person of Jesus Christ. And so, my friends, as we look towards Good Friday, which seems like such an oxymoron, because it is the most devastating day. Yet it is good because Jesus, Jesus willingly laid down his own will for the glory of God the Father. Jesus laid down his life. He set aside his kingly robes. He set aside his place in paradise with the Father. He laid aside the complete and total unity in the Spirit between the Father and the Spirit and said, I will go down. I will lay down my life. I will be the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. I will redeem them and not just to save them from their sins, but that the salvation that I put purchase for them is a redemption that brings them back into union with us. And though the first time around of being created in our image is now corrupted as the second Adam, I will open the way for them to be born again. And friends, that's the other thing I want to encourage us with. If we stop at just thanking Jesus for being a sacrifice for our sin, and we don't engage with him, and we don't pick up the cross that he appoints for us, and we don't absolutely desire to walk on the narrow way. We miss the other gift that Jesus has purchased for us, which is the gift of being conformed to his image, of being made new. And so I want to encourage you in these things. I want to challenge you in these things. Hopefully, hopefully it made sense. I pray that it did. And before I end, I want to read you my my own my own dianu that I wrote. And I encourage you to write one as well. Write a psalm of praise to the Lord, of thanksgiving to the Lord for what he has done. Yes, but because of who he is. And so this is this is my Dianue. If you had saved me when I was a young girl and not given me a life-changing experience with you at the age of twelve, it would have been enough. If you had only given me a life-changing experience with you, Lord, at the age of 12 and not helped me through horrible bullying experiences in middle school, it would have been enough. If you had helped me through horrible bullying experiences in middle school and not allowed me to find friends who loved you in youth group years later, it would have been enough. If you had only allowed me to find friends who loved you in youth group and not saved my dad's life from a horrible mold allergy by moving us to Colorado, it would have been enough. If you had held me in my darkest hours and heard my deepest cries, and not revealed yourself as loving, faithful, and true in all of this, it would have been enough. But you have done these things, and you are enough. Amen.