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“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” - Exodus 12:2 

Passover begins tonight at sundown, the 14th of the month Nisan on the Jewish calendar.  (Biblical trivia: this month was originally known as Abib or Aviv (Exodus 13:4, 23:15, 34:18), but ever since the Babylonian captivity it became better known as Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1, Esther 3:7).  It’s also spelled Nissan.) 

Passover commemorates the redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and it was so important that God told Israel that this shall be the first month (rather like a birthday).  The focus is redemption, and in Jewish tradition, the month of Nisan is the month of redemption.  Interestingly, also in Jewish tradition, the redemption from Egypt was viewed as a foreshadowing of something even greater:

The Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Rosh HaShana 11a) recounts a prevalent opinion among the sages that, “In Nissan our forefathers were redeemed from Egypt and in Nissan we will be redeemed.”

Redemption was indeed completed in Nisan, by the Jewish Messiah at Passover around 30 AD (Matthew 26:2; Luke 22:7; John 19:14). 

There’s good reason to celebrate redemption this month.

Consider this.  According to Jewish tradition, the month of Tishri was the month of creation, followed by the fall.  Then God redeems Israel, his covenant people, from slavery in Egypt, and by explicit commandment changes the first month from Tishri, the month of creation, to Nisan, the month of redemption.  And He promises a future redemption –a prophet like Moses but greater than Moses.  This was fulfilled with the redemption of Yeshua in the month Nissan a millennium later.  He came to His own people at the time that He had already taught them about. 

The psalmist twice (vv. 67, 71) reflects on the learning he received from God’s chastisement.  This reflects the teaching expounded in Hebrews 12:5–11, that God as a father corrects us, and though this does not seem “joyous” while it is happening, afterward, the good fruit will become visible.  As the psalmist was able to say, “It is good for me” (v. 71). 

An important distinction is present between pagan self-flagellation and Biblical affliction-as-discipline.  Pagans self-inflicted their suffering, in hopes of personal expiation of sins, attainment of holiness, hopes of showing spiritual superiority, and even with the desire of manipulating the gods in conformity with man’s actions.  It was all humanistic: man set his own terms for spiritual attainment.  Much of it was also prideful: man can control circumstances and even gods by his own rituals. 

By contrast, in Scripture, God administers corrections to teach us.  Self-inflicted suffering is unwarranted by the biblical conception of discipline, and is indeed meaningless in that context.  Further, it is prideful.  Man is not commissioned to determine sanctions upon himself for disobedience, and to do so claims power from God.  Where man does have the power to administer sanctions for wrongful conduct, it is expressly delegated power from God, to specific jurisdictional spheres (i.e., family, church, state).  There is no general delegation of power to self-flagellate, and to claim such a power is just as wrong as claiming any other power not delegated to man.

Today is the Mendelssohn bicentennial.  Felix Mendelssohn (born February 3, 1809, died 1847) was truly one of the great composers of the nineteenth century, and one of the great child prodigies of all time.  In his short life, he composed an enormous amount of music.  He was also responsible for helping to recover the music of J.S. Bach, which at the time was rarely performed.  Mendelssohn considered Bach’s music “the greatest Christian music in the world,” and through Mendelssohn’s advocacy, Bach’s music began to be performed again in what historians have called the “Bach revival” of the nineteenth century. 

Among all these accomplishments, one of the lesser known facts about Felix Mendelssohn is that he was a Jewish believer in Jesus as the Messiah.  His grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was an important Jewish philosopher who tried (rather unsuccessfully) to harmonize Judaism with the humanism of the Enlightenment.  Felix’s parents had their children baptized into the Lutheran church out of a desire to assimilate with respectable society rather than conviction, but evidence indicates that Felix embraced faith in Jesus wholeheartedly.  (See Patrick Kavanaugh, Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, for documentation.)

So, happy birthday to a great Messianic Jewish composer today!

Here, the psalmist opens by calling the Lord his “portion” (v. 57), חלק, a word that often has the connotation of an “inheritance.” Thus, the psalmist is reflecting the importance of a Godly multigenerational legacy by calling the Lord his inheritance.  Reflecting the high value placed on inheritance, the psalmist moves directly from this to stating his commitment to keep the inheritance.  This passage is of course primarily about the value of God’s word, but its secondary application is as a model of inheritance.  Fathers are to imitate their Heavenly Father in laying good foundations in order to pass on a Godly inheritance to their children.  And the children are to take up this legacy with gratefulness and a commitment to honor a Godly legacy. 

The psalm also has an interesting contrast between groups of people: “bands of he wicked” (v. 61) versus bands of the righteous (v. 63).  “I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.”  Thus, unlike so many religions which seek holiness in reclusiveness, Scripture teaches that holiness is found in God’s word, and that it can (indeed, should) be lived out in joyful fellowship with a community of others doing likewise.   

Hoping in God’s word (v. 49–50) can be expected to bring the derision of prideful men.  The very act of rejecting God’s word is prideful in the most heinous manner, for it puts man above God as the arbiter of truth and falsity.  So the unregenerate man will reject God’s word, intentionally suppressing what he knows to be true (Romans 1:18–25), and will react against every reminder of God’s word.  This includes a personal disliking of those who make it their business to honor God’s law (2 Corinthians 2:16, Proverbs 29:17), for this reminds him of God’s all-encompassing claims upon every area of life, including upon his own self.  

The flipside of this is that a true love for God causes the believer to be repulsed by wickedness (Proverbs 29:17).  The psalmist says, “Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law” (v. 53).  This is not a personal dislike or hatred.  This is the attitude of the upholder of a righteous law order, that the righteous laws cannot be transgressed without grave consequences.  God works covenantally, and there are consequences for the violation of the legal terms of His covenants, upon the individual and the nation (Deuteronomy 28).