Rabbi Mordechai Kraft - Hashem Believes in Us

Just as the Jewish nation is about to emerge out of Egypt and begin the journey in the desert, Hashem commands us with three mitzvahs. Change your calendars. Go after the moon. Rosh Chodesh. Korban Pesach. Take a sheep, roast it over a fire, and eat it. And of course, the mitzvah of matzah. And the question is, why these three? These are the first three commands Hashem gives the budding Jewish nation just before we leave Egypt. There must be something so significant so significant about these three. So, if we think about it for a moment, what do we see? Rosh Chodesh. You know, the sun is always the same. It rises, it sets. The moon changes. Every day it's something new. Lesson number one is Hashem is saying, you have to always be something new. You have to be in flux. You can't be locked into who you are. Secondly, when does Rosh Chodesh begin? It begins when we tell Hashem we spotted the new moon. In other words, Hashem is saying to us, "I want you to be a partner with me in creation. I want you to be a partner with me in bringing holiness into the world. You tell me when it's the first of Tishrei, and that's when I'll judge the world. You tell me when it's the first of Nissan, 13 days later we'll have Pesach. I want your involvement with me because I believe in you." The second lesson is Hashem is indicating to us how much he believes in us. It's like a teacher who says to the class, "Join me in creating the curriculum because I believe in you, in your abilities, your input." And then we have to believe in how much Hashem believes in us. Hashem tells Hashem tells us that to take a Korban Pesach, take the god of Egypt. Take the god of your masters, Ra, the sheep god, and burn it over a fire. Why a fire? Because you can see it. It has to be burnt with its legs. You can't boil it. You have to see it. And we're basically we're making a statement to the Egyptians and ourselves that your belief system is false. Imagine how much courage that took. In Egypt, we haven't even left yet. We're looking at our former masters and we're saying, "The system of belief that you have is a lie." To grow, to change, we have to have the courage to say there's truth in the world and sometimes there are things that are false as well and we have the courage to declare it and to say it both to the outside world and more importantly to ourselves. And then of course matzah. Matzah, what's this matzah bread? What's the same ingredients, flour and water. The only difference is that by bread, we allow time to take effect. When the flour hits the water and it's unmanipulated for 18 minutes, there's going to be chametz, it's going to rise. What's matzah? As soon as that flour hits the water, we manipulate it, we move it, we bake it. We prevent nature from taking its course. And of course the message is, you have to rule over nature because you have to rule over your nature. We love Hashem when he changes nature for us, when he splits seas and turns water into blood and mana falls from the heavens. But Hashem loves about us is when we change our nature for him. So these three mitzvot, change, know how much Hashem believes in you, have the courage to stand up for what's true and to declare what's false, and of course to realize that to be great, to grow, to be a spiritual, to be holy nation, to be a nation, to be an order goal of light to the rest of the world, we have to rule over ourselves in order that our true kedusha could should come out. May this Pesach be one in which we see the Geulah Shleimah b'ezrat Hashem. We see Am Yisrael united and returning to our land b'vias Goel Tzedek b'mheira v'yameinu. Amen.