Seder Meal

Celebrating freedom in Christ, all that He did for us, setting us free from the slavery of sin and death.  Riverside Community Church, Scottsboro, Alabama, April 22, 2011


The Seder is a ritual performed by a community or by multiple generations of a family, involving a retelling of the story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. 

The Seder itself is based on the Biblical verse commanding Jews to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt: 

"You shall tell your child on that day, saying, 'It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.' " 

(Exodus 13:8)

Thus, Seder participants recall the slavery that reigned during the first half of the night by eating 

matzo (the "poor person's bread"), 

maror (bitter herbs which symbolize the bitterness of slavery), and charoset (a sweet paste representing the mortar which the Jewish slaves used to cement bricks). 

Recalling the freedom of the second half of the night, they eat the matzo (the "bread of freedom" and also the "bread of affliction") 

and 'afikoman', 

and drink the four cups of wine, in a reclining position, 

and dip vegetables into salt water (the dipping being a sign of royalty and freedom, while the salt water recalls the tears the Jews shed during their servitude).

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  

Colossians 2: 13-14