Good morning, my name is Sean. For those of you who don't know me, I'm one of the pastors of Trinity
Cambridge Church, and it is my absolute joy and privilege to preach God's Word to you this morning.
Please turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 11. If you're not familiar with your
Bibles, or if you don't have one, if you raise your hand, we have some ushers in the back who
can bring you a copy of a Bible you could use. Exodus is the second book in the Bible.
Chapter numbers are marked with large numbers. Chapter 11, we're going all the way through to
chapter 12, verse 28. Let me pray for the reading and preaching of God's Word.
Father, we thank you that you have given us your Word, that we might know you, that we might know
your will, that we might know your salvation. And we thank you that in your Word, you give us not only
instructions, but also pictures, stories, that deeply impress upon us your love displayed for us in Jesus Christ.
we pray that you would
awe us again.
Strike us with a sense of wonder
again.
And your love
at your saving grace this morning.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Exodus 11, verse 1, going through chapter 12, verse 28.
The Lord said to Moses,
Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.
Afterward, he will let you go from here.
When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.
Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.
And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.
Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.
So Moses said,
Thus says the Lord,
About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt,
and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.
From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne,
even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill,
and all the firstborn of the cattle.
There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt,
such as there has never been,
nor ever will be again.
But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel,
either man or beast,
that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me,
saying,
Get out, you and all the people who follow you,
and after that I will go out.
And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger,
Then the Lord said to Moses,
Pharaoh will not listen to you,
that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.
Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh,
and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart,
and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
This month shall be for you the beginning of months.
It shall be the first month of the year for you.
Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month,
every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses,
a lamb for a household.
And if the household is too small for a lamb,
then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons,
according to what each can eat,
you shall make your account for the lamb.
Your lamb shall be without blemish,
a male,
a year old.
You may take it from the sheep or from the goats,
and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month,
when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel
shall kill their lambs at twilight.
Then they shall take some of the blood
and put it on the two doorposts
and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
They shall eat the flesh that night,
roasted on the fire,
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs,
they shall eat it.
Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water,
but roasted its head with its legs and its inner parts.
And you shall let none of it remain until the morning.
Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.
In this manner you shall eat it,
with your belt fastened,
your sandals on your feet,
and your staff in your hand.
And you shall eat it in haste.
It is the Lord's Passover.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night,
and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
both man and beast,
and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.
I am the Lord.
The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.
And when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
And no plague will befall you to destroy you
when I strike the land of Egypt.
This day shall be for you a memorial day,
and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord.
Throughout your generations, as a statute forever,
you shall keep it as a feast.
Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
And on the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses.
For if anyone eats what is leavened,
from the first day until the seventh day,
that person shall be cut off from Israel.
On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly,
and on the seventh day a holy assembly.
No work shall be done on those days.
But what everyone needs to eat,
that alone may be prepared by you.
And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread.
For on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt.
Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations
as a statute forever.
In the first month,
from the fourteenth day of the month at evening,
you shall eat unleavened bread
until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.
For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses.
If anyone eats what is leavened,
that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel,
whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land.
You shall eat nothing leavened.
In all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.
Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them,
Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans
and kill the Passover lamb.
Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin
and touch the lintel and the two doorposts
with the blood that is in the basin.
None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning,
for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians.
And when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts,
the Lord will pass over the door
and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.
You shall observe this rite as a statute for you
and for your sons forever.
And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you,
as he has promised, you shall keep this service.
And when your children say to you,
What do you mean by this service?
You shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover.
For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt
when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.
And the people bowed their heads and worshipped.
Then the people of Israel went and did so,
as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.
So they did.
This is God's holy and authoritative word.
In this passage, we're going to see how the Lord sets apart his people
by the sacrifice of the Passover.
And we're going to focus first on their identity as God's firstborn son,
and then the Passover lamb,
and then on the unleavened bread in turn.
In the preceding passage, if you weren't with us last week,
Pharaoh refused to let Israel go along with their children and livestock.
And he said to Moses in 10, 28,
Get away from me.
Take care never to see my face again.
For on the day you see my face, you shall die.
And Moses essentially said to him,
As you wish.
But Moses hasn't yet left Pharaoh's presence.
That will happen a little later in chapter 11.
And before he leaves Pharaoh's court,
he has one more thing that he wants to share from the Lord.
And he says in 11 verse 1,
The Lord said to Moses,
Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.
Afterward, he will let you go from here.
When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.
Chapter 11 verses 1 to 10 are structured chiastically.
The first half is mirrored by the matching elements in the second half of the passage
with the middle of the passage in this case,
verse 6, standing out alone by itself to bring attention to it.
So it says in verse 1, chapter 11,
The Lord speaks and the Pharaoh,
The Lord says that Pharaoh will let Israel go after the final plague.
And then that's matched by verses 9 to 10,
where the Lord speaks again.
And he says Pharaoh will not let Israel go unless the final plague comes.
And then in chapter 11 verses 2 to 3,
Israel and Moses enjoy the favor of the Egyptians.
And then likewise in verse 8,
Israel and Moses enjoy the favor of the Egyptians.
And then in verses 4 to 5,
Moses speaks.
And then he says the firstborn males of both man and beast of Egypt will die.
And then in verse 8,
Moses speaks again.
But the firstborn males of neither man nor beast of Israel will die.
And that leaves verse 6 by self,
where he says there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt.
And this is significant because this cry will not be the cry of the Israelites.
Previously, because of the harsh Egyptian taskmasters,
they said in Exodus 3, verses 7 and 9,
that the cry of the people of Israel came up to the Lord.
But now, after the final plague,
after the Lord's intervention,
it will be the cry of the Egyptians that fills all the land of Egypt.
So the structure of this passage is highlighting the great reversal that's happening.
Previously, Pharaoh and his servants arrogantly defied Moses and dismissed his demands.
But it says in verse 3 now that the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt,
in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people.
And then in verse 8,
Moses predicts that after the final plague,
all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me,
saying,
Get out,
you and all the people who follow you.
So previously,
in Exodus 1, 15,
Pharaoh decreed that every son that is born to the Hebrews
must be cast into the Nile.
But now, in the final disaster that God brings,
every firstborn male in the land of Egypt will die,
both man and beast.
But no harm will come at all to the Israelites.
When Pharaoh killed Israel's sons,
he was not merely acting against Israel,
but he was ultimately acting against God.
Because as God says in Exodus 4, 22,
Israel is my firstborn son.
And I say to you,
to Pharaoh,
let my son go that he may serve me.
If you refuse to let him go,
behold,
I will kill your firstborn son.
So this is the retribution that God has threatened to Pharaoh
and to his stubborn Egyptians.
But the tables have now turned.
There's a great reversal happening.
This, by the way,
is the reason why we,
as God's followers,
never should avenge ourselves upon our enemies.
Romans 12, 19 says,
Beloved,
never avenge yourselves,
but leave it to the wrath of God.
For it is written,
vengeance is mine.
I will repay,
says the Lord.
The reason why Christians can endure suffering and persecution without retaliating
is not because we don't care about justice,
even justice for ourselves.
It's not because it doesn't hurt us,
and we don't mind the suffering,
but it's because the Lord has said,
the vengeance is mine.
The Israelites suffered under the cruel slavery of the Egyptians.
They watched helplessly as their infant sons were exposed to the Nile,
as they drowned or were consumed by wild beasts.
They had no power,
but the Lord is powerful,
and he will not stand idly by when his firstborn son, Israel,
is battered and abused.
So here, Israel's identity as God's firstborn son points to the fact that they are a nation
that is specially set apart for God.
There are many children in this world.
All over the world, there are children,
but only three of them are my daughters.
I have a special relationship with them because they belong to me,
and I to them.
I am their father and no one else's.
Father, no one else calls me father.
That's similar to what God is saying here about Israel.
Israel has been, my people, God is saying,
have been set apart for me among the nations.
They belong to me,
and we as Christians also belong to God's people Israel.
In Romans 9, Paul writes that the Christians are,
by faith in Christ, spiritual descendants of Abraham,
the children of promise.
And so we are all members of God's holy people,
so then we can rightly apply this passage to ourselves as well.
So God says of us then,
Israel is my firstborn son,
and I say to you,
let my son go that they may serve me.
That's in fact what God has done here.
He has freed us from our slavery to sin.
He has delivered us from the bondage of the enemy,
so that we might serve him.
The spirit of God within you,
by whom we cry to God,
Abba, Father,
is God's stamp and seal upon our very souls,
declaring,
mine,
my people,
my son.
And that's why we as God's holy people,
consecrated to him,
for his special purposes,
ought to live holy lives.
You shall be holy,
for I am holy.
We see further evidence of Israel being set apart
as God's people
in the institution of the Passover in chapter 12,
verses 1 to 13.
The Lord says to Moses and Aaron in verse 2,
this month shall be for you the beginning of months.
It shall be the first month of the year for you.
The expression this month is literally this new moon,
because they used the lunar calendar.
And their exodus from Egypt
is such a life-changing and nation-shaping event
that God literally changes their calendar,
gives them a new calendar system.
From now on, he says,
the month of exodus from Egypt,
the month of your exiting Egypt,
which typically falls on March or April in our reckoning,
that shall be the first month of the year
to signal the reality
that this is a new beginning for the people of God.
Then in the following verses,
God gives the Israelites instructions
for how to observe the Passover.
On the 10th day of the first month of the year,
each household is to pick out a lamb
to slaughter and eat.
The lamb is to be carefully chosen.
It has to be a lamb that is without blemish,
a male, a year old.
A year old suggests that the lamb is fully grown,
it's mature, but it's in its prime.
The lamb is not senile, it's not old.
It's in good health.
And the carefully selected lamb then is to be sacrificed,
killed on the 14th day of the month at twilight.
Everyone is supposed to kill the lamb at the same time.
And then according to verses 7 to 10,
they are to take some of the blood of the lamb
and then put it on the top and the sides of the door.
And they are to roast the lamb on the fire.
It was required that the lamb be roasted by fire,
not consumed raw or boiled in water.
It was also supposed to be consumed
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
The significance of the unleavened bread,
I will explain a little later,
but the bitter herbs serves as a reminder
of the harsh slavery that Israel was under in Egypt.
The only other time that the word bitter
is used in the book of Exodus
is in Exodus 1, 13 to 14,
where it says the Egyptians ruthlessly made
the people of Israel work as slaves
and made their lives bitter with hard service.
So as they consumed the bitter herbs,
they are to be reminded of the bitter slavery
that they were suffering under in Egypt.
And the lamb was supposed to be consumed in its entirety.
Nothing was to remain until the morning.
And anything that did remain until the morning
was to be burned,
lest people found to be eating leftovers
and throwing out some of the leftovers to the trash,
and lest the Passover meal seem like a common, ordinary meal.
They are to burn it, all the remainders.
So these detailed instructions
for both the preparation and the consumption of the lamb
show that this is no ordinary feast.
It's a sacrifice.
This is not Taco Tuesday
where you just happen to eat tacos.
It's not a day in the year
when the Israelites just happen to eat lamb.
It's also not even like Thanksgiving turkey.
That's a little more similar
because you're commemorating something there,
but it's still not an adequate comparison
because the turkey itself
has no sacrificial significance.
The Passover is not just a celebration.
It's not just a meal.
It's, as verse 27 clearly says,
the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover.
And if it's a sacrifice,
it serves two main functions.
It atones for sin,
and it consecrates the people
on whose behalf the lamb is sacrificed.
That's why the offered lamb must be without blemish.
Later in Exodus 29 and 1
and throughout the book of Leviticus,
instructions for sacrificial offerings
specifically require that the animals be without blemish.
A sacrifice offered to God as worship to him
cannot be blemished.
Likewise, putting the blood of the lamb around the door
also suggests that this is a sacrifice
intended to set Israel apart
from the nation of Egypt,
from other people.
Later in Exodus 29,
when the Aaronic priests are being set apart,
consecrated for God to serve in the tabernacle,
a ram is sacrificed,
and some of its blood is sprinkled on Aaron and his sons
as a way of marking them,
consecrating them for God's service.
And it says in 29, 33,
that the ram was used to make atonement
at the Aaronic priests' ordination and consecration.
So then here in the Passover also,
the lamb without blemish is sacrificed
to make atonement for our sins,
and then so that the firstborn males of Egypt,
or of Israel rather,
might be spared from the death that is coming upon them.
And the blood of the lamb,
smeared around the lamb,
consecrates or sets apart
those who are within the house,
marking them as God's own special possession
and therefore protected from the plague.
Verses 12 to 13 confirm this.
God says,
for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night,
and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
both man and beast.
And on all the gods of Egypt,
I will execute judgments.
I am the Lord.
The blood shall be assigned for you
on the houses where you are.
And when I see the blood,
I will pass over you,
and no plague will befall you to destroy you
when I strike the land of Egypt.
I don't know if you caught the interesting reference there
to the gods of Egypt.
This is the first time that the false gods of Egypt,
apart from Pharaoh,
are explicitly referenced.
God says,
I will execute judgments on all the gods of Egypt.
So all the plagues that God has been inflicting upon Egypt
to this point,
and especially this pending final plague,
the 10th plague,
are ways in which Yahweh, the Lord,
is executing judgments on all the gods of Egypt.
So some people have tried ingeniously
to connect each of the 10 plagues
to a specific Egyptian deity,
but the identification is not so easy
or neat with some of them.
And sometimes the comparison is also anachronistic.
It doesn't fit because those gods that we know of now,
Egyptian gods,
were not necessarily worshipped at the time of Moses.
But because it says that God is executing judgments
to all the gods of Egypt,
you can make a general connection,
and some of the identifications are pretty easy.
So this, for example,
the plague,
the first plague,
the blood,
turning the Nile into blood,
neither the Egyptian god of the Nile,
Hapi,
nor the Egyptian guardian of the Nile,
Khunum,
could stop Yahweh from turning the Nile into blood.
The Egyptian goddess of fertility,
Heket,
who takes the form of a frog,
could not control the Lord
from bringing a swarm of frogs
overwhelming the land of Egypt.
The Egyptian god of the earth,
Geb,
could not stop Yahweh
from striking the dust of the earth
and turning it into gnats
to torment the Egyptians.
The Egyptian goddess Hathor,
who is often depicted as cattle,
a cow,
could not stop the livestock
from being killed
by disease of the Lord.
The Egyptian god of the sky,
Horus,
or the goddess of the sky,
Nut,
and the god of the storm,
Seth,
could not stop the Lord
from bringing the destructive hail thunderstorm
upon Egypt.
And the Egyptian god of fertility
and agriculture,
Osiris,
could do nothing to stop Yahweh
from destroying the remaining crop
with the locusts.
The Egyptian sun god,
Ra,
could not bring even a ray of sunlight
to shine on Egypt
when Yahweh blanketed with utter darkness.
And even Pharaoh,
who claimed to be God,
the son of Ra,
in fact,
could do nothing to protect
even his own firstborn son,
who's supposed to be divine,
who's supposed to be the next Pharaoh,
to rule over Egypt
from the final plague
that the Lord is about to bring.
It's a powerful statement
that the Lord is making
over and over again
with these plagues.
The Lord is setting himself
apart from these false gods of Egypt
and when he brings judgments upon them
and he's declaring to them,
I am the Lord.
And as he said in Exodus 9, 14,
there is none like me
in all the earth.
None in all the earth.
What are the quote-unquote gods
that you rely on
to provide for you
and protect you?
Buddha?
Allah?
Shiva?
Maybe your ancestral spirits?
Maybe it's no religious deed at all.
Maybe it's your savings account.
Your good looks.
Your intellect.
Your spouse.
When you make any of these things
your God
and you put your trust in them
rather than in the living God,
when you love and cherish them
more than you do
the God who loves you,
they will inevitably disappoint you
and fail you.
Because God will prove
over and over again.
Because God admits no rivals.
He will demonstrate in your life
again and again,
I am the Lord.
There is none like me
in all the earth.
And in setting himself apart
in this way,
the Lord God is also
setting his people apart,
Israel apart.
The blood shall be assigned
for you on the houses
where you are
and when I see the blood
I will pass over you
and no plague will befall you.
Egypt will be stricken
but Israelites will be spared
because they are atoned for
and covered by the Passover sacrifice.
Egypt is not God's people
but Israel is God's people.
God makes a distinction
and sets his people apart
for himself as a special possession.
And by God's grace,
now because of what Christ
has done on the cross,
all those who put their faith in Christ
from every nation
now belong to God.
And in this way,
God's people are set apart
by the Passover lamb.
And God's people are also set apart
by the unleavened bread.
After observing the Passover,
the Israelites are instructed
to observe a seven-day feast
of unleavened bread.
This is on the heel of the Passover.
They're all part of the big,
one big feast of Passover
or a five-feast of unleavened bread.
And then in verses 14 and 20,
they tell them during the feast,
they are to remove leaven
out of their homes.
For if anyone eats what is leavened
from the first day
until the seventh day,
that person shall be cut off
from Israel.
And they are to observe
a holy assembly on the first day
and the seventh day
of the feast of unleavened bread.
They are to not work,
observe a rest.
They have rest.
And you might wonder,
what's the deal with leaven?
I mean, it's just good fermented
sourdough bread, right?
I mean, what's wrong with leaven?
And there's a reason for this.
You find out later in verse 34
why God commands this feast
of unleavened bread.
And it's because the Egyptians
were so urgent
to make the Israelites leave
in a haste because of the plagues
that the Israelites, it says,
took their dough
before it was leavened.
When they were leaving
in their initial exodus
from Egypt,
they did not have time to wait
to let the bread rise.
And so they took unleavened bread
as provisions for themselves
in their journey.
This is similar to the command
earlier in verse 11
that we saw of how Israelites
are to eat the Passover lamb.
It says they were to eat
with their belt fastened,
their sandals on their feet,
and their staff in their hand
in haste.
Why do the Israelis
have to eat that way?
They needed to be ready
to leave at a moment's notice.
They had to have their shoes on.
They had to have their loins
girdled up, their belt.
They had to have their staff
in place already
so that in the moment's notice
when there is the release,
you may go,
you may leave Egypt.
They can leave right away.
And so by eating unleavened bread
each year during the Feast
of Unleavened Bread,
the Israelites were to remember
the same truth.
So this exhortation
of how to eat the bread,
like I mean how to eat
the Passover lamb
with girdled loins
or with your belts fastened,
that phrase is often used
actually throughout
the New Testament as well
in a figurative sense.
And it's used to tell Christians
that we ought to have
our belts fastened
when we live,
figuratively,
meaning we ought to be alert.
We ought to be sober-minded.
We ought to be prepared
for action
because this world
is not our home.
We should have
an eternal perspective
rather than thinking
and living like this world
is all there is,
like this life
is all there is.
We can't settle
and be comfortable.
Rather,
we ought to always have
the mindset of a pilgrim,
someone journeying
with their girdles fastened.
That's what
the unleavened bread serves
to remind us of.
Cleansing out the leaven
also has a symbolic significance
because leaven,
as we might assume
that leaven is yeast,
but yeast and leaven
are actually two different things.
In the ancient world,
yeast was very rare.
And so what they did
was use leaven
to ferment their dough.
Fermented dough
from an existing,
like an old batch,
some piece of it,
they would set it apart
to use as leaven
and they would mix it
with the new dough
and then that would then
ferment the new bread.
So that's leaven.
And so the more you do that,
of course,
there is a risk,
there's a danger
of with each subsequent bread
an increased risk
of mold growing
and harmful bacteria
growing on it
because it's literally
like you're taking
the same piece of bread
and using it
over and over again.
And so in the same way,
then the month
of their exodus
from Egypt
on the first month
of the year,
because it indicates
a new beginning
for God's people,
they are to cleanse
the leaven
from their pantries
and begin again
with the fresh batch.
And in this way,
because of how
only just a little bit
of leaven
leavens the entire
lump of bread,
this became a symbol
to represent
how sin and evil,
just a little bit of it
can so quickly spread
and infect
an entire community.
And so in 1 Corinthians
5, 6-8,
Paul references
the feast
of unleavened bread
and when telling
the Corinthians
to purge their church
of sexual immorality,
which was rampant there,
he says this,
Do you not know
that a little leaven
leavens the whole lump?
Cleanse out the old leaven
that you may be
a new lump
as you really are unleavened.
For Christ,
our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed.
Let us therefore
celebrate the festival,
not with the old leaven,
the leaven of malice
and evil,
but with the unleavened
bread of sincerity
and truth.
So brothers and sisters,
this is why
we as a church
must take holiness seriously,
why we must be
a holy people.
Unrepentant sin
is like leaven
that leavens
the whole lump
of bread.
It's like cancer
that spreads
and destroys
the entire body.
You can't afford
to leave
even a cell of it.
But we as God's people
have been joined
to Christ
and are therefore
God's firstborn son.
We have been atoned for
and marked out
by the blood of the lamb.
We have been set apart
as God's chosen possession
by the unleavened bread.
And as people
who have been set apart,
our lives
ought to reflect that
to show that
we belong to God
because the Passover lamb
has been sacrificed.
Paul is here
making,
in 1 Corinthians,
an explicit biblical
theological connection
between the Passover lamb
and Jesus.
He's telling us
that the Passover lamb
pointed to
and was fulfilled
by Jesus Christ.
That's why we read
in our Assurance of Pardon
today
from 1 Peter 1,
18-19,
it says that
Christ is
the lamb
without blemish
or spot
by whose blood
we have been ransomed
from the futile,
sinful ways.
Jesus was without sin
and therefore
he was fit
to be the unblemished
Passover lamb
that is sacrificed
for our atonement
and consecration.
So imagine
with me for a second
the original night
of the Passover
for the Israelites.
The Israelites
are to kill their lambs
at twilight.
The whole process
that then is carried out
in the dark,
it's at night.
And you could imagine
the fear and trembling
among the Israelites
as they take meticulous care
to slay the lamb,
they drain the blood,
they roast the lamb,
they are careful
to eat it
without breaking
any bones
and they're doing
all of this
and they take
some of the blood
and then they
daub it
around the doorposts
and since
it doesn't specify
how much blood
you're supposed
to put on it,
you can imagine
there are probably
some very overzealous
and fearful Israelites
who are just
you know
lathering the blood.
Make sure you cover it all.
I don't want
the destroyer coming in.
There's fear.
There's anticipation.
The Israelite families
probably don't sleep
a wink that night
and in the middle
of the night
they hear
shrill cries
in their neighboring
Egyptian homes
indicating that
there's some death
in the house
and then
the Israelite families
are gripped with fear.
Are we next?
Maybe some
older firstborn sons
who realize
what's going on
ask their parents
am I next?
Are we gonna be okay?
And the parents
reassure them
we're gonna be okay.
But why?
Because the blood
of the lamb
is on our door.
the Lord
passes over
the houses
of Israel.
The sun rises.
There's not a single
death in Israelite homes.
In fact
not even a dog
growled
against
the Israelite
families
or their animals.
Why not?
It's not because
the Israelites
are a superior race
or an ethnic group.
And it's not because
the Israelites
are more ethical
or more righteous
than the Egyptians.
The reason
the only reason
is because
they were chosen
and marked
by the blood
of the lamb.
The same is true
for all Christians.
Do you live in fear
of God's punishment?
Do you harbor
lingering doubt
in your heart
that your sins
can ever be pardoned?
Do you doubt
that God
can ever love you?
If God really knew me
if God really knew my heart
if God really knew my past
he would not love me.
He would not want
anything good for me.
Do you see
the blood
that Christ
the Passover lamb
shed
on the cross
for you?
You are covered
by his blood.
There can be
no condemnation
for you.
There can be
no punishment
for you.
There on the cross
is the indelible message
from the Lord God
saying
I have chosen you.
I have marked you
as mine.
There
is the blood
of the lamb.
And that's
what we remember
when we gather
in his name
week after week
to hear
the same
good news
of Jesus
proclaimed
over
and over again
to break
the same bread
and to drink
the same juice
proclaiming
the death
of Christ
over
and over again
because we need
to be reminded
of this
every single
day.
So let's
remember
1 Corinthians
11 26
for as often
as you remember
as you eat
this bread
and drink
the cup
you proclaim
the Lord's
death
until
he comes.
So let us
remember his
death
let's proclaim
his resurrection
and await
his coming
in glory.
Let's pray.
Father
thank you
for your
love.
Thank you
that you
do not
call us
to be a
holy people
so that
we might
qualify
to be your
people
but you
call us
to be
holy
because
you
have
already
chosen
us
because
you
have
already
marked
us
with the
blood
of the
lamb
because
you
have
already
called
us
your
own
so Lord
let us
pursue
holiness
let us
live
holy lives
not out of
fear and
insecurity
but out of
great love
for you
with great
security
assurance
and
gratefulness
knowing that
we are
your own
in Jesus
name we
pray
amen
to
we
have
all