God Passes Over His People (Exodus 12:1-30)

Bible Passage: Exodus 12:1-30

The tenth and final plague that God sent on Egypt was the plague on the firstborn. On one night the first born of all people and animals in Egypt would be struck down in a terrible act of judgement. This would apply to everybody – both the Egyptian masters and Israelite slaves, but God made a way for his people to be saved, as a lamb was sacrificed on their behalf and its blood was smeared on their doorposts. When God saw the blood, the household would be spared. This event has come to be known as the passover, and is remembered every year to this day as an act of salvation by God for his people.

Salvation by Grace: It is striking how undeserved this act of deliverance is. For the first nine plagues, there was a part that Moses and Aaron had to play, such as hitting the dust with their staff or stretching out their arm, but this time the action is all God’s. The event that brought God’s people to salvation is entirely Gods’ work, so he can say in verse 17 that “it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt”. In a similar way, the salvation that we have received in Christ is entirely his work and is given as a gift of grace to us (see Ephesians 2:1-10). It is easy to read a story like the Exodus and think of the Egyptians as the baddies who deserve judgement and the Israelites as the goodies who deserve salvation, but as we read the story we see that both the Egyptians and Israelites act in ways that fall short of God’s standard. The Israelites fought, grumbled, moaned, worshipped idols and disobeyed God’s commands. They were morally no better than the Egyptians, and so as the judgement upon sin came on the land, the Israelites had nothing to offer to save themselves, and only could rely on God intervening and providing them salvation by his grace.

Salvation Through Sacrifice: Very precise instructions were given to the people about what would need to happen for them to be spared the judgement of God. Each household was to sacrifice a lamb that had no flaws, and to use hyssop to apply the blood of that lamb to their doorposts. As this happened, the family was spared but another had died in their place. The lamb was a substitutionary sacrifice, and its blood marked out those who were to be spared. This imagery clearly points to the cross. Jesus came as the perfect lamb of God. He was flawless and without blemish, having never sinned, and he was crucified on the Passover festival as it was remembered many years later. Just as hyssop applied the blood to the doorposts (and David pleaded to be cleansed with hyssop in Psalm 51:7), so Jesus was offered wine vinegar by means of hyssop. The blood of Jesus is the marker that an individual will be passed over for God’s judgement, just as the blood of the lamb marked a household to be spared at the first passover.

Salvation Remembered: The passover was in many ways the defining moment in Israel’s story in the Old Covenant. It was the great moment of salvation, and God instructed them to remember what he had done for them and to mark it with an annual celebration where the story of how God had saved them was told, and future generations understood what had happened. This remembrance has happened every year to this day, and indeed the last supper that Jesus had with his disciples was a passover feast, where Jesus reinterpreted the elements of the meal in light of his own imminent sacrificial death. The bread was to be a symbol of his body broken and the wine a symbol of his blood shed. When Christians share in communion today, we follow in the tradition of passover, remembering God’s salvation of the Israelites from Egypt, and the greater salvation in Christ that this points forwards to.

Potential Applications:

• This message is about God’s salvation. It would be good to offer people the opportunity to respond to God and be saved.
• It would be appropriate to share in communion together and use it to remember how God has saved you.
• Spend some time praying prayers of gratitude and thanking God for what he has done for you in Christ.