Exodus: Here I Am, Send Someone Else
Part 7
“The Passover Plot”
Exodus 11-13
Let me read to you from the book of Exodus and Chapter 11. Verse 1 says,
“Now the LORD had said to Moses, ‘I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.’”
Down to Verse 4 – Moses now stands before Pharaoh:
“So Moses said, ‘This is what the LORD says: “About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt – worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.” Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All those officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.’
“Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.”
Go to Chapter 12 Verse 1:
“The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of the year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.
“ ‘That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire – head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it until the morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it.
“ ‘This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’S Passover.
“ ‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.
“ ‘The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.’”
Please keep your Bible open there. For several weeks we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus. And I want to make just a general comment on the book this morning as I begin.
The historical books of the Old Testament have a two-fold purpose. Firstly they give us a faithful record of what actually happened in history in space and time. And this book of Exodus of course records the events of Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt where they have been enslaved and in bondage, and their journey through the wilderness. Although Exodus doesn’t arrive in Canaan, that is their destination, and they eventually of course arrive in the land God has set apart for Abraham, the land of Canaan.
That is the historical record that we find here in this book of Exodus. But this serves only as a background, as a sort of canvas for another picture, which is also being painted. And this is the second purpose of the historical books of the Bible. And that is that they teach us spiritual truths that portray the ways and purposes of God in dealing with His people, both then and also now.
And the story of the book that is contained in the book of Exodus is the most frequently repeated story in the whole of the Bible, and for good reason. 400 years before, Joseph had brought his family as honoured guests into Egypt. Joseph, who himself had been a Hebrew, had been sold as a slave, had, through factors we don’t need to talk about, had become the second in command in the whole nation of Egypt.
And during a period of famine his brothers had come to find food, and eventually the whole family, 70 of them, had come down into Egypt. And because Joseph had been the deliverer of Egypt from the effects of that famine, they were given some of the choice land in Goshen, in the Nile Delta.
And there they had stayed, and as years went by people forgot about the debt they owed to Joseph. And as the Israelites multiplied from the original 70 to something over 2 million by the time the book of Exodus opens, the Egyptians have become threatened by them and they have reduced them to slavery and servitude.
And when the book opens you have the picture of them reduced to cruel slavery and bondage. They are suffering bitterly beneath the burdens inflicted on them by their taskmasters. They are helpless to free themselves and hopeless but for the fact that centuries before God has spoken to Abraham when He set him apart and promised him that from his body would come a nation. And God had told him the day would come that they’d go into Egypt; they’d stay there; they’d become slaves. And God had told him that one day He would intervene to redeem them and deliver them and free them from their bondage.
And this story is given to us as almost a master key to the rest of the Bible because we too are enslaved; we too are locked in bondage to something called sin. And by sin, I am not meaning sins, telling a lie, committing adultery, stealing something that doesn’t belong to you; I am talking about something that is the cause of our sins. It is this principle of sin that operates within us, that holds us captive.
Paul describes it well in Romans Chapter 7 when he says,
“For what I want to do is not the good I would do, but what I hate I do. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
In other words, he says, “there are certain things in life that are good and they are right. And I know they are good, I know they are right; I plan to do them but I don’t. There are certain things in life that are wrong and they are bad; I know they are wrong. I say to myself, I will never do those things again, but I do.” Why? Because, he says, “there is something in me called sin, this principle of sin that is pulling me down all the time.”
And this is true of every one of us here this morning. And it is a ruthless master in your life. Don’t kid yourself. This is real. And the consequence of the fall is that we are born into that condition.
The wages of sin is death, says Paul in Romans 6. That is not a future statement; that is a present tense statement. You are I were born the recipients of the wages of sin. We were born spiritually dead, in the language of Paul in Ephesians 4, that we are separated from the life of God. That is the nature of spiritual death.
And this condition of spiritual death makes us easy prey to this sin principle that came into the human heart the day that God went out of the human heart in the Garden of Eden.
Jesus said in Mark Chapter 7 and Verse 21, He said,
“For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, evil [envy], slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside a man and make a him ‘unclean’.”
They come from within because that is where we are broken, that is where we are corrupted. And as God’s purpose was to redeem Israel from their bondage to Egypt, this is a picture of the fact that God’s purpose is to redeem men and women, boys and girls, from their bondage to sin.
We must of course let the Bible be its own interpreter. We can’t superimpose interpretations upon the Scripture. But right through the Bible deliverance from Egypt is a portrayal of deliverance from sin. We’ll see that a little more clearly in a few minutes.
Canaan, the land to which they were to go, a land described as flowing with milk and honey, poetically stating that everything you need will be available to you there, is a portrayal of what it means to live in the fullness of God.
The journey from Egypt to Canaan, according to Deuteronomy Chapter 1, should have taken eleven days. But it took them forty years. It took them forty years because of their disobedience and their arrogance. And it portrays the carnal Christian that lives only in human strength, with human resources and goes around in circles following his own agenda instead of living in the strength and the power of the indwelling Spirit of God. The book of Hebrews teaches and gives that interpretation to this story.
But today we come to a very crucial event. It is the final plague that finally brought about the freedom of Israel from Egypt. It was the day that the angel of death came to every Egyptian home and the firstborn son of every Egyptian family died on the stroke of midnight in his bed that night, the fourteenth day of the first month of the year.
Not only that, the firstborn calf of every cow, the firstborn lamb of every sheep, the firstborn puppy of every dog, the firstborn kitten of every cat that belonged to Egypt died that night.
But the Israelites were to take a lamb, to kill the lamb and place the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their home. And when the angel of death came to Egypt that night, the homes marked with blood were preserved.
What is all that about? Well let me look at three things with you this morning and they are very simple. We will talk about the plague, we’ll talk about the Passover and we’ll talk about the purpose – what is all this really about?
Let me talk about the plague first of all because the final plague, after nine previous plagues, was the death of the firstborn son in every Egyptian home. Now we talked about the plagues generally last week and their impact upon the heart of Pharaoh because that is really the story line; it’s what’s happening in Pharaoh’s heart at that point.
And you will recall that we pointed out last time that these had not been random plagues. They weren’t simply designed to be of such a nuisance to Pharaoh that he would let Israel go in order to get a quieter life. No, these plagues were strategic attacks on the gods of Egypt. And this last one is no exception.
In Chapter 12 and Verse 12 it says,
“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgement” (listen to this) “on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.”
So this last plague is another judgement on the gods of Egypt. Now what the specific god of Egypt is in vogue here is hard to determine. The apparently seven hundred plus gods of Egypt were spiritual authorities and powers which governed their life. And as I pointed out last week, there were various gods of the Nile, there were gods of the weather, there were gods of health, there was a god of fertility, there were gods in forms of animals, all of which came under attack in the previous nine plagues. There was a god in the form of a frog, in the form of cattle.
And of course the pharaohs themselves were regarded as being divine. And it may be that the god of Egypt under attack here is the fact that the firstborn son of Pharaoh, the heir to the Egyptian throne, the heir to deity as the people understood it, would die that night. Because it specified - Chapter 11 Verse 5:
“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh” (the heir to the throne) – “the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl.” (Right across every strata of society.)
And with Pharaoh as a deity, perhaps this is what is in mind when God says He will strike the gods of Egypt with this final plague.
Or it could be the fact that generally all these plagues have been attacks on the gods of Egypt. And they had proved to be powerless against the God of Israel. And this is the demonstration of that in advance.
But whatever the case, when the Israelites left Egypt they marched out between the funeral ceremonies taking place the next day and they knew that God had brought judgement on their gods. We know that from Numbers Chapter 33 and Verse 3, which says,
“They marched out boldly in full view of all the Egyptians, who were burying all their firstborn, whom the LORD had struck down among them; for the LORD had brought judgement on their gods.”
And as Israel walked out, they knew the gods of Egypt were pathetic figments of the imagination and any power that they may have been attributed with to protect the people was utterly shattered and broken.
And if I can say this as compassionately, about as clearly as I can, anything which becomes the object of your or my dependence other than God, anything which is allowed to master our lives other than God Himself, anything which takes the place of God in your life becomes a legitimate target for the loving grace of God in undermining it and destroying it.
Not because God is vindictive - none of these plagues were vindictive acts by God. They were acts of love and kindness and mercy because that is God’s nature. God does not have a vindictive nature; He has a nature of love. In order that undermining them the ultimate would be that they would turn to recognize the true God and put their trust in Him.
And sometimes when things, which mean so much in our life, begin to fall apart, don’t ask God to stop the fall; He may have caused it in love for you because these things have become the objects of our dependence. And this is what is happening here with this final plague.
Secondly, let me talk then about the Passover because while all this was going on amongst the Egyptians, the Israelites were given their own instructions. And they are spelled out in Chapter 12.
They were to take a lamb. It was to be one per family unless the family was small and then they could share it with their neighbor. Interestingly, the criteria depended on how big the appetite of the family was because it says in Chapter 12 Verse 4 that,
“You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.”
So if a family was big enough with a big enough appetite, they could eat a whole lamb to themselves. If they weren’t big or didn’t have big appetites, they were to share it with their nearest neighbor.
And this lamb had to be one year old; that is, it had reached maturity, because that is when a lamb is regarded as mature and in the full vigor of life.
I don’t know if there are any butchers here this morning, but if you go into your butcher’s and you buy lamb, you are buying something that by definition is one year old or less. If you go in and buy mutton, it is by definition one year old or more, because it is one year that moves lamb to being mutton (and mutton is tough, as you know).
It’s the same difference between veal and beef. They are both cattle but one is young and one is older. It’s the same difference between bacon and pork – or pork and bacon. The pork is the younger pig and the bacon is the older pig. (That’s why it’s in small little thin strips, because it has gotten tough.)
The point of this is very significant: that this lamb is at the full vigor; it’s just arrived at maturity. It would be the equivalent in human terms of coming of age (which used to be 21 when I came of age in England; now it’s 18).
It had to be male because this lamb is going to take the place of the firstborn son and be a substitute for the firstborn son. It was to be without defect, a symbol of the moral integrity of the person it is going to represent, which ultimately, as we are going to see, will be the Lord Jesus Christ.
They had to eat it all. You don’t just nibble at this; you are either in for the whole thing or don’t get in at all. Eat it all, they said, don’t leave anything.
They were to select the lamb on the tenth day of the month and keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. And on the fourteenth, as the sun set, in the twilight of that day, they were to slaughter the lamb, they were to take the blood, they were to mark each side of the door and then mark the top of the door.
And interestingly, not here in Exodus 12, but later the practice was that a bowl that contained the remaining part of the blood was put at the base of the door. If you were to join those points together, this side to this side, to the top, to the bottom, what have you got? You have got a cross. It’s one of those very many shadows of things to come, as the writer to the book of Hebrews calls them.
These shadows fall across the Old Testament pages all the time; they are shadows of things to come; they are pointing of course to Christ Himself.
And that same night, having marked their doors with blood, they were to roast the whole of the lamb, they were to eat it with bitter herbs and with unleavened bread – that is, bread without yeast. And I haven’t time to talk about the significance of those, but they are significant ingredients in the menu that they had to follow that night. But we won’t talk about that.
And then they were to eat it all. None was to be left till the morning. And they were to eat it with their belt around their waist, their cloak on that was tucked into their belt, their sandals on their feet, their staff in hand. They were to eat it with haste, standing ready to run in the strength of the lamb, the moment the word came that you are free.
And the reason for all of this is this: in Chapter 12 Verse 13:
“The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”
And so it was. The Israelites whose homes were marked with blood were preserved. But as it says in Verse 30 of Chapter 12, for the Egyptians it was a very, very different story. It says,
“…There was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.”
What is the purpose of all this? What is this story all about? Is it a record of the great escape of all escapes? Well the New Testament tells us exactly what it is about. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 writes these words: “For Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us,” that the Passover is depicting in advance the work of Jesus Christ.
If you follow the lamb through Scripture and the lamb occurs before this event – if you follow the lamb through Scripture, when you get to the New Testament, the lamb becomes the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was John the Baptist who introduced Jesus to the world. He had been introduced to a few folks at His birth – some shepherds, some wise men, in Jerusalem at the temple at eight days old, He had been introduced to some folks there who knew who He was – and then suddenly dropped off the radar screen and lay low for thirty years.
And one day, coming down to the Jordan River, John was baptizing there and he looked up and he said this: He said,
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
And every Jew listening to John knew exactly what John was talking about because every year they re-enacted the Passover. And the Passover Lamb – “this,” said John, “this is the Lamb that’s not simply getting you out of Egypt, out of your bondage to slave drivers, but this is the Lamb who takes away the sin, the master in your life that destroys you, the sin of the world.”
When it comes to the book of Revelation, if you might put it in these words, the Lamb is the hero of the book of Revelation. The purpose of the book of Revelation is given to us in the opening verse - it is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now when you read Revelation there are lots of tantalizing attractions that take you off course and go down all kinds of cul-de-sacs but keep in mind that this is supremely the revelation of Jesus Christ. So look for Him in the book.
And He is identified as the Lamb thirty times. He appears first as a lamb in Chapter 5 where it speaks of the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb and in a loud voice they sang,
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Later in Chapter 7 there is a scene of a huge crowd of people. They are all dressed in white robes and a man comes up to John and says to John,
“These people in white robes - who are they, and where did they come from?”
And John answers,
“They are those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
There is a mixed metaphor there of course; if you wash something in blood it won’t become white, but it is of course about the cleansing of the heart and this outward white garment is a portrayal of the cleansing that’s taken place in the hearts of these people.
In Chapter 12 it talks about Satan’s attack on the people of God, his accusations of them. And it says,
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”
Why the blood of the Lamb? Well because the life is in the blood and the sentence was death. The blood had to be shed. And the death of Jesus Christ, the poured out blood of Jesus Christ, is the only means whereby men and women may be forgiven and brought into freedom.
We must have a proper understanding of sin. You know for most of us it seems to me that sin is primarily an inconvenience; it is something which messes us up; it is something which spoils our lives; it is something which destroys our marriages; it is something which corrupts our motives.
And whereas all that is perfectly true, that is a wholly deficient understanding of sin. If that is what sin is all about then there is a very simple solution: get forgiven for it and then go and get some counselling to make sure you don’t fall into the same traps again and get on and live your life better next time.
But that of course is not the issue. Sin is much bigger than that. The problem with sin right through Scripture is not what it does to us but what it does to God. Sin provokes the judgement of God.
The solution to the sin problem is that the wrath of God has to be addressed and satisfied. You see the Passover is addressing the judgement of God, when He came in judgement. The blood (“When I see the blood I will pass over you”) – the blood was the sign that judgement had already taken place but in a substitute – a lamb had died in place of the firstborn son.
You see what makes the cross of Jesus necessary is the wrath of God. His wrath needs to be appeased. The best word for that is a word that used to be in some of the older translations, is back in one or two of the new ones but missed by a lot, but I don’t know another word that is as good a word. It is that His wrath needs to be propitiated.
To propitiate is to turn away wrath, to turn away anger by satisfying its demands and requirements.
Let me read you one verse. 1 John 4:10 (And this is the King James rendering of it):
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us…”
How do you know He loved you?
“He sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
That is, He sent His Son to address and satisfy and in so doing, turn aside the wrath of God. And this is important.
The concept of propitiation has been controversial. We don’t like the idea of God’s anger needing to be appeased. We don’t like the idea of God having any anger at all because we prefer a stereotype that we have created of God with no negative emotions.
But if we think of sin only as our problem, that is messes me up and it brings me into trouble and we don’t understand in the first place that sin is a problem because it’s a problem to God, it provokes the wrath of God, then we will sentimentalize the cross of Christ.
Jesus did not die in the first place for you and me; He died in the first place to satisfy His Father, to turn away His wrath. You see the blood of the Passover sacrifice was for God; it was not for the people.
“When I see the blood I will pass over you.”
It is for God. It is God who needs to be addressed through the blood.
You see it had nothing to do with how good the Israelites were; it had nothing to do with how bad they were; it had nothing to do with their track record. It only had to do where the blood would symbolize the life given as a substitute was marking the doorposts of their homes.
If an Israelite family said, “We don’t go along with this nonsense that Moses talked about; we’re not going to kill a lamb and engage in this kind of sordid game with blood and gore and flesh; we’re not into that kind of thing,” they too that night, when the angel of death passed over the land of Egypt, their firstborn son would have died in his bed.
The lamb was the substitute for the firstborn. And this is what the cross of Jesus Christ is. You see we do not demand the cross. We would be perfectly happy if we could come to God and say, “God, I am really, really sorry for what I have done.” And for God to say, “Okay, I understand. I am glad you are sorry. I will forgive you.”
Wouldn’t you be satisfied with that - as long as you are sorry? You get a nudge and a wink from heaven that says, “Okay, okay I will forgive you.”
Why do you need a cross? We have sung some beautiful songs this morning that focus on the cross of Jesus Christ. Why? Because it is the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, that demands the cross. And Jesus Christ on the cross was addressing His Father and presenting to His Father as a substitute for you and for me an offering, in giving Himself in death, an offering that was acceptable in place of your death and mine.
How do you know it was acceptable? By the fact that God raised Him from the dead.
You know Paul said in Athens in Acts Chapter 17 [Verse 31], he said,
“God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
He is saying there will be a judgement day but men are going to be judged not on the basis of what they have done but on their relationship to the blood of Jesus Christ, to the cross of Jesus Christ. And God has given proof of this, proof of His acceptance of this, by raising Him from the dead.
And the resurrection of Jesus Christ has a whole range of important implications, but one of them is this: that God has accepted the death of Jesus and now, as 1 John Chapter 1 Verse 7 says, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.
And here of course is the gospel, that the blood of the lamb in Exodus Chapter 12 is a foreshadowing of the blood of Christ. (“And when I see the blood I will pass over you in judgement.”)
Have you come in relationship to the blood of Jesus? Have you come to the point of recognizing the helplessness of your own condition and the hopelessness apart from the fact that God promised He would send His Son as our substitute? And you have come and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, I am by nature separated from You but I thank You that You came and as a real man, without blemish, You presented Yourself to the Father.”
And on the basis of the death of Jesus, when a man, a woman, a boy or girl, comes and brings their lives under the protection of that death, under the protection of His blood by simply saying “Thank You, Thank You; You died my death,” they are forgiven. They are reconciled.
There is an old hymn that many of you older ones will know. It has as its chorus,
There is power, power, wonder working power
In the blood of the Lamb.
There is power, power, wonder working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
And its verse asks the question:
Would you be free from your burden of sin?
Here’s the answer:
There is power in the blood
Power in the blood.
Would you over evil a victory win?
And then it brings the answer:
There is wonderful power in the blood.
Do you know that?
I talked to two people after the first service this morning, both of them in tears. “I never knew that Jesus’ blood was enough for me.”
It doesn’t matter who you are. You will find as you read through, as I have done very carefully, these narratives about the Passover, there is absolutely nothing about the state of the Israelite people – were they good or bad or indifferent, what their track record of sin or their track record of goodness, how many folks they had helped across the road – it is totally irrelevant.
The criterion is not what we have done; the criterion is that we recognize our own bankruptcy and we cling only to one thing: that Jesus Christ died for me.
And there may be those of us here this morning and those of you listening on television – maybe you are in your home, maybe in a hotel room, and you have never entered into the joy of being reconciled to God by confessing to Him your need of Him and thanking Him that He died in your place. The blood of Jesus still cleanses from all sin.
You may have been in this church many times. You may have heard the Word of God taught many times. But you have never in humility bowed your head and said “Thank You, thank You for the blood that cleanses.” And you can do that right here this morning.
But I need to say this in closing because this is important to the message. Two things happened here, which must not be separated the one from the other.
The Israelites were being delivered from their slavery in Egypt, but at the same time, by the same act, they were being adopted as the nation of God. Because God had said to them in Chapter 6 and Verse 6, when He had spoken to Moses,
“I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched hand and mighty acts of judgement.”
Listen:
“I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”
In other words, “You will be released from Egypt, released from your slavery to be released to God, to be brought under His authority and now to be identified with His purpose (because now they are His people). And they were to be, as God had told Abraham centuries before, the means of being a blessing to the world.
This is not something additional to the gospel – you come out of your sin – phew! You can wipe your brow; you have got God off your back in terms of being angry with your sin.
That’s not the gospel. That’s the way in – coming out of your sin.
But the purpose for which He saves us is that we become His people, living under the authority of Jesus Christ as our Lord in the enabling and the empowering of His indwelling Spirit to quit looking after ourselves and instead, lift our horizons a little and begin to ask, “How is it You want to bless the world?”
You see there is nothing more frustrating than the Christian who has come out of Egypt – and we’ll see this in later weeks – and who gets stuck in the wilderness, because they fail to understand, “the reason we have been brought out is to be brought in,” to be the people of God in the land He had set apart for them with the resources He was providing for them to fulfill the purpose that He had for them, which was to bless the world.
If I were to tell you tonight the gospel is about having your sins forgiven, it would be true, but only half the gospel. We get rid of our sin to get rid of the junk and the mess in order that now, having been reconciled to God, having been restored to relationship with Him, we might now live in union with Him in the fullness of life He has for us and be a blessing to the world.
And there are folks here this morning, I have no doubt, and there are various stages – we’re all at different stages in our walk with God – there are those who have never come out. I am going to invite you this morning to come out, out of your sin.
As that other hymn used to say,
Out of my bondage, sorrow and night
Jesus I come.
Into Thy freedom, gladness and light
Jesus I come to Thee.
Out of my bondage, into Your freedom
Out of my want, into Your wealth
Out of myself, into Yourself.
That we might live that fullness of life that causes us as the people of God to bless the world. This is what the Passover was about - coming out of bondage and becoming the people of God. This is what the gospel is about – coming out of your sin and coming out of your bondage to be the people of God.
Let’s pray together.
Part 7
“The Passover Plot”
Exodus 11-13
Let me read to you from the book of Exodus and Chapter 11. Verse 1 says,
“Now the LORD had said to Moses, ‘I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.’”
Down to Verse 4 – Moses now stands before Pharaoh:
“So Moses said, ‘This is what the LORD says: “About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt – worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.” Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All those officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.’
“Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.”
Go to Chapter 12 Verse 1:
“The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of the year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.
“ ‘That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire – head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it until the morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it.
“ ‘This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’S Passover.
“ ‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.
“ ‘The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.’”
Please keep your Bible open there. For several weeks we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus. And I want to make just a general comment on the book this morning as I begin.
The historical books of the Old Testament have a two-fold purpose. Firstly they give us a faithful record of what actually happened in history in space and time. And this book of Exodus of course records the events of Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt where they have been enslaved and in bondage, and their journey through the wilderness. Although Exodus doesn’t arrive in Canaan, that is their destination, and they eventually of course arrive in the land God has set apart for Abraham, the land of Canaan.
That is the historical record that we find here in this book of Exodus. But this serves only as a background, as a sort of canvas for another picture, which is also being painted. And this is the second purpose of the historical books of the Bible. And that is that they teach us spiritual truths that portray the ways and purposes of God in dealing with His people, both then and also now.
And the story of the book that is contained in the book of Exodus is the most frequently repeated story in the whole of the Bible, and for good reason. 400 years before, Joseph had brought his family as honoured guests into Egypt. Joseph, who himself had been a Hebrew, had been sold as a slave, had, through factors we don’t need to talk about, had become the second in command in the whole nation of Egypt.
And during a period of famine his brothers had come to find food, and eventually the whole family, 70 of them, had come down into Egypt. And because Joseph had been the deliverer of Egypt from the effects of that famine, they were given some of the choice land in Goshen, in the Nile Delta.
And there they had stayed, and as years went by people forgot about the debt they owed to Joseph. And as the Israelites multiplied from the original 70 to something over 2 million by the time the book of Exodus opens, the Egyptians have become threatened by them and they have reduced them to slavery and servitude.
And when the book opens you have the picture of them reduced to cruel slavery and bondage. They are suffering bitterly beneath the burdens inflicted on them by their taskmasters. They are helpless to free themselves and hopeless but for the fact that centuries before God has spoken to Abraham when He set him apart and promised him that from his body would come a nation. And God had told him the day would come that they’d go into Egypt; they’d stay there; they’d become slaves. And God had told him that one day He would intervene to redeem them and deliver them and free them from their bondage.
And this story is given to us as almost a master key to the rest of the Bible because we too are enslaved; we too are locked in bondage to something called sin. And by sin, I am not meaning sins, telling a lie, committing adultery, stealing something that doesn’t belong to you; I am talking about something that is the cause of our sins. It is this principle of sin that operates within us, that holds us captive.
Paul describes it well in Romans Chapter 7 when he says,
“For what I want to do is not the good I would do, but what I hate I do. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
In other words, he says, “there are certain things in life that are good and they are right. And I know they are good, I know they are right; I plan to do them but I don’t. There are certain things in life that are wrong and they are bad; I know they are wrong. I say to myself, I will never do those things again, but I do.” Why? Because, he says, “there is something in me called sin, this principle of sin that is pulling me down all the time.”
And this is true of every one of us here this morning. And it is a ruthless master in your life. Don’t kid yourself. This is real. And the consequence of the fall is that we are born into that condition.
The wages of sin is death, says Paul in Romans 6. That is not a future statement; that is a present tense statement. You are I were born the recipients of the wages of sin. We were born spiritually dead, in the language of Paul in Ephesians 4, that we are separated from the life of God. That is the nature of spiritual death.
And this condition of spiritual death makes us easy prey to this sin principle that came into the human heart the day that God went out of the human heart in the Garden of Eden.
Jesus said in Mark Chapter 7 and Verse 21, He said,
“For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, evil [envy], slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside a man and make a him ‘unclean’.”
They come from within because that is where we are broken, that is where we are corrupted. And as God’s purpose was to redeem Israel from their bondage to Egypt, this is a picture of the fact that God’s purpose is to redeem men and women, boys and girls, from their bondage to sin.
We must of course let the Bible be its own interpreter. We can’t superimpose interpretations upon the Scripture. But right through the Bible deliverance from Egypt is a portrayal of deliverance from sin. We’ll see that a little more clearly in a few minutes.
Canaan, the land to which they were to go, a land described as flowing with milk and honey, poetically stating that everything you need will be available to you there, is a portrayal of what it means to live in the fullness of God.
The journey from Egypt to Canaan, according to Deuteronomy Chapter 1, should have taken eleven days. But it took them forty years. It took them forty years because of their disobedience and their arrogance. And it portrays the carnal Christian that lives only in human strength, with human resources and goes around in circles following his own agenda instead of living in the strength and the power of the indwelling Spirit of God. The book of Hebrews teaches and gives that interpretation to this story.
But today we come to a very crucial event. It is the final plague that finally brought about the freedom of Israel from Egypt. It was the day that the angel of death came to every Egyptian home and the firstborn son of every Egyptian family died on the stroke of midnight in his bed that night, the fourteenth day of the first month of the year.
Not only that, the firstborn calf of every cow, the firstborn lamb of every sheep, the firstborn puppy of every dog, the firstborn kitten of every cat that belonged to Egypt died that night.
But the Israelites were to take a lamb, to kill the lamb and place the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their home. And when the angel of death came to Egypt that night, the homes marked with blood were preserved.
What is all that about? Well let me look at three things with you this morning and they are very simple. We will talk about the plague, we’ll talk about the Passover and we’ll talk about the purpose – what is all this really about?
Let me talk about the plague first of all because the final plague, after nine previous plagues, was the death of the firstborn son in every Egyptian home. Now we talked about the plagues generally last week and their impact upon the heart of Pharaoh because that is really the story line; it’s what’s happening in Pharaoh’s heart at that point.
And you will recall that we pointed out last time that these had not been random plagues. They weren’t simply designed to be of such a nuisance to Pharaoh that he would let Israel go in order to get a quieter life. No, these plagues were strategic attacks on the gods of Egypt. And this last one is no exception.
In Chapter 12 and Verse 12 it says,
“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgement” (listen to this) “on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.”
So this last plague is another judgement on the gods of Egypt. Now what the specific god of Egypt is in vogue here is hard to determine. The apparently seven hundred plus gods of Egypt were spiritual authorities and powers which governed their life. And as I pointed out last week, there were various gods of the Nile, there were gods of the weather, there were gods of health, there was a god of fertility, there were gods in forms of animals, all of which came under attack in the previous nine plagues. There was a god in the form of a frog, in the form of cattle.
And of course the pharaohs themselves were regarded as being divine. And it may be that the god of Egypt under attack here is the fact that the firstborn son of Pharaoh, the heir to the Egyptian throne, the heir to deity as the people understood it, would die that night. Because it specified - Chapter 11 Verse 5:
“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh” (the heir to the throne) – “the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl.” (Right across every strata of society.)
And with Pharaoh as a deity, perhaps this is what is in mind when God says He will strike the gods of Egypt with this final plague.
Or it could be the fact that generally all these plagues have been attacks on the gods of Egypt. And they had proved to be powerless against the God of Israel. And this is the demonstration of that in advance.
But whatever the case, when the Israelites left Egypt they marched out between the funeral ceremonies taking place the next day and they knew that God had brought judgement on their gods. We know that from Numbers Chapter 33 and Verse 3, which says,
“They marched out boldly in full view of all the Egyptians, who were burying all their firstborn, whom the LORD had struck down among them; for the LORD had brought judgement on their gods.”
And as Israel walked out, they knew the gods of Egypt were pathetic figments of the imagination and any power that they may have been attributed with to protect the people was utterly shattered and broken.
And if I can say this as compassionately, about as clearly as I can, anything which becomes the object of your or my dependence other than God, anything which is allowed to master our lives other than God Himself, anything which takes the place of God in your life becomes a legitimate target for the loving grace of God in undermining it and destroying it.
Not because God is vindictive - none of these plagues were vindictive acts by God. They were acts of love and kindness and mercy because that is God’s nature. God does not have a vindictive nature; He has a nature of love. In order that undermining them the ultimate would be that they would turn to recognize the true God and put their trust in Him.
And sometimes when things, which mean so much in our life, begin to fall apart, don’t ask God to stop the fall; He may have caused it in love for you because these things have become the objects of our dependence. And this is what is happening here with this final plague.
Secondly, let me talk then about the Passover because while all this was going on amongst the Egyptians, the Israelites were given their own instructions. And they are spelled out in Chapter 12.
They were to take a lamb. It was to be one per family unless the family was small and then they could share it with their neighbor. Interestingly, the criteria depended on how big the appetite of the family was because it says in Chapter 12 Verse 4 that,
“You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.”
So if a family was big enough with a big enough appetite, they could eat a whole lamb to themselves. If they weren’t big or didn’t have big appetites, they were to share it with their nearest neighbor.
And this lamb had to be one year old; that is, it had reached maturity, because that is when a lamb is regarded as mature and in the full vigor of life.
I don’t know if there are any butchers here this morning, but if you go into your butcher’s and you buy lamb, you are buying something that by definition is one year old or less. If you go in and buy mutton, it is by definition one year old or more, because it is one year that moves lamb to being mutton (and mutton is tough, as you know).
It’s the same difference between veal and beef. They are both cattle but one is young and one is older. It’s the same difference between bacon and pork – or pork and bacon. The pork is the younger pig and the bacon is the older pig. (That’s why it’s in small little thin strips, because it has gotten tough.)
The point of this is very significant: that this lamb is at the full vigor; it’s just arrived at maturity. It would be the equivalent in human terms of coming of age (which used to be 21 when I came of age in England; now it’s 18).
It had to be male because this lamb is going to take the place of the firstborn son and be a substitute for the firstborn son. It was to be without defect, a symbol of the moral integrity of the person it is going to represent, which ultimately, as we are going to see, will be the Lord Jesus Christ.
They had to eat it all. You don’t just nibble at this; you are either in for the whole thing or don’t get in at all. Eat it all, they said, don’t leave anything.
They were to select the lamb on the tenth day of the month and keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. And on the fourteenth, as the sun set, in the twilight of that day, they were to slaughter the lamb, they were to take the blood, they were to mark each side of the door and then mark the top of the door.
And interestingly, not here in Exodus 12, but later the practice was that a bowl that contained the remaining part of the blood was put at the base of the door. If you were to join those points together, this side to this side, to the top, to the bottom, what have you got? You have got a cross. It’s one of those very many shadows of things to come, as the writer to the book of Hebrews calls them.
These shadows fall across the Old Testament pages all the time; they are shadows of things to come; they are pointing of course to Christ Himself.
And that same night, having marked their doors with blood, they were to roast the whole of the lamb, they were to eat it with bitter herbs and with unleavened bread – that is, bread without yeast. And I haven’t time to talk about the significance of those, but they are significant ingredients in the menu that they had to follow that night. But we won’t talk about that.
And then they were to eat it all. None was to be left till the morning. And they were to eat it with their belt around their waist, their cloak on that was tucked into their belt, their sandals on their feet, their staff in hand. They were to eat it with haste, standing ready to run in the strength of the lamb, the moment the word came that you are free.
And the reason for all of this is this: in Chapter 12 Verse 13:
“The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”
And so it was. The Israelites whose homes were marked with blood were preserved. But as it says in Verse 30 of Chapter 12, for the Egyptians it was a very, very different story. It says,
“…There was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.”
What is the purpose of all this? What is this story all about? Is it a record of the great escape of all escapes? Well the New Testament tells us exactly what it is about. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 writes these words: “For Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us,” that the Passover is depicting in advance the work of Jesus Christ.
If you follow the lamb through Scripture and the lamb occurs before this event – if you follow the lamb through Scripture, when you get to the New Testament, the lamb becomes the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was John the Baptist who introduced Jesus to the world. He had been introduced to a few folks at His birth – some shepherds, some wise men, in Jerusalem at the temple at eight days old, He had been introduced to some folks there who knew who He was – and then suddenly dropped off the radar screen and lay low for thirty years.
And one day, coming down to the Jordan River, John was baptizing there and he looked up and he said this: He said,
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
And every Jew listening to John knew exactly what John was talking about because every year they re-enacted the Passover. And the Passover Lamb – “this,” said John, “this is the Lamb that’s not simply getting you out of Egypt, out of your bondage to slave drivers, but this is the Lamb who takes away the sin, the master in your life that destroys you, the sin of the world.”
When it comes to the book of Revelation, if you might put it in these words, the Lamb is the hero of the book of Revelation. The purpose of the book of Revelation is given to us in the opening verse - it is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now when you read Revelation there are lots of tantalizing attractions that take you off course and go down all kinds of cul-de-sacs but keep in mind that this is supremely the revelation of Jesus Christ. So look for Him in the book.
And He is identified as the Lamb thirty times. He appears first as a lamb in Chapter 5 where it speaks of the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb and in a loud voice they sang,
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Later in Chapter 7 there is a scene of a huge crowd of people. They are all dressed in white robes and a man comes up to John and says to John,
“These people in white robes - who are they, and where did they come from?”
And John answers,
“They are those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
There is a mixed metaphor there of course; if you wash something in blood it won’t become white, but it is of course about the cleansing of the heart and this outward white garment is a portrayal of the cleansing that’s taken place in the hearts of these people.
In Chapter 12 it talks about Satan’s attack on the people of God, his accusations of them. And it says,
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”
Why the blood of the Lamb? Well because the life is in the blood and the sentence was death. The blood had to be shed. And the death of Jesus Christ, the poured out blood of Jesus Christ, is the only means whereby men and women may be forgiven and brought into freedom.
We must have a proper understanding of sin. You know for most of us it seems to me that sin is primarily an inconvenience; it is something which messes us up; it is something which spoils our lives; it is something which destroys our marriages; it is something which corrupts our motives.
And whereas all that is perfectly true, that is a wholly deficient understanding of sin. If that is what sin is all about then there is a very simple solution: get forgiven for it and then go and get some counselling to make sure you don’t fall into the same traps again and get on and live your life better next time.
But that of course is not the issue. Sin is much bigger than that. The problem with sin right through Scripture is not what it does to us but what it does to God. Sin provokes the judgement of God.
The solution to the sin problem is that the wrath of God has to be addressed and satisfied. You see the Passover is addressing the judgement of God, when He came in judgement. The blood (“When I see the blood I will pass over you”) – the blood was the sign that judgement had already taken place but in a substitute – a lamb had died in place of the firstborn son.
You see what makes the cross of Jesus necessary is the wrath of God. His wrath needs to be appeased. The best word for that is a word that used to be in some of the older translations, is back in one or two of the new ones but missed by a lot, but I don’t know another word that is as good a word. It is that His wrath needs to be propitiated.
To propitiate is to turn away wrath, to turn away anger by satisfying its demands and requirements.
Let me read you one verse. 1 John 4:10 (And this is the King James rendering of it):
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us…”
How do you know He loved you?
“He sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
That is, He sent His Son to address and satisfy and in so doing, turn aside the wrath of God. And this is important.
The concept of propitiation has been controversial. We don’t like the idea of God’s anger needing to be appeased. We don’t like the idea of God having any anger at all because we prefer a stereotype that we have created of God with no negative emotions.
But if we think of sin only as our problem, that is messes me up and it brings me into trouble and we don’t understand in the first place that sin is a problem because it’s a problem to God, it provokes the wrath of God, then we will sentimentalize the cross of Christ.
Jesus did not die in the first place for you and me; He died in the first place to satisfy His Father, to turn away His wrath. You see the blood of the Passover sacrifice was for God; it was not for the people.
“When I see the blood I will pass over you.”
It is for God. It is God who needs to be addressed through the blood.
You see it had nothing to do with how good the Israelites were; it had nothing to do with how bad they were; it had nothing to do with their track record. It only had to do where the blood would symbolize the life given as a substitute was marking the doorposts of their homes.
If an Israelite family said, “We don’t go along with this nonsense that Moses talked about; we’re not going to kill a lamb and engage in this kind of sordid game with blood and gore and flesh; we’re not into that kind of thing,” they too that night, when the angel of death passed over the land of Egypt, their firstborn son would have died in his bed.
The lamb was the substitute for the firstborn. And this is what the cross of Jesus Christ is. You see we do not demand the cross. We would be perfectly happy if we could come to God and say, “God, I am really, really sorry for what I have done.” And for God to say, “Okay, I understand. I am glad you are sorry. I will forgive you.”
Wouldn’t you be satisfied with that - as long as you are sorry? You get a nudge and a wink from heaven that says, “Okay, okay I will forgive you.”
Why do you need a cross? We have sung some beautiful songs this morning that focus on the cross of Jesus Christ. Why? Because it is the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, that demands the cross. And Jesus Christ on the cross was addressing His Father and presenting to His Father as a substitute for you and for me an offering, in giving Himself in death, an offering that was acceptable in place of your death and mine.
How do you know it was acceptable? By the fact that God raised Him from the dead.
You know Paul said in Athens in Acts Chapter 17 [Verse 31], he said,
“God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
He is saying there will be a judgement day but men are going to be judged not on the basis of what they have done but on their relationship to the blood of Jesus Christ, to the cross of Jesus Christ. And God has given proof of this, proof of His acceptance of this, by raising Him from the dead.
And the resurrection of Jesus Christ has a whole range of important implications, but one of them is this: that God has accepted the death of Jesus and now, as 1 John Chapter 1 Verse 7 says, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.
And here of course is the gospel, that the blood of the lamb in Exodus Chapter 12 is a foreshadowing of the blood of Christ. (“And when I see the blood I will pass over you in judgement.”)
Have you come in relationship to the blood of Jesus? Have you come to the point of recognizing the helplessness of your own condition and the hopelessness apart from the fact that God promised He would send His Son as our substitute? And you have come and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, I am by nature separated from You but I thank You that You came and as a real man, without blemish, You presented Yourself to the Father.”
And on the basis of the death of Jesus, when a man, a woman, a boy or girl, comes and brings their lives under the protection of that death, under the protection of His blood by simply saying “Thank You, Thank You; You died my death,” they are forgiven. They are reconciled.
There is an old hymn that many of you older ones will know. It has as its chorus,
There is power, power, wonder working power
In the blood of the Lamb.
There is power, power, wonder working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
And its verse asks the question:
Would you be free from your burden of sin?
Here’s the answer:
There is power in the blood
Power in the blood.
Would you over evil a victory win?
And then it brings the answer:
There is wonderful power in the blood.
Do you know that?
I talked to two people after the first service this morning, both of them in tears. “I never knew that Jesus’ blood was enough for me.”
It doesn’t matter who you are. You will find as you read through, as I have done very carefully, these narratives about the Passover, there is absolutely nothing about the state of the Israelite people – were they good or bad or indifferent, what their track record of sin or their track record of goodness, how many folks they had helped across the road – it is totally irrelevant.
The criterion is not what we have done; the criterion is that we recognize our own bankruptcy and we cling only to one thing: that Jesus Christ died for me.
And there may be those of us here this morning and those of you listening on television – maybe you are in your home, maybe in a hotel room, and you have never entered into the joy of being reconciled to God by confessing to Him your need of Him and thanking Him that He died in your place. The blood of Jesus still cleanses from all sin.
You may have been in this church many times. You may have heard the Word of God taught many times. But you have never in humility bowed your head and said “Thank You, thank You for the blood that cleanses.” And you can do that right here this morning.
But I need to say this in closing because this is important to the message. Two things happened here, which must not be separated the one from the other.
The Israelites were being delivered from their slavery in Egypt, but at the same time, by the same act, they were being adopted as the nation of God. Because God had said to them in Chapter 6 and Verse 6, when He had spoken to Moses,
“I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched hand and mighty acts of judgement.”
Listen:
“I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”
In other words, “You will be released from Egypt, released from your slavery to be released to God, to be brought under His authority and now to be identified with His purpose (because now they are His people). And they were to be, as God had told Abraham centuries before, the means of being a blessing to the world.
This is not something additional to the gospel – you come out of your sin – phew! You can wipe your brow; you have got God off your back in terms of being angry with your sin.
That’s not the gospel. That’s the way in – coming out of your sin.
But the purpose for which He saves us is that we become His people, living under the authority of Jesus Christ as our Lord in the enabling and the empowering of His indwelling Spirit to quit looking after ourselves and instead, lift our horizons a little and begin to ask, “How is it You want to bless the world?”
You see there is nothing more frustrating than the Christian who has come out of Egypt – and we’ll see this in later weeks – and who gets stuck in the wilderness, because they fail to understand, “the reason we have been brought out is to be brought in,” to be the people of God in the land He had set apart for them with the resources He was providing for them to fulfill the purpose that He had for them, which was to bless the world.
If I were to tell you tonight the gospel is about having your sins forgiven, it would be true, but only half the gospel. We get rid of our sin to get rid of the junk and the mess in order that now, having been reconciled to God, having been restored to relationship with Him, we might now live in union with Him in the fullness of life He has for us and be a blessing to the world.
And there are folks here this morning, I have no doubt, and there are various stages – we’re all at different stages in our walk with God – there are those who have never come out. I am going to invite you this morning to come out, out of your sin.
As that other hymn used to say,
Out of my bondage, sorrow and night
Jesus I come.
Into Thy freedom, gladness and light
Jesus I come to Thee.
Out of my bondage, into Your freedom
Out of my want, into Your wealth
Out of myself, into Yourself.
That we might live that fullness of life that causes us as the people of God to bless the world. This is what the Passover was about - coming out of bondage and becoming the people of God. This is what the gospel is about – coming out of your sin and coming out of your bondage to be the people of God.
Let’s pray together.