Exodus: The Passover

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Introduction

The next two weeks we will be discussing monumental events for biblical history, and truly all of history: the Passover and the Crossing of the Red Sea.
Both of these events will be referred to constantly all throughout Scripture. Both of these events carry immense weight for Israel. Both of these events carry immense weight for us. And so, it is very important for us to pay attention to this story and see what we can learn from it.

The Passover Sacrifice

So after the Lord instructed Moses all the things that were going to happen and what Israel needed to do, he went to the Elders and told them. Before looking at what they told them, it is important to consider why Israel offered sacrifices at all.

Sacrifices

These sacrifices that Israel would make for God were in worship of God, but for themselves.
Even though many may not have fully understood it at this time, Israel was still inherently sinful. They sinned against their God constantly, and this would keep them unreconciled with God—this would keep the bridge broken.
The slaughtering of an animal for one’s god, in this day, was an act of worship done seeking atonement for one’s sins. Man had been making sacrifices to God since God slaughtered an animal for Adam and Eve.

21 The LORD God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

This “sacrifice” was done cover Adam and Eve’s guilt and shame from eating the fruit they were not supposed to eat. Their sin was exposed; they were ashamed of their nakedness—God killed an animal to cover them. All throughout history, man has continued to try to cover his sin and shame by killing animals. This is how God designed man to atone for his sins.
The problem, though, is that these animal sacrifices would never completely cover their sin. They would need a better sacrifice to cover their sin wholly.

Families Must Slaughter a Passover Animal

Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal.

The more specific instructions on this are seen in verses 3-6. To emphasize the importance of this event, we see the Lord making this, the Passover, the new first month of the year. Everything on their calendar now revolves around this event.
There were specific requirements for this animal being slaughtered:
Unblemished
Year-Old
Male
Sheep or Goat
Why are their requirements on these sacrifices? The Lord is Holy and Perfect—this means, too, that He has standards. It is sinful of us to disregard His standards. We should, instead, reverently heed to His commands and standards.
This shows us that there is a right way to worship God. We obviously aren’t slaughtering animals in worship of God, but we are still singing and serving and preaching—there are right and wrong ways to do this. You can’t just say “God wants me to express myself how I’d like” and do whatever you want.
God didn’t want a blemished goat, or an unblemished cow or a female sheep; none of this was right. In fact, those who didn’t worship Him rightly in this example, would have been victim to the angel of death passing over.
And so, they had to follow these exact instructions to be sure to worship the Lord in the right manner.

Families Must Spread Blood on their Doorposts

22 Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning.

God wanted them to take the blood of the sacrifice that they slaughtered and spread it on their homes. Why would this be the symbol that God uses to show that these homes are covered? The answer to this goes back to the reason for the sacrifices: the covering of their sin. The Israelites were undeserving of salvation from death on this day.
Despite them being God’s people, what makes them different from Egypt? Are they greater? Or is it that God, in grace, just chose Israel to be His, thus sparing Israel? Israel’s sin was just as great as Egypt’s.
The method of covering their homes involved using a cluster of hyssop. Hyssop plants were used for rituals of atonement. We even see this referenced by David in Psalm 51.

7 Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow

Because Israel used hyssop for this purpose of the passover, that plant was always seen as directly related to atonement.

Families Must Eat the Meat of the Sacrifice

8 They are to eat the meat that night; they should eat it, roasted over the fire along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or cooked in boiling water, but only roasted over fire—its head as well as its legs and inner organs. 10 You must not leave any of it until morning; any part of it left until morning you must burn.

This was spoken of before today’s text.
Rather than burn the offering to the Lord, as they would with other sacrifices, these ones just needed to be slaughtered before the Lord and then the Lord required Israel eat the meat.
There are practical reasons for this.
They were about to embark on a journey
The Lord didn’t want them to waste the food
The leftovers were burned as a burnt offering
The first reason is the main one for eating the sacrifice—they needed sustenance and nourishment before they went on a long and far journey. These sacrifices served many purposes; not just atoning but nourishing.

Jesus, the Passover Lamb

Why are these commands about this passover so important? Because they were all shadows of the completed work that would occur through Jesus Christ.

Jesus was the Final Passover Sacrifice

The Lord required the sacrifice be without blemish, but these sacrifices never fully covered all of Israel’s sin forever because they weren’t enough.
But look what Paul called Jesus when addressing the Corinthian church.
Paul was pointing out a major sin that they were ignoring and how they were boasting in being good.

6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven, leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Jesus’s death did actually happen on this same day: the Passover. He was the spotless lamb, lacking any sin or fault or blemish. He fulfilled the Law perfectly. This made Him the perfect sacrifice.

Jesus’s Blood Covers Us

Just as the Israel spread the sacrifices blood on their doorposts to cover them and save them from the death from the angel of death, so we stand behind the blood of Jesus, covered. The reality is that without the blood of Jesus, we would be judged for our own works. This would ultimately lead to our eternal death. But we are covered in the blood of Christ; and so, when God looks at us, He sees Jesus’s perfection.

Jesus is our Nourishment

The Lord’s Passing Over

23 When the LORD passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you.

And here is what all of this was leading to: the final plague. This verse shows us that the Lord passed over, but the destroyer did the taking of life. Some refer to this destroyer as the Angel of Death. Whether this is God or just an angel of God, I am unsure.
What I do see in this, though, is that even Israelites would die if they didn’t listen to the Lord. Being Jewish, in this case, was not their salvation, but the atonement of the animal over their family was. And, furthermore, God’s grace was.

Remembering the Passover

Remembering the Lord

24 “Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony. 26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’ ”

The Lord wanted Israel to remember this event forever; and so, He instituted the Passover to be remembered each year. This was so that generations and generations would always know the Lord rescued Israel from Egypt.
The unfortunate truth is that Israel very quickly will forget about this miraculous event. In fact, some will remember but not care about it. This leads to generations such as the Judges generation, who only did what was right in their own eyes.
Application for us is that we cannot stop remembering all that the Lord has done for us. Namely through Christ on the cross. We do forget, though. We look at our situations and just totally forget that the Lord has ultimately saved us from all sin and death and Hell and so we can trust Him. Instead, we panic and get angry. We sometimes even accuse Him of being evil because we don’t like the places He let’s us go.
Make an effort to daily remember your salvation in Jesus Christ. Make an effort daily to remember all the ways the Lord has been there for you over the span of your entire life.

Responding in Worship & Obedience

So the people knelt low and worshiped. 28 Then the Israelites went and did this; they did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron.

Here is a time where Israel responds to the Lord rightly. They receive all of His instructions for them, see the Lord in His kindness, worship Him and obey.
Once again, we know they will later forget and disobey Him, but we shouldn’t discount their faithfulness here.
To continue the application for us in remembering all that He has done for us, we should respond to remembering, every time, in worship and obedience.

Worship

Israel kneels low, positioning themselves further below under God, to show Him as their authority. This is a great way for us to worship the Lord. Not necessarily by physically positioning, while that is still good, but verbally or mentally even.
The songs we sing should do this. They should position us as creatures and Him as our Great Creator.

Obedience

And then, we can’t just worship and move on. Your worship needs to be followed by obedience to Him. Doing as He says. This is the most worshipful act we can do.

The Exodus

The Final Plague

Now after all of this instruction has been given, in verse 29, we finally see what happens:

29 Now at midnight the LORD struck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock. 30 During the night Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn’t a house without someone dead.

Our God is One of His Word. If He says He is going to do something, He will. This is the humiliation of Egypt; this was their neutering.
The Egyptian god that is attacked in this plague is the Pharaoh himself. Pharaoh truly saw himself as a god; most pharaohs did. But the One True God knocked Pharaoh out of his power and position by taking his firstborn son.
However, it was not only Pharaoh’s son, but every Egyptian household had a firstborn male who died. This was a great fall for Egypt. And how will Egypt and Pharaoh respond?

Pharaoh Gives Up

31 He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, “Get out immediately from among my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the LORD as you have said. 32 Take even your flocks and your herds as you asked and leave, and also bless me.”

Pharaoh is humiliated and finished. With his son being killed, he gives up. He isn’t just saying “Leave for three days,” as was initially offered. He is just saying to leave.
He even positions himself below the Lord seeking a blessing from God. This is an attempt at repentance, but we will see how long it lasts.

The Egyptians are Plundered

33 Now the Egyptians pressured the people in order to send them quickly out of the country, for they said, “We’re all going to die!” 34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their clothes on their shoulders.

35 The Israelites acted on Moses’s word and asked the Egyptians for silver and gold items and for clothing. 36 And the LORD gave the people such favor with the Egyptians that they gave them what they requested. In this way they plundered the Egyptians.

The Egyptians were now also fed up. In fact, they thought God would kill them all, and so they pressured Israel to leave.
In the midst of this we see the Israelites obey God in asking the Egyptians for silver and gold.
This was something the Lord told them to do in a part I passed over.

2 Now announce to the people that both men and women should ask their neighbors for silver and gold items.” 3 The LORD gave the people favor with the Egyptians.

As the Jews’ God was decimating Egypt, the Jews were supposed to ask the Egyptians for money. This seems strange, but God wanted them to truly plunder and destroy Egypt.
And so He succeeded. The rest of chapter 12 explain the direction Israel went, the time they were leaving, and more laws about the Passover. Chapter 12 concludes with gratifying verses:

50 Then all the Israelites did this; they did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. 51 On that same day the LORD brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt according to their military divisions.

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