God provides a substitute: rescue from death

Reading

Exodus 12:1–13 NLT

1 While the Israelites were still in the land of Egypt, the Lord gave the following instructions to Moses and Aaron: 2 “From now on, this month will be the first month of the year for you. 3 Announce to the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each family must choose a lamb or a young goat for a sacrifice, one animal for each household. 4 If a family is too small to eat a whole animal, let them share with another family in the neighborhood. Divide the animal according to the size of each family and how much they can eat. 5 The animal you select must be a one-year-old male, either a sheep or a goat, with no defects. 6 “Take special care of this chosen animal until the evening of the fourteenth day of this first month. Then the whole assembly of the community of Israel must slaughter their lamb or young goat at twilight. 7 They are to take some of the blood and smear it on the sides and top of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the animal. 8 That same night they must roast the meat over a fire and eat it along with bitter salad greens and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat any of the meat raw or boiled in water. The whole animal—including the head, legs, and internal organs—must be roasted over a fire. 10 Do not leave any of it until the next morning. Burn whatever is not eaten before morning. 11 “These are your instructions for eating this meal: Be fully dressed, wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand. Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover. 12 On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord! 13 But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.

Introduction

Quiz about what these things are used to remember:

rainbow: pride day, no global flood, no global drought

roast lamb: Passover, Australia day, birthday

sending a goat into the desert: 40 years in the desert, shepherds, payment for sins

a pile of 12 stones: best BBQ spot, God’s presence here, boundary marker

God has done many great things for his people, and it is important that we never forget them. In fact, he tells us to teach them to our children:

Deuteronomy 6:20–22 ESV

20 “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes.

As Christians, we too have mighty works of God that we should remember. What is the symbol of what Jesus did for us? [The cross]

Kid’s church

Who dies?

Now that the kids have left, here is another, more morbid quiz. I should mention that, during the first part of this message I’m going to be talking about death. If anything hits you a bit hard, please don’t feel embarrassed if you need to go out for a time—no-one will think any the less of you. But I assure you, we will end on an upbeat note.

So, I’m going to tell you about three people I knew growing up in wild North Queensland:

the first was a rodeo clown—he was the guy who distracted the crazed horse or cow from the fallen rodeo rider; it’s famed as the most dangerous job in a dangerous activity;

the hoon—he was the guy who fixed up an old car and then went “rallying” in it, drifting, jumping, crashing, and generally taking every vehicular risk you can imagine;

the student—this guy studied hard, he played a bit of basketball and cricket with us, but he just wanted to get a decent job.

Which of these three won’t die?

[discussion]

Yes, the point is that, no matter what our lifestyle, we all die eventually. (For the curious, the rodeo clown died while we were still in school, and the other two have families and jobs still.)

Our problem with death

Death is something that we still rail against. Death touches all of us throughout our lives. For example, I consider myself relatively untouched by death, so far in my life. And yet I have seen grandparents die from old age, I have seen friends around my age die from cancer, and Mable and I have had miscarriages—our own barely-started children dying. Death is so omnipresent that we often don’t even notice it.

In traditional societies death was much more visible in people’s lives. Even today in Hong Kong, when you go to the market to buy chicken, you are confronted with a live chicken which is executed in front of you. You buy a live fish and then club it to death at home. But in traditional, extended families, the children would be present when grand or great-grandparents died, and they would see their bodies. I grew up on a farm, so animal death was simple a part of my reality, but human death, thanks to the segregation of Australian society, was something I rarely saw. I think the first dead human body I saw was in Hong Kong, at a funeral home.

But no matter how we try to hide death, to lock it away in hospitals and funeral homes, it stalks us all. And, eventually, it will claim us all.

So why then do we see death of animals, of people, as so bad? Why do we rail against something that is an integral part of the reality that we live in. Isn’t trying to resist reality a sign of lunacy?

No, because the story of the Bible tells us that we were made without death. And so death is an intruder, an enemy. How did that happen? Remember that we’re working through the Bible in a year. So let’s recap the story so far:

Story so far

In the very beginning, Adam and Eve were created in a beautiful, peaceful garden, and placed in charge. There was no death, only growth and life. But they decided that they knew better than their creator, and chose to make their own decisions. The result, as God had warned, was that they brought competition and death and destruction into the world. Their children killed one another, and the long line of descendants from Adam to Noah ends each line with “and he died.” (Except for Enoch, of course.)

By Noah’s time, people were so destructive and wicked that God decided that death for all was the only solution. He offered Noah a refuge, the opportunity to build a boat that God would protect through the great flood with which he would wipe out the wicked world. But, of course, Noah and his family brought death and destruction through the flood with them, and the line from Noah down to Abram was also punctuated by death at each step.

God called this guy Abram out of his land to a new one, and there he gave him a new name, Abraham, and a miraculous son in his old age, Isaac. And then he asked Abraham to kill his own son, as a sacrifice. Unlike Adam and Eve, Abraham trusted God’s life-giving power so much that he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, but at the last second, God provided a substitute, a ram that was killed in Isaac’s place.

Now that’s where we got up to last week, and Graham shared with us about Abraham’s incredible faith. But the story doesn’t end there, of course.

Isaac himself had children: Esau and Jacob. God chose Jacob, and gave him a new name, too: Israel. Jacob had twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. One of those sons, Joseph, was sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers, but God used their evil and Joseph’s faithfulness to create a refuge for the family of Israel when a great famine spread through the Middle East. The family of Israel, now itself called Israel, remained in Egypt even after the famine, and over the centuries grew from a large family of 70 into a small nation of perhaps two million people.

The vigor of the Israelites terrified their hosts, the Egyptians, and they reacted by forcing the Israelites into hard labour, and eventually trying to slow their population growth by killing their baby boys. But one of those baby boys escaped death (many of them did, actually) but this one, named Moses, found his way into the palace of the Pharoah, and grew up as a prince of Egypt.

When Moses was 40, he discovered his Hebrew, or Israelite, heritage, and in a fit of tribalism, murdered a cruel, Egyptian overseer. He fled into the wilderness, where he sheltered as a shepherd for forty years. But then the the all-powerful God of Israel, Yahweh, called him back to Egypt to confront Pharoah with God’s power, and to demand that Israel be released.

The Pharaoh, and all Egypt with him, refused to listen to Yahweh’s request, and so Yahweh visited a series of progressively worse plagues on them. Moses kept offering Pharaoh the opportunity to obey God, but Pharaoh kept refusing. And so, plague by plague Yahweh crushed Egypt and its gods. He turned the waters to blood, brought swarms of frogs, gnats, and flies, destroyed their livestock, inflicted the people and animals with boils, crushed them with hail, stripped the fields with locusts, and hid the sun from the land. The gods of Egypt were supposed to protect its people and land, but they were crushed by Yahweh’s constant triumphs over them. Still Pharaoh and the people resisted, and Yahweh promised a tenth plague, a plague where he would kill every firstborn, except for those of Israel.

But why would God kill all the firstborn?

Why death of the firstborn?

The first thing that we need to remember when we’re talking about the idea of God killing people is this: God gave all of us life, our lives rightly belong to him, and he is well within his rights to take them away at any moment. One of the consequences of Adam and Eve’s rebellion, which happened right at the beginning of the story, is that we have inherited their upside-down view of the world, where we think we are in charge, that we are the bosses. But no matter how firmly we believe lies, they don’t become true. I can believe I am Albert Einstein as firmly as I wish, but it doesn’t make me him. It just makes me crazy. The same is true for the idea that God somehow owes us life—life is a gift from God, not an entitlement. God in his mercy sustains us in life until, in his mercy, he chooses the moment of our death—for all of us, remember, whether we are hoons, rodeo clowns, or have our heads stuck in books.

The idea of only taking the firstborn is an example of God’s mercy. In Old Testament law, God in his mercy asks only that we give the first-fruits, and that includes our first-born children. Of course we don’t need to sacrifice our children, but rather “consecrate” (dedicate) them to God. Immediately after explaining the passover to the people we find in Exodus 13:

Exodus 13:1–2 ESV

1 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.”

But since even firstborn children belong to God, some form of substitute must be presented, and God tells Moses that he will take the priestly tribe of Levites as a substitute for the firstborn of the rest of Israel in

Numbers 3:40–41 ESV

40 And the Lord said to Moses, “List all the firstborn males of the people of Israel, from a month old and upward, taking the number of their names. 41 And you shall take the Levites for me—I am the Lord—instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the cattle of the people of Israel.”

Now it’s interesting that, as Christians, God treats us more strictly in a way! We can no longer get away with just dedicating the first-fruits to God. Rather, God expects everything. Remember, Jesus said,

John 12:24–26 ESV

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

We no longer merely dedicate our first-fruits to God, but rather what he deserves, what he owns: everything. I’ll talk about how that works a bit later, but lets get back to the Israelites and Egyptians.

As we saw, Egypt had rejected God, constantly and completely. They had tried to slaughter God’s people, the Israelites. Yet with more than half the plagues Moses forewarned Pharaoh and the Egyptian people, and they could have let Israel go any of those times. So, even now, in the tenth plague, God is still not meting out the justice they deserved. Because they completely rejected God, the consequences would naturally have been a destruction as complete as their rejection. But God held back his hand and took only the firstborn.

But Israel, too, were far from perfect. Why then were their firstborn spared? Why did God pass over the Israelite homes?

Why pass over the Israelites?

When Moses gives God’s warning to Pharaoh of this final plague in chapter 11, he just says that Israel will be unaffected, he doesn’t explain how or why:

Exodus 11:6–7 ESV

6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 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.’

But when God talks to the Israelites, the first thing he tells them is that they shall take a lamb for each household. It’s not until after a long and detailed description of how to kill the lamb, paint its blood on the door posts, and then eat it that God mentions, “Oh, and I’ll be passing through Egypt destroying all the firstborn.”

Exodus 12:12 ESV

12 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.

Why this difference in emphasis?

The Egyptians vs the Israelites

Remember that the Egyptians had their own gods. They considered themselves above the Israelites and their God, Yahweh, even though the Israelites claimed that Yahweh ruled the whole universe. In fact, the ten plagues are often viewed as a one-sided battle between Yahweh and the Egyptian gods. Some of the most obvious examples of Yahweh’s defeat of the Egyptian gods includes the death of the livestock—the Egyptian goddess of love, Hathor, took the form of a cow; the plague of darkness humiliates Egypt’s primary god, Amon-Re, the god of the sun. And in this final plague, Yahweh will execute the future pharaoh-god of Egypt, the current pharaoh’s firstborn son.

Even the goddess Isis, who was supposed to protect children, is helpless against Yahweh.

Because of that, the results of Yahweh’s destruction are presented to the Egyptians as a fait accompli, as if it has already happened, and there is nothing they can do.

For the Israelites, on the other hand, Yahweh is in their corner. He is their god. However, just because he is their God, doesn’t mean that he has no expectations of them. He still expects them to do something to show that they are his people. But what could he expect, really? After all, as we’ve said, death is the destiny of us all? What could anyone possibly do to avoid it? And, since God has laid special claim to the firstborn, what could the people do to redeem them?

As it turns out, there was nothing the Israelites could do to earn their reprieve from certain death. But it didn’t matter, because God himself would provide a substitute. Just as he had done for Abraham when he was about to sacrifice Isaac, God provided a substitute lamb. The passover lamb didn’t earn the Israelites freedom from death, and that’s made clear in the way God talked about it. In verse 13 of chapter 12 of Exodus, God explains:

Exodus 12:13 ESV

13 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.

God will pass over the houses marked by the blood of the lamb. The death of an unblemished lamb will allow the Israelites will escape death. There is no explanation of how this works, and it is only after Christ’s death that we could understand the mystery; that what was really at work here was faith in the lamb of God, Jesus Christ, that was slain for us all. It is helpful, then, to remember that this was not merely a national thing, every household had to obey this command:

Exodus 12:3–4 ESV

3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4 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 count for the lamb.

Personal faith, not ethic identity, has always been the only way to escape death. While God demonstrates his justice to the Egyptians—those people who reject him--he demonstrates his mercy and grace to the Israelites—those who show faith in him.

Any Egyptian family could have joined with Israel and followed the instructions given the Israelites, and been passed over, too. In fact, later in chapter 12 God talks about celebrating the Passover in the future, and he makes it clear that foreigners who want to celebrate the passover are free to become circumcised Israelites in order to join in.

Exodus 12:48 ESV

48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.

Israel was intended to be an open people, gathering together those who trusted God into one nation. Isn’t God merciful?

Too much focus on death?

Now, you may think I’m playing up this threat of death and the substitution of a lamb a bit too much. After all, wasn’t this event just the final plague that got the Israelites out of Egypt?

Well, no. Even right here in Exodus 12 we see how foundational this event is. God starts his instructions to the Israelites by telling them:

Exodus 12:2 ESV

2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.

This is a new beginning! The people of Israel are transforming from an oppressed, oversized family into a holy people, chosen by God to be a light to the nations. And they are never to forget what made them that! In verse 14 God says:

Exodus 12:14 ESV

14 “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.

And, of course, the passover was remembered as perhaps the greatest feast day of Israel. The passover is mentioned 26 times in the gospels, 10 times in John alone. Paul explains why in 1 Cor. 5:7:

1 Corinthians 5:7 ESV

7 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.

The passover is a foreshadowing, a prophecy in a way, of the ultimate substitute that God will provide to rescue us from death.

The Israelites could not earn a rescue from death, and instead had to substitute an unblemished lamb, so that the lamb’s blood would paint their doorposts and they would be passed over. And we cannot earn a rescue from death—eternal death—and instead Jesus Christ, the sinless lamb of God, is slaughtered in our place. His blood covers us, and God’s justice passes over us.

What do we do with this?

The question then remains: so what? What do we do with this?

The first, and most important thing, I think, is that it should transform our relationship with God. Death is real, and it is terrible. It is also something that will visit every one of us. But the ultimate price of death is spiritual death, eternal death. What the apostle John calls the “second death” in the book of Revelation. This separation from God and, therefore, all good things, seals all the horrors and pain of death. But, unlike physical death, which we will all experience, this second death is not inevitable, because there is a redeemer, a lamb who was slain in our place. That lamb is God himself, the son of God, our Lord Jesus. When we fully recognise that, though we deserve to be separated from God because of our rebellion against him, he has made a way back, then we can feel nothing but joy and love and gratitude. Of course, if we harbour doubts about the wickedness of our sin, or the appropriateness of its consequences, then it will be hard for us to be grateful. But if we recognise the truth of things, then we can relax into gratitude and joy, secure in the loving hand of God, which nothing and no-one can snatch us from.

This is the danger of luke-warm Christianity, I think. When we have an apathetic attitude towards our own sinfulness (I’m not really that bad), we naturally have an apathetic attitude to God’s redemption (I didn’t really need rescuing). In fact, when we remain attached to sin we look back and, instead of gratitude towards the one who rescued us from it and its consequences (death, remember), we look back and get grumpy at the one who stole us from having a good time! That might sound crazy, but I know many people with that attitude, including myself quite often. We see the Israelites fall into that attitude almost immediately. They have only just been rescued from the Egyptian army through the miraculous parting of the waters and,

Exodus 16:2–3 ESV

2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

This sounds outrageous to us, but how often do we do the same thing? God has rescued us from eternal death and we throw a tantrum over a lost opportunity or a bung knee or failed finances (or something much worse but still not comparable to eternal death). This sort of behaviour only makes sense when “died by the hand of the Lord” means less to us than having “meat pots” and “eating bread to the full.” In other words, when we are ruled by our feelings instead of understanding the true realities that surround us.

Lord deliver us from such thinking!

The second thing is to recognise that, having been redeemed from the slavery of sin and its wages—death—we are going to live differently. Why would we live differently? Simply because death no longer holds any fear for us. We are safe in the hand of the one who rules death!

It’s been interesting and disturbing to watch the events happening in Hong Kong over the last couple of months. Hong Kongers have recognised a threat to their freedom, and have stood up to be counted against such a threat. That has been inspiring and encouraging. Less inspiring have been the young people who are so depressed by the massive inevitability of Chinese oppression that they have cast aside their lives. This kind of fatalistic thinking is realistic in a way, but only in a very narrow way.

Contrast that with Christians who live in societies that are bent on destroying Christianity. Christians in these situations rarely take their own lives, rather they give their lives up for God and others. They are not afraid to die, but they are not afraid to live, either. They recognise that there is so much more to reality than this life, than our bellies or our bodies.

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t live that way, is there? A friend of mine found herself being dragged down by a support group on Facebook of others who had shared the same terrible loss as her, but instead it reminded her over and over of that loss, trapping her in miserable memories. She found it better to be singing psalms to God or songs of praise with her brothers and sisters. If we find ourselves stressing about our finances, why don’t we remember God’s demonstration of his love and concern for us, and remember how he has shown us his care? If we’re struggling with a fatal disease (even if it’s just old age) perhaps we can remember something like the fact that it will, eventually, free us from the bondage of this carnal body, this body so distracted and harrassed by sinful desires and pains? To a modern Australian, this sounds like crazy talk, I know. But that’s because the modern Australian is blinded by the veil of this world. The beautiful vistas of heaven are invisible to them. They are numb to the glory and power of God’s love. But Christians need not be.

If you are uncertain that God has rescued you, then please come and talk to me or Graham. It makes a world of difference.

Let us, then, live as if God has provided a lamb to redeem us and rescue us and claim us as his own.