July 8th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image from visualbiblealive.com

Yesterday, we looked at how God was revealing Himself powerfully through the plagues against Egypt – these were not random acts of destruction, they were theological statements introducing Him as the LORD, the only true God. In the midst of this powerful account of God’s judgment against Egypt, we also find one of the most powerful illustrations of salvation and pictures of Jesus as Redeemer contained in the Old Testament.

“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.”

Exodus 11:4

The judgment would be swift and severe. And there was only one way to avoid it.

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… The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect…

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.

Exodus 12:3,5,21-23

God didn’t tell them to try really hard to be good in order to avoid being wiped out. There weren’t long lists of rules they should follow, there was no character test. If they were to be spared, the lamb had to die in their place. They had to trust God enough to obey His command, slaughter an innocent lamb, and have their homes marked with the blood. Surely the firstborn sons were especially motivated to obey the command of God – and as he saw his father marking that doorframe with the blood of another, the message was clear: the lamb died, and now I will live.

One of my professors in college was an expert in ancient cultures. He took us on the best “field trip” of my life which included stops at a museum in Philadelphia and also at the MET in New York. As we walked through a hall of Egyptian artifacts, he pointed out to us the stone doorframes from Egypt lining the hall, each engraved all around the sides and top of the doorframe with hieroglyphs. He stopped and read the hieroglyphs to us – pointing out that these engravings were claiming allegiance to and calling for protection from various members of the vast pantheon of Egyptian gods.

The night of Passover suddenly became even more profound to me. As followers of the LORD dipped the hyssop branches into the blood of the lamb and wiped it on the doorframes of their homes – they were claiming allegiance to and trusting in protection from only one God: the one true God. Anything they had trusted in in the past would be covered up – only their faith in Yahweh was what mattered.

Fast forward thousands of years, and we find Jesus described in the New Testament as the Passover Lamb:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

John 1:29

Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

1 Corinthians 5:7

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.

Revelation 5:6

Jesus is the Lamb of God. We all deserve to die because we are all sinners. But this spotless, perfect Lamb was sacrificed in our place. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor and spare us from the punishment we deserve. We must simply trust His Word and place our faith in Jesus as our Passover Lamb. Our hearts must be marked with His blood. Just as the Israelites would have covered up any engravings already in place on their doorframes – we must trust in Him alone for our salvation.

Because the Lamb died, I now will live.

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