Auto Transcript
Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.
Summary
We are reminded of God’s sovereign, patient, and redemptive power as revealed through the final plague on Egypt and the institution of the Passover in Exodus 11–12. This passage teaches us that the Passover lamb is a powerful foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, our true Passover lamb, whose blood covers all who trust in him.
Key Lessons:
- God’s patience is on full display throughout the plagues — he gave Egypt hundreds of years and many opportunities to turn before his judgment fell.
- The Passover lamb is a detailed type of Christ: sinless, living among those he would die for, his blood applied as a sign of protection, and his bones unbroken — all fulfilled in Jesus.
- God’s distinction between Israel and Egypt was not based on Israel’s superiority, but on his sovereign grace and covenant faithfulness — just as our salvation is not based on our merit but on Christ’s finished work.
- The Lord’s Supper calls us to serious self-examination, looking back at the cross just as Israel looked back at the Passover, so we do not partake in an unworthy manner.
Application: We are called to approach the cross — and the Lord’s Supper — with fresh gravity, mourning over sin, marveling at God’s patience, and resting our assurance not in a decision we made but in the finished, atoning work of Christ.
Discussion Questions:
- How has your understanding of God’s sovereignty and man’s accountability changed as you have grown in faith?
- When did you last truly mourn over your sin in light of what Christ endured on the cross as our Passover lamb?
- How might you use the imagery of the Passover to share the gospel with someone from a Jewish background or someone unfamiliar with Christianity?
Scripture Focus: Exodus 11–12 reveals the final plague and the Passover institution. Isaiah 41:10 anchors us in God’s presence and strength. 1 Corinthians 5 explicitly calls Christ our Passover lamb. 1 Corinthians 11:27–32 calls us to worthy participation in the Lord’s Supper with careful self-examination.
Outline
- Introduction
- Where We Are in Redemptive History
- Review: God’s Character in the Plagues
- Exodus 11: The Final Plague Announced
- Exodus 12: The Final Plague Executed
- Christ Our Passover
- Application: God’s Sovereignty and Our Responsibility
Introduction
All right, we’re going to continue with our series in Exodus. We’re going to go through the last plague. If you guys could go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Exodus 11, we’ll be covering chapter 11 and much of 12 today. We’ll be bouncing around and seeing what the Lord has for us.
So today’s slides are taken directly from the ABC curriculum with some additions and adjustments for us today, including the Bible version. One of the things that you may have observed in the curriculum is memory verses. I don’t know if we’ve emphasized that so much, but we certainly recommend them for you.
Today’s is one that might be familiar to you: Isaiah 41:10. This is one that I know has been a go-to verse for me for many, many years. This verse has sustained me in many a difficult moment.
Let me read it for us today. Isaiah 41:10: “Do not fear, for I, that is the Lord, am with you. Do not anxiously look about you. For I am your God. I will make you mighty. Surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
With that, would you pray with me? Father God, we pray that you would open our eyes to the reality of your demonstrated strength, your power through the plagues, for the uniqueness of this last plague, what it commemorated for the Israelites, what it foreshadowed for our salvation today, and how we can live this out in practice, understanding the depths of your great love for us and your wondrous salvation in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Who can tell me where the word Passover came from or comes from?
The last plague, right? When God pronounced the curse upon the Egyptians but passed over the Israelites. Why? How did that happen? We’ll go into some detail here, but give me the short version.
They put blood on the doorpost.
Yeah. And the angel passed by.
We’re going to dive into the details of that. One of the things that I love about this series and something that I’ve learned maybe midway through my Christian life is this: I grew up in kind of a typical evangelical home. My parents came to Christ in my late childhood, and at that time, it was very common to learn individual scriptures and memorize things, but not the redemptive flow of history.
So it’s always important when you look at a passage in the Bible to know where you are. I like to think of it as that poster in the mall. I don’t like malls, but if I have to go, I want to know where I am.
Where We Are in Redemptive History
And when you see that big poster with that little red dot, you are here. I find that really helpful. How much more important it is for us to know where we are in scripture.
Now, there are three classic periods that are often talked about with regard to scripture. There’s creation, that’s the first part. There’s the fall, which happens really quickly. And then there’s redemption, right? Or creation, fall, and redemption.
I love what Answers in Genesis does here. They give us seven, which I think are much more helpful and much more descriptive for us. So I’ll just go through these briefly and remind us of where we are before we continue.
Creation. God created the universe in six days.
Corruption. Sin entered the world.
Catastrophe. God judged sin by bringing a global flood.
Confusion. God judged sin, confusing the languages and scattering people throughout the earth. The genesis, if you will, of the various cultures and peoples of the world.
Then many years later came Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, became a human. And then the cross—Jesus, the perfect sacrifice for sins.
And then we look forward to the consummation. Will God create a new heaven and a new earth?
So where are we in our passage today? We are between confusion and Christ, right? That’s where we are in our passage.
Where are we today? Praise God. We’re between the cross and the consummation, right? I can’t wait for Christ’s return. Today would be great, wouldn’t it?
I love you all. Enjoy seeing you, but I think we’d have a better time with him in glory. This is what we look forward to. And it is our future hope that fuels us in the present.
Romans 8:24-25 says, “For why does one hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait eagerly for it.” That’s an interesting tension that God gives us. Because we look forward, we are better in the present for looking forward to our future hope, right?
Some people will say things like, “If you’re too heavenly minded, you’ll be no earthly good.” The Bible says nothing of that. We need to be more heavenly minded so we can be more earthly good because we are aware of God’s eternal purposes.
“We need to be more heavenly minded so we can be of more earthly good, because we are aware of God’s eternal purposes.”
Amen.
Amen.
Amen. Thank you for that over there in the corner. All right. So, review.
Review: God’s Character in the Plagues
I’m going to give you the answers, but what do you remember about how God displayed his character in the plagues and in the interactions between Moses and Aaron and Pharaoh? How did God display his character there? Just shout out what you remember from these last few weeks.
His love and patience.
His love and patience with whom?
With Pharaoh.
With Pharaoh, for sure. Yeah. His power for sure over the gods of Egypt. Yeah, keep in mind guys, this was the superpower in the world at that time. Some would say that no civilization has surpassed it since. But this was the world’s great superpower that was being defeated by a bunch of slaves by God through those slaves.
Let’s walk through some of the details here. God showed his sovereign control over nature in many different ways, right? We certainly saw that. We saw the magicians, Pharaoh’s magicians, able to replicate, I think the first two or three, if I recall. After that, they had nothing, right? They had nothing. He showed his supremacy over the false gods of Egypt. And those things are related, right?
He showed his sovereignty over Pharaoh as he hardened his heart to bring the plans for bringing the Israelites out of Egypt to pass.
Proverbs 21:1 says the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord and he turns it whatever way he wishes. And we tend to stumble over that as we think about what about man’s free will. I think as you look through the passage, Pharaoh wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want to do. His heart was pretty hardened toward the Lord. “Who is Yahweh?” It was a direct challenge to which Yahweh answered, I think, pretty decisively.
But when we think about God’s will and particularly when we think about free will, a great thing to think about is what about God’s free will to do what he wants? I think that’s more important. And if God gets to do what he wants, that’s a lot better than us getting what we want. Would we say that? Because of who God is.
And so this is an area of tension, no doubt, but an area of rejoicing and worship for us. God has designed his sovereignty not for us to stumble over or to debate over, but to worship. In Romans 8 ends with such a passage, we see his faithfulness to the Israelites as he worked toward freeing them.
God had prophesied this to Abraham many years earlier. Your people will be enslaved some 400 years, right? Before he intervenes. And so this was all going according to plan. And then finally he showed his justice in bringing judgment on Egypt for enslaving the Israelites. That was a just act.
“God has designed his sovereignty not for us to stumble over or to debate over, but to worship.”
Anybody confused about justice today? Do you think our world is confused about justice today? Who gets to define justice? We don’t. God does. And Romans tells us wonderfully that God is both just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus. Praise the Lord for that.
So that’s a little bit by way of review. This one might be a little bit hard for you to see. These slides will be made available to you, but this just walks through each of the plagues and each of the gods of Egypt that this was meant to address more specifically to defeat. All right.
So what promise of God, having gone through all of these plagues, what promise of God are we still waiting to see fulfilled? I think we would say that while he has shown the signs and wonders and hardened Pharaoh’s heart, the Israelites were still not free. They were still enslaved. And we don’t know exactly how long this took, but it was at least a period of months, right? This wasn’t just a couple weeks and they were gone.
So you can only imagine what that was like for the Israelites who had been enslaved for many, many years looking for a very tangible redemption. So today we’re going to look at two key ideas. One is the final plague that God will bring and the second is the institution of the Passover and especially how it points us to Jesus.
How many of you were able to see last week or otherwise the patterns of evidence the Exodus movie? Yeah.
What do you remember about the modern Jews that they interviewed and how they celebrated the Passover? What did they say about whether or not these things actually happened? Do you remember?
It stood out to me that some of them said, “It doesn’t matter whether these things happen or not. This is just our tradition.” Really? Is that the kind of tradition that you want to have?
It’s kind of sad, kind of insulting. We want both our worship, our understanding of the Old Testament and fast forward to the New Testament to be based in reality, to actual events of things that have happened. This is not a charade men and women, nor should it be. We base our faith on very real events.
So with Bibles open, let’s proceed to read our passages and make some key observations. So if you haven’t already, please turn to Exodus 11. And we’ll just start reading together. I’ll just read through a few verses slowly. We’ll do some observations from both Exodus 11 and Exodus 12. And then we’ll look at some interpretations and applications.
Exodus 11: The Final Plague Announced
Exodus 11.
Then Yahweh said to Moses, “One more plague I will bring on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out from here completely.
Speak now in the hearing of the people, so that each man may ask from his neighbor, and each woman from her neighbor for articles of silver and articles of gold.
And Yahweh gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses himself was very great in the land of Egypt, both in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.
Let’s think about that for a second. Do you remember what Moses’s reaction was when God met him at the burning bush and commissioned him to go speak to Pharaoh?
What was his reaction?
Excuses.
Who am I? Send someone else. Forty years of shepherding sheep in the wilderness would do that. He went from being high and arrogant, thinking that he could intervene for God to being humbled for 40 years. This was God’s plan.
And yet God had exalted him here in the sight of the Egyptian people. Isn’t that interesting? In our Iron Man men’s teaching, we’re going through the blessing of humility. One of the key verses we notice there is in 1 Peter 5:5, where it says, “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord that he may exalt you at the proper time.”
We don’t exalt ourselves. We wait on the Lord and make him great, and he will exalt us at the proper time. This was the proper time for God to exalt Moses.
“Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord that he may exalt you at the proper time.”
So Moses said, “Thus says Yahweh: About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die from the firstborn of the Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the servant girl who is behind the millstones and all the firstborn of the cattle. Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as there has not been before, and such as never shall be again.
But for any of the sons of Israel, a dog will not even bark, whether against man or beast, that you may know how Yahweh makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
God’s Distinction Between Egypt and Israel
Just want to stop here for a second and think about this.
When we think about distinction, don’t think about prejudice or partiality.
You may know that, and we’ll see this in future weeks, that with the Exodus, some Egyptians joined them, right? God’s indictment was against the false gods of Egypt, not necessarily against all the people of Egypt. God is a redeeming God.
As you see throughout redemptive history, God has always commissioned Israel to be a light to the nations. Their problem was that they were so insulated and they made it too much about themselves. But it’s always meant so that the nations would come to them.
And so for us as a church, that’s true as well. Throughout redemptive history, God always made provisions for other nations and other peoples to join Israel in their worship. He would say that you can join, but the same standards that apply to them if you want to join will also apply to you, but you’re welcome to join.
We see people in the lineage of Jesus who were not Israelites.
“God always made provisions for other nations and peoples to join Israel in worship.”
Isn’t this amazing? From the very beginning, when we see this, don’t think of God as a genocidal God. I’m going to talk about that in a bit. That is a word that’s really abused these days. Can I just say that? Do people even know what the word means?
We want to see God’s justice, but also his generosity, his patience, his salvation. Let’s not miss this as we go through this.
All right. Where am I? Yeah, we got a couple more verses to go. Then all these servants will come down to me and bow themselves before me, saying, “Go out, you and all the people who follow you.” And after that, I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger.
Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you so that my miraculous wonders will be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” Now Moses and Aaron did all these miraculous wonders before Pharaoh. Yet Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart with strength. And he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his hand.
All right, let’s make some observations here.
Would this be the last plague?
Yes. Finally, it would. God promised that there would be one more.
Our answers are right there. We’re just going to walk through this right there in your text. God promised that yet one more plague.
Is this something that the Egyptians should have been relieved about?
Probably not. What do we learn will happen after this last plague?
Well, God told Moses that Pharaoh would finally let the Israelites go. All of this has happened through plague nine. He said, “Well, some of you can go. Maybe you can go.” No, you can’t go. Right now, it would get decisive.
Whom did God tell Moses to speak to?
What we see in our passage is that while it isn’t explicit, it is implied that he was sent to talk to Pharaoh, but also to the people of Israel. You see that in verse two: “After that, speak now in the hearing of the people so that each man may ask from his neighbor and each woman from her neighbor for articles of silver and articles of gold.”
Yeah, we see this, don’t we see this in the life of Jesus? Sometimes he’s speaking to people, but he’s speaking for other people who happen to be around. I think in some ways that’s how worship is for us, right?
When we gather to worship at our worship gathering in a little less or a little more than an hour, who’s the audience? It’s God. Our orientation is to him.
What of unbelievers who come in right now? We want them to feel welcome, but our orientation isn’t to them, but to God, and they get to watch and hopefully see something great of God. The scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 14:2 that we are the sweet aroma of Christ to God among those who are perishing, right? Our orientation is always toward him, right?
And when we do that, that’s the very best thing for people who do not yet know him.
And who were the people in verse two?
As I just read, they must have been the Israelites since they were to ask for the Egyptians to give them their wealth. This is described in more detail later in chapter 12. Isn’t that amazing?
And then the word is used later, I think later in Exodus. I think it’s certainly used in the New Testament. It says, “Thus you will plunder the Egyptians.” Isn’t that interesting? Not by force, not by conflict, simply by asking.
The Lord, we see so much of the Lord’s sovereignty over the hearts of people, don’t we? Now, you can say that it was forced in the sense that you guys have done enough damage. You need to go now. We’ll give you anything to get out of here. That’s real, right.
But we see that God always does it through the working in people’s hearts. Yeah. That’s a wonderful thing to see. May it be so with us.
All right, let’s continue. How did the Egyptians view Moses? We’ll see that in verse three. What would you say to that? We talked about that. How did they view Moses?
As a very great man. Yeah. They had come to esteem Moses, likely recognizing that he was a prophet of the true God. Yeah. So we went from royalty to shepherding, which the Egyptians loathed, to maybe even higher than royalty, above their own gods and their own pharaoh.
Amazing. Keep in mind that many of these people would have been people who saw Moses grow up as a child in Pharaoh’s household. So this is all very interesting to see how it unfolded.
Moses as God’s Spokesman
How did Moses begin his address to Pharaoh?
It’s in verse four. How did he begin?
Thus said the Lord.
Thus says the Lord. Thus said the Lord.
Yeah. And that’s always the message. This is what should have given Moses confidence from the beginning because he was not speaking from himself.
Nor was it his own eloquence that would be the determining factor, but the word of God. He was to be a steward of the word of God. You can make the case that this would have given him confidence. Certainly, for those of us who teach in the church, this is what gives us confidence. If we’re just up here making things up, I don’t even know why you should show up. This isn’t a TED talk, right? This is us being stewards of the manifold grace of God through his word. Yeah.
“We are stewards of the manifold grace of God through his word — that is what gives us confidence.”
What would happen and who would do it?
We see this in verse 5. What would happen and who would do it?
I’ll just give it to you. You can read it there. God would kill the firstborn of all the Egyptians and the firstborn of the cattle.
God’s Justice and Patience
I find it interesting that this is one of many passages where God makes it clear what he’s about to do and what he is doing.
There are several verses in Isaiah that talk about theodicy. Have you ever heard that term? Why do bad things happen and what does God have to do with that? I got to tell you, particularly in the book of Isaiah, God makes it really clear these calamities, all these things that happened that you’re stumbling over. I did that.
There’s a lot to process there, right? But God makes clear what he’s doing, what he’s about to do. And then I think we have to just say that when we look at that, someone mentioned, I think you, Glenn, God’s patience in all of this. What if God wasn’t patient? What would this look like?
You wouldn’t have 400 years of waiting. Not only 400 years for the Egyptians, but 400 years for the nations around them to seek him, right? What about us? What if God was impatient with you and me?
We’ve talked about this before. We wouldn’t be having this discussion today. It’s always good for us to recognize in our human condition what we get compared to what we deserve.
We talked in Iron Man about mourning over our sin. One of the examples was the woman who at Jesus’ feet washed his feet with her tears and with that perfume. How did Jesus describe her? She was forgiven much, loves much.
She was aware of what she deserved and what she got. And so I think we want to keep that in mind as we think about God’s justice here. His justice is being meted out. And yet even in that we see his great patience. He waited a long time with the Egyptians. He gave them many opportunities to turn.
“She was aware of what she deserved and what she got. Even in God’s justice we see his great patience.”
Okay. How were the Israelites to be treated during this final plague? It says they would be separated so that not even a dog would growl against them.
Really interesting. You try to picture the scene, what that would look like. How do these things happen and then the Israelites not get touched? It’s God’s supernatural hand. And why were they to be spared?
We see that God wanted to make it clear that Israel was his people and leave no doubt that he was in control of who was affected by the plagues. Let me stop right here and ask a question. Did God do this because the Israelites were more worthy or superior to anyone else?
Absolutely not. I don’t have the verse in front of me. Maybe somebody could find it. But God makes it clear several times that I didn’t do this because of any greatness in you. In fact, you were probably the least and the worst.
But I did this to show my redemptive power. And can we just notice this as we look at the redemptive flow of history? You look at the patriarchs. Those are the guys God chose through whom to demonstrate his power.
The disciples, the twelve disciples. Come on. Not the best and the brightest, right? Amen.
Us perhaps not the best and the brightest, but this is all about him and what he can do with weak and inferior people. We’re all at that level.
“This is all about him and what he can do with weak and inferior people.”
Don’t hear through this. And I really have to emphasize this because, as you may know, anti-Semitism is growing. It’s on the rise in a way that I’m stunned by, right?
And this is not to say that Israel is perfect in all its dealings. It’s not. But God made a promise to Abraham. He did.
And it is clear and I think obvious as it’s playing out that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And that has nothing to do with how they’re doing. It has to do with God’s faithfulness.
So I don’t want to get political, but that’s an important thing to think about and an important thing to push back on and understand that it’s not about Israel per se, but it’s about God’s faithfulness and his faithfulness to us. Let’s always hear that. Okay.
How did God say that the Egyptians would respond? He said that they would bow down as though they were servants of Moses and recognize God as Lord and then they would tell the Israelites to get out of Egypt.
What a turn of events. What a role reversal, right? You think about the whole history here. This is stunning. What a role reversal brought about in a way that only God could do it.
Exodus 12: The Final Plague Executed
All right. That’s just some observations. Let’s continue on to Exodus 12. We’ll do the same thing with Exodus 12, then we’ll tie together some interpretations and some applications for us. Okay.
Exodus 12:29-30. Before I hit Exodus 12, any questions or comments?
Mike says that God made the promise.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He chose Abraham, then he chose Isaac and not Ishmael. And then he chose Jacob and not Esau.
He keeps on going. Right. Right.
Yeah.
Also saying things this little change.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Preceding this, we see God’s favor on Joseph. Yeah.
Yeah.
They came from a point of—Yeah. So they get—Yeah. You can look at Psalms like Psalm 78. I think Acts 7 gives kind of the wide breadth of the history of Israel, which is really interesting, just seeing God’s faithfulness in these terms of events that are just stunning. How did Israel even get into Egypt? Well, through Joseph and through things that only God could orchestrate. Yeah. Wonderful.
Shortly after the Exodus, we see probably made a mistake.
Yeah.
So we’ll see more in the coming weeks as Pharaoh changes his mind. Glenda, the thing I got in this series that we’re doing with how Moses fled to the wilderness.
Moses fled. Yeah.
And God was talking to him about going back, all the excuses he had. What I got from it: God is a covenant-keeping God. Amen.
Glendon promised to Abraham.
Yeah.
All of the excuses that he was doing—I made a promise to Abraham, my friend.
Yeah.
So in every excuse and everything that is happening, God was the covenant God.
I am going to bring them out.
Yeah.
And I’m going to give them back that covenant with Abraham.
So look at it as he’s a covenant-keeping God and can keep the same covenant with us. God is a covenant-keeping God and he keeps that covenant with us. We’re going to fast forward as we go into Passover and into the Lord’s supper, as well as we just see these millennia of faithfulness that we get to benefit from, and it’s all about him.
I mean, this is one of the things that I love about the Bible and one of the things that is an apologetic for its veracity, its truthfulness: people don’t look very good in this book. If humans wrote this, you would not write it up like this because they look pretty terrible compared to God. And that’s meant to tell us something.
And to your point, Mike, we see through Jacob and Esau, Joseph, his brothers—every what’s amazing to me is so many people are trying to manipulate circumstances for the outcome that they want. What happens? God’s purposes work through all of that, right?
As my friend Andy Picatoli often tells me, he’s relentless. God’s relentless. Or as a friend of mine, Wayne, often says, you can’t stop it. You can’t stop God’s purposes. All right, good stuff.
Let’s continue in Exodus 12. Now, it happened at midnight that Yahweh struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. Then Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead.
Imagine that.
Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, “Rise up. Get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel, and go serve Yahweh as you have spoken. Take both your flocks and your herds as you have spoken, and go and bless me also.” What an interesting final phrase. Bless me also.
Who Brought the Death and How
Let’s go through some observations here.
Who was acting to bring about this death? We touched on it. We see that in verse 29. God did this as only he could because it had to be very selective. It’s not like a disease that is indiscriminate. It was very targeted.
Did God act alone? What do you think?
I think he did.
You think he did? Okay, Glenda, elaborate a little bit because Moses was hesitant in what he was about to do.
So God had to take the initiative in our lives. We don’t need our hands or feet and he can do it. He is able to bring about what he said he’s going to bring about. Now sometimes he uses means.
Think about this, for example, with something that happened earlier in history with Job and all the calamities that came upon Job. Did God act alone in that? In an ultimate sense, we say that’s always the case, and I think that’s what you were getting at, Glenda. But with Job and all the calamity that came upon him, did God act alone?
No. He used the means of Satan, but Satan’s on a leash, right? God oversaw it, but used that as a means.
This is a little bit different. I’m just going to unpack this, and this is from the study guide that I think was really helpful. Verse 23 mentioned the destroyer, right? The destroyer could be a reference to death, or some have understood it to be a second person linked to the angel of the Lord.
Who’s the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament?
It’s Christ. Yeah, as in 2 Samuel 24:16. There are other verses there. It is possible this was a second person of God, a shadowy reference to the Trinity. The text isn’t explicit, but I think we can say with certainty that God did it.
Was he unjust in doing this? No.
Again, I want us to hear God’s great patience. Psalm 103 talks about this. He will not always strive with us, right? He gives a great amount of time for us to turn. Slow to anger—that’s the memorial name given by God to Moses.
“The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. He will not keep his anger forever. He forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet he will not keep his anger forever.”
Justice is coming, but slow to anger. I just want to repeat this and I want our hearts to hear this.
“The only reason you and I are here today is because God is slow to anger.”
I think that might tell us something about how we ought to be with others as well. Something that I need to hear. I’m not as slow to anger as I need to be.
Pharaoh’s Response and Role Reversal
How did the Egyptians respond to the plague?
Well, they rose up in the night and there was a great cry.
We’re not cold-hearted people. We see a civilization where every family experienced death in it. You have to feel the weight of that and have some compassion. Every single family experienced death.
Just let that sink in.
There’s a lot that can be said here. You might make the case that maybe some of those families didn’t do anything wrong.
But it goes to the power and the importance of leadership. God was condemning a nation of which they were a part. And everyone faced the consequences.
When we think about what a firstborn is, we recognize how important that is for societal survival. It meant more back then even than it does now with the prominence of the firstborn. You’re really attacking the heart of a people when that happens. The wound is deep.
What did Pharaoh command Moses and Aaron in verses 31-32?
He commanded them to take the Israelites out of Egypt to serve Yahweh. He also said to take the flocks as Moses had requested earlier. You might recall earlier in the narrative that God had requested that everyone go. Pharaoh negotiated: “Well, just you can go. Just the men can go.”
Then maybe the men and the women, but hold back the flocks. Right now, it’s a full purge. He’s sending them all out.
What did Pharaoh ask from Moses and Aaron? He asked for a blessing. Isn’t that interesting? He had all these curses. Could you just leave a final blessing to me? That is in some ways a recognition of God’s power. He asked for a blessing, presumably acknowledging that God had won the war and had the power to bless him.
God was finally answering Pharaoh’s initial question: Who is Yahweh?
“Pharaoh asked for a blessing — a recognition that God had won the war and had the power to bless.”
I think Pharaoh’s got a bit of a clearer picture at this point. He is the God of heaven and earth. Well, all right.
Christ Our Passover
Let’s tie this together. The main connection that we want to make in terms of interpretation is Christ our Passover.
We see in Exodus 12:1-6 that we read earlier, the Passover lamb is described.
I’ll walk through briefly the parallels, which are amazing. He was to be a lamb without blemish. As such, Jesus was sinless.
You may have heard it asked, “Well, if it was Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection that saved us, why couldn’t he just come down for the weekend and take care of that?” Because he had to live a sinless life. A full sinless life from birth until death, tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.
What did John the Baptist say of Jesus? Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
The lamb lived with the family. Right?
This was really interesting. If you study the Passover, lambs are cute, right? You’re going to have this lamb in your home. The kids are going to kind of get attached to it.
It’s going to become like a member of the family and then you got to kill it.
Parallels Between the Passover Lamb and Jesus
Yeah. That shows something really serious. In the same way, Jesus lived among those he died for. John 1:14 says he tabernacled among us, right? He lived among us full of grace and truth.
He could be observed. His family could be observed, right? Imagine that.
Sometimes I think about whether Mary ever said to Jesus’ siblings, “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” Not fair, right? I hope not because that really would not be fair, because they couldn’t be more like their brother. Impossible, right?
The lamb was killed at twilight in the afternoon. Jesus died at 3 p.m. according to the Gospels. Have you ever seen a video of what Passover looks like in Israel?
It’s really interesting. If you’ve seen that, lambs don’t die quietly. There’s a lot of them being slaughtered at the same time. It’s quite alarming. It’s quite stunning. If you ever get a chance, take a look at that.
Similarly, we see something very stark, very difficult occurring at the Passover with the Egyptians.
The blood of the lamb is a sign in the same way the blood of Jesus is a sign of the new covenant. As he said in 1 Corinthians 11, the passage that we read every time we do the Lord’s supper, the lamb’s remains were not to remain until morning. Interesting. Similarly, Jesus was taken down from the cross and buried before the end of the day.
According to Jewish law, the lamb was the Lord’s Passover. In the same way, Jesus is our Passover lamb. 1 Corinthians 5 makes that direct connection for us. This isn’t a matter of is he or isn’t he. The scriptures are very explicit about that.
God will see the blood on the door and pass over, withholding his judgment. Jesus’ sacrifice allows God to pass over us so that we avoid his judgment. Seeing Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and in particular for those who’ve repented and believed in him, our sins are covered.
“Jesus’ sacrifice allows God to pass over us so that we avoid his judgment.”
I hope this passage today, this study is helping us to feel the weight of that.
The unleavened bread signified purification from sin. To follow Jesus is to seek to remove sin from our lives, and it is a sign of his true followers.
2 Corinthians 7:1, following an overview of all that God has done through us in redemptive history, says, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Are you starting to see echoes of how we do the Lord’s supper here? These themes carry forward as how we need to look maybe a little bit more closely than we normally would at the righteousness of God and the seriousness of sin and the intensity of the sacrifice. I keep referring to the Lord’s supper. It’s just the Lord putting these things together at the same time.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. When was the last time you really mourned, really cried over your sin? I think a look at the cross and these things will really do it for us.
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, which I love, there’s a scene where Pilgrim sees the cross, the burden of his sins falls away, and he just weeps.
“Pilgrim sees the cross, the burden of his sins falls away, and he just weeps. May that be so for us.”
Yeah. May that be so for us as we understand more deeply what Christ has done.
The Memorial: Passover and the Lord’s Supper
Okay. Go back a bit. The memorial of the sacrificial lamb.
This is really interesting and I encourage a deeper look at this. When God gave the instructions as to what to do for the Passover, he was not only telling them what to do in that moment, but how it should be practiced every year, generation after generation.
The memorial would remind future generations of how God had passed over the Israelites while judging the Egyptians. Similarly, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper communion as a memorial of his sacrifice. We see similar language in the narrative of the Lord’s Supper with Jesus and his disciples and Paul’s recollection of it and instructions for how to do it.
Jesus instituted the memorial in the event itself just as the Passover had been done. It’s amazing.
“Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper as a memorial of his sacrifice, just as the Passover had been instituted.”
The foreigners and the lamb—none of the lamb’s bones were broken.
We saw this: Jesus’ legs were not broken on the cross, which was against Roman custom. It would have been normal for his legs to be broken. But in God’s sovereignty, in his fulfillment of prophecy, Jesus’ legs were not broken because they could see that he was already dead.
Foreigners had to become part of Israel to be passed over. Jesus’ blood covers only those who are in Christ from every group of people.
There’s so much that we could say here, but again, God’s salvation being openly displayed to the world through Israel and his invitation to come to him, to all nations through Israel.
Instead of resenting Israel like so many are doing today, let’s just say, boy, if God could do this through such people as Israel, this is really meant to encourage us because again, there’s no superiority in them.
Anything good from them comes from God and we recognize that as well for us. So Christ our Passover.
Well, let’s get into some application. But before we do that, we’ve got about 12 minutes. Any comments or questions before we bring this in for a landing?
Application: God’s Sovereignty and Our Responsibility
Okay, Pharaoh had finally relented and the Israelites were about to leave their bondage, but God had not finished displaying his power among the Egyptians. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see that they will be utterly and decisively vanquished.
One of the things I have to work really hard to do is get the movie out of my mind. I grew up with the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, which is based actually less on scripture and more on a book called Prince of Egypt. It’s got some things that are pretty inaccurate.
I struggle to get those things out of my mind. But the display of God’s power I think is done pretty well in that movie. Let’s always be going back to the scriptures and picture it from there.
We know that God says he is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart and that Pharaoh is judged for his own actions, right?
There’s a lot that we don’t fully understand about God hardening his heart, which is explicit, but then he hardened his own heart, which is also true. In one sense, this is beyond our understanding.
But ultimately, Pharaoh is accountable.
With Pharaoh, as with us, nobody is doing anything they don’t want to do. No one. We have to acknowledge that.
“Ultimately, Pharaoh is accountable. Nobody is doing anything they don’t want to do.”
I’ll ask this: How has your understanding of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility changed over time? I think the scriptures teach both. God is sovereign, man is responsible. I think a better word is accountable to God because responsible has implications in it that I don’t think the scripture teaches. Anyone want to chime in on that?
Mike.
So the being born again concept isn’t even a thing if you’re not born again, right?
Yep. You think you’re autonomous.
Yeah.
Start knowing your God.
Knowing him after being born again.
Knowing how much you don’t know. Yeah.
It is a mystery. I love there’s a clip on YouTube of John MacArthur when someone asked him their question. He goes, “I don’t know. How do I reconcile these? I don’t know. It’s not my problem. It’s God’s problem.”
Right? We need to just rest in that. It is God after all. We might suspect there might be just a couple things we don’t fully understand and we got to be okay with that.
I think one of the things we think about is what it means to be born again, which is how salvation is described. Has anyone here chosen their own birth?
No. I think that just tells us something that God, praise God, he can birth us to new life in Christ. Leela, coming to faith is the first step.
Yeah.
And then the scripture says, “The just shall live by faith.”
Yeah.
All right. You’re going to push me right into Romans 1 and we’re never going to end. The just shall live by faith. It is from faith to faith. It originates with faith. It is sustained by faith. That’s our lives in Christ. There’s a lot to explore there. I’m going to bookmark that for now. But that’s a beautiful comment, right?
Why is that? Because faith is not just believing something that’s true. It’s putting your complete trust in something, right? That’s what we grow in in our lives in Christ.
Here’s something to think about that you might not have thought about. Because God is the source of life, to follow him brings life, but to reject him brings death. It can’t be otherwise.
If you unplug from the source of life, this isn’t difficult, right? So I think what we recognize is this is not God being vindictive. People really struggle with this as an apologetic in terms of God’s treatment of the Egyptians and then God’s treatment of the nations who would be vanquished and killed when Joshua entered the promised land.
We struggle over this, right? Completely forgetting the 400 plus years that God gave them to turn and the great patience that he showed.
Completely forgetting if you look at the histories of these cultures and what they were doing—unspeakable things. Child sacrifice is kind of the least of it, although that’s terrible, right? So it was very important that God deal with that because God is a just God.
This is not God being vindictive. This is reality playing itself out. If someone asks you a question like, and I’ve gotten this several times, “How can a loving God send anyone to hell?” It’s a great question.
Again, we’re not cold-hearted people. We care about this. We do. We care about people. John 1:4 says, “In him was life.” That’s Christ. And that life was the light of men.
If Jesus is the source of life, the source of eternal life, then to reject him can’t be anything else but eternal death, right? That’s us not choosing the source of life. That’s just reality. I think we need to honor God by saying that, right?
But again, we’re not cold-hearted. This is why we do evangelism. This is why we do what we do because we want as many people to come to the light and come to the life of Christ.
“If Jesus is the source of life, to reject him can only be eternal death. This is why we do evangelism.”
Anyone here ever been part of a Passover seder meal? Leela.
Yeah. And you grew up with that before you were a believer, correct? Tell us a word or two about how you viewed it then and how you view it now.
Well, I loved it.
You loved it? Yeah.
Follow the rules. But after coming to Christ, I didn’t understand then the sacrificial lamb. The sacrificial lamb was a mystery.
Yeah. The Ten Commandments.
Yeah.
I didn’t like eating lamb. I mean, I never got any of that. I never understood it was about me.
Yeah.
We were waiting for a Messiah.
Really? The Messiah wasn’t even mentioned in it. Really?
So interesting. Well, we know from Romans 8:8 through 8:11 and other passages that God has a veil over the eyes of those who’ve grown up with such traditions, but God opens blind eyes.
Praise the Lord. Okay, just a couple of things. How could you use the account of the Passover to share the gospel with those who have a Jewish background? I know Isaiah 53 is a great place to go. I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos of people just reading Isaiah 53, which talks very explicitly about Christ.
They’ll talk to a Jewish person and they’ll think that’s from the New Testament because they don’t know their own scriptures. They’re stunned to realize how explicitly the hope of the Messiah is talked about.
I find it really interesting that what’s it like to be a very devout Jewish person going through all those rituals, but you don’t have the temple system. You don’t believe in your Messiah. So how do you even process sin and forgiveness?
No wonder you have to think that it’s just stories.
Great point. No wonder you have to think that it’s just stories because it’s not real. It doesn’t really have a direct meaning in your life. We saw people talk about that in our movie the last couple weeks.
Assurance of Salvation and the Cross
Well, thinking about your own life, how are you assured that you are safe from God’s punishment for sin?
Trust in the sacrifice of Christ.
Yeah.
Believe that.
Yeah. Because we’re leaning on not our own works but the perfect atoning work of Christ. Yeah.
Always good. In the same way that the Israelites were to look back at the Passover, we are to look back at the cross.
“In the same way the Israelites looked back at the Passover, we look back at the cross.”
I remember a pastor friend really helped me with this. Many people struggle with assurance of salvation once you’ve come to faith in Christ, wondering if you could possibly lose your salvation.
What do you look back at? Some people will say you look back at this decision that you made or this prayer that you prayed. No, look back further. Look back at the cross in the same way that the Israelites look back at the Passover.
What are the implications for how you and I approach the Lord’s supper, communion, coming up in a few weeks?
Approaching the Lord’s Supper Worthily
Look with me just briefly. We have just a minute or so at 1 Corinthians 11.
I want to point out something that you might not have considered.
This is where self-examination is so important for us before we partake in understanding the seriousness of sin, so that we don’t go in casually.
Let’s start in verse 27. We have our instructions, which I think you’re familiar with in 1 Corinthians 11 starting in verse 17. But in verse 27 it says, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
That a man must test himself and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.
But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. Now listen to this. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. Like the Israelites, we want to make sure that it is the blood of Christ that covers us.
1 Corinthians 11:32: “When we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”
We’re not with the world anymore. We are with him and we want to make sure that that’s the case. When we engage in sin knowingly and still take the Lord’s supper, we drink judgment upon ourselves. We are putting on ourselves a judgment that’s meant for the world, not meant for us. We’re going back to that. Pastor Crumbley is going to preach a little bit later about serving the right master, right? Don’t go back.
I think we’ll see this here. I just encourage us to think maybe a little bit differently about the Lord’s supper. We’re about at time. Just some other things to consider and then I’ll pray.
In what ways do you see parallels in your experience of God’s power over all of creation and what we have read today?
It’s amazing. Look at this beautiful fall day. I could have gone without defrosting my car this morning, but it’s beautiful, isn’t it? God’s faithfulness every morning.
As you consider all of the events of the plagues, how have you come to understand God’s character more fully and the redemption in Christ more fully?
We see his sovereignty. We see his power. But I think the big theme that came out today, and thank you to Glenda for emphasizing this, is his patience, his relentless loving kindness.
Father, we are simply in awe of your real historic work with your people.
We praise you that as your word says, when we are faithless, you remain faithful because you cannot deny yourself. It’s upon your faithfulness, your finished work that we rely today. Work in our hearts today that we would see the cross more clearly. We would see Christ more clearly. And that we would enter into new depths of repentance and faith and joy and peace and life. Amen.