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I Will Pass Over You
I Will Pass Over You Exodus 11:1 – 12:51 Key Verse: 12:12-13 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.” In the previous passage we thought about the first nine plagues that the LORD inflicted on Egypt. We thought about how these plagues reminded the Israelites that they were God’s chosen people and how he had not forgot about them in spite of everything that they had suffered in Egypt. God had chosen them and had made promises to them through their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and God intended to keep those promises. Through the nine plagues, God also revealed himself to pharaoh. He revealed that he was the one true God who was sovereign over all the earth and that the Egyptian God’s and wise men were completely powerless to do anything to stop His plans. Finally, we thought about why God had performed all of these wonders in Egypt rather than just simply freeing the Israelites immediately. He did it to make sure that His name should be proclaimed in all the earth so that all people might know who he is. In today’s passage we want to think about the final plague that the LORD inflicted on Egypt. This plague was the most terrible of them all and it would insure that pharaoh would not only let the Israelites go and worship the LORD for a three day period, but pharaoh and the Egyptians would drive the Israelites out of the land completely. In this passage God completes his judgment on all the gods of Egypt and, more importantly, He makes a clear distinction between the people of Israel, His chosen people, and the people of Egypt. In the end God won the war between himself and the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. The people of Israel were not only set free but they also plundered their captors just as God had promised Moses months before this whole battle began. Moreover, God also gave us a foreshadowing of the victory He has in store for each of us if we simply believe His word and accept the Pascal lamb that He has provided us in Jesus. May God bless our study today to see that He is absolutely sovereign in all the Earth and that He is a God who always keeps his promises. First, Moses gives Pharaoh one last warning (11:1-10). Look at verse1. “Now the LORD had said to Moses, ‘I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.’” Apparently, these words were given to Moses before pharaoh summoned him to bring relief from the ninth plague, the plague of darkness. If you look back at chapter 10:24-29 you will see that pharaoh was still trying to bargain with Moses about letting the Israelites go just for a three day celebration to the LORD. He told Moses that the Israelites could go even with their women and children, but they had to leave their flocks behind as an insurance policy that they would return. When Moses refused this offer, God hardened pharaoh’s heart one last time, pharaoh got very angry with Moses and told Moses that he would never see his face again if he wanted to live. It is amazing that after all Pharaoh had seen, after he had watched his country be destroyed while his gods and powerful magicians stood by helpless to do anything, he still thought that he was in control of the situation. Moses knew better; he knew that God was in complete control and he knew what God was about to inflict on pharaoh and all his people. This ultimatum by pharaoh angered Moses deeply because he knew that pharaoh’s stubbornness was going to cost the Egyptians dearly and result in countless, needless deaths. Moses responded by saying “Ok, I’ll never see your face again but before I go let me tell you what is about to happen to you.” If you look at verses 2 and 3 you will see that Moses had already told the Israelites to ask their Egyptian neighbors for articles of silver and gold and the Egyptians were willing to give them up because God had made them favorably disposed to the Israelites and the Egyptians now held Moses in great esteem. Just as God had promised, He had made Moses like God before pharaoh and the Egyptian people understood this. They knew they could not stand before God and Moses, but pharaoh held onto his pride and refused to back down. Pharaoh’s refusal to accept God as God set up the stage for the final plague, so before leaving Pharaoh’s sight Moses told pharaoh very clearly what was about to happen. Look at verses 4-8. “So Moses said, ‘This is what the LORD says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.’” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh. Verse 7 is very important. God makes a distinction between his people and the people who refuse to accept him. This is as true today as it was in the time of Moses and we must always remember this. No matter what our situation is we still have God’s words of promise to us. He will save us. He will redeem us and give us the final victory. In fact, he has already done this. He has done this by giving us our own Pascal lamb, Jesus. All we have to do is trust in his words of promise and cover our hearts with the blood of Jesus. Then we are set free from our slavery to sin and we are free to serve him without fear all of our days. Verse 8 is also a very instructive verse for us. Moses clearly told pharaoh that all those officials who stood with pharaoh as he refused to listen to God’s commands would come and bow down before him and tell him that God’s people were free to go. As Christians we must have a sense of final victory. God has promised us this and no matter what is oppressing us we have to live with a sense of victory. God has promised us this victory. We must accept it by faith and claim victory over those things that hold us in bondage. This does not mean that we should be arrogant and walk around like we are world conquering generals, because we haven’t done anything. God has done it for us. We must simply humbly accept this and tell others what God has done for us. If we think for a moment that we have done anything we are just like pharaoh, thinking that we somehow control the situation when, in fact, God is in control of everything. If we simply accept and believe God’s words of promise we can be like Moses and tell the pharaoh’s in our lives that we won’t face them again and just leave them behind. Verse 8 ends by saying, “Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.” Why Moses “hot with anger?” I believe it was because Moses didn’t want to see so many innocent people suffer because of one man’s stubbornness. Moses may have wondered why innocent children had to die because one man wouldn’t listen to God. This is the nature of sin. Sin not only affects those who commit it, it affects everyone around them as well. Sin is contagious just like a disease. That is why we call it sin sickness. Nevertheless, in spite of all this pain and suffering that Moses knew was coming, he and Aaron performed all these wonders before pharaoh, so that God’s promises might be kept and God’s name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Second, God says that this event must be remembered (12:1-28). God had foretold everything to Moses. Moses in turn told Aaron and both of them told the elders of Israel. More than that, all the Israelites witnessed these events, but there is a big problem with human beings. We all tend to forget things and usually we forget them very quickly. We all need to be reminded of things from time to time. This is especially true of God’s salvation. The worries of the world and the troubles that people face every day quickly make people forget that there is a God who saved us. God knew that his people were going to face a lot of difficulties once they were free from their bondage in Egypt. He knew that these difficulties would quickly make them forget about the deliverance that they experienced when they were back in Egypt. He especially knew that the generations following the one that experienced all the miracles in Egypt would quickly forget about what God had done for their forefathers. This is why God gave very specific instructions to Moses and Aaron about this final event. The first thing God instructed Moses and Aaron to do was to make the month of the Exodus the first month of the Israelites year. This is very important and we can see why even today. The beginning of every year, whether a person is a Christian or not, is a very important time. People look at the new year as a time of new beginning. They make resolutions and plans about how they will change their lives in order to make them better. This is, as far as I know, a universal truth. For the Israelites in the time of Moses this could not have been more true. Their lives were completely changing. They were going from laves to a free people. From people who were living in as foreigners in a land that was not their own to a people who were going to have a land of their own. Their lives were going to be completely different. It was really a time of a new beginning for them. However, there is another aspect of the New Year that many people forget today. It is not only a time to look forward to new changes in our lives, it is a time to look back and reflect on what happened in the previous year (or years) of our lives. We can take the time to think about how we have grown and matured. We can think of what we have done, whether it is good or bad. And, if you are smart, you can think about what God has done for you over the past year or throughout the years of your life. This is what God wanted the Israelites to do. At the beginning of each year God wanted the Israelites to remember what He had done for them. Therefore, God instructed Moses to make this month, the month of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt, the first month of their year. If you look at verses 3-11, God gives Moses very specific instructions about one meal. This meal was a very important meal for the Israelites and also for us. It reminded the Israelites of their situation on that one night long ago. They needed a lamb or a goat; a male a year old without any defects. They had to take of that animal for four days and then they needed to kill it themselves. Before they ate the meat they were to take some of the blood and put it on the doorframes of their houses (this was a very important step). Then they were to cook the meat in a specific way and they had to eat all the meat before sunrise or burn what was left over. Finally, they were to eat the meat quickly with their cloak tucked into their belt, with their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hand. Verse 11 ends with the words, “It is the LORD’s Passover.” What did this mean? Verses 12 and 13 tell us. That night the LORD was going to pass through the land and kill every first born in Egypt, both man and animal, but if he saw the blood on the doorframe God would “Passover” that household and no one or no animal would die. How could the blood of a lamb or a goat on the doorframe of a house protect someone from a terrible plague? It doesn’t make any sense, but if the Israelites obeyed they would experience a great miracle. If they chose not to obey they would taste the sting of death. The same is true today. How can the blood of one man shed more than 2000 years ago save us? I don’t know, but if we obey and accept it, I believe that the Angel of Death will “Passover” us. We will be freed from our bondage and we will be brought into our promised land. Verses 14-22 give additional instructions about what the Israelites should do on that night and for the generations to come. The instructions were detailed and proclaimed a 7 day feast or festival that the Israelites were instructed to hold every year so that they wouldn’t forget what happened on that night. The instructions for the Passover meal and the festival that were to follow were separate, but they were both designed to help the Israelites remember what God had done for them. The instructions for the meal were designed to commemorate how God saved them and the instructions for the feast were designed to remind the people to live pure lives before God every day. Both are very important. If we don’t remember how we are saved then there is no point in living a holy and pure life. However, if we don’t remember to live a holy and pure life then we won’t remember how we were saved. God thinks of everything; we don’t. Human beings usually forget one or the other. If we forget about the meal and don’t remember how we were saved we become arrogant and self-righteous and live lives like the Pharisees. On the other hand, if we forget about the conditions of the festival and don’t get rid of the yeast, we will also forget how we were saved and end up living just an ordinary life never being free and never getting to the Promised Land. We must remember both sets of instructions; that is we must remember how we were save and live a holy and pure life. However, first things must be first. It is only if we remember how we were saved, that we can keep the requirements of the festival; not only for seven days, but for every day of our life. Then we can live holy and pure lives and be a blessing, or a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, for all of our life. God knows our forgetfulness and so he provides a way for us to remember. This is why I love UBF. UBF has things like a New Year’s conference were people take time to reflect on what God has done for them in the past year and think about how they want to go forward in God in the coming year. However, I am a very forgetful person. I am the type of person who likes to remember how I was saved, but I often forget about the festival part. I like to think about how I want to go forward in God but I don’t like taking the time to reflect on how I have failed in keeping the provisions of God. This dislike leads me to forget to get rid of the yeast therefore I don’t make any progress toward the Promised Land. More than that, as the days go by I forget more and more how God save me. God has given us all very clear instructions on how we should remember what he has done for us and how we should live our lives, so we must obey them. Verses 29-32 tell us what happened on the night of the Passover. In the end pharaoh does exactly what God said he would do; he kicked the Israelites out of his land completely. There was no more leave this or that here or make sure you come back after three days. It was simply “Take your and herds…and go.” However he also said something that was very interesting. He ended by saying, “And bless me also.” God had shown pharaoh who He was. Now pharaoh knew the LORD and he knew that he needed the LORD’s blessing. In today’s passage we see the culmination of God’s plan to free the Israelites. In it we can also see God’s plan to save each of us. We all must obey God’s instructions and cover ourselves with Jesus’ blood. It may not seem to make sense how his blood can save us, but without it we will remain in bondage and never get to the Promised Land. We also must remember what God has done for us by keeping up the requirements of his festival. |
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