After four hundred years
of Egyptian slavery, God was ready to free His people.
He had devastated Egypt with nine wasting plagues. The
tenth plague — the death of the first-born male
— would finally convince Pharaoh to let God's
people go.
God provided a way, though, for
any family in Egypt — Egyptian or Jewish —
to escape the judgment of the death angel. Here is
what they would have to do:
They were to choose a one-year
old lamb, a perfect lamb without defect, from their
flock on the tenth day of the first month. Four days
later, they were to kill that lamb and spread the
lamb's blood on their home's door frame.
God had already announced His
intention to "pass through" Egypt in judgment. Now, He
promised He would "pass over" every blood-marked
house, because the blood shielded it from destruction.
The message of Passover would have been crystal clear
to the Israelites.
First, redemption was
by substitution. The lamb was slain in place of the
firstborn male;
Second, the lamb's blood had
to be sprinkled after it had been shed, signifying
that there had to be individual appropriation of
the blood to effect God's provision.
Third, each family and
individual rescued by God was thereby purchased for
God. Their whole life now belonged to
Him.
Today, Christians do not observe
Passover during the first month of the Jewish
calendar. However, we do recognize Passover in our own
way. Jesus is our Passover lamb, who was slain that we
might escape the judgment of God (see John 1:29; 1
Corinthians 5:7).
So, in the same way that
salvation from the death angel was by means of
substitution in the Old Testament, so today, our
salvation is by virtue of the substitutionary death of
Jesus. He took our place.
And, just as the lamb's
blood had to be sprinkled after it had been shed,
signifying that the individual family had appropriated
the blood to effect God's provision, so today, even
though Jesus' blood has been shed for all, each one
here must personally appropriate that blood to himself
by faith, or else the judgment will still
come.
And finally, just as each
individual rescued by God was purchased for God and
his whole life belonged to God, so each one who by
faith has been rescued from God's judgment by the shed
blood of Jesus belongs to God and owes Him
everything.