Kootenai Church Morning Worship

The Old Testament contains numerous examples of God judging nations. God's judgments are always righteous, and they are always well deserved. And God judged the nations that occupied the land of Canaan, for instance, and He used the Israelites to execute that judgment on multiple nations that were rebellious and idolatrous, immoral and wicked to a degree that is almost unimaginable. God used Israel as an instrument of judgment sometimes, and then He turned around and turned the scope of His judgment against Israel at other times. So at some points in Israel's history, they were an instrument of judgment upon other nations, and at other points in Israel's history, they were the recipients of God's judgment at the hand of other nations. And that was true not just for Israel, that was true for a number of Old Testament nations—Babylon Nineveh, the Medes, the Persians, the Edomites, the Midianites. All of them at times were used as instruments of God's judgment as well receiving God's judgment.
But of all the judgments of the Old Testament, the judgment of judgments that far surpasses all other judgments—in fact, the judgment that rings throughout the ages—is God's judgment upon the nation of Egypt when He delivered the children of Israel out of their bondage and their slavery under the leadership of Moses. That judgment upon Egypt demonstrated God's power and His sovereignty. Those judgments showed that Yahweh is not like any of the other gods, that Yahweh is alone God and He is God above all other gods, and that there is no God of the nations that is like Him. He demonstrated His sovereignty and His mercy.
And throughout the Old Testament, in many instances, there were judgments that were cataclysmic. The flood, for instance, was a cataclysmic judgment, but it was not targeted at any one nation. It just wiped out all except for Noah and his family that were on the ark. Then there were judgments that were cataclysmic in nature, like Sodom and Gomorrah, that destroyed the entire civilization, the entire city, and wiped them out. But those judgments, though they were targeted, were not protracted. Egypt's judgment was unique in that it was targeted toward one nation, it was protracted over a series of perhaps several months, and it was utterly cataclysmic in that it destroyed the entire economy, the agriculture, the political structure, and everything of the nation of Egypt.
The plagues on Egypt demonstrated God's sovereignty over His creation because He controlled elements like water and hail and light. It demonstrated His sovereignty over creatures as He controlled frogs and gnats and locusts and flies. And it demonstrated His sovereignty over individual health as people were struck with boils and cattle and livestock died. And then in the final plague, that tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, God demonstrated that He is the giver and the taker of life when He killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, showing that He is the sovereign over the life of men.
Those judgments upon Egypt also demonstrated that God's mercy and His protection are towards those who are His, who belong to Him. God distinguished between the children of Israel and the people of Egypt by making sure that all of those plagues, those judgments, came upon the Egyptians, and none of them ever touched the Israelites. And thus God made a distinction between those who are His and those who are not His.
And the judgment showed that all of Egypt's idols were powerless and that they were mute. Each plague that God unleashed upon the Egyptians was intended to mock and hold up to scorn and ridicule one of the Egyptian gods. So, for instance, when God turned the water into blood in the Nile River, it demonstrated that the god of the Nile, Hapi, was powerless to stop that judgment. The very deities that the Egyptians trusted in to protect them from things like this, plagues—God gave those plagues specifically aimed against the gods of Egypt so as to show His judgment upon their idolatry and the impotence of all of those gods to deliver them or to protect them.
Heqet, the Egyptian goddess of birth, had a frog's head. So the plague of frogs was demonstrated as an attack against that god, to show that that god that they worshipped, that had a frog's head, was unable to deliver them from the plague of the frogs. They worshipped a goddess with a cow's head named Hathor, and the death of the livestock mocked that idol. They had a sun god, so God struck them with darkness. They had a goddess who allegedly protected their crops, and so God sent locusts to eat up and destroy all of their crops. Do you see the pattern? Do you see what God did, as if He took each one of these gods of Egypt, and He just put them out to scorn them and to mock them and to judge them in plain sight as a demonstration that He alone is God?
And God's dealings with Egypt and with Pharaoh also serve to show the sovereignty of God over His creatures in terms of Him showing mercy to some and hardening others. This is a key thing to catch because Paul makes much of this in Romans 9:14 when he writes this: “What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?” Stop for just a second. You think back upon God's dealings with Moses and Pharaoh, and one might be tempted to say, if God is hardening Pharaoh's heart, then there must be some injustice with God. It's unjust for God to harden Pharaoh's heart just to judge him. So Paul asked the question in Romans 9, Is there injustice with God?
14 May it never be!
15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.”
18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. (Rom. 9:14–18 NASB)
That's the object lesson that Paul draws from that. Does that bug you that God has mercy on whom He wants and that He hardens whom He wants? Do you object to that? Neither Moses nor Pharaoh deserved mercy. Neither one of them. Moses was just as ill-deserving of God's mercy as Pharaoh was. He was a son of Adam, born in rebellion, unregenerate at one point. And Moses was just as deserving of God's judgment in terms of his own sinfulness as Pharaoh was, or as you are, or as I am. He's just as deserving of that. He didn't deserve that mercy. He didn't deserve that grace. So would you take issue with that, object to God showing mercy to some and hardening others?
If you would, Paul would say to you that you need to shut your hole and know your role. Or here's how Paul says it: “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” (Rom. 9:20) And our response to that is to shut our mouths and say we can raise no objection against God's justice. He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills. Why does God elect some and not others? Who are you, O man, to question the ways of God?
Pharaoh and Moses are an example that God is sovereign over the giving of His grace, always just in His judgments. He is righteous altogether, dispensing of His mercy. And to give mercy to any one individual is grace beyond what we can possibly imagine. And the fact that He does so to countless millions from every tribe and kindred and tongue on the face of the planet, in drawing them to Him and choosing them and then saving them and paying the price for their redemption, that is a mercy that is beyond our ability to even comprehend. And so we cannot object to God in the dispensing of His mercy.
God's judgment of Egypt becomes a parable throughout the entire Old Testament that echoes all the way into the New Testament as time after time after time, God's deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and God's judgments upon the Egyptians become the the story, the object lesson, for God demonstrating grace to some and bringing them to salvation and delivering them as He has promised, and God judging others who are very worthy of His judgment and His damnation. And we find that here in Hebrews 11.
The climactic act of God's judgment was this tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn, that is mentioned and that is behind the mention of Moses’s faith in verse 28. “By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them” (v. 28). Now, we've been looking at Moses’s faith from verse 23 through 27. It is described in verse 24–26 as a faith that refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and chose a spiritual affiliation with the people of God. Then Moses by faith left Pharaoh and his wrath. We looked at that last week back in Exodus. And today we're looking at the act of faith in keeping the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them (v. 28).
I want to make a couple of general references to this verse and then we're going to jump back to the book of Exodus to see what is behind this. And then I'll be drawing your attention back to the things that you're seeing here. But keep your Bible open to Hebrews 11 here for just a moment because I want you to notice a couple of things. This reference to the Passover is something that would have been instantly recognized by every Jewish Christian who read this in the first century, who read the book of Hebrews. They would have understood exactly what it is. They were intimately familiar with the Passover, the background of it, the celebration of it, all the nuances of it, the meaning of it. He doesn't explain that here, he simply mentions it, something that would have been common to their knowledge and to the authors.
This example of Moses’s faith in verse 28 fits chronologically with him leaving Egypt in verse 27 of Hebrews 11, not fearing the wrath of the king, because the very next thing that is mentioned back in Exodus 11–12 is the institution of the Passover. Notice two key things in verse 28. First, notice there is a distinction between the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. Both are mentioned. Verse 28: “By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood.”
Now, if you're mildly familiar with your Old Testament at least, you'll recognize that the sprinkling of the blood that he's referring to here was part of the Passover celebration. So it raises for us the question, Why is it that the author distinguishes between these two things, the sprinkling of blood and the Passover? “By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood” (v. 28). Couldn't the author just simply have said, “By faith he kept the Passover,” and left it at that? Why does he single out the sprinkling of blood? There is a reason that these two things are distinct in the mind of the author and why he separates them here.
Second, notice the reference in verse 28 to the destroyer: “So that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.” And now we have to ask the question, Who is the destroyer? Who is he who destroyed? And these two things we're going to observe as we turn back to Exodus. Just to remind you, these two things are separate, Passover and sprinkling of blood. Why are they separated? And then, second, who is the destroyer?
Now turn back, if you will, to Exodus 11. A little bit of context—where we're going to pick it up is after the nine plagues that the Lord smote Egypt with. The previous one at the end of chapter 10 is the darkness that fell over the land. In all of those plagues, God was distinguishing between Israel and Egypt by preserving His people. And in all of those instances, all nine of those plagues, Israel didn't have to do anything to be preserved, they just had to exist. They just stayed in Goshen and the plague didn't strike them. But with the Passover, something is different. Israel did nothing to be preserved in the previous plagues. But in this tenth plague, Israel would have to do something to be sovereignly protected from the one who would destroy.
This final plague is the death of the firstborn. And this plague would be different than all the other plagues, more severe. It is the ultimate, it is the climax of all of these ten plagues. It is the worst one. It does devastation to Egypt. And it is the plague that ends up causing Pharaoh and the Egyptians to release Israel from their bondage.
So we pick it up where we left off last week, not actually in chapter 11 yet, but in verse 27 of chapter 10. This is what's referred to back in Hebrews 11:27, which says, “By faith he left Egypt.” “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, ‘Get away from me! Beware, do not see my face again, for in the day you see my face you shall die!’ Moses said, ‘You are right; I shall never see your face again!’” (vv. 27–29)
And there you see Pharaoh's heart is hardened as an act of God's judgment. The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. And throughout the previous chapters, I mentioned last week, there's references to Pharaoh hardening his own heart. That describes his impenitent, incalcitrant disobedience to God's revealed will. And then there are references to God hardening Pharaoh's heart, which describes the act of God judging and pouring out upon Pharaoh the very thing that he wanted. This is an act of God's judgment that's there in that passage, God hardening Pharaoh's heart.
Now, listen, apart from divine grace, this is how man responds to the truth every time truth is presented to him. He hardens his own heart. Apart from divine grace, that is man's response. God judges the sin of the rebellious unbeliever by hardening the unbeliever's heart so that the unbeliever ends up getting exactly what it is that the unbeliever desires, namely an impenitence and an unwillingness to obey that truth.
So the act of hardening Pharaoh’s heart is something that Pharaoh deserved. Don't get in your mind that this is not something Pharaoh deserved. If in your mind you think that Pharaoh was out stumbling through his moral darkness, seeking after the one true God, just wandering around Egypt, asking anybody and everybody, “Can you tell me if there's a God, if He exists, and who is He? I want to worship the one true and only God,” that was not Pharaoh. Pharaoh was hard. He was impenitent. He was incalcitrant before Moses ever encountered him, before the ten plagues. And so Pharaoh here is just getting exactly what he deserved. He's not seeking to know God. And his rejection of the truth ends up hardening his own heart. It results in God judging him and damning him by God hardening his heart.
Now, I ask you, listener, are any of you here, sitting here, like Pharaoh? You sit here week after week. You hear the gracious appeals to turn to Christ for salvation. You hear of God's work in Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And yet you respond to it week after week by refusing to embrace God's provision in Christ and refusing to repent of your sin. If that is you, I'm telling you right now, you are doing what Pharaoh did, and that is you are working diligently to harden your own heart so that eventually repentance and penitence will be impossible for you. And eventually, God will stop calling you to repentance because every time you are confronted with the truth, you respond in disobedience and rejection and your own prideful self-will and your own excuses against the truth and your own excuses to continue in your sin.
And that response to the truth of God only serves to harden your heart even further. And that will happen time after time after time again because the truth of God's Word always has one of two effects. It either softens the heart toward repentance, or it hardens the heart toward damnation and judgment. And if you sit here week after week hearing all of these gracious offers to trust Christ for salvation, you are working to harden your own heart. And I promise you that God's judgment upon you will be Him hardening your heart finally and fully until the day of His wrath, when His wrath pours out upon you and breaks you without mercy on that day. Your only recourse is to turn in repentance and faith.
Heed the example of Pharaoh. You will find that if you reject truth until your dying day, you will have spent your entire life working hard to accomplish the hardening of your heart, and God will have given you exactly what it is that you were working so hard for, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself. You'll find that the hardness of the heart was not only the cause but also the precursor to God's judgment.
God prepared to judge Pharaoh by hardening his heart. Exodus 11:1: “Now the Lord 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.’” Now, notice that the Lord knew exactly how many judgments were necessary for Pharaoh. God wasn't sitting in Heaven saying, “Let's try turning water into blood and see how that goes. That didn't work. Let's try frogs. I wonder how many of these judgments it's going to take before Pharaoh catches on that something is amiss and lets My people go.” That was not God's intention at all. God knew that it would be ten plagues, He knew what each of those plagues would be, and He knew the outcome of each one of those plagues upon Egypt. And He knew that at the tenth one, Pharaoh would not only let them go, he would drive them out. He would insist upon their leaving.
Now, that's quite a change, isn't it? From before, with Pharaoh saying, “Yeah, maybe just go a couple of miles out into the wilderness, then come right back. I'll let you go,” or “I'm not going to let you go,” or “I promise to let you go,” and then turning back on that. This is quite a different response. Not only will Pharaoh let you go, he will ask you to go. He will beg you to go. He will pay you to go. He'll drive you out of here, and he will insist on you going and being gone forever. Does that sound like Kamala Harris yet? You're going to go, and then when you're gone, you're going to go, and you're going to go to go. The change would be entirely due to this tenth plague. Pharaoh would finally be a completely broken man.
Exodus 11:4:
4 Moses said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt,
5 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 slave girl who is behind the millstones; all the firstborn of the cattle as well.
6 Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as there has not been before and such as shall never be again.
7 But against any of the sons of Israel a dog will not even bark, whether against man or beast, that you may understand how the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’
8 All these your 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. (Exod. 11:4–8 NASB)
Now, here's the judgment. Chapter 11, verse 9:
9 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that My wonders will be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
10 Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart [there it is again], and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land. (Exod. 11:9–10 NASB)
Now, here are the instructions for the tenth and final plague. This one results in their deliverance, and this one would result in a ceremony that the children of Israel were commanded to obey annually, every year, as a reminder of what God was about to do. Now, this is what's behind Hebrews 11:28. Exodus 12:1–3:
1 Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
2 “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.
3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's households, a lamb for each household.’” (NASB)
Now, notice that the Lord arranges their entire civic calendar around the celebration of this event. In the middle of their lives, the Lord says, “Stop right now. This becomes January 1 for you.” That's the equivalent to that. You're going to begin a new year with the celebration of this feast. So as the new year would begin in Israel, they would be expecting and anticipating this massive celebration. It was the best way for the Lord to demonstrate to them that this marked a brand-new beginning. This is your liberation. This is you being brought out in fulfillment of all of My promises. So this begins the year for you.
Verse 4:
4 Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.
5 Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. (Exod. 12:4–6 NASB)
Now, these details are for the annual celebration that would come after this. So it’s not exactly how it unfolded on that night in Egypt because all of this happens really quickly. There's no four-day delay. But in the commemoration of this event afterwards, there would be this delay where they would set aside the lamb on the tenth of the month, keep it apart until the fourteenth of the month, and then they would slay it on the fourteenth of this first month.
Notice the description of the sacrifice that is involved. It was to be an unblemished male lamb—that is, a lamb without any physical defect whatsoever. They couldn't offer a lamb that had broken its leg. They couldn't offer a lamb that was missing an ear or a lamb that had his eyes gouged out because he got in a fight with somebody. It couldn't be a lamb like that. It had to be unblemished, free from physical defect. That is intended to picture the freedom from moral defect of another Lamb who would fulfill this sacrifice. They are to take it from amongst the flock and to set it apart and then kill it at twilight.
Chapter 12, verse 7:
7 Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
8 They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails.
10 And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.
11 Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord's Passover. (Exod. 12:7–11 NASB)
Now here's the reference in verse 7 to the blood of this lamb that was to be put on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they ate it. And notice the reference to the lamb. They were to eat the lamb, the Passover lamb. That is, they weren't just to kill it and observe its death. They were to take the flesh of that animal and appropriate it to themselves by consuming the sacrifice. That was the point of that.
And they were not to eat it raw, and they were not to boil it with water, but they were to roast it with fire. Why the reference to fire? Because fire in Scripture is a symbol of God's judgment. When fire falls, it's the fire of God that brings judgment. And so fire is a symbol for judgment. This is to picture this lamb that is sacrificed and slain, and then in its entirety, it is consumed.
Exodus 12:12:
12 For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord.
13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; 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. (Exod. 12:12–13 NASB)
Notice in verse 12, the end of verse 12, this is a judgment: “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord.” See, God's point is not just to execute judgment on the Egyptian people, but rather there is a theological, polemical issue at play here where He is going after all of their various gods. And it has become obvious by this point that that is the case with the god of the Nile mocked and the god of the frogs mocked and the god of the cow mocked and the god of the sun mocked.
Well, now what is being mocked is the god who supposedly protects the firstborn. Egypt worshipped a god called Min, who was the god of reproduction. They worshipped a goddess called Heqet, who was the goddess of childbirth. They had a god, Isis, who was a goddess who protected children. And even Pharaoh himself was viewed as a god. Pharaoh was worshipped as a god, and so his firstborn son then was also deemed to be a god, since Pharaoh's firstborn son would eventually become Pharaoh, inevitably, and he would be worshipped as a god as well.
So what happens when God kills all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, including Pharaoh's son? What happens? He is going after all of the gods of Egypt who are supposed to protect the firstborn. And God is actually killing an Egyptian god, so it's judgment executed against all the gods of Egypt.
And the significance of the blood—by marking the door they secured the protection from death. And the judgment would be that the destroyer would go out through the land of Egypt and destroy the firstborn in every house, except in those houses where blood marked the doorposts and the lintel of the house.
Verses 14–20 of Exodus 12 establish a feast of unleavened bread, which came to be celebrated with the Passover, in conjunction with it. Skip down to verse 21.
21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb.
22 You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning.
23 For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you. (Exod. 12:21–23 NASB)
Notice the reference there to the destroyer. Moses is commanding here the children of Israel to observe the details of this Passover and what it is that they were to do to protect them and their household from the judgment of God that was going to fall on the Egyptians. Now who is the destroyer? The end of verse 23: “The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.” We'll deal with that in just a moment.
Verse 24:
24 And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever.
25 When you enter the land which the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite.
26 And when your children say to you, “What does this rite mean to you?”
27 you shall say, “It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.” And the people bowed low and worshiped.
28 Then the sons of Israel went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. (Exod. 12:24–28 NASB)
So they responded in faith, in obedience, believing what God said though, again, according to our definition of faith, they had never seen anything like this unfold before, right? They had never done anything like this before. But now they are going to observe by obedience exactly what it is that God gave them to do.
Verse 29:
29 Now it came about at midnight that the Lord 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.
30 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. (Exod. 12:29–30 NASB)
It is difficult for us to imagine the destruction, the devastation, the weeping, the sorrow, and the utter ruin that this tenth and final plague would have unleashed in Egypt. Keep in mind, every nation on the planet deserved this judgment then and every nation on the planet deserves this judgment today. So God shows mercy to all of us by not giving us this kind of judgment and then pours it out on one nation. Just thank God for His mercy in that case; don't question His justice. Because sometimes God lets His justice come out like a fire and consume an adversary so that He may remind everybody else, “Look, you've been spared, but don't think you've been spared because of your righteousness. You've been spared because God is gracious.”
Verses 31–32: “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, worship the Lord, as you have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go, and bless me also.’” Pharaoh was ruined by this. He's a broken man.
Now, before we turned back to Exodus, I asked you to observe two things. Do you remember what they were? Number one, the fact that in Hebrews 11 there seems to be a distinction that the author makes between the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. And second, who is the destroyer that we saw mentioned in the passage earlier? Here's why there is a distinction between the sprinkling of blood and the Passover. Though at this point in time, Exodus 12, these two things happened together—all of the details of the celebration of the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, they happened on the same night, on the same occasion—after that first event there is no record that from then on the children of Israel sprinkled blood on the doorposts and on the lintels. Why is that? Because the Lord did not send the destroyer to kill the firstborn in the land on the fourteenth of every first month after that, every year.
So the sprinkling of the blood is a one-time event. The establishment of the ceremony is the repeated event. The ceremony was to be repeated, but not the sprinkling of the blood, though on that first Passover both of them went together because on that first Passover the sprinkling of the blood saved them from the destroyer who would come and destroy the firstborn throughout all of the land. But after that time, that did not need to be observed. They were to offer a sacrifice of a Passover lamb, yes. He was to have all the qualities that we just mentioned, yes. They were to roast him with fire and consume him and eat it just in the way that was described here. But the application of the blood was not necessary because that one-time event where that blood saved them from destruction had already been accomplished. So the author distinguishes between the one-time application of the blood that delivered the nation of Israel out of Egypt and preserved them from judgment and the ceremony that was to be observed every single year. Those are two separate and distinct things, though at the one point they happen together. Do you see that?
By faith Moses had to do two things. By faith, first of all, he mentioned to the children of Israel that they would enter into the land and in the future their children would say, “Tell us what the Passover means.” And then they would answer to their children, “On the night that the Lord did this and smote the Egyptians, He passed over our houses and delivered us from His judgment.” And that was the answer that they were to give to their children when they asked that in all of the years that was to come.
So here's the point. When Moses gave to them all of the instructions for celebrating the Passover, the event that he told them that they would observe every year after this as an annual celebration, that event had not yet even happened. So Moses laid out all the details for the celebration of a memorial of an event that had not even taken place. That's faith. See, Moses is saying, “Every year from here on out, this is what you're going to do, and you're going to remember this event.” “What event, Moses?” “The event—I know it hasn't taken place yet, but tonight it's going to happen.” See, that is an expression of faith. Moses had never seen that before, and yet he is instituting for the children of Israel and giving all the instructions for a celebration and a memorial of an event that he had not even seen, listen, because in Moses's mind, the judgment was a done deal. In Moses's mind, the judgment—it was as if it had happened last night. He was so certain of what he had not yet seen that he gave the instructions for the annual celebration of an event that he was about to witness. By faith he what? He saw the substance of what was unseen, and he was convinced of what he just had merely hoped for. So by faith he did that.
By faith he also sprinkled the blood. That's the second thing. In obedience to that command. There was no other judgment that fell upon Egypt that Israel had to do anything to protect themselves from. But this one, they had to appropriate the blood. They must offer the sacrifice, and they must apply the blood in order to escape death. And their obedience to that was an expression of their faith. Their belief that God would protect them from divine judgment because they painted the doorposts of their house and the lintel over the doorpost with blood, that is an expression of their faith.
They had to be convinced of at least two things. Number one, that God was going to smite the firstborn in all of the land of Egypt, that God was going to do that. And second, they had to be convinced that if they took a lamb from their flock and slaughtered it and put the blood up around the doorpost, that that would save them. And see, every Israelite there knew that there is nothing magical about just blood itself. There's nothing magical about that. But the application of the blood, the putting of the blood around the door, was the expression of faith that if I do this and I trust in this and I trust in a God who says He will preserve me on this basis, that God will indeed preserve me on that basis.
And so the children of Israel obeyed and did what the Lord commanded them to do, doing so by faith, having never seen before anything of what they were warned about. But they applied the blood, not because they believed that the blood was magical, not because they believed that the blood was a potion or a magic formula or anything like that, but because they believed that if the blood was applied to their doorpost, they would be safe. And they just had to take that by faith. And while the people in Egypt were screaming and crying all night all the way around them, they were thinking in their minds, “We have done what God has commanded us to do, and because of that we shall be safe.”
Now, the destroyer. This is the reason why those two things were separated, the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. Now, who is the destroyer that is mentioned in Exodus 12:23. Read that again. Verse 23: For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.” This is the only reference to this destroyer in the entire narrative of Exodus 11, 12, and following. Hebrews 11:28—remember it says, “By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.”
Now, who is the destroyer? There's three possibilities. First, that the destroyer is an evil fallen angel, a demon whom the Lord used to execute judgment upon the Egyptians. And that is suggested mostly because people can't imagine God Himself doing this because God is a God of love. I don't argue that God is a God of love, but I do take issue with the sloppy, sentimental, slobbering idea that God's love precludes Him from executing judgment upon His enemies. People have a hard time embracing a God who would smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, and they think that because God is love that He can't do anything like that.
The second possibility is that it is a holy angel because holy angels were sometimes instruments of God's judgment in Scripture. Second Kings 19:35: “Then it happened that night that the angel of the Lord went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead.” Sometimes God's angels do execute people and do execute God's justice on His enemies as instruments of God. There's no problem with that. Just because an angel does what God wills them to do, even if it is killing people, it's entirely in keeping with God's nature and purposes and the role that angels might play.
But there is a third option, and this is what I think it is. It's not a reference to a fallen angel. It's not a reference to one of God's holy angels. I believe this is a reference to the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. You say, “Who is the angel of the Lord?” This is the messenger of Yahweh. You see this throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes there are angels who show up, and sometimes there's the angel who shows up. And the word angel just simply means messenger or one who communicates or one who reveals a message. Angels, holy angels, created beings, sometimes brought messages on behalf of God to people in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And sometimes the angel shows up, the messenger of Yahweh. That messenger of Yahweh is sometimes called Yahweh. He is sometimes described as having the attributes of Yahweh. He is sometimes worshipped as Yahweh because that one, that angel of the Lord, is Yahweh.
In John 1 when John says, “No one has seen God at any time,” he is describing the essence of God and the Father (v. 18). He says, “[But] the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained [or declared] Him” (v. 18). That is to say that in all of the Old Testament passages where people saw Yahweh, it was not the essence of the Father, and it was not the triune God they were seeing. They were seeing the manifestation of the preincarnate Christ, the second Person of the Trinity appearing in the Old Testament. You see this throughout the Old Testament when this angel of the Lord shows up and He is called Yahweh, where people have conversations with the angel of the Lord and they say, “Let's just build an altar right here because we're going to worship this one. This was Yahweh that we saw.” They understood that.
So I don't think that this is an angel of the Lord. I don't think it's an unholy angel. I think this is the angel of the Lord. This is the second Person of the Trinity. This is Yahweh Himself before He is incarnated in Jesus Christ.
So what is attributed here in the actions of this angel or this destroyer is actually attributed throughout the rest of the passages as the actions of Yahweh Himself. I want you to look at it. Go back to Exodus 11:1, and I’ll give you a brief survey.
Exodus 11:1: “Now the Lord said to Moses, ‘One more plague I will bring on Pharaoh and on Egypt.’” Who claims responsibility for it? It's Yahweh.
Exodus 11:4: “Moses said, ‘Thus says the Lord, “About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt.”’”
Exodus 12:12: “And I will go through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am Yahweh.”
Exodus 12:13: “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; 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.”
Exodus 12:23: “For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.”
Exodus 12:27: “It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.”
Exodus 12:29: “Now it came about at midnight that the Lord 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.”
So who is the destroyer? Yahweh is the destroyer. And yet Yahweh keeps Yahweh the destroyer from entering in and killing the firstborn. So Yahweh is doing something, but Yahweh is keeping Yahweh from doing something. How do you explain that? Only with a robust understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. That's how you explain that.
You see, we have other language like this in another judgment. Genesis 19:24: “The Lord [or Yahweh] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord [Yahweh] out of heaven.” The Lord, Yahweh, rains fire from Yahweh down on Sodom and Gomorrah. So you have one Person called Yahweh who is raining fire down from another Person who is identified as Yahweh out of Heaven.
Well, here's the exact opposite. It's not the destroyer calling down fire from Yahweh out of Heaven upon a city or a people, but instead it is Yahweh Himself, God, who keeps God the destroyer from going in and executing judgment. So the one who rains down destruction upon Sodom and Gomorrah is the same one who here executes judgment upon Egypt. The second Person of the Trinity or the second Person of the triune Godhead is the one who rains down fire out of Heaven from Yahweh in Genesis, and He is the same one whom Yahweh restrains from going in and executing judgment upon the Egyptians.
So who is the one who killed all the firstborn in Egypt? Yahweh did it. God did it. He's the one who did it. And He's also the one who spared or kept Himself from doing that because of the blood that was on the doorpost. Now, does that disturb you that the one who was incarnated in Jesus Christ would Himself execute all the firstborn in the land of Egypt? Does that disturb you? You're thinking, “Jim, I know better than to say yes to that because you set me up with the last one when you said, ‘Know your role and shut your hole.’”
Jesus said in John 5:22, “Not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son.” Here's just a brief description of what that judgment is going to look like when He returns. Revelation 19:
11 I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war.
12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself.
13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses.
15 From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.
16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”
17 Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in midheaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God,
18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and small and great.” (Rev. 19:11–18 NASB)
That's the judgment that is coming. It should not disturb you if you understand who Jesus Christ is as both Judge and as Savior, that the same one who offers Himself up for salvation is the one who Himself will come and execute judgment upon all of His enemies. And next time it will be only those who are under His blood as the Lamb of God that are saved from that judgment. This is the point, that Jesus Christ is both the Judge and He is the Lamb who bears the judgment for any and all who will place their faith in Him.
How will you escape that judgment, that one I just read about in Revelation 19? How will you escape that? The only escape, the only reprieve you have, is in Jesus Christ. When God deals with sinners, how will He deal with you? Are you still an enemy of God in your mind through wicked works, impenitent, unrepentant, hardening your heart and being hardened by God as you continue to listen to the truth and refuse to repent and believe the good news of the gospel?
There are parallels between the work of Christ and this Passover event, parallels that are intended by God. And I wish I had a whole other sermon to go into this. First Corinthians 5:7 says, “Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” See, that's the connection that the New Testament makes to this event back in Exodus, that the one who has been sacrificed for us is our Passover Lamb. The prime example of God's judgment in the Old Testament was also an example of God redeeming and saving a people through blood, the blood of a Passover lamb. Christ is the judgment falling on the Egyptians, and for us, Christ is also the one who saves us from the judgment that would fall upon us.
Here are a number of the parallels. John 1:29: John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The blood of Christ is called the blood of a lamb. First Peter 1:18–19: “You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” Christ is the Lamb who was taken from the flock. He was among us. He was a man. He partook in flesh and blood just like you and I partake in flesh and blood. He was set aside and sanctified, and then at twilight on Passover day, He was slaughtered.
He is the Lamb who was without blemish. You were not redeemed with perishable things from your futile way of life, but with the unblemished and spotless blood of Christ. He was the sinless one who did no sin, who spoke no sin, who knew no sin. He never violated the law of God. He never did what God forbid. He always did exactly what the Father commanded Him to do. So He was morally perfect in every way, unblemished. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:22, “[He] committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth.” He is the holy one, the righteous one.
And He was the Lamb who was sacrificed under judgment. Just as fire consumed the Passover lamb, so the judgment of God was completely absorbed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and God's judgment, the Father's judgment, fell upon Him. “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,” Scripture says (Gal. 3:13). Hebrews 7:27 says that He “does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.” And in Jesus Christ, because of His sacrifice, we are protected. We are covered by His blood because He bore our sins and our iniquities in His own body on the cross. Isaiah 53:4:
4 Our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. (Isa. 53:4–6 NASB)
And in Jesus Christ, as probably one of the greatest examples of Him fulfilling this Passover sacrifice, not a bone of His would be broken even though, listen, it was customary for the Romans to break the legs of crucifixion victims so that they could not relieve their suffering and extend their lives and so that they would suffocate. But not His legs. They came to Him and saw that He was already dead. He had already said, “It is finished, the price has been paid.” And they came to Him and just thrust the spear into His side to ensure death. But John in John 19 says that
33 coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs.
34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.
35 And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.
36 For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.” (John 19:33–36 NASB)
What is that? Where's that from in Scripture? Do you know? It's not Isaiah 53. It's not Psalm 22. You know where it comes from? Exodus 12:46, where it describes the Passover lamb, that in the sacrificing of the Passover lamb and in the eating of the Passover lamb, not a single bone was to be broken. John quotes the Passover passage and said Jesus died without a broken bone to fulfill that passage because He is the Passover Lamb. He's the sacrifice that fulfills that picture in the Old Testament. And John points back to the Passover passage and said Jesus was fulfilling this on the cross. Even that little detail was fulfilled. And John sees the connection that Jesus is our Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed for us.
So will His blood avail for you or not? Is His blood on your account or not? There's only one way for you to escape the judgment that will fall upon all the impenitent and all the rebellious and all the wicked, all the sinners and doers of iniquity. There's only one way, and it is through the blood of the Passover Lamb applied to your account. There is no other protection for you. None. Not your good deeds, not your righteousness, not your lineage, not the fact that you attend this church. There is nothing else that can avail for you.
There was nothing else that could avail for the children of Israel. Not their Jewish lineage. They couldn't trust in the fact that they were sons of Abraham. They couldn't trust in the fact that they were looking forward to going into the land and seeing the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. They couldn't trust in their prayers, their good deeds, their fastings, their piety, or their lineage. In fact, if a firstborn child of Abraham that night had spent all night fasting and praying and asking and begging God for deliverance but he did not apply the blood to the lintels and to the doorposts, it would have done him no good. He would have died along with all the rest of the firstborn of Egypt. None of those other things would have done anything for him. There was only one thing necessary, and that was the application of the blood and its merits to his doorpost so that he could be saved. That was the only thing that could save him.
But here's the good news. That was the only thing that was necessary. They didn't need to do anything else. Only one thing could do the trick, and only one thing was necessary. So if they applied the blood like that and were believing in the Lord for the application of that and for the promise to be fulfilled, which they had to have been in order to apply the blood, then it didn't matter how many firstborn around them were being struck on every side, they would be safe because the blood was the only thing that can save them. But the blood was the only thing that was necessary.
This is what God has given to us in Jesus Christ. There is only one Savior from your sin. And here's the good news. There's only one sacrifice that is necessary, and it's His. And after that, nothing else is necessary, not our good deeds. Nothing else is necessary. Your response to that good news is repentance and faith. And if you will not turn and you will not believe, the destroyer will destroy you.
Here's the glory of the gospel. The destroyer who will destroy you is the same one who bore the cost for sin and who Himself invites you this day to come lest you be destroyed. You're coming to the one who is both Savior and Destroyer. He bears the burden and pays the price, but then He will destroy the one who responds to that good news with impenitence and with unbelief.
Is He your sacrifice? Has He borne your wrath? Do you know that you are redeemed? Have you responded with repentance and faith? If not, then the Lord's Table is not for you. Do not partake of the Lord's Table. Do not partake of our communion with us today if you are not in Jesus Christ. Because to do so is to eat and to drink judgment to yourself.
And if you are a believer who refuses to repent of your sin and you are living in unrepentant sin, you have every reason to question your salvation. You have every reason to not have any assurance. And you have no reason to partake of the Lord's Table unless you will turn from that sin, confess it to the Lord, and trust in His sacrifice.
And just as with the Passover sacrifice, this celebration of it, this memorial of it, does not save you. This just memorializes, symbolizes, and causes us to remember the thing that actually does save us. Just as with the Passover, all the celebration of the offering of the Passover lamb and the eating it with the sandals and all of the stuff that they did annually after that reminded them of that one event, the application of the blood which secured their deliverance. When we observe the Lord's Supper, we're not doing this for salvation. We're not doing this for forgiveness. We're doing this because we have been forgiven, because we have been saved, and we're remembering that one event, the offering of the Passover Lamb for us in our stead that purchased our salvation.