Exodus 12:12-51.
ALL the first born—not a family to be spared, unless the blood was on the door posts and the lintel over the door, —were to die on the chosen night. When God began, He would punish all, except the blood-protected ones, because the lamb had, as we might say, given its life, been punished instead, God would pass over those. All have sinned, and all deserved to be punished, but the Lamb of God, the sinless One, has died for all, and those who believe in Him are saved.
They were never to forget this night of judgment, and of passing over; and well might they always remember it. Before it came, for seven days, the people who believed God were to eat no leavened bread, no bread, as I explained last week, made with yeast. The first and last days of the week were set apart for meetings, there must be no work done on those days, except to provide meals for themselves. Again and again here in this chapter the people of Israel were told that there must be no leaven in their food, or even in their houses during the whole week before the stroke of judgment fell.
Now, what do you think that God meant for people to learn from these things? If we remember that that night was one of the times when God showed us, long before it happened, something about the dying of Jesus, it isn’t hard to see that putting all the leaven out of the house, meant that God would not have sin allowed by His people during the whole week, or, really, their entire lives. If we belong to Jesus, through faith in His blood, we ought not to sin, at any time.
In the twentieth verse, God finished speaking to Moses, and then in the next, we have Moses beginning to tell what he had been told. They were not to go out of their houses that night, after the blood of the lamb was put on the door posts, because they were only safe inside, protected by the blood out there in the dark. The destroying angel came through their streets about midnight, looking at the doorways of the houses. If there was blood there, on he flew to the next house. No blood on its door posts? Then in he went, and the oldest child was found dead. O, what crying there must have been in all the country! But it was too late; God had warned them again and, again and told of a way, of escape. And the families that believed God; they were perfectly safe in their homes, for was not the lamb’s blood on the door posts, and God had said, “When I see the blood I will pass over you”?
Expecting to leave Egypt forever by the coming of the morning, they were dressed for the journey, and meanwhile the lamb had been roasted, as I suppose, before the open fire, and eaten. Perhaps they didn’t feel safe, but it was not their feelings that kept the angel of death outside.
And through the length and breadth of Egypt the messenger of God flew, entering every house which had not the blood on its door posts, taking the eldest, the first born every time. You see, it was all a question of the blood of the lamb where God could see it.
Now the Egyptians were terrified, and they hurried the people away, thinking that if they kept them any longer, God would take the lives of all. They said, “We be all dead mien,” but we soon find that their scare did not last very long.
With bread only partly made, and with jewelry and clothes given to them by the Egyptians, the people of Israel started on their long journey, a big crowd indeed, and with them, too, a great mixture of other people who for one reason or another thought best to go along.
ML 01/15/1922