1. Redemption by blood is directly taught in God’s Word for the first time in the story of the Passover.
GOD would have the bondsmen of Egypt His freedmen. Rest had been promised them, the tidings of the pleasant land had been brought them, but not one step towards liberty could the bondsmen take until they were redeemed by the blood of the paschal lamb.
2. Love wafted the gentle tidings of the good land to the fainting slaves, but the stern fact remained unmoved— they were in the land of judgment.
Justice had drawn its sword, it exacted its claims against them, from justice they could not escape. Men may grow weary with the work and vanity of the world, but deeper and more serious sorrow than the ills of daily life lies upon this world— God has declared that He will judge it and its gods, and lay its greatness, its glory, and its wisdom low.
But the judgment which fell upon Egypt was forestalled for Israel: the blood outside the house doors forbade the Destroyer entering within. The crimson stain upon lintel and doorposts uttered its voice, and the angel passed over.
3. There was no escape save by blood. Mercy retired from the land, chased away by the Destroyer. Wherever the blood was not, there fell the sword.
What house had not been judged lay under the wrath. Honor, titles, personal worth were then no shield: the sword clave through them all and smote the firstborn dead. “From the first-born of Pharaoh who sat upon his throne, unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon,” all perished. The very customs of the country augmented the horrors of that night, for at death’s entry the living fled from their houses—the women with breasts bared and hair loose, the men wildly crying—all hurrying hither and thither, till every street and village in the land echoed with their terror. “There was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.”
When the Lord, “as a thief in the night,” comes to this world in judgment, when the lightning-like flash of His coming shall spread from east to west—from Palestine to Christendom—and when “every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him,” the terror shall be more terrible, the despair more deep, than that of Egypt.
4. When the great day of His wrath has come, who shall be able to stand?
Who? The great, the mighty, the noble of the earth? Who? The well-disposed, the upright, the moral? They, and they only, who are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
Reader, the great Exodus is near: God has said, “Not a hoof shalt be left behind.” “We will go out with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters,”— “for we must hold a feast unto the Lord.” The world will presently be emptied of God’s people, nor babe nor gray-haired man, who is sheltered by the blood, shall remain behind.
5. The word of command, the shout of the Captain will soon be heard. “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.”
We shall assemble on high, “for we must hold a feast unto the Lord,” a never-ending feast in the Father’s house above. Will you go out of the world to the glory there? Will you be caught up there to meet the Lord in the air, or will you be left here to be punished with everlasting destruction because you obeyed not the gospel, because, when He bade you “take you the Lamb,” you refused, because you sided with the despisers who shall perish?
6. Christ is God’s gift: who will have Christ?
Behold the freeness of God’s love to sinners. The grace of His kindness, which sends to you such an invitation as “take you a lamb”: you, sinner, your own very self, for you must have Christ for yourself, or you have Him not at all. You need Christ for yourself; you need His blood for your sins. To disobey the gospel is to be doomed to eternal death. Oh “take you the Lamb” —THE GIFT OF GOD.