Redemption 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 toward liberty could the bondsmen take until they were redeemed by the blood of the paschal lamb.
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, and from justice they could not escape.
But the judgment which fell upon Egypt was forestalled for Israel; the blood outside their houses forbade the destroyer entering within. The blood upon lintel and doorposts uttered its voice, and the angel passed over.
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. Whatever house bore not the evidence of having already been under the sentence of judgment, which had not appropriated the blood to its own door, lay under the wrath. Honor, titles, personal worth, were no shield; the sword clave through them all and smote the first-born dead-"From the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon," all perished. The very customs of Egypt 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 day of judgment comes, 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."
Some Israelite might have said, "Show me proof that I am saved. O for evidence that I am among God's people!"
"The blood shall be to you for a token." There is none other granted. Look not for a sign within your breast; see it in the cross of Christ. Look not at your feelings, but at His shed blood. It would not have been faith but disobedience in Israel to have spent their night in inquiring and looking if the blood marks were upon their houses. "None of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning," God had said. And they sat within and waited for the daybreak. Is that family whose doors are shut, and who assemble in fear and trembling around their paschal lamb, less safe than its neighbors who calmly wait for liberty's coming morn as they keep the feast? Is the first-born of the pale dejected mother less secure than hers whose strong faith in Jehovah already accepts God's freedom? No, it is the blood without the door, not the feelings of them within the house, wherein the safety lies. Faith obeyed God, took the blood and sprinkled it, and in the redeeming blood was the security.
We once bent over a poor dying man and said, "Friend, you are leaving this world. You will very soon appear before God. How is it about your soul? Where are your sins?" He was too weak to lift a finger, but looked up calmly and whispered, "My sins are under the blood."
The poor man had received the truth in the love of it. He had believed what God says respecting the blood of His Son. He rested in this-that God looks upon the sacrifice of His Son, and not upon the sins of those who put their trust in Him.