Speaker 1: Exodus chapter 11. The Lord said to Moses, yet one plague more I will bring upon pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, for silver and gold jewelry.
And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people. So Moses said, thus says the Lord, about midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who's behind the hand mill and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
And all these, your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying, get 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. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
Speaker 2: Picking up in Exodus 12. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month will shall be for you the beginnings of months. It shall be the 1st month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall take you shall make your account for the lamb.
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you you should keep it until the 14th day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the 2 doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its heads with its legs and its inner parts.
And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning, you shall burn. In this manna, you shall eat it. With your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste.
It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. Both man and beast, and all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgement. I am the lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.
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. At midnight, the Lord struck down 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 the livestock. And pharaoh rose up in in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house for someone who was not dead. Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, up.
Go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go and serve the Lord, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds as you have said, and be gone and bless me also. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks to God.
Joel Brooks: If you would, pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. Through it, we get to know you, we get to come and worship you, have our hearts changed by you, as your spirit takes that word and roots roots it deep in our heart, and begins transforming us. And I ask that that would happen in this moment at this time. Lord, we desperately need to hear from you because you speak words of life.
So father, in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground, blow away, and not be remembered anymore. But lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Well, we're finally, here at the last plague.
We've been in Exodus for a few weeks now. This is the the plague, the 10th one that all the other 9 have been leading up to. The death of all the first born children of Egypt. Now the narrator, as he's been going through the other plagues, has kept somewhat of a quick pace, but when we come to this this final plague, the pace slows down. And the narrator takes his time to tell us of these events, And then tells us how we are to observe these events and to remember these things for all generations.
And tonight, we're gonna look at why we are to do this. Well, we've seen that pharaoh has time and time again, he has seen God work, he has seen a plague, and he has refused to let God's people go that they may worship him. So God finally here, He tells Pharaoh that He's gonna send the worst plague of all. He is going to kill the firstborn child, the firstborn male of every family. And just just let that sink in.
I think sometimes we just read through this, and we forget that this is a horrific event, the death of the firstborn child of everyone. And even the Jewish people, as they celebrate the Passover and they're reading through this text, when they come here, there is a somberness as they read through this, because you can't delight in the death of so many. It's a horrible event. But what is really going on here? Why why does God decide to do this?
Why does he decide to kill the firstborn? Why not the second born? Why not the third born? Why not just kill pharaoh? In this culture here, one of the things we see is that the firstborn carries a whole lot of significance to them.
Mike Wilkerson, he wrote a book going through Exodus. And in his book, he he says this. He says that, as a father, all your hopes and dreams were wrapped up in your firstborn. They carried on your legacy. They got the bulk of your inheritance.
They carried your name after you were long gone. Your future glory rest in your firstborn male child. And when god is saying that he is going to kill the firstborn, what he is is saying is all of those things as your creator, all of those things, all your honor, all your glory, all your inheritance, all of that belongs to me. In addition to this, the firstborn child not only carried all of the honors of the father, but also carried the shame and the sin of the father as well in this culture. And so the firstborn, if they if they had a father who had any outstanding debt, it was up to them to pay for it.
If the father had committed any sin, they bore the guilt of their father's sin. And what we see here is not only is God saying all the glory and all the honor that's due to the firstborn is mine. He is saying all of the guilt and all of the shame, the debt that must be paid. I am now calling in that debt by taking the firstborn. And that's what we see here when we come to Exodus 11.
And we see God punishing the Egyptians by taking the firstborn. And he does this by sending this mysterious figure called the destroyer. We're we're not sure. I mean, you can read tons of different commentaries on this. And scholars are just they they really don't know who this destroyer is.
All we know about this destroyer is that he could go through the most powerful nation on earth. He can confront pharaoh and all of his wealth, all of his army, all of his chariots, and he could go through them like they don't even exist. And he can kill whoever he wants. Now, I want you to notice one thing about this final plague that's different than all of the others. In all of the other plagues, all other 9, we see that God is the one who is making a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians.
It is God who is the one who is making the distinction. And so for instance, when God brought the plague of darkness, well, God sent the darkness on all of Egypt, but in the land of Goshen where the Israelites dwelled, God made sure that there was light there. The Israelites didn't do a thing. God was the one who made the distinction. Darkness here, light here.
But this is different. Unlike all of these other times in which God makes the distinction, here he tells the people of Israel, you have to do something now to set yourself apart from the destruction that is coming. Says if you don't make a certain mark, if you don't put a certain symbol on side or outside of your home, then you are going to be judged as well. You need to do something. The destroyer is going to come and it's going to destroy any firstborn that's in a house that doesn't have this mark on it.
So, be sure to put this mark. It doesn't matter if you're an Egyptian. It doesn't matter if you're an Israelite. God is going to come and destroy unless you have this mark. And so what we we see here clearly from this text is that whether you're an Egyptian, whether you're an Israelite, whoever you are, you stand before the Lord guilty.
Every person here has taken the gifts that the Lord has given us, and we have squandered them. We have taken that the gift of life he has given us. That's to be lived for his glory, and we have lived it to the glory of ourselves. Romans 3 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and we see this here. The the Hebrews, they can't they can't tell God, hey, you said we're your chosen people, Therefore, you can't harm us.
They they couldn't tell the lord, hey, we're we're really a good people. So that should be the They couldn't even tell the lord, you know, look at our lives. We have already had a horrible life, full of oppression, full of sorrow. We're your slaves for crying out loud. Why would he bring judgment upon us?
Bring it on our oppressors. But God says, no. He doesn't make any distinction between the oppressor and the one who is oppressed because both have sinned. This destroyer who is coming is not going to discriminate. And I realized that when you read this at first, it might it might seem a little unfair that God would do this.
That God was gonna judge the Israelites who'd already suffered so much under an abusive power of Egypt. But just because they are a victim of somebody else's sin, does not excuse them from their own sin. And I I I wanna be careful here as I talk about these things, but I also wanna be very clear about them. Every person here in this room at some point, I'm sure has suffered as a result of sin. Usually, you suffer at the result of your own sin.
Sin. But there's many of you, especially in a room this size, who have probably suffered as a result of somebody else's sin against you. And we see here in this text that if that has happened to you, that you have been sinned against by somebody who may be in a position of power, that God sees your hurt, that God comes to rescue, that God will judge that person for their sin. But at the same time, God says, you know what? At some point, your sin has become your own.
It has become your own. Whether you are the abuser or whether you are the one who just felt that, but then have gone on to live a sinful life. It doesn't matter if you're the abused or you're the victim initially. All of us eventually become sinful people. All of us need to own up to these sins.
We have no excuses. No matter what background you have come from, all of us at this point have given ourselves freely and willingly to a sinful lifestyle. Once again, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I would say that even apart from the Bible, even if you never had the 10 commandments, even if you had never had the moral law of God, and we were to just be judged by our own words or our own standards, we would all fall short. I mean, how many times have you judged somebody, whether it's in in your heart or spoken and said, you know, that person is unkind, that person's unfair, that person is a liar, or that person is a cheat, That person is so selfish.
Maybe you've said that. And how often have you been those things? Our own words condemn us. Even apart from the word of God, we all stand guilty. Going to church isn't going to spare us.
Trying to become a better person isn't going to try and spare us. We all have this tremendous debt that needs to be paid. And someday, God can call that in whenever he wants. Now understanding this should really change the way that you look at other people, because you can never be arrogant. The Israelites can never look at the Egyptians and be like, they're awful people.
They deserve such a judgment. Because they are all in the same boat. There's no position for arrogance because every one of us has sinned. The Hebrews were no better than Egyptians, and they would be judged the exact same way unless they put this certain mark on their door. Let's look at this mark.
What it what is this mark? I mean, how can you survive? There's there's the destroyer coming. He's gonna kill without discrimination unless there is a mark. And it's this.
Every Hebrew family has to get a lamb. Not just any lamb. They've got to get a a a male lamb, a spotless lamb, one that is only 1 year old. And then every family at midnight on the 14th day of the month is to kill the lamb. Then they're they're to take some of the blood of this lamb and they're to put it on the doorpost, put it on the lintel of their home.
It says, and then with this destroyer comes, the destroyer is going to see this blood on the doorpost. And the destroyer is going to pass over, is going to pass them by. And they will not be harmed. This is really extraordinary. I mean, when you're just reading this, it's it's extraordinary to think about because the destroyer is coming.
And once again, this is the person that could go right through pharaoh's armies, all of pharaoh's wealth, all of pharaoh's chariots mean nothing. He could cut right through them like a warm knife through butter. And yet, it says the only thing that could keep this power at bay is if you kill a little white fluffy lamb and you put his blood on your door. You just got to ask why. I mean, why why have all the symbols this?
Why seems so arbitrary? Why not tie yellow ribbon around around you know the doorpost? Why not hang a wreath? Why not you know write an inscription? Why lamb's blood?
The the church last week we were broken into, And, so we've been thinking of ways that we can, you know, shore up the doors, ways we can better lock this area. And, you know, never once in our discussions, did we ever think of lamb's blood. It just, it wasn't, it wasn't one of the things, although it might work. It really might freak people out if we surrounded this building with blood. But we're we're gonna trust on, like, you know, a double bolt lock, you know, more than we would trust blood to keep out just a common thief.
And so how is it that blood is going to keep out this destroyer? What's so special about lamb's blood? What's so special about a lamb? You know, when you read through Exodus, especially when you get to chapter 12, you're gonna notice the great lengths that God goes to in describing this lamb and to ensure that during the sacrifice of this lamb, the image of the lamb is not destroyed. The lamb was to be taken into your home for 4 days before you killed it.
That's just awkward. Alright. I mean, just you you picture, you're bringing in this little, you know, lamb just kind of jumping around. It's in your house. You're telling the kids don't name it.
You know, you you just it's just it by this point, it's becoming a pet as it is with you for 4 days, constantly looking at you, constantly trusting you for its care and for its provision. And all the while, you know what you've gotta do to it. And when you have to kill this lamb 4 days later, God's very clear. You're not you're not allowed to just chop it up, and you're not allowed to cook it. You're not allowed to boil it.
You're not allowed to make a stew out of this lamb. You have to roast the entire lamb. It has to stay intact. So when you ate the lamb, it was to still look just like the lamb that had been in your home for 4 days. This is so much different than going to a place like you know Chick Fil A.
In which I mean, you just have like a chicken breast there. You don't you don't have the head. You don't have like the feet. You don't have the eyes staring at you. You really, you don't know it's a chicken.
Alright? But here you're eating a lamb and it's just a carcass sitting on the table in front of you. A constant reminder. You know that life was taken for this meal? Life was taken so that the destroyer might pass me by.
Now, Exodus 1213 tells us why they had to do this. This verse tells us what all of this was for. Verse 13 is really key. We read, the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are and when I see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you or destroy you.' Now the lamb's blood that is outside of the doors is not a sign for the destroyer. It's not what the text says.
It is not a sign for God to look at and to know he's not to kill these people. No, the text says that the lamb's blood is a sign for the Israelites, not for God. This blood is to mean something to us here now. It points to something for us to understand. It's a sign for us, and it's a sign here pointing 1400 years forward to Jesus.
It was the lamb of God. Or as John the Baptist would introduce him, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The destroyer passes over this lamb. The sign points us to Jesus who just like the Passover lamb here was without blemish, was spotless, was completely undefiled by sin. It's a sign for us.
You know, all of all of the gospels, they, they tell of an instant that Jesus shows he's really aware of this. Of course, Jesus, he would have been going to the temple since he was a child. And all the gospels tell of a time that he went into the temple and he wreaked havoc there. If you remember that. He he went there and he completely cleared out the temple, and this happened during the Passover week.
So the time when the Israelites were celebrating the Passover in Jerusalem, that week long celebration there, and they are celebrating this. Every gospel tells of a time that Jesus went there, and he just went ballistic. I mean, you you we always hear, you know, the gentle Jesus, meek and mild. But actually, if you look at the scripture here, it's it's Jesus picking up a whip, driving people out. People who are all set up with their, you know, exchanging their money.
Jesus goes up to them, and he throws over the tables. That's a violent act. I don't know if you've ever seen that happen. I have seen somebody throw over a table and angry. And when you're they're angry, and it's like, woah.
I mean, it is a violent action. Gets your attention. And Jesus is doing this, and he's driving people out with a whip. And he he empties the entire temple during Pass over. To put that in perspective, about 200,000 people would have gone into Jerusalem, into the temple area during this time.
So so picture, you know, the Galleria Mall. Picture Thanksgiving Day sales there. That does not touch the amount of people that Jesus cleared out during this moment. It's quite a sign, but why did he do it? What you see is from from the age of 12, when Jesus would have gone into the temple, and Joseph would have been telling him about these things, and talking to him about the sacrifices.
All the while, Jesus is is knowing, this is me. All of these sacrifices are pointing to me. Then it becomes the week of Passover, and He's already been doing ministry for a few years, and the cross is less than a week away. Jesus goes into the temple and he sees all of this crowding around. People exchanging money.
People doing all of these things. Buying and selling sacrifices here. And it's just business, and he's thinking, this this points to me. All of this points to me. And Jesus goes ballistic.
He he starts overthrowing the tables. He starts driving everybody out. He says he drove out all of those who had the sacrifices. He drove out all of the animals. And don't miss this image.
Jesus drives out every sacrifice in the temple during the Passover, and he stands in the temple alone. He's saying, I'm it. I'm what every sacrifice is pointed to. I am the lamb of God, the final sacrifice. That's why Jesus has that reaction.
Oh, would we believe that? During that final Passover week, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples. It had already been quite a week at this point, But he he gathers all of his disciples into an upper room, and Jesus as the head of this would have, of course, told them the story of the Passover. He would have read the exact same text that we just read. But then, Jesus really flushes out the meaning of it.
There's three main elements to a Passover meal. There is the unleavened bread, there is the wine, and then, of course, there is the lamb. And we see Jesus, he he picks up the bread, and this would have been called the bread of affliction. This was the bread that symbolized all of the pain, all of the sorrow that Israel had felt in all of their years of oppression. Jesus holds up this.
He's like, I'm the fulfillment of this. This sorrow, this affliction. This is my body broken for you. And then Jesus, he would have gotten the wine. He takes the cup.
This would have been the cup of redemption. There's there's several different cups that you would take in the Passover meal. This was the cup of redemption. And here, he says, this is the blood of the covenant. It's my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
So so all the affliction that we saw in Exodus, the blood that was spilled in Exodus, it all points to me. And every scholar picks up on this, the next thing that happens is that Jesus doesn't say anything about the lamb. And and some people think maybe he removed the lamb, just didn't even have it present. Others think that really the meaning at this point was so clear. If this was the body and this was the blood, then of course, Christ is the lamb.
He's the lamb that will die for their sins. Jesus is the true firstborn, the only begotten of God who will die, who the full judgment and wrath of God will fall upon, So that they might be free. And so we see on this original Passover that when we look through Exodus, we we see salvation, but we see the salvation in which Israel is just saved by the Egyptians. They're just saved from slavery. They're just saved from oppression.
But when we get to Exodus with a capital e, when we get to the Passover with a capital p here with Jesus, We see we're not just saved by from slavery or the hardship, which we will be someday. But we are saved from sin and death itself. We are set free of those things. Now just as the Israelites during this time would have heard all of these horrific screams, I cannot imagine the screams going all around the land of Egypt as all of these firstborn are being killed, and they're waiting to be delivered, the or the Israelites are, so that they might be set free, and that they might go to worship. Jesus, he has this last meal with his disciples, and then he goes to the cross, and he cries out.
And then we become free, Free of our sin to go and worship the Lord. But the story of the lamb, and and really could go through all of scripture just using the theme of the lamb. The story of the lamb doesn't end there. It doesn't it doesn't end during this Passover meal. I mentioned that there were multiple cups that you took during a Passover meal.
There was actually and then you would drink. And it was the cup of redemption that Jesus would have said, this is my blood. The final cup was the cup of joy. The cup of joy, and Jesus did not drink from this cup. We see this in scripture.
He didn't drink from it. Instead, Jesus said this. He goes, I tell you the truth. I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine. Until the day I drink it with you, anew in my father's kingdom.
So he he he holds off on this final cup. And what he what he's doing here is he's leaving the Passover meal unfinished. He says that he plans on finishing that Passover meal when when his father's kingdom comes. When his kingdom comes, it's established. Then he will finish the meal.
But first, before then, he's gonna have to die for our sins. He's gonna have to be raised back to life. He's gonna have to ascend to the father, sit on his throne, someday may make a new heaven, make a new earth, and then we will finish that meal. And we'll take up that cup of joy. Now the apostle John, he describes this final meal.
He describes it in the last book of our bible, the book of Revelation. When we come to Revelation chapter 19, he describes this. He he doesn't call it a Passover meal. What he calls it is the marriage supper of the lamb. So when we have this this feast, this marriage supper of the lamb, it's it's the feast of joy.
It's a feast of celebration in which we are finally united with Jesus. Jesus, the groom, and his bride, the church are married. We're united forever. It's the marriage supper of the lamb. Now, we've gotten so used to that language if you've grown up in the church, but have you ever stopped to ask the question, why is it when John is recording this vision, why does he call it the marriage supper of the lamb at this point?
I mean, of all the names that John has at his disposal, the wedding feast of the Prince of Peace, the wedding feast of the Lion of Judah, the the wedding feast of the King of kings or the Lord of lords. There were so many titles he could choose from, but he chooses the title, the lamb. It's one of the last images we have of Jesus in the Bible is of the lamb. Why does he do this? Well, I think anybody who's gotten married has kind of a hint of this.
On your wedding day, I mean, I can remember as a groom, you want to look your absolute best. You want to look your best. You want to look glorious, And what we see here at the wedding feast of the lamb, is that the glory of Jesus is most beautifully displayed. His love is most powerfully demonstrated when we see him as the sacrifice of our sins. When we see him as the lamb of God, that is when he is most beautiful to his church.
When we see him as the Passover lamb. There there is a reason, like, after resurrection, after Jesus gets his new body, have you ever noticed he still keeps the scars? He still has them. Why not? You're getting a new body.
Why not why not get rid of those? Because Jesus is never more glorious than we see him as a sacrifice for our sins, than when we see him as the Passover lamb. That's why it is the wedding of the lamb. Revelation 19, we read this. The angel said to me, write this.
Blessed are those who were invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. Now, we get a foretaste of this in the meal that we were about to partake in. Just as the Passover meal was a time of remembrance, the Lord's supper, this time of communion is a time of remembrance in which we remember Jesus at his most glorious. Jesus at his most beautiful, Jesus when he gave his life. And so we do remember on the night that Jesus was betrayed, during that Passover week, Jesus took the bread and he broke it.
He said, this is my body broken for you. The same way he took the cup. So this is the cup of the new covenant. This is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of many. And as we come tonight, I want us to remember both the sacrifice that Jesus has made, and to remember the celebration and the joy that awaits when we finish this meal anew with him and his kingdom.
Pray with me. Father, in this moment, we want to thank you for the gift of your son. Sending your only begotten. And Jesus, we wanna praise you for being that Passover lamb. We would certainly fall under the judgment of God if it was not for your blood.
So we thank you. Now pray in this moment through the power of your spirit, we would indeed commune with you. As we feast on this wine and this bread, we would our hearts and our souls would feast on you and that you would nourish us. We pray this in the name of Jesus.