7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner 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. 12 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 on 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 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. (Exodus 12:7-13)
We are a month into this adventure of reading through the Bible together, and by now you should be getting used to looking for events that look forward to and anticipate the work of Jesus. We saw it in the story of Noah (Day 003), when God shut Noah’s family inside the ark while the ark itself absorbed the fury of God’s wrath.
We saw it in the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac (Day 019). God provided a lamb as a substitutionary sacrifice in place of Isaac.
Today’s story is arguably the greatest foreshadowing of Jesus’ death for our sins in the entire Old Testament. In the tenth and final plague, the Lord sends His destroying angel through the streets of Egypt, in order to kill the firstborn son of every household. But God instructs His people to take the blood of a spotless lamb and paint the doorposts of their houses with it. When the destroying angel saw the blood, He would pass over that house, because all those inside the house were under the blood of the lamb. God’s wrath would be turned away from them.
All this happened, just as God said it would. Those who willingly placed themselves under the blood were not only saved from God’s wrath, but were released from slavery. They were no longer captives. And God began from that moment to bring them into the land He had promised them. It would take another forty years, but God would use the wilderness experience to ready His people for their promised rest.
Do you see it? Paul spelled it out for the Corinthian church centuries later, when he said, “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7).
Under His blood, we are saved from God’s wrath. We are set free from bondage to sin. And those whom God saves, He sanctifies. At the point of salvation, God begins the lifelong process of sanctifying us, until the day He brings us into our promised land. It begins with placing yourself under the blood of Christ. Beloved, have you done that?
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