Hebrews Lesson 190 March 18, 2010

^NKJ Psalm 119:9 How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.

Open your Bibles to Exodus 11. I'll just review a little bit for you where we have been in our study in Hebrews. On this first chart we look at 3 of the 5 instances that the writer of Hebrews focuses on in relationship to Moses’ life, how Moses is an example of faith to these Jewish believers in Jesus Christ (these early messianic Christians in Israel), in Judah who are under pressure and are about to give up and tempted to give up their belief that Jesus is the Messiah and fade back into Judaism. So the writer of Hebrews is writing to warn them of the terrible consequences that that will have.

What hits me as I read Hebrews is that we tend to think that fellowship is relational and based upon sin. If you sin, you’re out of fellowship. If you are staying without sinning, then you stay in fellowship. But in that book and in Hebrews, the key issue is doctrinal consistency; that in 1 John if you don't have the right view of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ (that He appeared in a flesh and was qualified in His humanity to go across the cross), then you’re out of fellowship. Fellowship is the first doctrinal, then it's related to sin. So the sin in 1 John that gets you out of fellowship is heresy. It is bad theology; it is a bad Christology. In Hebrews the issue is just giving up on the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. So it starts with a doctrinal belief that’s at the very core, which is a little bit different from the way most of us the think about fellowship most of time.

With these examples Moses is an example of one who persevered. If you think about the time line here, he's 40 years old when the second event takes place. He recognizes his destiny to follow, to be identified with the Israelites and to reject all that had been provided for him as an Egyptian. So he leaves Egypt. You have event #2 and event #3 are very close to one another in terms of the timeline.

Then the next event comes 40 years after that which is the event related the Passover.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:27 By faith he forsook Egypt,

Love the resounding nature of the King James there. Literally it’s just “by faith he left Egypt.”

not fearing

As I pointed out in the exegesis, that’s a causal participle because he was not afraid of the wrath of the king.

the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

When you read Exodus it looks like he is afraid of the wrath of the pharaoh, but this is showing that he had already made a decision to leave prior to the event where the pharaoh was threatening him.

The basis for that is that he endured as one who saw or one who sees Him who is invisible. His focus is on God. God is the motivator of his spiritual life; not the details of life, not what he’s going to get out of things, but the person of God, His person and His plan for Israel.

Then he spends 40 years in Midian before God appears to him on Mt. Horeb or on Mt. Sinai in the burning bush.

Then God commissions him to go back to be the deliverer. He's 80 years old. He packs up his wife and children, and he heads back to Egypt.

Hebrews 11:28 focuses on the next event:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:28 By faith he kept the Passover

I think this is one of those figures of speech in the Scripture where the Passover really stands for the entire set of the 10 plagues that came upon Egypt. The Passover, the plague of the death of the firstborn is the greatest and most intense of the 10 plagues. The 10 plagues as we saw the last time builds to this final great dramatic demonstration of God's power over the firstborn of Egypt and the deliverance that God has for Israel where He redeems them through this substitutionary sacrifice.

Hebrews 11:28 says:

and the sprinkling of blood, lest he

(Which would be God the Father)

who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.

He keeps the Passover because he is trusting in God. Faith always has an object so he is trusting in the promise of God which God gave to him in the first part of the 11^th chapter of Exodus.

Last time we went through the 10 plagues or 10 judgments that God brought upon Egypt which completely wiped out and devastated their whole military industrial complex. Their economy was wasted. God destroyed Egyptian society. He wiped out their religious basis but nevertheless it rebuilds because the arrogance of the human soul in rebellion against God is such that he is going to refuse to bow the knee to the creator and he is going to worship the creature instead. I pointed out last time as we looked at these 10 plagues that each one of these plagues is related to one of the deities (one or more deities) in the pantheon of the Egyptians.

This chart I took out of the Bible Knowledge Commentary section on Exodus. That commentary was written by John Hannah. This idea though is not unique to the Bible Knowledge Commentary. There are numerous different commentators who have noted the parallels: why does God brings these particular judgments? They are also, in a way, foreshadowing of the kind of judgments in a much greater degree that will come during the tribulation period. This becomes a watershed event in revelation in the history of Israel; one that is referred to numerous times later in the Old Testament, and one that is referred to numerous times by of the Lord in the gospels as well as in the New Testament.

It is because the Exodus stands as a teaching event for 2 key things. The first is substitutionary redemption and that that is the Passover. When we think of Passover, we should think of substitutionary redemption. A payment is made.

It's interesting this last week; I was talking with Igor about some different theological things especially in terms of translation issues. I had met last week with an old friend of ministry Dr. Joe Wall who's now the Director-Vice President for East West Ministries. His responsibility is training and development of their staff. One of the books that they've been trying to get into print to use with training pastors in the former Soviet Union is a book written (the original title was Between Calvinism and Arminianism) by Gordon Olson. Gordon is retired. I’m amazed he’s still alive he’s had so many heart problems over the last ten years; it's just amazing. In fact he had a heart attack about a month before that conference. That was in Philadelphia. I don’t know when it was, 2001 or 2000. Dan Ingram and I met down there and went to that conference. That was the first time I had met Gordon although I hadn’t connected his name with the manuscript. Somebody e-mailed me the manuscript of his book (big 400-page book) where he really deals with a lot of issues related to the whole issue of Calvinism versus Arminianism. He does a great job, a tremendous job in that book. Then it was abridged a little bit, and it came out again as a paperback called Getting the Gospel Right with a foreword by Tim LeHaye. I thought it was kind of ironic because Tim LeHaye tends to be a little lordship and Tim doesn’t like Calvinism. But he tends to be lordship. I think it’s kind of an odd thing. But Dr. LeHaye wrote the foreword to that book. It has been translated into Russian; but it hadn’t been printed yet because he did not want to go to print until someone who understood his theology who was a native Russian speaker could read it to double check it to make sure that the translation was right.

Now y’all may not realize this but translation is not easy. I always wondered about people who went out and took certain books and translated them and they’d come back 5 years later and say, “We’ve got all these books and all these things we translated into whatever the language is.” It's hard. I mean the people doing the translating really have to have a firm grasp of theology.

English has had at least 500 hundred years of technical theological language development. Think about it. English was not a well-spoken language in 1500. But by 1620, it was firmly established. It happened because of the English Bible, because of the translation of those early Bibles by Tindale and by Miles Coverdale and the Geneva Bible that was translated into English. All that culminated in of course that great work of English prose. And it really is. The King James Bible – one day I’m going to do a study on this for everybody. I've read 5 or 6 books on this in the last couple of years; and it is a remarkable work of translation. Nobody spoke like that. They elevated. They didn't translate the King James into the Koine of the day. But they elevated it into a glorious masterpiece of literature that has so many different elements to it. But it is written at the same time that Shakespeare's writing his plays. This is the heyday of Victorian English when the English becomes established.

If you think about what happens during that period with the Reformation still going on in the development and rise of Puritanism and Puritan theology and all of the good senses and good things that brought to the study the Scriptures and bringing the Scripture into the language of the people that you have a development. All of this argumentation that’s going on at a theological level; you have the foundation laid for a rich vocabulary in English to accurately translate the Greek language into English. We have all of these rich words have been developed.

We have the word atonement which is basically an English invention based on the word at-one-ment which is where it came from. It is coining a whole new word to represent the totality of what Christ did on the cross. That word atonement which you find in any decent systematic theology is going to have a number of chapters dealing with the nature of the atonement, the extent of the atonement and dealing with a whole Old Testament teaching on atonement. But in Russian there is only one word that’s used to translate atonement, propitiation, redemption. All these different words, there is only one word. There is a poverty in most languages when you try to translate over. They don't have technical language there so if you're if you're reading a passage that use the word redemption; in Russian it uses the same word it would use for atonement or the same word it would use for cleansing or the same word it would use for reconciliation or propitiation. And this gets very confusing.

So Igor and I were talking about some of the problems related to that, and it looks like he's going to be able to work things out with Gordon Olson to double check this theological work. You really have to be adept in the target language and you have to have a good understanding of theological nuance to do that kind of translating.

Otherwise, and we’ve run into this problem. I remember ten years ago when we were in Kazakhstan we had a man who was translated for a number of different the English-speaking pastors and professors who had come over to speak for some other seminary. So Jim Myers had hired him to translate for us. This guy was butchering what we were saying so much. But at the end of the second day Jim called up his main translator in Kiev, Margaret, and flew Margaret to Almaty to do the translation because this guy had never had anybody talk about all these different kinds of words as I’m explaining to you, like propitiation, redemption and expiation. He was just stumbling all over the place because he had never had another English speaking teacher come in and talk about these kinds of things which is kind of a sad commentary. But it shows the challenges that we have with translation.

So when we get into talking about the Exodus event, the picture here is just of that; it is substitutionary atonement. And it's such a great rich picture with the death of the Passover lamb that it amazes me that in the early church they had divorced themselves from the Jewish backgrounds in the early second century after the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 the Gentile Christians pretty much ostracized the Jewish Christians and they begin to interpret the Old Testament and New Testament totally within a Greek sort of background. They lost the meaning (the significance) of a lot of Old Testament passages. It wasn't until the Reformation (and earlier than the Reformation) almost a thousand years before certain things were recovered. When Anselm first clearly articulated substitutionary atonement about 1000 AD that could've been done 500, 600, 700 years earlier if they had just really understood the Old Testament sacrificial system. But by divorcing themselves from the Jewish backgrounds, which is part of an anti-Semitism that leaked in, they lost this whole concept of substitutionary atonement.

The Passover represents substitutionary atonement and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which begins with the Day of Passover, is the first day of the weeklong of the feast of Unleavened Bread speaks of separation, which is exactly what is happening in the Passover event as God is separating His people from Egypt. And it's a picture of the believer being separated from the world and then the event where they go through the Red Sea and Moses parts the Red Sea is identification with Moses in his faith. It is a picture, a foreshadowing, of the baptism by the Holy Spirit as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 10.

These events are really important because God gives us these little snapshots to help us to understand these more abstract doctrines that we get into in the New Testament referred to as substitutionary atonement, referred to as the separation of the believer from the world, consecration. It’s related to the whole doctrine of sanctification as well is the concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

So verse 28 focuses on Moses keeping the Passover. So let's look at the description of this in Exodus 11 and 12.

^NKJ Exodus 11:1 And the LORD said to Moses,

The first 3 verses focus on God giving initial instructions to Moses. In the first verse, for the first time indicates the limits on the plagues. Up to this point Moses doesn't know how many they're going to be. They just keep coming, and he has no idea when they are going to end and when the pharaoh will finally release the Israelites.

"I will bring yet one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether.

In other words, God gives a promise here that this is it, and when this occurs pharaoh will finally completely tell you to leave. Then He gives Moses instructions on what he should tell the people.

^NKJ Exodus 11:2 "Speak now in the hearing of the people, and let every man ask from his neighbor and every woman from her neighbor, articles of silver and articles of gold."

For 430 years they've been slaves in Egypt. Now they're getting their payday. They're not stealing the money. They're asking for their Egyptian masters to give them whatever they have, and the people do it. That's the thrust of verse 3.

^NKJ Exodus 11:3 And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

The Egyptians were glad to do it, in other words. The word there for favor indicates grace and the Egyptians were glad to do it and the reason is because of Moses.

The next sentence says:

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.

There is a motivation now not only to avoid further judgments, but also because of Moses. And the Egyptians who had always hated the Semites and had a strong anti-Semitic prejudice willingly give to the Jews all that they have that is valuable.

^NKJ Exodus 11:4 Then Moses said, "Thus says the LORD:

This is what he's going to say to the people and to pharaoh.

'About midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt;

Now it doesn't say midnight tonight, midnight tomorrow, or midnight next week; so there's a vagueness here to give pharaoh time to I think about it as to how he will respond.

^NKJ Exodus 11:5 'and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die,

Now this is important because the eldest had the right of primogeniture. He is the heir. He received the double portion of the inheritance. He is the one who was to carry on the family name especially among the aristocracy and among the royalty. It is the firstborn that got the greatest education. So if the firstborn is wiped out, you're basically destroying the intellectual capital of the next generation. You’re wiping out that generation that had received the best education available in Egypt.

It's not only that but as the firstborn of pharaoh, his son was considered to be divine as the pharaoh was considered to be divine because he would then be the one to take the throne when the current pharaoh died (when his father died). This is a direct attack by God on the whole concept of the deity of the pharaoh.

from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the animals.

Now some of you who are tracking with me and remember what we covered the last time are going to say. “Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I thought all the animals were dead.”

And it sort of sounds that way and I wanted to go back and address this. Last time when we look at the fifth plague the comment was made in verse 6.

^NKJ Exodus 9:6 So the LORD did this thing on the next day, and all the livestock of Egypt died; but of the livestock of the children of Israel, not one died.

Now if all the livestock of Egypt died (which is what 9:6 says), then how can the firstborn of the animals die in chapter 11? I thought they all died back in chapter 9. It seem that way, doesn’t it? Then you had the plague of hail, which had another problem. You have to look back at chapter 9, verse 3.

Moses said:

^NKJ Exodus 9:3 "behold, the hand of the LORD will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep -- a very severe pestilence.

That key phrase is “in the field.” Those that were sheltered in the barns (in the stables) were not affected; only those in the field. This same phrase occurs in the seventh plague which is the plague of the hail and says in verse 19 with the warning of the hail raining down in verse 18 says:

^NKJ Exodus 9:19 "Therefore send now and gather your livestock and all that you have in the field, for the hail shall come down on every man and every animal which is found in the field and is not brought home; and they shall die." ' "

It appears that they had an opportunity to protect some of their livestock by bringing it into the barns, bringing them into the stables. But those that were left out in the pasture were the ones that suffered judgment. They didn't wipe out all of their domestic stock in one blow. But it did take out a large segment of them; but there's still a tremendous amount left.

Now in verse 5 of chapter 11 the plague of the firstborn is going to come on the humans as well as the animals. Verse 6 gives the consequence of it.

^NKJ Exodus 11:6 'Then there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before,

In other words this is a one-of-a-kind of judgment.

nor shall be like it again.

Now that language is very similar to language that Jesus uses in Matthew 24 to talk about the judgments at the last half of tribulation period. Daniel used it to refer to the judgments during the tribulation period. This foreshadows that. It is the tribulation judgment worldwide and they are one of a kind.

So verse 8 goes on to say:

^NKJ Exodus 11:8 "And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, 'Get out, and all the people who follow you!' After that I will go out." Then he went out from Pharaoh in great anger.

In other words, Moses is saying that when this happens all the servants of pharaoh will come to me, and they will they will beg us to leave.

^NKJ Exodus 11:9 But the LORD said to Moses, "Pharaoh will not heed you, so that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt."

^NKJ Exodus 11:10 So Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.

So the judgment is going to be enacted.

Now chapter 12 gives the escape clause for the Israelites and that is the Passover. The Passover is that key event around which I think all of the Old Testament acts because this Passover event is the major picture of redemption and judgment in the Old Testament. Of course the flood was in Genesis 6; but this is even more so and it is picked up as such in the New Testament.

God begins a new calendar, verse 2.

^NKJ Exodus 12:2 "This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.

So this is the month of Nisan in their religious calendar. It’s the seventh month of the civil calendar. The Rosh Hashanah occurs for us in our calendar around late September or early October. That begins the civil calendar; but the religious calendar, the calendar related to the observances related to the spiritual life of Israel begins in Nisan which is roughly from the middle of March to the middle of April, that period in the spring.

So the instructions are given. The first instruction is that the congregation on the tenth of the month (very specific):

^NKJ Exodus 12:3 "Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: 'On the tenth day of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.

The lamb is going to take care of the whole household. That speaks to unlimited atonement that not everyone in the house may believe or trust or understand what's going on with the Passover; but nevertheless that one lamb would take care of everyone who was in the house. That’s unlimited atonement. They would take a lamb and they would take it on the tenth day and they were to examine the lamb for 4 days. It was not to be killed (sacrificed) until the 14^th.

^NKJ Exodus 12:5 'Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year.

Literally, a son of the first year; so it's about a year old.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

^NKJ Exodus 12:6 'Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.

Or, “between the sunsets” is how it reads in the Hebrew. There’s debate about exactly when that was to have taken place. But these are all instructions for the initial observance of Passover. Things change. I'm not sure really when some of the other elements came in, but this has to do with the first (the very first) Passover. They would kill it probably between the period of sunset and complete darkness. Then they would take the blood from this lamb that was without spot or blemish; and they would put it on the doorpost or the lintel of the houses where they eat it.

^NKJ Exodus 12:7 'And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.

^NKJ Exodus 12:8 'Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

The lamb foreshadows the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul indicates in 1 Corinthians 5:7.

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 5:7 Therefore purge out the old leaven,

….uses all the symbolism here in applying this to the life of the church there at Corinth.

that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.

So it's a picture of the unleavened bread. So here's the point.

For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us

That’s his point. Jesus Christ is clearly identified as our Passover, as the Passover Lamb. This is what John referred to ( John the Baptist) in John 1:29 when he saw Jesus coming toward him.

^NKJ John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

So when an Israelite would hear this, they're thinking of that sacrificial lamb, their thinking of the Passover lamb and there's an identification made in the New Testament that that lamb (that Passover lamb) that was the spot or blemish was to depict the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peters says the same thing in 1 Peter 1:18-19. It begins with a causal participle because:

^NKJ 1 Peter 1:18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,

^NKJ 1 Peter 1:19 but with the precious blood of Christ,

Remember that phrase “blood of Christ” indicates His death.

as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

The New Testament makes a direct claim that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the picture from the Old Testament that that Passover lamb was for portraying something about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that it was without spot or blemish indicated the impeccability or sinlessness of the Lord Jesus Christ (or the Messiah) that He would be without sin.

The reason that the lamb is kept from the 10^th to the 14^th is to examine it (to evaluate, to make sure) that it is without spot or blemish. It was a time of examination and investigation.

Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the 10^th day of Nisan in 33AD. This is what we call Palm Sunday, although I don't think it was on Sunday. He enters into Jerusalem on that day and then He is examined until the Day of Preparation, which is when He is sacrificed. The Day of Preparation would actually technically be the 13^th because Passover by the time of the life of Christ in Judea; the day began at dusk. So from dusk to dusk you have you have your daytime.

John said Jesus died on the Day of Preparation. So the 14^th begins at nightfall on Wednesday and Jesus is sacrificed on the cross that afternoon on the Day of Preparation between 12 noon and 3 pm.

He is evaluated. When you read through the Gospel accounts, between the period of His entry into Jerusalem until He is taken (arrested) at the Last Supper, there is a time when He is constantly being questioned and interrogated by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees, by the Herodians. This is the examination of the Passover Lamb from God. He is being evaluated to see if He in all that testing passes all that testing and temptation that occurs demonstrating that He is qualified to go to the cross. And He is the lamb. The lamb as I've said many times in our Revelation series is used some 27 times as the favorite title that John uses of Jesus in Revelation.

Revelation 13:8 is one of those passages.

^NKJ Revelation 13:8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

…indicating that the plan of God was from the beginning of creation to offer the Second Person of the Trinity as the substitute for mankind. There is this evaluation period between the tenth in the fourteenth.

Then there is specific description given about the sacrifice. He is to be killed. The carcass is then to be roasted. They are to take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts and on the lintel. The lintel is the crosspiece at the top of the door. So if you have blood on each doorpost and blood on the top and then you connect the dots, you have a cross. That is the foreshadowing of the cross and the death of Christ.

^NKJ Exodus 12:8 'Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Eating is a picture of fellowship. It is also a picture of accepting something into yourself. You are receiving it into yourself and so it becomes a picture of faith. Anyone can eat; anyone can believe. Eating is taking something and making it a part of yourself. Trusting in Christ is depicted by eating. It is the same picture we have in the Lord Table. When we eat the bread, drink the cup that is a depiction of faith that we have accepted Christ; we were receiving Him into our life. So to eat the flesh on that night with the unleavened bread … The bread (we learned from later revelation) depicts the humanity of Christ. It is unleavened because leaven depicts sin. So the bread is to be unleavened. There's no sin there because the bread pictures Jesus Christ as the bread of life. They are to eat it with bitter herbs. The bitter herbs depict the bitterness of the slavery that they have had under Egyptian bondage. So the bitter herbs depict sin and the solution to the sin is of course the substitutionary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

^NKJ Exodus 12:9 'Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire -- its head with its legs and its entrails.

Why? Because it is judgment. There is a particular kind of death that the Savior had to go through. He could not have died from being hit over the head. He could not have died from just any kind of death. He couldn't have just said, “Okay, I’m going to die for the sins of the world,” and had a cardiac arrest. He had to die a violent penal death because it is depicting the fact that He is the one being judged for our sins.

^NKJ Exodus 12:10 'You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire.

Then they were instructed that after they ate it, they would stand up eating that the first time because they were ready to leave. God was going to release them from their bondage, and they were eating in haste.

Later one of the questions in the Jewish Passover is why did they eat standing up and we eat lying down. It is because the first time they were being delivered from slavery, and now they can eat lying down resting because they're resting in what God has already done. It’s a great picture of the faith rest life of the believer that because Christ has done it all. We have a sufficient Savior, a sufficient salvation, a sufficient Savior and a sufficient Scripture we can rest in the provision of God.

Now that doesn't mean that life is always going to be easy. It doesn’t mean that at all. God didn’t promise us a life without adversity, but He promised us the resources to handle the adversity and to live in and with the adversity without letting the adversity overwhelm us in discouragement, depression, sadness and failure. That's one of the things that people always have trouble with.

^NKJ 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape,

Most people never hear the rest of the verse.

“Good! God’s going to get me out of this and things are going to change and life is going to be good. I’m going to get to escape it.”

No the way to escape:

that you may be able to bear it.

What? That means you're going to stay in and under the pressure. God’s not going to take it away. I was talking to a pastor earlier today. He said, “That is the biggest trouble,” (and mentioned somebody I knew) “that they have. What they hear no matter how much you tell them differently, all they hear is that somehow God is going to change their circumstances.”

That verse doesn’t say God is going to change their circumstances. It's going to change your mental attitude. When you're focused on Christ, your mental attitude changes so you can handle the circumstances. But God is not going to change your circumstances just because it's tough. It is tough and that's what you have to learn to handle to grow and mature as a believer.

They're ready to leave. They have dressed. They’ve packed. They're ready to go.

^NKJ Exodus 12:12 'For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

God strikes the firstborn: 2 years old, 7 years old, 14 years old, 25 years old. And the liberals have a terrible time with this.

“How can you worship this God that kills babies and kills children and kills teenagers just because they're firstborn?”

What they don't realize is number one every Egyptian was told what the escape clause was that all you have to do is take the lamb that is without spot or blemish, sacrifice it and put the blood on your doorpost and the firstborn will not die. But they refused to accept God's provision of deliverance for the 10^th judgment.

The second thing they failed to note is that they blow up this a false idea of love. They then impose that on God. It is such arrogance. It's like you go out in your backyard have this little ant in the ant bed and starts shaking his fist at you and say, “You know, you just don't do anything right. I’m going to tell you how to do everything and how to take care of this yard.” And that's exactly what it's like when you have of these liberal theologians come along and say, “How can this be a loving God?” They always focus on the person who is being punished. They never focus on the crime itself and the fact that because God is righteous and just and love He must execute justice among sinful rebellious creatures. And He gives them grace upon grace upon grace upon grace, opportunity after opportunity to turn to God’s solution. He not only tells them there's going to be judgment, but He gives them a way out, every time. But they reject that. So now God is the one who's going to bring the judgment upon them.

As we will continue to go through chapter 12, God says in verse 13:

^NKJ Exodus 12:13 'Now 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 the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

What happened this night was that there were thousands of firstborn in the houses in Egypt that died; but none, not one in the house of Israel. That’s the Doctrine of Separation and separation is based on obedience to God's revelation.

^NKJ Exodus 12:14 'So this day shall be to you a memorial;

That’s the same language that we have with the Lord Table. It is a memorial, something to remember.

and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.

^NKJ Exodus 12:15 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.

So the Passover is the first day of that week observance of unleavened bread. That first day which is the day of Passover:

On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

It is not capital punishment, but they are kicked out. They lose their citizenship. They are removed from the congregation because of their disobedience to God. God obviously took that to be very important. Why? Because it is depicting something about the Person of the Savior. You can't mess around with what God has said in God’s description of these events.

^NKJ Exodus 12:16 'On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat -- that only may be prepared by you.

^NKJ Exodus 12:17 'So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance.

He goes on to describe some of the basics. Moses then repeats the instructions for applying the blood.

^NKJ Exodus 12:22 "And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning.

Hyssop is always used in a context of purification, the context of purification of cleansing. So they take the hyssop, dip it in blood and put it on the lintel.

Then we get into the results of the plague in verses 29 and 30.

^NKJ Exodus 12:30 So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

It shows in Egypt there was virtually 100% disobedience even after 9 judgments. They still don't get it that it's going to happen that when Moses said, “Thus saith the Lord,” God was going to bring it about. That shows the hardness of the unbeliever, the hardness of the person who is set against God. It's not about reason. This has got to be one of the most irrational things that you can think of. But it has nothing to do with reason. How in the world we think can someone who has witnessed the previous 9 plagues, and they hear what's going to happen, refuse to believe it's going to happen? It's because they're rejecting God. It's not because they are stupid. It's that they have made a prior decision to reject God and a biblical view of reality. So we see that around us all the time. People again and again - friends, family members - just don't have anything to do with Christianity, and they reject it completely from the foundation all the way up. They don't want to have anything to do at all with Christianity, and they never will.

But our job as believers is to constantly be kind, constantly be giving them the gospel, looking for opportunities. We don't want to absolutely drive them away by pestering them with the gospel, but looking for and praying for those God-given opportunities we have, that God can create certain situations that will make them teachable or give them an opportunity to listen again.

Now when we get little further down into chapter 12, we have the various regulations related to the Passover.

^NKJ Exodus 12:43 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "This is the ordinance of the Passover: No foreigner shall eat it.

It's not for Gentiles. It is only for Israel because this is a picture of what He is doing for the nation as a whole in redeeming them; the payment price to free them from bondage to Egypt, which is a picture of our bondage to sin.

^NKJ Exodus 12:44 "But every man's servant who is bought for money, when you have circumcised him, then he may eat it.

In other words circumcision is a picture of being loyal and identifying with the Abrahamic Covenant. That was the sign of the Abraham Covenant. The Sabbath is a sign of the Mosaic Covenant. So it only applied to a servant if that servant identifying himself with Israel and with the Abrahamic Covenant. In contrast a sojourner (this would be someone who was just traveling through Goshen or someone who just temporarily staying with them):

^NKJ Exodus 12:45 "A sojourner and a hired servant shall not eat it.

…because they they're not identified with the Abrahamic Covenant.

^NKJ Exodus 12:46 "In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you break one of its bones.

So it’s to be eaten in the house with the family. Each household had his own lamb. You couldn't transfer it. You can’t transfer your faith to somebody else in the house. No lamb was to be broken because no bone was going to be broken when Jesus was on the cross. That is the depiction there.

^NKJ Exodus 12:47 "All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.

^NKJ Exodus 12:48 "And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat it.

This is how a Gentile would become identified with Israel and become part of Israel. They would be a proselyte and enter into the heritage of Abraham. There are several Gentiles such as Rahab and Ruth who entered into Israel. Rahab was a Canaanite who entered at Jericho. Ruth was a Moabitess. They are both in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ.

^NKJ Exodus 12:49 "One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you."

So you have two different rules or regulations there.

Verse 50 summarizes it:

^NKJ Exodus 12:50 Thus all the children of Israel did; as the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

^NKJ Exodus 12:51 And it came to pass, on that very same day, that the LORD brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt according to their armies.

So that brings us to the next verse, which is going to emphasize the escape from Egypt, the deliverance itself as Moses parts the Red Sea. Next time we will take a look at the issues related to their departure, the Red Sea, their advance to Mount Sinai and the role that the parting of the Red Sea plays in terms of being a picture of baptism according to 1 Corinthians 10:1-3.

Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.

Illustrations