Details

DEVOTION

EXODUS

DETAILS

Ex 12:1-11

12:1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire — head, legs and inner parts. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.

NIV

We have arrived at the start or the preparation of the last and final plague God is going to bring upon the Egyptians. It is rather interesting all the other plagues God just did them right out, but here he has very specific instructions for the Israelites to prepare themselves for this plague so that the angel God sends will know who is who. We will get into that as it unfolds for us in the next passages, but for now we should see just how exact God is. Why did he get such exacting instruction? Everything had to be done in a very detailed manner. They could not just kill any animal and sprinkle its blood on their doorposts. How would the death angel know the difference? God even ordained the changing of their known calendar to mark this event. This event became a continual celebration for generations upon generations. This was something really big in the lives of Israel and today in the lives of Jewish people all over the world. They celebrate the Passover in very specific fashion, following a prescribed pattern. This marks their rescue from slavery in Egypt. The sacrificial lamb such significance and the children of Israel have missed it completely. Certainly God was showing them what he was going to do, not just to rescue them from bondage in Egypt, but to rescue them and us from the bondage in sin, from the bondage Satan has imposed upon us, or rather we submitted to of our own freewill. God has in fact given the perfect, the most perfect lamb as a sacrifice to rescue us from the chains the bind us in sin. We know all this, yet have we allowed that moment of our salvation to escape us? Although it is very ritualistic in nature for the Jews to celebrate the Passover, they celebrate it. How many of us recall on a yearly basis the hour we first believed. How many of us spend time, at least once a year, remembering the events that led to our redemption? Surely we celebrate as a nation, as the nation of God, our redemption, making Good Friday and Easter morning a special moment in our churches. We celebrate what God did so we could be saved, but do we celebrate that as our personal Passover? Should not we recall that exact moment when we took the Lamb and devoured all of him, consumed every bit of him, and took his blood and sprinkled it over the doorpost of our heart. Shouldn’t we be ready, with our shoes on and our staff in hand, ready to leave at a moment’s notice? Why do we develop such deep roots in this life, in this world, when we should be ready to leave it in an instant? Sure we should occupy, but not Wall Street. We should not place any value on anything other than our redemption. Let us remember to celebrate the hour we believed, the time when God spared us, when we sprinkled the blood of Christ on the doorpost of our heart. What a day that was in our lives. What an hour!God changed our personal calendar. He gave us the day of the beginning of our eternal life. How could we ever forget how he came to us, gave us the specific instructions as to how we could be born again. How we needed to admit we were sinners, how we needed to repent of that sin and ask him for forgiveness, and how he did, and how he told us we needed to accept the sacrifice of his Lamb, his only son Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savoir. How glorious that day was in our lives. He rescued us. Let us not ever forget those details.