Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
Exodus 12:28
This obedience was to the instructions that the Lord gave Israel in Egypt in the First Passover. They were more than eager to obey this as a nation. They had just seen God's miraculous preservation of them through the ordeals that befell Egypt in the plagues. They had seen the painful consequences as God tried to move a hard-hearted Pharaoh through non-lethal means. But as Egypt's leaders kept resisting the supernatural power of God, the resistance led to this final plague. What blood and hail, bugs of various kinds, frogs, boils, disease, loss of crops and livestock failed to convince, the death of countless firstborn males would do. As Israel was spared all the effects of each plague, they now had to obey God through the Passover sacrifice and prepare for the Exodus in order to be spared the last one. And they did so. In one night they left Egypt behind them by God's supernatural deliverance.
The only plague that tested Israel's obedience was this last one. And in that obedience God's grace was shown to His people, even as His fiercest judgment came to the Egyptians. And in the Passover a new relationship with God began to unfold for Israel, a relationship borne out in a practice still within Judaism to this very day. A theology of deliverance emerged from these events that prepared the way for Jesus as Savior for the world.
O God of deliverance,
How I need to always know You in this way. And just as You delivered Israel though a perfect lamb's blood, so my soul is delivered by the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. Keep me from the bondage of my sin and pass over me by Jesus' blood applied to my door.
Amen
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment