Moses: Faith to Trust in the Blood (Hebrews 11:28)

For vile and wicked one, a sentence is judged. A joy is now.

Well, good morning, and welcome to Kootenai Church. It looks like everybody got over the sickness from last week, so welcome back. Please stand, if you will. We're going to sing, Saved by the Blood.

Saved by the blood of the crucified one, the new world kind one, he's saved. For the scripture reading, will you please turn to Psalm 116.

While you're turning there, I'll just make you aware of a couple of events that you should be keeping on your calendar. First of all, next week is a barbecue potluck, July 24th. So we have this big lawn next to the church.

We can set up a game time out there, play softball. We're going to have hamburgers and hot dogs, and we just ask you to bring a salad or dessert, something that goes with that, like we normally would do for a church camp out every year.

And we're going to enjoy a time of fellowship and a meal together after our service next week. And then we have a baptism class coming up on August 14th. And I think there's information about both of those in your bulletin, so just pay attention to that.

And then one last thing, and there's nothing in your bulletin about this, but I just want you to put this on your calendar for later this fall. We're going to have a reformation conference the last weekend in October, October 28th and 29th.

That's a Friday and a Saturday, so it'll be a Friday evening and an all-day Saturday event, kind of like we did with Justin when he did his Clouds Without Water seminar here back in January. This will be a free conference, and we're just going to take up an offering to cover the cost of some of the food that we have for lunch that day.

And our speaker is Don Kistler. Don Kistler runs Solo Deo Gloria Publications. He has a ministry of republishing all of the old Puritan writings that have fallen out of print. And so Don republishes those, and his brother Dan Kistler attends here, as well as Dan's wife, Bernice.

So Don is going to come and talk to us about the Puritans and the Reformation, why the Reformation was necessary, and the role of Reformation theology in the lives of the Puritans, and what the Puritans believed, and what makes them significant.

So mark that on your calendar, October 28th and 29th. And we'll have a registration page up on the website. This is, right now, is the first that Josh is hearing about it, so we'll have a registration page up on the website soon.

This afternoon, he'll have it up. I'll let you know when that's available for your register so we know who is coming. Psalm 16, I'm gonna read together this entire Psalm. I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my supplications, because he has inclined his ear to me.

Therefore, I shall call upon him as long as I live. The cords of death encompassed me, and the terrors of Sheol came upon me. I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I beseech you, save my life.

Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is compassionate. The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low and he saved me. Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

For you have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed when I said, I am greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm, all men are liars.

What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I shall lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I shall pay my vows to the Lord. O may it be in the presence of all his people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his godly ones. O Lord, surely I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your handmaid. You have loosed my bonds. To you I shall offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord.

I shall pay my vows to the Lord. O may it be in the presence of all his people. In the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. You stand with me as we pray. Bow our heads.

Our gracious God, we are thankful for your great mercy to us, abundant as it is in Christ. Though our sins were great, your mercy is even greater. Your loving kindness toward those who are yours, to whom you have shown compassion and mercy, is infinite and beyond measure.

We thank you for it. We thank you that we can trust in it and rejoice in it and that you by your grace have lifted us up out of the mire and the pit of sin and have redeemed us for yourself that we may give to you eternal praise and glory and honor.

We begin in this life even by worshiping you.

Here this morning.

We pray for your blessing upon our worship, for you to energize our hearts, to serve you, to be inclined toward you, that you would open our eyes, that you would open our hearts and that out of us may flow freely worship and praise to you, our great and blessed triune God.

Thank you, Father, for choosing us. Thank you, O Lord Jesus, for dying in our stead and thank you, Holy Spirit, for applying the work of the Son to our behalf, to us, and regenerating us so that we may know the fullness of grace and of glory and of joy in Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.

Have sinned his guilty son And to become the lamb of God O Lamb of God, shed his blood Find Jesus Christ, the lamb of God Forgive the blood they crucified They laughed and swore his blood till I died

Christ Died for Us and Saves from Wrath

In Romans 5, verses six to nine, it says, for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

Moses, Pharaoh, and the Judgment of Egypt

And now please turn to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. I'm gonna start reading at verse 23. Read from verse 23 through verse 29. By faith, Moses, when he was born, months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who was unseen. By faith, he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.

By faith, they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned. Let's pray together. Our gracious God, we ask your blessing upon your word this morning, both the hearing of it, the preaching of it,.

And our reception of it.

We pray that as we place ourselves under your word that you would encourage us and edify us and equip us, train us in your word that we may be righteous and that you would unite our hearts in affection to you for what you have done for us in Christ and that you would unite our hearts in affection and love and unity with one another because we share this same sacrifice and this same blood.

We pray your blessing on this time to the end that we who are yours by your grace in Christ may give to you hearts of obedience and loving affection.

In Christ's name, amen.

The Old Testament contains numerous examples of God judging nations. God's judgments are always righteous and they are always well-deserved. And God judged the nations that occupied the land of Canaan, for instance, and he used the Israelites to execute that judgment on multiple nations that were rebellious and idolatrous, immoral and wicked to a degree that is almost unimaginable.

God used Israel as an instrument of judgment sometimes and then he turned around and turned the scope of his judgment against Israel at other times. So at some points in Israel's history, they were an instrument of judgment upon other nations and at other points in Israel's history, they were the recipients of God's judgment at the hand of other nations.

And that was true not just for Israel, that was true for a number of Old Testament nations, Babylon, Nineveh, the Medes, the Persians, the Edomites, the Midianites, all of them at times were used as instruments of God's judgment as well as they received God's judgment.

But of all the judgments of the Old Testament, the judgment of judgments that far surpasses all other judgments, in fact, the judgment that rings throughout the ages is God's judgment upon the nation of Egypt when he delivered the children of Israel out of their bondage and their slavery under the leadership of Moses.

That judgment upon Egypt demonstrated God's power and his sovereignty. Those judgments showed that Yahweh is not like any of the other gods, that Yahweh is a lone God and he is God above all other gods and that there is no God of the nations that is like him.

He demonstrated his sovereignty and his mercy and throughout the Old Testament, in many instances, there were judgments that were cataclysmic. The flood, for instance, was a cataclysmic judgment but it was not targeted at any one nation, it just wiped out all except for Noah and his family that were on the ark.

Then there were judgments that were cataclysmic in nature like Sodom and Gomorrah that destroyed the entire civilization, the entire city and wiped them out but those judgments, though they were targeted, were not protracted.

Israel's judgment is unique in that it was, sorry, Egypt's judgment was unique in that it was targeted toward one nation, it was protracted over a series of perhaps several months and it was utterly cataclysmic in that it destroyed the entire economy, the agriculture, the political structure and everything of the nation of Egypt.

The plagues on Egypt demonstrated God's sovereignty over his creation because he controlled elements like water and hail and light. It demonstrated his sovereignty over creatures as he controlled frogs and gnats and locusts and flies and it demonstrated his sovereignty over individual health as people were struck with boils and cattle and livestock died.

And then in the final plague, that 10th plague, that penultimate plague, the death of the firstborn, God demonstrated that he is the giver and the taker of life when he killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt showing that he is the sovereign over the life of men.

Those judgments upon Egypt also demonstrated that God's mercy and his protection are towards those who are his, who belong to him. God distinguished between the children of Israel and the people of Egypt by making sure that all of those plagues came upon, those judgments came upon the Egyptians and none of them ever touched the Israelites.

And thus God made a distinction between those who were his and those who were not his. And the judgment showed that all of Egypt's idols were powerless and that they were mute. Each plague that God unleashed upon the Egyptians was intended to mock and hold up to scorn and ridicule one of the Egyptian gods.

So for instance, when God turned the water into blood in the Nile River, it demonstrated that the God of the Nile, Appi, was powerless to stop that judgment. The very deities that the Egyptians trusted in to protect them from things like this, plagues, God gave those plagues specifically aimed against the gods of Egypt so as to show his judgment upon their idolatry and the impotence of all of those gods to deliver them or to protect them.

Heket, the Egyptian goddess of birth had a frog's head. So the plague of frogs was demonstrated as an attack against that God to show that that God that they worship that had a frog's head was unable to deliver them from the plague of the frogs.

They worshiped a goddess with a cow's head named Hathor and the death of the livestock mocked that idol. They had a sun god, so God struck them with darkness. They had a goddess who allegedly protected their crops and so God sent locusts to eat up and destroy all of their crops.

Do you see the pattern? Do you see what God did? As if he took each one of these gods of Egypt and he just put them out to scorn them and to mock them and to judge them in plain sight. As a demonstration that he alone is God and God's dealings with Egypt and with Pharaoh also serve to show the sovereignty of God over his creatures in terms of him showing mercy to some and hardening others.

This is a key thing to catch because Paul makes much of this in Romans chapter nine when he writes this, what shall we say then? There's no injustice with God, is there? Stop for just a second. You think back upon God's dealings with Moses and Pharaoh and one might be tempted to say if God is hardening Pharaoh's heart then there must be some injustice with God.

It's unjust for God to harden Pharaoh's heart just to judge him. So Paul asks the question in Romans nine, is there injustice with God? May it never be for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs but on God who has mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh,.

For this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. So then he has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.

That's the object lesson that Paul draws from that. Does that bug you? That God has mercy on whom he wants and that he hardens whom he wants? Do you object to that? Neither Moses nor Pharaoh deserved mercy, neither one of them.

Moses was just as ill deserving of God's mercy.

As Pharaoh was.

He was a son of Adam, born in rebellion, unregenerate at one point and Moses was just as deserving of God's judgment in terms of his own sinfulness as Pharaoh was or as you are or as I am. He's just as deserving of that.

He didn't deserve that mercy. He didn't deserve that grace. So would you take issue with that, object to God showing mercy to some and hardening others? If you would, Paul would say to you, you need to shut your hole and know your role or here's how Paul says it.

Who are you? Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? And our response to that is to shut our mouths and say we can raise no objection against God's justice. He has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.

Why does God elect some and not others? Who are you, oh man, to question the ways of God? Pharaoh and Moses are an example that God is sovereign over the giving of his grace. Always just in his judgments, he is righteous altogether, dispensing of his mercy.

And to give mercy to any one individual is grace beyond what we can possibly imagine. And the fact that he does so to countless millions from every tribe and kindred and tongue on the face of the planet in drawing them to him and choosing them and then saving them and paying the price for their redemption, that is a mercy that is beyond our ability to even comprehend.

And so we cannot object to God in the dispensing of his mercy. God's judgment of Egypt becomes a parable throughout the entire Old Testament that echoes all the way into the New Testament as time after time after time, God's deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and God's judgments upon the Egyptians become the story, the object lesson for God demonstrating grace to some and bringing them to salvation and delivering them as he has promised and God judging others who are very worthy of his judgment and his damnation.

And we find that here in Hebrews chapter 11. The climactic act of God's judgment was this 10th and final plague, the death of the firstborn that is mentioned and that is behind the mention of Moses' faith in verse 28.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them. Now we've been looking at Moses' faith from verse 23 through 27. It is described in verse 24 through 26 as a faith that refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and chose a spiritual affiliation with the people of God.

Then Moses by faith left Pharaoh and his wrath, we looked at that last week back in Exodus and today we're looking at the act of faith in keeping the Passover and sprinkling of the blood so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them, verse 28.

I wanna make a couple of general references to this verse and then we're going to jump back to the book of Exodus to see what is behind this and then I'll be drawing your attention back to the things that you're seeing here.

But keep your Bible open to Hebrews 11 here for just a moment because I want you to notice a couple of things. This reference to the Passover is something that would have been instantly recognized by every Jewish Christian who read this in the first century, who read the book of Hebrews.

They would have understood exactly what it is. They were intimately familiar with the Passover, the background of it, the celebration of it, all the nuances of it, the meaning of it. He doesn't explain that here.

He simply mentions it, something that would have been common to their knowledge and to the authors. This example of Moses' faith in verse 28 fits chronologically with him leaving Egypt in verse 27 of Hebrews 11, not fearing the wrath of the king because the very next thing that is mentioned back in Exodus 11 and 12 is the institution of the Passover.

Notice two key things in verse 21. First, notice there is a distinction between the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. Both are mentioned. Verse 28, by faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood.

Now, if you're mildly familiar with your Old Testament, at least, you'll recognize that the sprinkling of the blood that he's referring to here was part of the Passover celebration. So it raises for us the question, why is it that the author distinguishes between these two things, the sprinkling of blood and the Passover?

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood. Couldn't the author just simply have said, by faith he kept the Passover and left it at that? Why does he single out the sprinkling of blood?

There is a reason that these two things are distinct in the mind of the author and why he separates them here. Second, notice the reference in verse 28 to the destroyer. So that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.

And now we have to ask the question, who is the destroyer? Who is he who destroyed? And these two things we're going to observe as we turn back, just to remind you, these two things are separate, Passover and sprinkling of blood.

Why are they separated? And then second, who is the destroyer? Now turn back, if you will, to Exodus chapter 11. Exodus chapter 11. A little bit of context, where we're gonna pick it up is after the nine plagues that the Lord smote Egypt with.

The previous one at the end of chapter 10 is the darkness that fell over the land. And in all of those plagues between Israel and Egypt, distinguishing between them by preserving his people. And in all of those instances, all nine of those plagues, Israel didn't have to do anything to be preserved.

They just had to exist. They just stayed in Goshen, and the plague didn't strike them. But with the Passover, something is different. Israel did nothing to be preserved in the previous plagues, but in this 10th plague, Israel would have to do something to be sovereign from the one who would destroy.

This final plague is the death of the firstborn. And this plague would be different than all the other plagues. More severe, it is the ultimate, it is the climax of all of these 10 plagues. It is the worst one.

It does devastation to Egypt, and it is the plague that ends up causing Pharaoh and the Egyptians to release Israel from their bondage. So we pick it up where we left off last week, not actually in chapter 11 yet, but in verse 27 of chapter 10.

This is what's referred to back in Hebrews 11, 27, when it says, by faith he left Egypt. But the Lord hardened them, not willing to let them go. But Pharaoh said to him, get away from me. Beware, do not see my face again.

For the day that you see my face, you shall die. Moses said, you're right, I'll never see your face again. And there you see Pharaoh's heart is hardened as an act of God's judgment. The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.

And throughout the passage I mentioned, throughout the previous chapters I mentioned last week, there's references to Pharaoh hardening his own heart that describes his impenitent, incalcitrant disobedience to God's revealed will.

And then there are references to God hardening Pharaoh's heart, which describes the act of God's judging and pouring out upon Pharaoh the very thing that he wanted. And this is an act of God's judgment that's there in that passage.

God hardening Pharaoh's heart. Now listen, apart from divine grace, this is how man responds to the truth every time truth is presented to him. He hardens his own heart. Apart from divine grace, that is man's response.

God judges the sin of the rebellious unbeliever by hardening the unbeliever's heart so that the unbeliever ends up getting exactly what it is that the unbeliever desires, namely an impenitence and an unwillingness to obey that truth.

So the act of God's judgment.

Is something that Pharaoh deserved. Don't get in your mind that this is not something Pharaoh deserved. If in your mind you think that Pharaoh was out stumbling through his moral darkness, seeking after the one true God, just wandering around Egypt asking anybody and everybody, can you tell me if there's a God, if he exists and who is he?

I wanna worship the one true and only God. That was not Pharaoh. Pharaoh was hard, he was impenitent, he was incalcitrant before Moses ever encountered him before the 10 plagues. And so Pharaoh here is just getting exactly what he deserved.

He's not seeking to know God and his rejection of the truth ends up hardening his own heart. It results in God judging him and damning him by God hardening his heart. Now I ask you, listener, do any of you here sitting here like Pharaoh?

You sit here week after week, you hear the gracious appeals to turn to Christ for salvation, you hear of God's work in Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and yet you respond to it week after week by refusing to embrace God's provision in Christ and refusing to repent of your sin.

If that is you, I'm telling you right now you are doing what Pharaoh did and that is you are working diligently to harden your own heart so that eventually repentance and penitence will be impossible for you.

And eventually God will stop calling you to repentance because every time you are confronted with the truth, you respond in disobedience and rejection and your own prideful self-will and your own excuses against the truth and your own excuses to continue in your sin.

And that response to the truth of God only serves to harden your heart even further and that will happen time after time after time again because the truth of God's word always has one of two effects.

It either softens the heart toward repentance or it hardens the heart toward damnation and judgment. And if you sit here week after week hearing all of these gracious offers to trust Christ for salvation, you are working to harden your own heart and I promise you that God's judgment upon you will be him hardening your heart finally and fully until the day of his wrath, when his wrath pours out upon you and breaks you without mercy on that day.

Your only recourse is to turn in repentance and faith. Heed the example of Pharaoh. You will find that if you reject truth until your dying day, that you have spent your entire life working hard to accomplish the hardening of your heart and that God will have given you exactly what it is that you were working so hard for.

And you'll have no one to blame but yourself. You'll find that the hardness of the heart was not only the cause, but also the precursor to God's judgment. God prepared to judge Pharaoh by hardening his heart.

Exodus 11, verse one. Now the Lord said to Moses, one more plague I will bring on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out from here completely.

And notice that the Lord knew exactly how many judgments were necessary for Pharaoh. God wasn't sitting in heaven saying, yeah, let's try turning water into blood and see how that goes. That didn't work.

Let's try frogs. I wonder how many of these judgments it's gonna take before Pharaoh catches on to something is amiss and lets my people go. That was not God's intention at all. God knew that it would be 10 plagues.

He knew what each of those plagues would be. And he knew the outcome of each one of those plagues upon Egypt. And he knew that at the 10th one, Pharaoh would not only let them go, he would drive them out.

He would insist upon their leaving. Now that's quite a change, isn't it? From before, Pharaoh's saying,.

Yeah, you can go,.

Maybe just go a couple miles out into the wilderness, then come right back. I'll let you go or I'm not gonna let you go or I promise to let you go and then turn him back on that. This is quite a different response.

Not only will Pharaoh let you go, he will ask you to go, he will beg you to go, he will pay you to go, he'll drive you out of here and he will insist on you going and being gone forever. Do I sound like Kamala Harris yet?

You're gonna go and then when you're gone, you're gonna go and you're gonna go to go. This is, the change would be entirely due to this 10th plague. Pharaoh would finally be a completely broken man. Exodus chapter 11 verse four, Moses said, thus says the Lord, about midnight I'm going out into the midst of Egypt and all the 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 is behind the millstones, all the firstborn of the cattle as well. Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt such as there has not been before and such as shall never be again.

But against any of the sons of Israel, a dog will not even bark, whether against man or beast, that you may understand how the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these your servants will come down to me and bow themselves before me saying, go 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. Now here's the judgment. Chapter 11 verse nine, then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you so that my wonders will be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. There it is again and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of the land. Now here are the instructions for the 10th and final plague.

This one results in their deliverance and this one would result in a ceremony that the children of Israel were commanded to obey annually every year as a reminder of what God was about to do. Exodus 12 verses one through three.

Now this is what's behind Hebrews 11 verse 28. Exodus 12, one through three. Now the Lord said to Moses in the land of Egypt, this month shall be the beginning of months for you. It is to be the first month of the year to you.

Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the 10th of this month, they are to each one take a lamb for themselves according to their father's households, a lamb for each household. Now notice that the Lord arranges their entire civic calendar around the celebration of this event.

In the middle of their lives, the Lord says, stop right now, this becomes January 1st for you. That's the equivalent of that. You're gonna begin a new year with the celebration of this feast so that as the new year would begin in Israel, they would be expecting and anticipating this massive celebration.

It was the best way for the Lord to demonstrate to them that this marked a brand new beginning. This is your liberation. This is you being brought out in fulfillment of all of my promises. So this begins the year for you.

Verse four. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them, according to what each man should eat.

You are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.

Now these details are for the annual celebration that would come after this. So not exactly how it unfolded on that night in Egypt because all of this happens really quickly. There's no four-day delay.

But in the commemoration of this event afterwards, there would be this delay where they would set aside the lamb on the 10th of the month, keep it apart until the 14th of the month, and then they would slay it on the 14th of this first month.

Notice the description of the sacrifice that is involved. It was to be an unblemished male lamb, that is a lamb without any physical defect whatsoever. They're looking, they couldn't offer a lamb that had broken its leg.

They couldn't offer a lamb that was missing an ear and that lamb that had his eyes gouged out because he got in a fight with somebody. It couldn't be a lamb like that. It had to be unblemished, free from physical defect.

That is intended to picture freedom from a moral defect of another lamb who would fulfill this sacrifice. They're to take it from amongst the flock and to set it apart and then kill it at twilight. Chapter 12, verse seven.

Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two-board doorpost and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roast it with fire, both its head and its legs, along with its entrails. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.

Now, you shall eat it in this manner, with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. Now, here's the reference in verse seven to the blood of this lamb that was to be put on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they ate it.

And notice the reference to the lamb. They were to eat the lamb, the Passover lamb. That is, they weren't just to kill it and observe its murder, its death.

Sorry, murder's the wrong word.

Observe its death. They were to take the flesh of that animal and appropriate it to themselves by consuming the sacrifice. That was the point of that. And they were not to eat it raw, and they were not to boil it with water, but they were to roast it with fire.

Why reference to the fire? Because fire in Scripture is a symbol of God's judgment. When fire falls, it's the fire of God that brings judgment, and so fire is a symbol for judgment. This is to picture this lamb that is sacrificed and slain, and then in its entirety, it is consumed.

Exodus 12, verse 12. For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live, and where 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. Notice in verse 12, the end of verse 12, this is a judgment against all the gods of Egypt.

I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. See, God's point is not just to execute judgment on the Egyptian people, but rather, there is a theological, polemical issue at play here, where he is going after all of their various gods, and it has become obvious by this point that that is the case, with the god of the Nile mocked, and the god of the frogs mocked, and the god of the cow mocked, and the god of the sun mocked.

Well, now what is being mocked is the god who supposedly protects the firstborn. In Egypt, they worshiped a god called Min, who was the god of reproduction. They worshiped a goddess called Heket, who was the goddess of childbirth.

They had a god, Isis, who was a goddess who protected children, and even Pharaoh himself was viewed as a god. Pharaoh was worshiped as a god, and so his firstborn son then was also deemed to be god, since Pharaoh's firstborn son would eventually become Pharaoh, inevitably, and he would be worshiped as god as well.

So what happens when God kills all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, including Pharaoh's son? What happens? He is going after all of the gods of Egypt who are supposed to protect the firstborn, and God is actually killing an Egyptian god, so it's judgment executed against all the gods of Egypt.

The significance of the blood, by marking of the door, they secured the protection from death, and the judgment would be that the destroyer would go out through the land of Egypt and destroy the firstborn in every house, except in those houses where blood marked the doorposts and the lintel of the house.

Verses 14 through 20 of Exodus 12 establish a feast of unleavened bread which came to be celebrated with the Passover in conjunction with it. Skip down to verse 21. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families and slay the Passover lamb.

You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts, and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning, for the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians.