FRIDAY
The final purpose of the plagues, and probably the most obvious one, is the deliverance of God’s people from slavery in Egypt.
Exodus 3:16–17 (NIV) 16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Exodus 3:19–20 (NIV) 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
Then after the crossing of the Red Sea we read:
Exodus 14:31 (NIV) 31 And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
We see this theme clearly in the distinctions in the plagues that God makes between the people of Israel living in Goshen and the Egyptians. In the flies, livestock, hail, darkness and death, God makes a distinction on the people of Israel. They are exempt from the plagues God brings on the Egyptians.
This is most notable in the Passover. God commands Moses and Aaron to tell the people to butcher a lamb, eat it (if it was too much for one family they were to share with another), and wipe some of the blood on the doorposts of their house. When the angel of death passed through Egypt, he would not enter the house with the blood on the doorposts. Every firstborn—humans and livestock—would be killed in the houses that didn’t have the blood on the doorposts. You can read the full account in Exodus 12.
The death of the firstborn, the 10th plague, you’ll remember is a response to Pharaoh killing the Hebrew boys at the beginning of the book. From this judgment, unlike Pharaoh, God makes a way of escape. It is the blood of the lamb that exempts one from the death of the firstborn. In the Passover, we see God’s mercy on display even amidst his judgment.
The Israelites were to celebrate a festival in honor of the Passover every year. This was to mark the beginning of their calendar year (Ex. 12:2). It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jesus is crucified during the Passover celebration. He institutes the Lord’s Supper as he shares the Passover meal with his disciples. In the Lord’s Supper, the lamb is missing. The implication is obvious. Jesus is the Passover lamb! His blood shed for us, when we accept it through faith, cancels the debt of our sin and exempts us from its ultimate consequence—death. We will live with God forever in eternity. Jesus employs this image of salvation in the Exodus to help reveal the even greater display of God’s power and his love and mercy in salvation for the people of God through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection to life eternal.
This is who God is. He saves. He delivers.
Reflection
Thank, praise and worship God for his salvation in Jesus.