The Passover and the Exodus (Exodus 12:1-15:21)

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(1) Sermon Script

Reading: Exodus 14:13-31 Coverage: Exodus 12:1-15:21

Introduction: Slow learners

“I get knocked down but I get up again. You're never going to keep me down.”

The NRL used to have it as their theme song in 1998. But it’s a stupid song. It is a song about living life as a fool. The only people who get up after they’ve been knocked down are drunks. That’s what the song is about. “He drinks a whisky drink, a vodka drink, a lager drink, a cider drink" The songs about getting drunk, and getting in fights, but getting up again to get knocked down.

Pharaoh is someone who gets knocked down only to get up again, only to get knocked down. He’s a fool who won’t learn from his mistakes. Pharaoh is like a violent drunk, knocked down 9 times, but still wants to fight the bouncers.

Israel saved through twin judgments: Passover & Exodus

Now, the story of Exodus 12 to 15 is of two mighty final judgments of God. Through them, God both punishes his enemies and saves his people. The first judgment, the Passover, still holds out the hope of blessing for Egypt. But the second judgment, the baptism in the red sea, is final. After it, there is only the saved, and the dead bodies.

The first judgment: The Passover — saved through blood

The first judgment in God’s knock out one-two combination is the Passover. As terrible as it is, it is, so to speak, only the lead punch to the knock-out blow.

The blood of the firstborn

Now, YHWH had always intended the death of the firstborn to be part of the final flurry with Pharaoh. While Moses was travelling from Midian, God said to him:

²¹ The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. ²² Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, ²³ and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.'" (Exodus 4:21-23 NIV)

In other words, all of the other plagues were just the warm up act. Now God is going to execute retribution on Pharaoh. It is proportionate. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Firstborn son for a firstborn son. Pharaoh has abused God’s firstborn son. By enslaving Israel, murdering Israel’s boy babies, trying to destroy Israel’s army. So God will do the same. The death of the firstborn was God’s deliberate, planned retribution.

And only the blood of Egypt’s firstborn will release Israel from slavery. Nothing less than the death of the firstborn could set Israel free. So on Passover eve, God commanded special preparations be made.

Preparing for the first Passover: the blood of the lamb

On that evening, the people were to gather in families. Each family took an unblemished male lamb or goat. At dusk, they slaughtered it, drained the blood into bowls, and their door frames with it. The reason… Exodus 12:11-13

[I]t is the LORD's Passover. ¹² "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn-- both men and animals-- and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. ¹³The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. (Exodus 12:11-13 NIV)

We see here why the evening is called ‘Passover’. For as YHWH ‘passes through’ Egypt, he will ‘pass over’ those houses marked with the blood of the lamb. The firstborn of Israel will be saved by the blood of the lamb. But the firstborn of Egypt will be struck dead, for there is no protection of blood. This is a sign for Israel that salvation is found only in the blood of the lamb.

Fast Food

Then the families ate the lamb as a meal. The side dish was unleavened bread and bitter herbs. This was ancient fast food. Spit roast was the quickest way to cook. But it’s very expensive and wasteful, just like all fast food is. Whatever wasn’t to be eaten was to be burnt up. No leftovers for tomorrow, for by then, they’d be on the road out of Egypt. And for that journey, they needed to trust that YHWH would provide for them.

And they ate it fast, too. With sandals on, walking stick in hand, and with their loins girded ready to run. This is eating and running. For on this night, at any moment there would be a be a frantic banging at the blood stained door, and their Egyptian neighbours, fresh from weeping over their dead boy, would be rushing them out of Egypt, begging them to hurry, piling into their arms all their best silverware and gold jewellery and designer clothing, and pleading with them never again to return to Egypt.

Preparing for many Passovers: The First Day of a Feast, the First of Many Feasts

So momentous was this event, that this wasn’t just a once off meal. This became a ritual celebration. And it wasn’t just one dinner. YHWH commanded a 7 day feast to be observed every year, for perpetuity. ‘The Feast of Unleavened Bread’. For the generations to come must learn about God’s salvation.

The Firstborn belongs to YHWH (13:2; 13:11-16)

Now, after the Passover, God considered the firstborn sons of Israel differently. So we read in Exodus 13:2-3.

"Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal." (Exodus 13:2-3 NIV)

The firstborn sons now belong to God; Israel owed God their firstborn sons. This taught Israel three things: First, Israel is not really all that different from Egypt. God is completely in his rights to kill the firstborn of Israel. But YHWH in his mercy provides blood to save his people. Second, it takes blood be saved by God. Salvation involves messy, bloody, smelly sacrificial slaughter. And third, Israel’s freedom cost the life of Egypt’s firstborn son. A firstborn son must die to free God’s people from slavery.

To teach later generations of Israelites, God set up the law of the firstborn. This required either sacrificing or redeeming the firstborn. A firstborn animal always meant that an animal was slaughtered (See Exodus 13:11-16; 18:15-18). New life meant sacrificial death. And a firstborn son had to be bought back with money (Numbers 18:15-17). This taught that the Israelites aren’t born free. They were born slaves and had to be redeemed at a costly price (Psalm 49:7-8).

Second Judgment: The Exodus – Saved through the Sea.

The second judgment, the final judgment, is what happens at the Red Sea. At the Red Sea, Pharaoh will get knocked down, and he will not get up again. Israel doesn’t take the direct route out of Egypt. They come out like a private bus service; the longest way possible, for two reasons: First, YHWH wanted to protect his people from war (Ex 13:17). They would want to go back to Egypt. For God knows us well, and he does not test us beyond what we can bear (1 Cor 10:13). And second, YHWH wanted to lure Pharaoh and his chariots to their doom. He is using Israel as bait (Ex 14:3).

Our bible reading tells the story. YHWH parts the Red Sea, and 2 million Israelites pass through on dry ground. Pharaoh and his chariots take the bait and plunge after them. And YHWH folds the sea back over them, killing them all. And as the dead bodies wash up on the beach, Israel dances and sings. Yahweh has saved them. They saw it all with their own eyes. And the result is given in chapter 14 verse 31:

³¹ And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant. (Exodus 14:31 NIV)

We might see this as a horrible and harsh judgment. And it is. But let’s remember that it is strictly fair. Pharaoh sought to drown Israel’s army of newborn boys. So Yahweh drowns the fully grown Egyptian army. This is strict justice, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

Part of the song they sung went like this.

I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously, The horse and rider thrown into the sea. (Repeat) The Lord, my God, my strength, my song, Is now become my victory! (Repeat) The Lord is God and I will praise him, My Father’s God and I will exalt him. (Repeat) [Ring of Praise 79, adapted from Exodus 15:1-3]

The song celebrates both their salvation, and God’s judgment on Egypt’s army.

Our Passover and Exodus

Since the Exodus, the most important event for Israel was the coming of the Messiah. They eagerly looked forward to the coming of this prophet like Moses.

Jesus the firstborn so we can be God’s firstborn

And it became clear that the Messiah would take the title of ‘Yahweh’s firstborn’. As Psalm 89:27 says:

“I [Yahweh] will also appoint him my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth.” (Psalm 89:27 NIV)

And we know this Messiah is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the firstborn of God. So the New Testament teaches.

He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. (Colossians 1:15-16 NIV)

But when He [God] again brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him [Jesus].” (Hebrews 1:6 NIV)

Jesus is ‘the firstborn’. What does this mean? Well, I’ll start out by tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that Jesus is created. Jesus always existed. He is not created, he is eternal. If that’s what it doesn’t mean, what does ‘firstborn’ mean?

First, the word ‘firstborn’ reminds us that Jesus is God’s unique Son. He has always been and always will be, the unique and only Son, God the Son. The firstborn in Exodus was wholly consecrated to God. And God the Son from all eternity has been consecrated to his Father. The Son has obediently dedicated himself to serving the Father and doing his will.

Second, it also means that Jesus is heir of everything. In the Old Testament, the firstborn became the ruler. The ‘firstborn’ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that is Jesus. Jesus is firstborn because he made everything (Colossians 1:16). So, everything belongs to Jesus, because he created everything. In other words Jesus is God. We owe him our allegiance.

Third it reminds us that Jesus wants us to be his brothers. The ‘firstborn’ wanted to be ‘the firstborn of many brothers’ (Romans 8:29). In love he wanted to share his father with us. So the Son became our brother. Though fully God, the Son became fully human. He is not ashamed to be our brother.

And because the death of God’s firstborn set us free, we can now also take the title of firstborn. Israel under the Old Covenant took the title of God’s ‘first-born’. But now Jesus, the true Israel, takes it. And through our union with Jesus, we also take the title ‘firstborn’. So we read Hebrews 12:22-24

^‘But you have come … to the church of the firstborn (plural) registered in heaven.’ (Hebrews 12:22-24, note plural in the original).

Furthermore, when Jesus rose again, he became the ‘firstborn from the dead’ (Colossians 1:18). When we rise, then we will be like Jesus, our big brother, the firstborn of his resurrected family (see 1 Cor 15:20-23). For Jesus our big brother wants to share everything with us. His Father, his resurrection body, his inheritance, his rule of the universe.

Jesus our Passover Lamb so God’s Wrath passes over us

But Jesus is not just the firstborn of God so we can be God’s firstborn. Jesus is also our Passover lamb so God’s Wrath passes over us. For on the Passover in 33AD, Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said that it was his body (Lk 22:7-13; Mk 14:12-16; Mt 26:17-19). He took a cup and said that it was his blood. He redefined the Passover as a meal about himself.

It is interesting that no account of the Last Supper mentions eating the Passover lamb. Perhaps they were highlighting the bloodshed of the one who John the Baptist called, ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’ (John 1:29, 36). Christ is our Passover lamb. His blood covers us and protects us from the wrath of God.

Every year before the ‘Feast of Unleavened Bread’, everyone in Israel scoured their houses to get rid of leaven. Leaven is the dough left over from last week’s lump. It is allowed to ferment over the week. Then it was added to next week’s fresh dough to make it rise. But for the whole week of the feast, there was to be no leaven in Israel. And the people were to eat bread made without leaven.

Paul uses this festival by way of an analogy in his letter to the Corinthians. In Corinth, a man claiming to be Christian was sinning seriously, and sexually. And Paul says, this sinful use of sex is the old way of life. This is the way the Corinthians used to live – in sexual sin. It’s like last week’s dough. It’s gone off. And if it is added to the new dough, it will spread. So the Corinthians needed to do what the Israelites did to leaven for the Passover feast. Get rid of it. Expel the man who called himself a Christian but was doing this sin. Otherwise, the influence of that sin would spread quickly through the church. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians:

⁶ Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? ⁷ Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. ⁸ Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:6-8 NASB)

Jesus death as the Passover lamb has made them unleavened. The Corinthian church are in fact like unleavened bread during Passover. Pure and unspoilt in God’s sight, and acceptable to him. All this is because of the sacrifice of Jesus as the Passover lamb.

So now they need to be what they are. Just as in the passover feast, the death of the lamb was followed by a week of celebrations of feasting on bread without leaven, so also the whole life of the Christian is cleansed by the death of Jesus and is followed by a life-long celebration of putting away malice and wickedness. Be what you are. You are unleavened. So be unleavened. Celebrate the forgiveness won by Jesus’ death with holy living for the rest of your lives.

Jesus our Exodus way to God

Jesus also had an Exodus We see this in Luke Chapter 9 verse 30 and 31. That is the famous story of the transfiguration, where on the Mountain in the Cloud…

Two men, Moses and Elijah, ³¹ appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure (literally, exodus), which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem (Luke 9:30-1 NIV, compare NLT).

Literally, exodus means, ‘way out’. Jesus was looking to return to his Father. And his ‘way out’, his ‘exit road’ was via Jerusalem. At Jerusalem, Jesus would die, rise again, and then ascend back to the right hand of his Father in glory. The way out of this dying world for Jesus was his death, resurrection and ascension. And that is the ‘way out’ for us. For Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). And Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension is the ‘way out’, the exodus, for us. For he died for our sins, and rose again for our forgiveness. And now he sits at God’s right hand as our mediator and advocate. Jesus is the way, the only way to the Father. There is no other way.

First, Jesus is the firstborn, consecrated to God, who died and rose again to set us free from sin and make us a church of firstborns in him. Second, Jesus is our Passover lamb, whose sacrifice makes us unleavened, so we can live the rest of our lives as a holy festival to him. Third, Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension is the exodus, the way to God, both from him and for us.

Heaven: the saved singing songs of salvation at the seashore

And the picture of heaven in Revelation 15 is very similar to what we have in Exodus 15. For Moses and Miriam sang songs of salvation on the shore of the Red Sea. And so do those in heaven.

I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues-- last, because with them God's wrath is completed. ² And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. They held harps given them by God ³ and sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb: "Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. ⁴ Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed." (Revelation 15:1-4 NIV)

Here, at the very end of the age, we find seven plagues. Chapter 16 shows these plagues are similar to the Exodus plagues. Painful sores, water to blood, darkness, frogs, deadly hailstones. And after a plague, the people are brought to a sea. The sea has become hard, like the walls of water which protected the Israelites. And standing by the sea stands God’s victorious people, singing about their salvation. The song is both Moses song and the Song of the Lamb. So this song is twice as good as the one in Exodus 15. For the salvation is twice as good, at least. And this song praises God for his just judgments.

And friends, that is what it will be like in heaven. Those in heaven have witnessed the awesome judgment day, and the separation of the sheep and the goats, the eternally saved and the eternally lost. And the saved forever know that God was completely fair in his judgments. There they will truly understand not only how kind God was to them, but also how much those who God sent to hell deserved it. The saved will see that the eternal condemnation of the impenitent is utterly deserved.

Friends, sometimes we wonder if an eternal hell is fair. I don’t think you understand the bible’s teaching on hell if you didn’t sometimes wonder this. But in heaven no one will wonder how an eternal hell can be fair. For though they have witnessed that great and eternal separation, those there will sing,

‘Just and true are your ways, King of the ages’ … ‘your righteous acts have been revealed’

Let’s pray.

(2) English Translation (Exodus 12:21-41; 14:13-31)

12:21

Wayyiqtol And Moses called all the elders of Israel

Wayyiqtol and he said to them,

Qetol ‘Pull out

WeQetol and take to yourselves a lamb for your clan

WeQetol and slaughter the Passover (lamb).’

12:22

Weqatal And take a bunch of hyssop

Weqatal and dip [it] in blood which is in the basin,

Weqatal and brush [it] onto the lintel and onto the two doorposts

out of the blood which is in the basin.

We-Renom-yiqtol And none of you (pl) shall go out of the door

of his house until morning.

12:23

Weqatal And YHWH will pass by to strike [the] Egyptians

Weqatal and he will see the blood upon the lintel

and upon the two doorposts,

Weqatal and he will pass over the door

We-Lo-yiqtol and will not deliver to be ruined,

to come into your houses to strike [you].

12:24

Weqatal You will observe this thing as a statute for you and for your sons forever.

12:25

MSM-Weqatal And it will be

Ki-yiqtol; tmp cls that when you come to the land

Rel clause which YHWH will give to you,

Rel clause just as he said,

Weqatal you will observe this service.

12:26

Weqatal And it will be

Ki-yiqtol that your sons will say to you,

SNC ‘What [is the meaning of] this service for you?’

12:27

Weqatal And you will observe this sacrifice of the Passover to YHWH,

Rel-qatal in which he passed over the house of the sons of Israel in Egypt

Temporal clause

+ we-X-qatal when he struck the Egyptians and saved our house.’

Wayyiqtol And the people bowed down

Wayyiqtol and they worshipped.