Exodus 7-18
Pass Over
Manuscript
Today we look at one of the most famous passages of the Bible. The Exodus. Sure – the whole book is called “Exodus,” but the event of the “exodus” - the exit – the departure – of the people from Israel - the Exodus - that is the central part of the passage we are looking at today from chapters 7-18. The events of the Exodus are well known to Christians, and even many non-Christians. There have been epic movies made about the Exodus. Cecil de Mille’s The 10 Commandments starring Charlton Heston, and more recently the animated “Prince of Egypt.” Both films follow the rough outline of the Exodus events, but do bear in mind that in places they do take artistic licence and add in or modify some of the details. But the point is: Exodus is famous. And throughout the rest of the Old Testament it is constantly referred to. It is seen as the turning point in Israel’s history, when God delivered Israel from bondage and slavery and brought them out of Egypt by His mighty hand to bring them through many trials to the promised land. In the Psalms and elsewhere, the events of Exodus are constantly looked back to as the defining moment in Israel’s history. And the Exodus is event is referred to in the New Testament - something that we will look at later in this Sermon.
Today we are going to look at chapters 7-18. A lot happens in these 12 chapters and we can break it down roughly as follows:
In chapters 7-10 we have the first 9 plagues.
Then in chapters 11 and 12 we have the final devastating plague, culminating in the Passover and the actual departure of the Israelites from Egypt.
The rest of the chapters from 13-18 covers the journey from Egypt to Mt Sinai. But that journey is not uneventful!
In chapter 14-15 we read of the crossing of the Red Sea and again, God’s deliverance of Israel.
In chatpers 15-17 the Israelites grumble about water and food, and God provides.
And then in chapter 18, Moses’ father-in-law gives Moses some good management advice!
So let’s have a look at these plagues first up – the first 9 plagues. But before we do – a quick recap from a fortnight ago. Remember, the book of Exodus closes with the Israelites living in Egypt. They are oppressed by the Egyptians as an underclass, a slave class, in a fairly similar way to they way Africans were treated in the US during the slavery era. They are not even second class citizens, but they are slaves. And God sees their afflictions and hears their cries for help and determines to do something about it. He calls Moses – a pretty ordinary bloke who by this time is nothing more than a sheep herder in the wilderness. God prepares Moses and tells him to go to the Pharoah – the king of Egypt - and tell the Pharoah to let the Israelite people go. But Pharoah doesn’t want to lose his free labour force, so he refuses to let the Israelites go, and so God has to do something to force Pharoah’s hand. And that something is that God sends plagues on Egypt. There are various plagues that God inflicted on the Egyptians. Here’s a list:
1. Nile River turned to blood
2. Frogs
3. Gnats
4. Flies
5. Livestock die
6. Boils
7. Hail.
8. Locust plague
9. Darkness
Any of those plagues by themselves would have been pretty bad. Now we might say: isn’t that a bit rough for God to do these terrible things to the Egyptians? Certainly in this day and age, many people have this teddy bear image of God. They see God as this big grandfatherly figure in the sky who never gets angry. Or as some sort of divine teddy bear who is cute and cuddly. And so when they read the God of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament, and read about God sending plagues on the Egyptians, and many of the Egyptians suffered and died as a result of these plagues - that idea of what God does and who God is often doesn’t compute with our ideas of who we think God ought to be. And because we are a product of our modern Aussie culture, we can find this difficult to come to terms with. I know that I personally struggled for many years to come to terms with it. I went to catholic schools for most of my schooling, and I remember in our grade 9 Religious Education class we went through the plagues in Exodus. Our teacher would read out each plague, and then after he’d read it he would say, “Now we know that God wouldn’t do such a thing - these are only stories, fables.” Why did my religion teacher say that? Well – because he had this teddy bear image of God, that God is only nice and cute and cuddly.
But the fact is, we need to understand all of whom God is. God is love – that is true. But you know – love isn’t true love if it doesn’t go hand in hand with righteousness. God is also righteous. We’ve been looking at that in Genesis last year and in the Sermon on the Mount this year. God’s standards are high – and we are going to see that partcicularly in a fortnight’s time when we look at the giving of the Law, including the 10 Commandments. But in this case, we can see that God did not indiscrimately judge the Egyptians. He gave them heaps of chances to repent and let the Israelites go. In recent history, the white man should never have oppressed the black man, and in the same way, the Egyptians should never have oppressed the Israelites in the first place. The Egyptians had already sinned greatly by enslaving the Israelites. And then, God gave Pharoah and the Egyptians ample opportunity to let the Israelites go. And when they didn’t, God started by afflicting the Egyptians with plagues. One at a time – to give the Egyptians the opportunity to relent, but they didn’t. And so the plagues got steadily more and more destructive. The Egyptians had what was coming to them. And after each plague, the Pharoah either passes the plague off as something not from God, or he promises to let the Israelites go – but then goes back on his promise.
But we start to see something interesting from the fourth plague onwards – the plague of flies. God tells Moses that He will send flies to cover everything - flies even worse than a hot summer’s day in the Aussie bush. But, God says in
Exodus 822 But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. 23 Thus I will put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.” ’ ”
A distinction between the Egyptians and Israelites – God’s people. A distinction between people who are God’s people and those who aren’t. The one’s who are God’s people are not affected by the plague of flies. And it’s the same with subsequent plagues. In the fifth plague when the livestock are killed, the livestock owned by the Israelites are spared. With the plague of hail, the place where the Israelites lived was spared. With the plague of darkness – again, this didn’t touch the area where the Israelites lived. God made a distinction between those who are His and those who aren’t, and He still does to this day, as we shall see.
And in the case of Israel and Egypt that distinction came to a head with the 10th and most terrible plague of all. Most of us know what the 10th plague was. The Pharoah and the Egyptians had not heeded the previous 9 plagues – God’s warnings to Egypt. So we read:
11 The LORD said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here.
And then Moses went to Pharoah and we continue in verse 4
4 So Moses said, “Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5 and every 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 handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8 And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get 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 sometimes our familiarity with this plague can make us numb to how terrible it is. Can you imagine if your firstborn child dies? How horrible that would be? Now can you imagine if every first born child in our town of Gympie dies? Or even worse – in all of Qld – or even all of Australia dies? What a calamity that would be! What sorrow there would be! What tragedy and utter sadness. No wonder verse 6 says:
Exodus 116 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.
But – note – there would be an exception. A significant exception - just like the other plagues. God would make a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites. Between God’s people – and people who don’t follow God. At the same time as there will be unimaginable wailing in Egypt, in the areas where the Israelites lived everything would be quiet. Not even a dog would growl as none of the Israelites would be affected by this great judgement of God against the Israelite’s sin.
Now – and here’s where it gets interesting. Were the Egyptians guilty to deserve this punishment? When we look at their sin – yes they were. But the big question is – were the Isrealites any better? Sure- they were the ones suffering under slavery, but they hadn’t exactly always done the right thing either. Why did God choose the Israelites to be His people? Was it because they were better than other people? Because they deserved it? Later on in Deuternomy 7:7, God gives His reason for choosing Israel:
Deuteronomy 77 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
God chose Israel because He loved them, and He was keeping the oath that He gave to their forefathers. That is what we call grace. That God chooses us not for anything we’ve done. We haven’t earned God’s favour. He just loves us and shows us favour. And why He has chosen us and not others – is just a mystery that lies with God. And because it lies with God – and because God is supremely just and righteous - we can have full confidence that God’s choices are right choices. And so, in a sense the Israelite kids – the firstborn – deserved to die just as much as the Egyptian firstborn, but God made a disticntion because out of His mercy and grace. He chose not to punish the Israelites.
And God gave Israel a sign, a sign so that their houses would not fall under the same judgement. God told every Israelite household to sacrifice a lamb. Yes, although the Israelites would be spared the judgement of God, there was still a cost – the life of a lamb. And they were to smear the blood of the lamb on the doorframes of their houses.
Exodus 1212 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when 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.
That event was called the Passover. That is, - the Israelites were passed over when God executed His judgements. But in order for the Israelites to be passed over they had to do something, they had to take a lamb – kill it, and then smear its blood on the doorframes of their houses as a sign that they were God’s people. Through this event God not only spared all their firstborn, but it was also through this event that Pharoah finally let God’s people go. Tthey finally released them from slavery, and as we will learn later, they were released from slavery to become God’s special, chosen people. And this Passover became the defining event in Israel’s history and every year from them on in – in fact, even up to today, the Jews celebrate the Passover as their most solemn occasion of the year. Much like we celebrate Easter as our most solemn occasion. And there is good reason why the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter are celebrated with similary solemnity. Why? Because our Easter – is Passover. People – this Exodus – this Passover – this has tremendous signficance for us as Christians. Why? Because Easter is Passover. It’s even at the same time of year. And in most languages of the world, the word for Easter is the same word as Passover. The Last Supper that Jesus had with His disciples before He suffered and died on the cross was the Passover meal. And the lamb was none other than Jesus Himself. John the Baptist said about Jesus:
John 129 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There is a reason that Jesus died on the cross at Passover and not another time of the year. As 1 Corinthians 5:7 says:
1 Corinthians 5:7b For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
You see – Christ was our Passover lamb. The Exodus, and the covenant that God made with Israel aferwards which we’ll be looking at in the coming weeks, was only the precursor to what Christ would bring. How do we know that? Well, many years after the Exodus, but before New Testament times, there was a prophet called Jeremiah and God gave Jeremiah these words:
Jeremiah 31 31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
In this prophecy, Jeremiah refers to the covenant that God made with Israel when He took them out of Egypt, that is the Exodus. And He tells them that He will make a new covenant, a much better one. And in the book of Hebrews - that book quotes that prophecy from Jeremiah in Hebrews chapter 8 and says that Christ is this new covenant, the better covenant. And look at the final words of this promise that Christ fulfilled:
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Friends, when Christ died on the cross, He was our Passover lamb. His death and resurrection sealed the new covenant – or agreement – made in His blood. The agreement God gave us whereby He would forgive our sins! You know, when we look at the book of Exodus, we see something of quite literally biblical proportions. God performing amazing signs and wonders and freeing the Israelites from slavery to be a free people in their own land. But God has delivered us from something far greater than slavery to Egyptians. He has freed us from slavery to sin. Now remember last week when David shared with us, he mentioned that when we pray we tend to pray for the material and physical rather than the spiritual, but that God tells us to pray for the spiritual more than the material. When we read Exodus we read of a mighty physical deliverance. If that happened today it would certainly make the world stop and take notice. Plagues of darkness, seas parting. We notice that sort of stuff.
But the spiritual – sins forgiven – a relationship with God. For us that doesn’t seem to have quite the same wow factor as the things we see in Exodus. But friends – in the light of eternity, it is much more significant than rivers turning to blood or plagues of locusts or flies. To know that our sins won’t be held against us in the final judgement of God. To know that our sins will be Passed Over – why? Because of the sacrifice of our Passover Lamb – Jesus. To know that a distinction will be made between those who are God’s people and those who aren’t. Those who aren’t God’s people will have to atone for their own sins with an eternal judgement. While we who are God’s – if indeed you are God’s – make sure you are! While we who are God’s will be passed over, and will enter our rest, our Promised Land of the New Heavens and the New Earth. Paradise and reigning with God forever.
Well – back to Exodus. After the 10th plague, and all the firstborn of the Egyptians were killed, the Egyptians finally relented and let the Israelites go. But it didn’t take long for the Egyptians to change their minds – we read:
Exodus 145 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?”
They’d let all their free labour go! So they went off in pursuit, and many of us probably know how the Israelites were cornered by the pursuing Egyptian army - cornerned between the Egyptian Army and the Sea. And God miraculously parted the Sea so the Israelites could walk through the Sea onto dry land on the other side, but when the Egyptians tried to follow them, the sea returned to its place, and they Egyptians were drowned. Again – God made a distinction between His people and those who refused to obey Him. And the Israelites were saved from their enemies.
And they then travelled through the desert towards Mt Sinai, which is at the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula. And on the way – well – they were travelling through a desert, so there were issues with finding water and food. And the Israelites, who had so recently seen the mighty hand of God - all those plagues, the parting of the Red Sea – they whinged and grumbled against Moses saying things like we find in
Exodus 16:3“Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
It seems unbelievable that they would doubt God after seeing all of His wonders, and that they would want to go back to the slavery of Egypt. But sometimes we can be like that too. If you are a Christian, God has delivered you from the slavery of sin. But how often do we want to go back to the world’s way of doing things? The world’s attitudes towards relationships, sex, money, power? Let’s not be like the Israelites! But despite their grumblings, God did feed them and give them fresh water to drink. He looked after them. But as we will see later in Exodus, when God delivers us, He does expect us to obey us.
Friends, today we’ve done a brief survey of the events of the Exodus, how God delivered Israel from the slavery and oppression of the Egyptians. How God made a distinction between those who people who are His, and those people who are not. And we’ve seen how this has direct relavance for us today. That the Israelite Exodus was the forerunner that looked forward to Christ, the fulfilment of the Exodus. That for those who are God’s people - that is – those who have repented of their sin, and asked God to forgive them of their sin because of what Jesus has done and make Christ their Lord – which means to trust and obey Him. If that’s you – you are part of God’s people, and He will pass over you in judgement.
If that’s not you – well you can become part of God’s people by acknowledging your sins to God. Asking Him to forgive you, and then with God’s help – turning from that sin to a new life of following Jesus.
