Today's Verse
The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
Exodus 12:13
Historical Context
Exodus is Moses' account of how God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt, written for a people who would need to remember, in every generation, who rescued them and why. Chapter 12 sits at the hinge of the whole book. Nine plagues have already fallen on Egypt. Pharaoh has hardened his heart nine times. Now God announces the tenth and final blow, and before he strikes, he stops to give Israel detailed instructions for a meal.
That detail matters. Egypt was a land saturated with gods, and the firstborn son of Pharaoh was considered divine, an heir of the sun god. When God says he will execute judgment 'on all the gods of Egypt,' he is not being poetic. The tenth plague is a public dismantling of Egypt's entire religious order.
But Israel is not innocent. They have lived in Egypt for four hundred years and have picked up Egypt's gods along the way (Joshua 24:14 says so plainly). The angel of death has no reason to pass over an Israelite house simply because it is Israelite. What separates the saved from the struck is not ethnicity, not merit, not even sincerity. It is blood on a doorframe.
God also resets the calendar. This month, he says, will be the first month of your year. Israel's whole sense of time is to be reorganized around this rescue. Every Passover afterward, for more than three thousand years now, Jewish families have eaten roast lamb and told their children: this is what the Lord did for us when he brought us out.
Reflection
God did not ask the Israelites to be brave that night. He did not ask them to fight, or to prove themselves, or to feel the right feelings. He asked them to kill a lamb and put its blood where he could see it. That was all. The families who did that lived. The families who did not, died.
We do not like this. We would prefer a God who saves people based on their intentions, or their upbringing, or the general decency of their lives. But the Passover teaches us that judgment is real, that it falls on households, and that the only shelter from it is a substitute. Something has to die so that someone else can live.
When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him, he did not call him a teacher or a prophet. He said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.' Paul says it plainly: 'Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.' The whole ceremony in Exodus 12 was pointing forward. The lamb without blemish, the blood applied by faith, the meal eaten in the family, the deliverance from death: all of it finds its true meaning at the cross.
So the question the passage puts to you is not whether you are a good person. The question is whether the blood is on your door. Have you taken shelter under the death of Christ, or are you still trusting that the Lord will overlook your house on general principle? He will not. He is holy, and judgment is coming. But he has provided a Lamb. Apply the blood. Eat the meal. Trust him, and live.
For Reflection
Where in your life are you still trusting your own decency to shelter you, instead of the blood of Christ?
Prayer
Father, we thank you that you did not leave us to face your judgment alone. You provided a Lamb. You gave your own Son to be struck down so that we might be passed over. Teach us not to trust in ourselves, in our religion, or in our good intentions, but only in the blood of Christ shed for sinners. Mark our households as yours. Bring us out of every Egypt into the freedom of your people. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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