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 ‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

I had some South African friends who formed a singing trio, and I remember them belting out an old gospel song that included these words:

‘I’ve got the blood on the door of my heart, and all my life is beneath its cleansing flow;

And when God, He looks at me, He know more sees the things I’ve done, He only sees the blood of His crucified Son.’

This, of course, is imagery taken right out of Exodus 12. As we have seen, the Passover lamb points ultimately to Jesus. For the people of Israel then, as for us now, it was the application of the shed blood which made all the difference between salvation and judgment.

In terms of God bringing “judgment on all the gods of Egypt” (12), we could ask, ‘How so if idols are not real?’ But I wondered, could it be that the judgment is on the demonic powers lying behind idolatry, exposing them, defeating them, and demonstrating the far superior power of the living God? Then I read Tom Hale’s commentary and he explained that this judgment also fell on those human beings the Egyptian people worshipped. They too lost their firstborns.

Whatever the correct interpretation may be, we can say in the words of a more recent song that ‘Jesus is the winner Man’, and in Him we win too!

PRAYER: Today, Lord, I want to thank you again for the precious blood of Jesus that takes away all my sin as I trust in Him and His Cross.

Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire – with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

As regular communicants, believers gathering around the Lord’s table who feed on Christ by faith, are we flexible? Are we ready for off? We must be ever ready to leave on the next journey the Lord has for us. This may not be a physical, geographical movement from one place to another, but the Lord’s people need to be adaptable and adjustable, always open to the movements of the Spirit. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut, and, as someone said, the only difference between a groove and a grave is one of depth!

PRAYER: Oh Lord, please keep my walk with you fresh and alive, and help me to live in a state of readiness to ‘move’ at your bidding

Thought: “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.

Three other aspects of salvation are typified in these three verses:

• The fact that we are all, by our sin, responsible for Jesus’ death (6);
• The truth that the blood of Jesus must be personally applied to our hearts (7).
• The reality that we get to feed on Christ by faith (8). ‘We trust Christ that we might be saved from our sins by His sacrifice, but we must also feed on Christ in order to have strength for our daily pilgrim journey. As we worship, meditate on the Word, pray, and believe, we appropriate the spiritual nourishment of Jesus Christ and grow in grace and knowledge.’ Warren W. Wiersbe, Old Testament commentary, p.163.

The Cross of Jesus truly is ‘Wondrous’, and to think that we can ‘survey’ it in documents written centuries before the historical event! ‘How marvellous, how wonderful, and my song shall ever be.’

PRAYER: ‘May I never lose the wonder, the wonder of the Cross.’

(Apologies that there will be an interruption in these notes next week. I hope to return to writing them w/b 16^th January. Thank you again for your interest and support

The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.

Yesterday I had the privilege of having a thirty minute conversation about the Cross with a fellow-believer. My heart still burns at the thought of it. We chatted about how there is a ‘river of blood’ running through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation; about how God has clearly made known His way of salvation.

No wonder Alec Motyer writes about the ‘sacred precincts’ of Exodus 12. You feel over and again that you are on holy ground. It gives you the tingles. At every turn you run into Jesus and His Cross. For example, today’s verse points to Jesus who came into the world and lived the only perfect human life. So he was able to offer Himself to God as both Priest and Victim – the one full, final, perfect offering for sin.

But, as Alec Motyer says, ‘How could Israel have ever accepted that, nevertheless, this was a great new beginning (12:2) and that (of all unlikely – even absurd things) their deliverance would hinge on what they were to do with a lamb and blood?’ ‘The message of Exodus’ p.128. It takes faith to accept salvation on God’s terms – as my friend and I observed in the course of our conversation.

‘There is a way for man to rise, to that sublime abode;

An offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit’s energies,

An Advocate with God.’

PRAYER: Thank you Lord that Jesus paid it all; only He is worthy.

If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.

This reminds me of the hymn, ‘Now none but Christ can satisfy’ – a song describing the spiritual search through arid places prior to finding (or being found by) Christ.

I understand that one of Peter Seller’s former wives said about him, ‘All his life he was searching for something he never found.’ He was a comic genius, but, tragically, he was also a tortured soul.

When I first met my wife, Jilly, who was not then my wife, she was a participant on a ‘Christianity Explored’ course. She was a ‘seeker’, looking into the Christian faith. In a brief conversation she told me that all her life she had been searching for something, but had always felt an emptiness in her heart. Apparently I said to her, ‘That’s your God-shaped hole.’ (Augustine famously said that God made us for Himself and our hearts find no rest until they rest in Him).

The Passover lamb, which as we know prefigures Christ, brought satisfaction. Everyone could eat and be satisfied. Ultimately Jesus fulfils this picture. He fills the heart as nothing and no-one else can, and He satisfies the hunger of all who turn to Him by faith.

By the way, it’s a lovely thought isn’t it about households ‘sharing’ a lamb? As Christians, we have Jesus in common, and sharing Him is the essence of all true fellowship.

‘Now none but Christ can satisfy, no other Name for me. There’s love and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus found in thee.

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.

We have had a couple of bottles of a rather strong cough medicine in our bathroom cabinet for a long time. I had often heard the virtues of this particular linctus being extolled. In fact, someone once asked me to pick up a bottle for him and his wife when they were quite poorly. It was the first time I’d heard of it, but I knew he held it in high regard!

However, when a pre-Christmas cold left me with a lingering chesty cough, I stopped looking at the bottles and admiring them, and I actually took some. It was only then that I was able to experience the beneficial effects for myself. I’d heard ‘testimony’ given by others, but now I knew its efficacy.

The gospel is the good news about Jesus – the Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.But Christ (the gospel) has to be personally appropriated. Each person has to “take” Jesus for themselves, and to themselves. Jesus is the unfailing cure for sin-sick people, but He must be taken.

One day, when I was pastor of a little church in Lancaster, I was serving communion, and I suddenly felt a tug on my trousers, somewhere around my knees. I looked down into a pair of big brown eyes, and a delightful Ugandan boy looked up at me and said, ‘I want to get Jesus!’ Jesus wants us to ‘get’ Him. We so need Him.

Of course, I had to keep taking the medicine after imbibing the first drop. I didn’t merely take one amount, but several. As Christians we never outgrow our need of the gospel. How we need to keep on preaching the great gospel truths to our own souls. We never stop taking the medicine.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.

Passover was going to mark a new year for the Jews. Passover, of course, speaks loudly of the Cross. As we begin our own new year, we know this is a time when people think about new beginnings, fresh starts, clean slates, and even make resolutions. We also know that the familiar pattern is for many to feel demoralised about their well-meant intentions, not very far into January!

I realise afresh, as I consider this, that there can be no genuine starting over, no authentic new beginnings, without first coming to the Cross in meaningful repentance.

Also, we will not persevere with our good intentions to live as followers of Christ, throughout the year, if we do not set the Cross continually before us as the God-given pattern of discipleship. The Christian life is cruciform: it is Cross-shaped.

Someone said, ‘Being a Christian is not about pinning the Cross, like a badge to your old way of life; it is rather about nailing your old way of life to the Cross – daily!’

PRAYER: Jesus keep me near the Cross…