What Is The Passover?

God's Sovereign Plan, Not Improvisation 1:53

“Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.”

— Exodus 4:22-23 (NKJV)

Now, before we get to all that, let me ask you a question. Do you think that when God sent these plagues it was like, all right, let's try out this, we'll make the river's blood, let's see if that'll work? And then when it didn't work, He just moved on and tried, well, gosh, what to do, what to do, flies, I know, flies, or disease, or boils, or what have.

Do you think that's the way God processed this? That He tried thing after thing, and it just didn't work, and so finally comes up with this 10th plague. Do you think that's what would happen, or what did happen? Well, of course not.

And we know that's not the thought process that God had, because way back in Exodus 4, before any of these plagues hit, we read this in Exodus 4, 21 through 23. The Lord said to Moses, this is the chapter right after the burning bush. The Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you do all these wonders before Pharaoh, which I've put in your hand, but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

And then you say to Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go, that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed, I will kill your son, your firstborn. Way back in Exodus 4, before any of these other plagues happened, God was saying, this is where this is all going to lead.

It's all going to lead to the Passover night. It's all going to lead to the death of the firstborn, including Pharaoh's own son. Furthermore, way back in Exodus 4, God says, I'm deliberately, deliberately hardening Pharaoh's heart to this end, so that we will get to the tenth plague. Now, why?

That's a question a lot of people look at and say, why? Hardening his heart? You tell him to do blank, and then You harden his heart so he won't do blank. What's going on here, oh God, isn't this counterintuitive?

Well, we explained some of that in last week's study. For our purposes this morning, I'll give you just maybe two reasons why everything was definitely going to end up at the Passover night.

The Punishment Fits the Crime 3:55

Two reasons why this was definitely going to happen. Number one, remember this, the punishment in God's economy, the punishment was going to fit the crime. If you remember back in Exodus 1, what did that Pharaoh do? What was his great crime?

Killing of the firstborn. Remember Moses? He was born under a death edict. There was babies, Israel's babies, being just chucked into the river.

The firstborn of Israel, firstborn males, were thrown into the river. They were killed. They were drowned. Now, do you think drowning Israelite children is a bad idea?

Well, I think so, because in Exodus 4, God says, look, Israel, you know who they are to Me? They are My son. They are My firstborn. So in a sense, God is saying, I know what you did.

You took My firstborn, and you killed him. In that sense, the punishment was going to fit the crime, and we were always going to get to Exodus 12 and the 10th plague.

Slavery to Sin and Death, Not Merely Egypt 4:50

Now, the second reason is far more significant. When they were in Egypt, we remember they were bound by chains, and they were oppressed, and they were slaves to the Egyptians. The Egyptians forced them to work at the point of a sword. So they were slaves.

We know that. They knew that. But what the Israelites, maybe even the Egyptians, what neither of them probably fully understood is this. Not only were the Israelites slaves to the Egyptians, the Israelites were also slaves to the same thing every man, woman, and child has always been slaves to across the history of mankind.

Slaves to what? Sin. Slaves to sin. God looks down on His people, and yes, He sees the whips and the chains and the swords and all the things that are holding them, but in the economy at God, that's the slavery He was least concerned about.

You understand that? That was the slavery He was least concerned about. The slavery He was more concerned about was their slavery to sin and to death. Sin and death held them tighter than any bonds or chains ever could.

So when God looks at His children, when He looks at Israel, His firstborn in the early stages of Exodus here, the book of Exodus, He knows they need to be delivered from Egypt in order to get to the promised land.

The Passover Points Forward to Christ 5:59

That's true, but number two, they need to be delivered most importantly from sin and death, something that ultimately would only happen through the personal work of Jesus Christ, when we come today's text in chapter 12, when we come to the Passover night, when we come to all the things that we're going to read here this morning, what's going on in the Passover night is not just deliverance from Egypt.

Rather, what's going on the Passover night was intended to point forward, like a neon sign, of the same thing this table points forward to. To the ultimate deliverer who wasn't named Moses, to the ultimate deliverer who would come named Jesus Christ, who had set His people free from that which truly shackled them.

On the night of the Passover, the destroyer went throughout the land and brought judgment and condemnation on the houses of Egypt, but some were spared. Some were spared. How? Well, as we'll see in today's text, those who were spared were spared because they were marked by the blood of the lamb.

Those who were spared were spared because the doors were marked by a sacrifice that was offered on their behalf at this time. And in that way, what we're going to see in the Passover, as we're going to detail these events, pointed forward, as it was always intended to, to that, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All right, let's consider all this further.

Choosing the Lamb Without Blemish 7:21

“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.”

— Exodus 12:5 (NKJV)

Now I'm going to look at Exodus chapter 12, verses 1 through 5, and then work our way through as time will allow. Verse 1. Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be your beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year to you.

That tells us something significant's about to go down, something really important, not just a minor deliverance, comparatively speaking, like Jonah being freed from a whale or Daniel from a lion's den. The whole calendar year is changing as a function of what's going on here. This month shall be the beginning of months, shall be the first month of the year too.

Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father. A lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of persons.

According to each man's need, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. And you may take it from the sheep, or you may take it from the goats. All right.

At the start of this 10th plague, something different's going on. None of the other plagues started with this. See, the first nine plagues, if you're an Israelite, what was your job in the first nine plagues? Well, not much.

In the first nine plagues, you were fairly passive. There wasn't a whole lot that you were responsible for across the first nine plagues. You were largely bystanders to what God was doing. But here, the start of chapter 12, the 10th plague, verses 1 through 5, God says to His own people, hey, you got a job to do.

I want you to go out there. I want you to pick yourself out a lamb. Pick yourself out a lamb. Now, that in itself was not the hardest thing in the world to do.

The Israelites had gotten pretty used to sacrifices over the centuries. They knew how to sacrifice things. But the difference here was this wasn't going to be just any lamb. In this instance, this case, God says, you have a job to do.

It's to pick out a lamb, but you must only pick out those lambs that are perfect in your sight. Those lambs that are without blemish. Those lambs that have no defects. There's not going to be buck-toothed, lazy-eyed lambs that are going to be sacrificed this night.

You need to be selective and find those without blemish. Now, why? Why is that? Well, we'll get to that.

The Blood Applied to the Doorposts 9:45

“Now 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 the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

— Exodus 12:13 (NKJV)

Let's look now at verses 6 through 13. Now, you shall keep this lamb until the fourteenth day of the same month. So they would pick it out on one day, a day that throughout the centuries would be called Lamb Selection Day. They would pick out this lamb and they'd keep it.

Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel on the 14th day shall kill it at twilight, and they shall take some of the blood. Upon killing it, they'll take some of the blood and put it on the two door posts and on the lintels of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire, with unleavened bread, with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain till morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire, and thus you shall eat it. Note the haste here. Thus you shall eat it with a belt on your waist, sandals on your feet, staff in your hand.

So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. For I am the Lord.

Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, notice that phrase, when I see the blood, I, when I see the blood I will pass over you. Not some guy with a sword, not just any old angel. When I see the blood I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

All right, these verses, specific, specific instructions. God would do this throughout Exodus, really throughout all the scripture. Guess what, God has specific ways in which we approach Him, interact with Him, do the things He's told us to do. If you take the Bible and you put it on a shelf and you dismiss it, you're missing all the specificity that's supposed to aid us and help us and which is important to Him.

So in these verses He tells people, hey, this is what you got to do. Remember that perfect lamb, the perfect one? Well, here's how to cook it, here's how to prepare it. Now again, He also said that all this will start on a specific date.

Lamb Selection Day and Palm Sunday 12:04

It's referred to as the 10th of Nisan, upon which the Jews are going to go and pick out the lambs that were to be slain. Now, as I mentioned before, this is a significant date. There's a date in which they were to pick out the lambs. It's different from the date in which the lambs were to be sacrificed.

You see? There's a date in which they were supposed to pick out the lambs. Now, across the pages of history, if you fast forward a good number of years, you get to another occasion that occurred on that very same date. You get to another occasion that happened on Lamb Selection Day.

On the very day when the Jews were picking out the perfect lambs to sacrifice for their Passover meal, you get to another occasion. Does anyone know what it is? You get to that day that we consider Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus Himself entered into Jerusalem at the start of His Passion Week.

It's the same day. The very day that the Israelites, as they'd done for year after year after year, picking out the perfect lamb to be slain, on that very day, the perfect lamb entered into the city, into Jerusalem. When people were looking for the perfect lamb, the perfect one, the perfect, perfect one, entered in all those years later in order to be slain.

The Passover Meal Fulfilled in the Lord's Supper 13:16

In any case, in verse 6, we see that Moses' contemporaries, once they had picked out their own lambs all the centuries earlier, were to keep the sacrifice until the 14th day of the month, upon which then it would be killed and eaten. Now, is that date significant? Well, of course that's significant. What was Jesus doing on the night He was betrayed?

What was He doing? He was enjoying the Passover meal. And in the Passover meal, in the Passover meal, He instituted something new, something different. He said, this is a new covenant in My blood, not just the blood of any old lamb that you've been gathering off the hillsides for centuries.

This is a new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, on that night, the night that He was betrayed, He brought fulfillment to everything they've been doing for centuries from the Passover forward. There's a tie, and then again, we're going to get to that more and more.

But these dates are important. You look at, God says, do this on this date, and that on that date, and this sort of animal has to be perfect. All of it, all of it's meant to point like a neon arrow to Jesus Christ. Now in verse 13, probably the most significant part of this, in verse 13, it's not enough just to pick out the animal, and it's not enough to cook the animal, and it's not even enough to kill the animal.

What do you have to do? You have to take the blood of the animal, and in order to be spared of what's about to go down on this night, you have to take that blood and you have to mark your doorposts. You have to mark your doorposts. And so long as those doors were marked, in what was about to happen at midnight, so long as the doors were marked, when the destroyer passed through the land, he would pass over the homes that were marked.

And his judgment would only touch those who were not covered in, not saved by the blood of the lamb that was slain. This is the gospel in Old Testament clothing. This is the gospel as we see it all these centuries earlier in Exodus chapter 12. Okay, let's jump ahead now.

Kill the Lamb, Apply the Blood, Stay Inside 15:12

Let's look at verses 21 through 28. Verse 21. Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel. He said to them, pick out and take lambs for yourself according to your families and kill the Passover lamb.

And then take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that's in the basin, strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that's in the basin. And, and this is important, and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians.

And when He sees the blood upon the lintel and on the doorpost, the Lord will pass over the door and He will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you. And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and for your sons forever. It will come to pass when you come to the land, which the Lord has given you just as He has promised, that you will keep this service.

And it shall be when your children say to you, what does this mean? What do you mean by this service? That you shall say, it's the Passover sacrifice of the Lord who passed over the houses of the children of Israel and Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households. So the people bowed their heads and they worshiped.

And then the children of Israel went away and they did so just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. So they did. There's a Baptist commentator that I respect tremendously who said that God's instructions here, God's instructions to Israel, are boiled down to three things. Three things here.

Number one, kill the lamb. Number two, apply the blood. You've killed the lamb, then apply the blood to your lintels, to your doorposts. But then number three, and don't miss this part, stay inside.

Kill the lamb, apply the blood, stay inside. So the lamb had to die. That was integral to this whole thing. And the blood needed to be applied to the door because that's the basis by which this angel of death, so to speak, passes over this house.

So those two things had to happen. But number three was important too. Number three is that people needed to stay inside.

Faith Tested: Is the Blood Sufficient? 17:15

And that would be difficult. Why? Well, picture this. This was a real event that happened in real time and space.

Picture this. In a community without radios and televisions and the like, picture this at midnight when it should have been quiet. All of a sudden screams go out. Not just one scream, not just two or three, but across the entirety of Egypt.

There had to be some temptation to run. Find a cave, find a castle, find someplace, go somewhere, get a sword, do anything. Something terrible is happening. And can you imagine this scream?

You know, I was in a hospital chaplaincy a number of years ago. At times, folks passed there in the ER or the ICU or what have you. What happened in the ER, which was where I spent most of my time on call for trauma cases, when someone passed and that news was conveyed to a loved one, the hardest sound you'll ever hear is the scream.

It's a cry, the emotion. And you can just watch. You can watch the staff members, and they're dreading it because they know the news has to be shared with the person down the hall, and you can just see them stiffen up. And everyone hears the sound, and they know what's gone on is that someone's heart is just broken.

Of course, the doctors and nurses still have to be about their business. But to hear this one voice, and it's like a dagger in the heart, at least it was in mine when I was there. Now take that and multiply it thousands and thousands of times over in the same singular moment in time and space.

Picture you're behind a door. There's blood on your door. It's a small hut. These walls aren't that thick.

And all around you, in every direction, there's screams. The destroyer passes through and takes the firstborn. Takes the firstborn of the Egyptians, all the animals as well. Now you, as an Israelite, marked by the blood of the lamb.

It's interesting in chapter 11. God says, not only are you going to be passed over. In chapter 11, it says, not even a single dog in all of Egypt is going to bark against you. You're not in danger in any way, shape, or form.

There's not a dog who's even going to bark at you that night. You are entirely insulated, entirely protected, entirely covered. There's no threat to you whatsoever, provided that you stay inside. Provided that you stay inside.

See, the people at that moment, their faith had to be tested by this. Is the blood sufficient? Do you hear what's happening? Run!

There's got to be a cave or a castle or someplace we can go. Something's going down. Run. But then you just imagine the fathers of the households barring the doors and saying, no! We've been warned.

We stay inside. Our only hope, believe it or not, is the protection offered through the sign and the seal that we put on our doorposts. That's our hope. Their faith was stress-tested at this time, that the blood was sufficient, that the blood was enough to save them.

They had to have faith that there was no other shelter or security to be found. They had to have faith that the Lamb's blood was entirely sufficient on its own to rescue them, to redeem them, to save them. All these years later, it's not any different. The amount of people running outside their doors, looking for every possible option under the sun by which to rescue, redeem, provide them hope, and discounting that, discounting the blood of the Lamb, it's as dangerous now as it was then.

We're saved through the blood of the Lamb. That's it. That's all. And that's why they were told to stay inside.

A Perpetual Ordinance of Remembrance 21:02

Now, verses 24 through 27, God tells them that when this goes down, you never forget. You never forget what has happened. Specifically, He said, you shall observe this as an ordinance forever. Now, why?

Why were they supposed to commemorate this forever? I mean, why this one thing? If you stop and think about it, God saved His people all the time. God was saving His people from all different enemies and villains in Scripture.

He saved them from Goliath and the Philistines. There's no perpetual feast for that. So why this? Why a perpetual, ongoing feast for this event over and against all the other times that they were saved, miraculously saved?

Why this? Why do Jews continue to celebrate the Passover to this day? For that matter, why do we have a table here to this day, even as Christians? Well, again, it's for the same reason we just mentioned a moment ago.

It's because what the Passover and this, the Lord's table, implies. We're a silly and stupid and forgetful people, and we need to remember. We need to remember, and so God has given us. He's given us this.

To the Jews, he gave the Passover meal that they were to do every year, to remember, to remember, to remember. And when Christ came, He didn't do away with it entirely. He simply repurposed it for its rightful meaning, the meaning it always had. The Passover is the clearest.

If you go back into the entirety of the Old Testament, what we're talking about in Exodus 12 and the Passover meal, it's the clearest Old Testament picture you have of the gospel, of the propitiatory sacrifice that the ultimate Lamb of God would ultimately give for the people of God. The Passover is the clearest Old Testament picture we have of the propitiatory sacrifice that Jesus would offer in the New Testament.

In order to appreciate the former, God wanted them to remember the latter. In order for Israel to properly anticipate what Jesus Christ would ultimately do and to be on the watch for Him when He showed up, God gave them this meal to commemorate every single year in order to point them like a neon sign to the lamb that would be slain.

The Passover lamb here in Exodus 12 is a shadow, it's a type. Jesus was the fulfillment.

Behold the Lamb of God: Peter and John the Baptist 23:10

Now, in the New Testament, there was guys who got that. Peter, Peter, he would once write this in 1 Peter chapter 1. He would tell Christians, he'd say, hey, you weren't redeemed by just cheesy, cheap things. He says, you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot.

Peter made the connection. There's a lot of people that made the connection. Do you remember John the Baptist? John the Baptist, wonderful, wonderful John the Baptist.

One day he's sitting on the riverbank. He's on the riverbank and he's doing his thing. He's baptizing people. And then he looks down the riverbank and someone's coming.

Who? Well, we know it to be Jesus, but that's not how John identified Him. Do you remember what John said about Jesus? He looks, he sees Jesus coming and he says, behold, the Lamb of God.

Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. John the Baptist, before Jesus was even dead, understood that Jesus was the fulfillment of Exodus chapter 12, that Jesus is the Passover lamb. What Peter said in retrospect, looking back at it, John understood fully even at that time. And there was others who would have understood that, that they were looking forward to this one who would come, what Isaiah called the suffering servant, one who would lay down His life for the lambs, one who would come, the good shepherd, one who would come as the sacrifice, one who would come, a lamb, a fulfillment of the lamb they've been slaying for centuries.

Behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. John's statement was no accident. He knew what the Passover represented.

Midnight in Egypt: Judgment Comes 24:44

All right, at this point, we've come to the portion of today's text that everything was building towards in Exodus 12. We've come to midnight in Egypt. Let's look at verses 29 and 30. Verse 29.

And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And so Pharaoh rose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

Midnight hour. Now, before we consider what happened at midnight here, I want to mention something. In Matthew 25, Jesus is telling a parable. He's telling a parable about people who went to bed.

At that time, they thought they were safe, at least until the stroke of midnight. Now, what happened at midnight in Matthew 25? Well, the short answer is this. At midnight, Jesus showed up.

Now, why is that a bad thing? Isn't Jesus the good guy? Why is that a bad thing? Are we hoping He shows up?

Don't we want Him to come back? Isn't that our desire? Don't we want Him to come back tomorrow? Well, yes, we do want Him to come back tomorrow.

However, the interaction we'll have with Him at that time depends a whole lot on the relationship we have with Him today. You might want Him to come back tomorrow. I hope you do. But I tell you, the interaction we'll have with Him at that time depends a whole lot on the relationship we have with Him today.

In Matthew 25, people were going to meet Jesus. In Exodus 12, people met Jesus. This is not any old angel we're seeing here in Exodus chapter 12. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells this parable about His ultimate return, and the parable culminated in this warning to the impenitent and to the unready.

He says, watch out because you do not know the day or the hour when I'll be back. In Exodus 12 and Matthew 25, you have a picture of sinners at ease and resting. There's been this party in Matthew 25. You have people sleepy here in Exodus 12.

You have this picture of sinners at ease and at rest, sinners who had had warnings about their sins and their choices and their behaviors, and yet who are caught completely unaware when judgment comes, when judgment comes to their door. However, in the case of the Egyptians, everyone in Egypt had seen these plagues.

And see, nine plagues. Nine plagues. In the case of the Egyptians, they had to have some sense as to the God of Israel's power and authority. They had to have some idea.

Remember just the previous plague, the ninth plague, was what? I want to see if we're paying attention last week. What was the ninth plague? Darkness.

The darkness. It was so dark, Scripture said last week, you could feel the darkness in your bones. The darkness could be felt. It prevented them from even moving except in the houses of the Israelites.

With that said, the Egyptians had experienced these plagues, they had to be aware. The God of Israel had just decimated all their pagan gods. In fact, every one of the nine plagues, we called it last week the spiritual depancing of the idols of Egypt. And what we meant by that is God time and time again did plagues, and rivers, and in the fields, and all manner of places, and even over the sun, in order to prove to the Egyptians that the God of the sun, you know, Amun-Ra and all the other gods in their pantheon over the rivers and the fertility and the like, that they were nothing.

God had just issued a spiritual depantsing of all of their false deities. And if you were in Egypt, you'd just seen that. You'd seen people praying all these things and it didn't help them in the least. When the God of Israel came knocking, the plague came in, and no amount of plagues to false gods that helped them one iota.

So they had to have some sense, if you're in Egypt, that, oh, the God of Israel, He keeps telling us to let the people go. I mean, that had spread around. They knew what this God wanted. Let My people go.

And they look around, well, the people are still here. Well, we've had nine plagues, can't get much worse than that. He's got to be tired by now, right? I mean, He's exerted all this.

And look, we're still here, and we still have the Israelites. They were defiant. Pharaoh was defiant, and that defiance probably went across the whole land. Look at us.

Look at what we stood up against. God's dropped all this stuff on us. We're still here. We still have them.

So they went to bed, proud in their resistance, firm in their rebellion, even firmer. We know Pharaoh, his heart was even more hard at this point. But they knew better. They knew better.

They knew that the God of heaven told Egypt and Pharaoh His expectations of them. And they knew He had the power to do still more. And yet, and yet, from the Pharaoh on down, they all went to sleep that night with confidence. From the Pharaoh on down.

There was ease. They went to rest without care in the world, so to speak. They slept. They closed their eyes as they usually did.

But on this night, throughout the land, some eyes would never reopen. At midnight, as the text said, this destroyer visited the house of Egypt. Verse 30, a great cry went out over their dead.

Common Grace and the Salvation of Some Egyptians 30:23

As fellow human beings here this morning, it's understandable for us to have compassion for this. In fact, I hope we do. Death of anyone is not to be celebrated. So there's some compassion, you know, especially over the loss of children, for those children that died in this case.

With that said, let me submit something to you. Anyone in Egypt who wanted to avoid this outcome could have. Now, what do I mean by that, roomful of reformed folks? What do I mean by that?

How could the Egyptians have avoided this destroyer? Well, think about it. Think about it. In God's grace, He'd given them nine plagues.

We think that is judgment. Well, yes, it was judgment. It was also grace because it should have been instructive. Sometimes when God rattles or takes you by the lapels and shakes you, that's one of the most graceful things He can do because it causes you to look at Him in times when you otherwise might not.

Nine times He demonstrates His power. There's been people for centuries that are praying for miracles, prove that you're God, prove that you're there, what have you. Well, nine times that people saw the power of God displayed. There's grace in that, even as it was disciplinary.

There was grace in that. They had nine chances for these pagans to realize that, hey, my gods are stupid and silly and dumb and mute and deaf and worthless. But this God of Israel, He seems to have His stuff together. They had nine chances to do that, nine opportunities to recognize and to turn to the God of Israel.

Nine opportunities. They didn't lack for evidence. They didn't lack for truth claims with regards to God and His power and His authority. And furthermore, nothing was stopping them from rejecting their own gods.

Nothing was stopping them from turning to the God of Israel at any point. Now, here's the thing. In all likelihood, some did. And that's encouraging.

In all likelihood, there were some native Egyptians who were saved this day. In all likelihood, there were Egyptians who did learn and who did trust and who God had quick in their spirit, changed their heart and enabled them and persuaded them to see what the Israelites in their midst saw and recognized. That's not the most unusual thing in the world.

You understand that, don't you? Think of Rahab. Rahab's there as a Canaanite of the Canaanites, and yet God rescues and redeems Rahab in the face of his judgment upon the city. Think of Nineveh.

You want to think of a place filled with pagans? Nineveh. Multitudes turn to God through faith in this case. And if you want to know more about that, then just look back at the study we did in Jonah.

I think that's online. Sometimes even the most hard-hearted villains turn to God. We see that it said other intervals by which pagans, Ruth the Moabitess, there's others, other pagans from pagan nations apprehend something, as Ruth saw through Naomi, apprehend a faith that might be foreign to them, and yet God changes their heart in such a way that they embrace it.

In all likelihood, that happened in Egypt. In all likelihood, there were Egyptians saved. And that's cool. You know why?

Because at one point, we're all like the Egyptians. God's in the business of rescuing hard-hearted sinners and hard-hearted villains. Look at Nebuchadnezzar. We studied that when we studied Daniel.

God's willing and able to take some, even from the collection of His enemies and change their heart and save them. In our room, in our culture, in our age, in our own world, we may very well be a remnant of those that God has done just that with, saving some from a larger composite of rebels.

In all likelihood, that's something that may have happened here, in all likelihood, there may have been some Egyptians safe behind bloody doors, bloody lintels. But that said, the rest of Egypt was not safe when midnight came. And so God brought death to the firstborn just as He said He would earlier on. God fulfills everything He says He's going to do.

And it was a result, approximate direct result, of their rebellion and their sinfulness. They earned every ounce of it. Unless you should ever think that that's unfair, that God should ever pour out His wrath on the firstborn of pagans, if you ever think it's unfair that God would pour out His wrath on the firstborn of pagans, how do you explain Him pouring out His wrath on His own son?

You understand, God can relate. He can understand everything that went down in Exodus 12. God fully understood what was going on, and it was entirely fair that He did so.

The Exodus Begins: Plundering Egypt 34:54

All right, let's look now at our last verses, verses 31 through 39. Verse 31. Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by night. In all likelihood, this is a messenger sent to them.

He called for Moses and Aaron by night and said, rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. Go serve the Lord as you have said, and take your flocks, take your herds, as you said, and be gone, and bless me also. And the Egyptians urged the people that they might send them out of the land in haste, for they said, we shall all be dead.

And so the people took their dough before it was leavened, and having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes and on their shoulders. And the children of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, and they had asked for the Egyptians' articles of silver and gold and clothing, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so they granted them what they requested.

And thus they plundered the Egyptians. Then the children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about 600,000 men on foot besides children. A mixed multitude went up with them also, and flocks and herds, a great deal of livestock. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves.

That's going to take us to next week. They had nothing. They were still operating on the basis of faith when they went out and left Egypt. All right, as we wrap up here, let me offer this.

Before sun had even come up, you notice here in verse 31, Pharaoh calls for Moses, again, we believe this to be a messenger sent. That's how some interpret this. A messenger is sent to Moses and Aaron at night. It's not even daytime yet.

Before the sun even comes up, Pharaoh says, all right, you just go. Take your people, take your children, take your animals, take everything and leave. Get out is, I guess, the summary of what Pharaoh told to Moses and the others. Now, at this point, it would appear that the fight has gone out of Pharaoh, at least for the moment, the fight has gone out of him.

At this point, Pharaoh, at some level, he's sitting there with dead in his own house. His own firstborn is dead. He's got to be sitting on some level and saying to himself, the 10th plague just cost me my own son. If there's an 11th plague, I'm not going to survive it.

He probably interpreted this as the final straw prior to his own death and demise. And so maybe at a self-preservation, he says, go, go. I've seen what God can now do. However, notice that when they go in verses 35 through 36, they didn't go empty-handed.

For reasons that seem inexplicable other than God was at work, the Egyptians helped load their carts with stuff. They gave them all sorts of stuff. It's like, go, don't come back here. Take this, take that.

They just wanted them gone. They gave them all manner of different gold and silver. And because of that, we see here in chapter 12, as also was anticipated in chapter 3, that when they left, they would plunder Egypt. When they left, they would plunder Egypt.

All right. For time's sake, I'm going to stop at this point in our text. It's actually a good transition point for next week. The people are now free.

The shackles are now off. For the first time in generations, the Israelites are going to leave Egypt behind. Their cries have been answered. Their prayers have been heard.

However, as they're heading out, they're probably asking a question. Two words. As they head out of Egypt, and they're leaving, and they've got their stuff, and they're going, and they're looking out at the desert. Two words.

They're probably asking, what now? What now? Everything was different for them. What now?

Well, stay tuned to find out. Next week, we're going to find out what happens next, as Israel's faith would continue to be tested, and as Pharaoh would have a trademark change of heart and pursue them all the way to the Red Sea. All right, let's pray.