Devotional Day 9

Worship

Today, I encourage you to begin your devotional by listening to “The Blood” by Bethel Music, Jenn Johnson & Featuring Mitch Wong.

Scripture

Exodus 12:1-14

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. 3 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. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, 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. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 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 doorframes 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. 9 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.

12 “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.

14 “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.

Devotional

After the Israelites had killed the passover lamb and painted its blood on the doorframes of their houses, God declared that they would be safe from his impending judgement on the Egyptians.

For days, maybe weeks, Israel has watched as God brought the 10 plagues on Egypt: frogs, gnats, all the water turning to blood, thick darkness, devastating hail. Time after time they witnessed God not only firing warning shots across Pharaoh’s bow, but more-so God judging and humiliating the god’s of Egypt.

God judged the Egyptian God of the Nile, Hapi, that was supposed to bring fertility and abundance by turning the nile to blood.

God humiliated heket, the frog headed goddess of fertility and childbirth with the plague of frogs, and so on and so forth, each plague, not random, a show of force of Israel’s God, the one true and living God humiliating the gods of the Egyptians.

Now for one final plague God was going to judge Pharaoh himself, who considered himself as a god. The one true God, in his ultimate humiliation and judgement on Pharaoh, was going to take his firstborn son, because Pharaoh had taken God’s, Israel. In the midst of such a mighty show of force I image the Hebrew people were in awe and terror at the power of God. However, in order to ensure that they weren’t judged along with Egypt, God’s people were to slaughter a lamb and hide in their homes behind a shield of its blood.

Similarly, we as Christians are shielded from the wrath of God and his judgement by the blood of Jesus. Not our nationality, not because our parents went to church, or because we have been a good person, no, the only thing that matters, the only substance in the universe powerful enough to render us safe from God’s righteous judgement on sinful humanity is the free gift of Jesus sacrifice.

Prayer

“Lord, I hide myself in you today, safe, firm and secure. Thank You Jesus for protecting me from the punishment that I deserved and for instead giving me a hope and a future with you”. Continue to thank Jesus for his sacrifice and to bring to him anything that is going on in your life.