Exodus 12:1-28
The Passover
12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.
7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. 12 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.
14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. 15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. 17 And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. 18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.
The instruction Moses gave was to be passed along from generation to generation. After he finished with these specific instructions, Scripture says, “And the people bowed low and worshiped. Then the sons of Israel went and did so; just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (vv. 27–28).
We’re back again to the key word: obedience. Pharaoh did not—would not—obey. As a result, he exposed both himself and his nation to the judgment of the Lord. The Hebrews, however, heard the Lord’s Word through Moses and did obey, right down to the smallest detail. As a result, they experienced a great deliverance. They made history, while Pharaoh became history.
I would like to apply some of these thoughts before we press on. My personal conviction is that our greatest struggle is not in the realm of understanding the will of God; it’s in the realm of obeying the God whose will it is. To be painfully honest, when you and I look back over our lives, we do not find ourselves puzzled and mystified about God’s will nearly as much as we find ourselves stubborn and resistant to the One who was directing our steps. Our problem wasn’t that we didn’t know; our problem was that we knew but weren’t willing to follow through.
That’s the basic struggle of the Christian life. The clear truth of God is set before us time and time again. It’s available to us, we read it, we hear it explained from a pulpit, in a Christian book, or on a Christian radio program, and we sense the Holy Spirit whispering, Yes, this means you. We understand Him clearly . . . but we resist. When the chips are down, our tendency is to say, “I’ve got it planned another way.” Looking back, we wonder, “Why didn’t I obey?” Or, “Why didn’t I follow God’s call?”
At some juncture in our lives—maybe at several junctures—we need to ask ourselves those questions. You may say, “Well, Chuck, he’s not calling everyone to that task.” I know that. But that’s not the issue here. We’re not talking about everyone. The question is, how do you know He isn’t calling you?