Death of the Firstborn
Download MP3We have been going through the gospel through the life of Moses, and this is our 4th week in looking at that. And this is it's an important topic, to go through the book of Exodus as we've looked at each week, because it gives us the vocabulary that we need to understand our salvation, to understand redemption. The very words that we just read in the Heidelberg Catechism find their meaning, their genesis, if you will, in the book of Exodus. And so that is the reason that we have been studying this. If you read with me actually, flip back.
Joel Brooks:I want to go through all of chapter 11 and part of chapter 12, I'm in this story. The lord said to Moses, yet one more plague will I bring upon pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.
Joel Brooks:And the lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt in the sight of pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people. So Moses said, thus says the lord, about midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor ever will be again, but not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
Joel Brooks:And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me saying, get out you and all the people who follow you, and after that I will go out. And he went out from pharaoh in hot anger. Then the lord said to Moses, pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before pharaoh. And the Lord hardened pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
Joel Brooks:The lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the 1st month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses. A lamb for a household. 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.
Joel Brooks:You shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the 14th day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill the lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the 2 doorposts and the lentils of the houses in which they eat. They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire.
Joel Brooks:With unleavened bread and bitter herbs, they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it. Its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning, you shall burn.
Joel Brooks: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. 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.
Joel Brooks: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. Go to verse 29. At midnight, the lord struck down 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.
Joel Brooks:And pharaoh rose up 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 someone was not dead. Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, up. Go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go. Serve the lord as you have said.
Joel Brooks:Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also. And pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word. How your word speaks to us through your spirit, How your word reveals truth. How by your spirit, your word cuts into our very being and changes us, and I ask that that would happen tonight.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my word would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I realized when I was in college, that I had somewhat of a what I would call a children's Bible understanding of scripture, And I knew my Bible stories.
Joel Brooks:I I grew up in a Baptist church that really taught those stories well, and so I knew all of those stories, but I had no idea what they meant. And I and I would just always gravitate towards, you know, the pictures, the exciting stories. And Exodus would be one of those, but yet I didn't have any idea what it was about. And and I've said this over and over, and I'm going to keep pounding this in that all of the Bible points us to Jesus. All of the Bible does.
Joel Brooks:Every story we read provides us with the foundation on which the gospel is going to be built. And so it gives us these these different pieces, all of which are necessary to put together for it to understand and get the full picture of who our Messiah is or who our king is, Jesus. And you can see this not just in Exodus that we've looked at the last few weeks, but you can see this throughout the whole scripture. Starting in Genesis, And and you can see this in the lives of all the patriarchs, and let me just kinda walk through a few of those. You go back in Genesis 12, and God is when he he calls Abraham.
Joel Brooks:And in Genesis 15, he makes his covenant with Abraham. And this covenant, the way it's done is just so unique. You you cut animals in half, and you you spread them apart and you create an aisle kind of like this right here or something you would have, you know, maybe the head over here and the rest of the body over here. And to make a covenant, you would walk through it. You would cut a covenant, and you would say, let this be done to me if I don't fulfill this covenant.
Joel Brooks:And so Abraham was gonna make a covenant with God, and so he cut the pieces of of all these animals, he spread them apart, and he's waiting. All day he's waiting. He's waiting and he's waiting, and finally towards the end of the day, he's overcome with just tiredness, and he falls asleep. And so when he is asleep, making no effort, when he is incapacitated, the lord appears as a melting pot on fire. Then the unthinkable happens.
Joel Brooks:The melting pot walks through the aisle. The melting pot initiates the covenant. God comes to man. God says, let this be done to me if I am not faithful to my word. What a picture of Christ coming to us, making his covenant with us.
Joel Brooks:You see this after Abraham in in the life of Isaac, or I guess you should say with the almost sacrifice of Isaac, in which Abraham in Genesis 22, God asked him to sacrifice his only son. And Isaac who's kind of wondering what's going on, yeah, Why are we going up this mountain? He says, hey, God's gonna provide the sacrifice. He will provide the lamb. What an image.
Joel Brooks:What an image of pointing us fast forward 1000 of years to Christ, the firstborn that was sacrificed. You have Jacob, Isaac's son, who his entire life sought God's blessing. Actually, the the blessing of his father. He wanted that firstborn blessing so bad. He would do anything to get it.
Joel Brooks:He would lie to get it. He would cheat to get it. He would do whatever it whatever it took. And in that famous story, he actually dresses up like Esau, his brother to steal the blessing of the firstborn. And so, you know, he he gets goat hair, and he he puts it on him because his brother Esau is hairy.
Joel Brooks:He puts on his brother's clothes so he would smell like him. And sure enough, he gets the blessing of his father, and Esau gets the curse. But what is that story about? It gives us an image of Christ who is the firstborn, who has every right to that firstborn blessing, but what he does is he comes and dresses up like us. He clothes himself with flesh that we might have his blessing and that he might take our curse.
Joel Brooks:What an image. You have Jacob's ladder, or really, it's Jacob's staircase that, Jacob is fleeing from his brother Esau, and there's this wonderful vision that god sends him. And it's of angels ascending and descending on this ladder or this staircase. And you just gotta scratch your head afterwards and you wonder what the heck does that mean. Well, Jesus tells you what it means in John chapter 1, when he's talking with Philip and Nathaniel, and he tells Nathaniel, he says, I saw you under the tree, and Nathaniel goes, you you are god.
Joel Brooks:How did he see me under the tree? Nobody was around. He says, Nathaniel, he says, I will I will show you greater things than this. You will see angels ascending and descending on the son of man, on me. I am that that ladder.
Joel Brooks:I am that stairway that connects heaven to earth that joins the 2 together and makes it possible. That is about me. It's about me. Even when Jacob later in Genesis 32, when he's fighting with the angel of the Lord. And it says that they they struggled with each other and and neither one could prevail.
Joel Brooks:And that is an amazing passage because he's wrestling with God, and it says that God couldn't prevail. And it shows us that God at times will make himself weak and interact with us that he might bless us. What a picture of Christ. You go to Jacob's son, Joseph, and and the images, they're just they're just so, vivid there. Sold by his brothers, betrayed by his brothers, clothes ripped from him, sold for silver, abandoned to death, Yet God raises him up, puts him in a place of power, and he saves the land, and he is appointed as judge.
Joel Brooks:Points us to Jesus. You look at Joseph's brother, Judah, who at the the beginning of that story, it was his idea. Yeah. Let's throw Joseph in the pit. Yes.
Joel Brooks:Let's let's kill him. Yes. Let's do all that. Judah's idea. Then at the very end in Genesis, Judah comes forward, and he steps up and he says, sir, don't don't take Benjamin, the youngest.
Joel Brooks:Don't don't throw him in prison. I offer myself as a substitute. Take me, a substitute that he might go free. And we find later that Judah is the ancestor of Jesus. And we've looked at the last few weeks when we come up, and we finally we get to Moses, and we saw Moses in the burning bush.
Joel Brooks:And so there's this burning bush, and it's the Angel of the Lord, it's actually God himself, appearing there saying that his name is I am the Lord Yahweh. And here is Moses, a guy who has wasted his life, wasted all the privileges that were given to him, and yet here he is standing before this this divine revelation right in front of him on holy ground arguing with God. God, no. No. I'm not gonna do that.
Joel Brooks:God, I hear you, but no. Get somebody else arguing with God, and he's not struck down dead. Why? How can he do that? In other places in scripture, when you're on holy ground, if you were to defy God, you are dead.
Joel Brooks:Jesus gives you the answer. Because in the new testament, when when Pharisees and all these religious leaders are arguing, and with Jesus and saying, who do you think you are? Do you think you're greater than than Abraham, greater than the prophets? And Jesus says, absolutely. Because before Abraham was, I am.
Joel Brooks:I am. I was the one in the bush talking to Moses. The only reason he could stand there and not be slain on the spot is because I was already mediating on his behalf. I am. And last week, we looked at the first nine plagues, and and we spent a little bit of time focusing on that last plague, the 9th plague when darkness covered the land.
Joel Brooks:I love the image. Moses stretches out his hands, and and darkness covers the land. This is a darkness that you can feel. And it's God's presence leaving, and it's that that fear crippling darkness coming in. And you fast forward 1400 years, and you see the same thing, a man with arms stretched out wide and darkness covering the land, a darkness you can feel as his father abandons him.
Joel Brooks:And then we have the death of the firstborn son, this final plague, the one in which all of these other plagues had been leading up to. The narrator before as we've gone through is just barely touching on all these other plagues. A little paragraph here, a few sentences here, barely touching on it. Gets to this last plague, chapters. Slows down.
Joel Brooks:It shows us how we're to remember this plague. We're to remember this by taking a a Passover meal. This is to be remembered for all of time, and we're gonna remember that tonight. God told pharaoh that he is going to kill every firstborn, every firstborn in the Egyptian families, From the highest in pharaoh to the lowest, even a slave girl or even someone in a dungeon, their family is gonna kill the firstborn. I mean, let that every time I read this, this this should hit you.
Joel Brooks:This is horrendous. You know, even when the Jews today celebrate the Passover, they don't celebrate this with a smile when they think of all the death of the Egyptians. They are very somber because this is pretty heavy stuff that God could say, I'm going to kill someone from every family. What what what's going on here? Why does God decide to do this, and why is it only the firstborn?
Joel Brooks:Why doesn't he say I'm gonna kill, you know, the second born, or I'm gonna kill pharaoh? He's the one who deserves it. What what is this about the firstborn that god is gonna kill? When this culture, the first born, it it meant so much. The the firstborn is the one who got all the inheritance.
Joel Brooks:The firstborn was one who carried on the name. Your your glory and your dreams are bound up in that firstborn. It was huge. And God actually tells us in several places throughout scripture that he has a claim to the firstborn. He says the firstborn are mine.
Joel Brooks:Exodus 2229, God is listing all these things that belong to him. Says first fruits belong to me, the firstborn of sheep and of oxen belong to me, and by the way, your firstborn child is mine. God says that in Exodus 22. Firstborn is mine, and you see this clearly in Genesis 22 when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn of Sarah. And this is a horrific thing.
Joel Brooks:It's a horrific thing, but Abraham doesn't object. He doesn't say, God, what are you doing? Absolutely, no. Abraham doesn't object. He realizes this is a horrible thing, but he basically, he's resolved, and he says, god, I'll do it, because he knows god has a right to the firstborn.
Joel Brooks:He has a right to it. And in his heart, he knew this. He knew that he had a debt to the lord that had to be paid, and that payment was gonna be through the death of his son. So when God was asking him to sacrifice his son, he would have seen this simply as God calling into debt. I guarantee if God said, sacrifice your wife, Sarah, he would have said, no, Absolut.
Joel Brooks:What are you talking about? But when to sacrifice your son, he realizes the firstborn are his. God's calling in the debt. And God could Abraham could never point at God and call him unjust because he knew he had the right to ask of this, but God didn't that day. So he looked, he he he's gonna provide another sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:If you think, you know, maybe it's kind of unfair to to punish a child for the sins of their father, it's a very ethnocentric view. In America, we we've looked at this in the past. We are the most individualistic people who has ever existed ever. And that's just not the case here, in which the firstborns here, they they they were seen to to share in both the glory and in the name and in the guilt of their fathers. And this would not have been seemed seemed odd here.
Joel Brooks:There's a connection that in America, we have a hard time understanding. Now now we see here in Exodus 11 that God is once again calling in this debt. He's calling in the firstborn, and he's going to send this we we don't even know what this is, the destroyer in. It's gonna send this destroyer to come in and to kill. All we know about the destroyer is that the destroyer can move into the most powerful nation and kingdom of its day like nothing's there.
Joel Brooks:No defense can keep the destroyer. Just go right in, and he can kill, and nobody can stop him. And and we know that at the end of time, judgment is gonna come kind of like this. That there's going to be a judgment. There's gonna be a lot of death.
Joel Brooks:And what we're seeing right here is, for a brief moment, God is allowing us to see judgment, real judgment. We know it's coming at the end, but for a brief moment, God's saying, now here's real judgment, real death. The destroyer is coming. Not one family of Egypt will be spared. Now, actually, not one family of Israel will be spared either unless they do something.
Joel Brooks:Notice that this plague is different than all of the other plagues. And all the other plagues, the other 9, God makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt. You have darkness all in Egypt, and in the land of Goshen where the Hebrews lived there's light. God makes the distinction. God never asked the Hebrews to do a thing.
Joel Brooks:God himself makes the distinction, but this time it's different. God says, you're gonna have to do something if you do not want to be judged when I send the destroyer. You have to do something. And and what he says is you have to put this certain mark outside of your home, out on the gate, or on the doorpost of your home. If you don't do it, the destroyer is coming and will kill your 4th firstborn as well.
Joel Brooks:Because you see, everybody, everybody's guilty. And God can call in the debt for everyone. The Hebrews can at no point say, God, we're your chosen people. We're we're excluded from judgment. They can't say that.
Joel Brooks:They can't say we have Abraham for our father. They can't say, hey, we've been really trying to do good and please you, it doesn't matter. They can't even say, but our lives have already been so bad. Spare us. God doesn't discriminate when the destroyer comes because all are guilty.
Joel Brooks:All of us in this room are guilty as well. Every one of us have sinned. None of us are to be spared from judgment. God won't discriminate. There's no special privileges that we can bring.
Joel Brooks:Being a good person, it won't matter. All of us have a debt that has to be paid, and we can feel it. You can feel it. And understanding this should really affect the way that we relate to others. You know, you can't ever look down at another person.
Joel Brooks:You know, may maybe you look down another person because of their political party, and you just think, that's just insane. You know, only a stupid person would even believe that, and you look down on a person, or you look down on a person because of their addiction, or because of their horrible parent, or because of terrible decisions they make, and you're always looking down on them. You can't do this because you have to realize we're all in the same boat, every one of us. The destroyer doesn't discriminate, he will come and he will destroy. All of us are guilty, and we can't ever from a pedestal look at others and say, look at you compared to me.
Joel Brooks:No. We are all on a level playing ground. Grace levels the field. It does. We're in no way better.
Joel Brooks:It's the only thing that spared the Israelites as they put a mark on their door. Let's look at this mark. I mean, how in the world are you gonna, you know, save yourselves from the destroyer who's coming? What is it about this mark? And and God says, every Hebrew family needs to get a lamb, not just any lamb, but a real little lamb.
Joel Brooks:A little baby lamb. And to kill it and take some of his blood and put it on the doorpost. And when the destroyer comes and sees this blood, the destroyer is gonna pass over and not enter. And this is extraordinary when you think about it. The destroyer is coming.
Joel Brooks:The most powerful force you can imagine. Chariots can't stop this thing. Military army, they they can't stop. The destroyer is coming and God says, you know, take a little fluffy, kill it, get a little bit of the blood, put it on there, and the destroyer will pass right on by. He doesn't say, you know, place a wreath on the door, tie a yellow ribbon around, you know, make an x, something like that.
Joel Brooks:It has to be this blood from a defenseless lamb. You know, in my neighborhood or in this neighborhood, there's, we get our share of break ins. The moment we had to move out of our house after it was hit by a tree, that very night somebody tried to break into our house. I can imagine if I were to put a little bit of lamb's blood on the sides, it's not gonna even keep a common thief out. Here's gonna keep the destroyer away.
Joel Brooks:Look at chapter 12 verse 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. Now notice who the sign is for. This blood shall be a sign for you, not for me. This blood is a sign for you.
Joel Brooks:It's a sign pointing us to something or pointing us to someone 1400 years later to Jesus. Jesus definitely picks up this theme. You know, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he is celebrating this meal, this Passover meal with his disciples, and they're all gathered around in the upper room, and Jesus begins to tell this very familiar story. The story has been told to generation after generation after generation for well over a 1000 years. And so it's well known, and there's three main elements to this meal.
Joel Brooks:There's the unleavened bread, there's the wine, and there's the lamb. And Jesus, he picks up the the bread, and this is the bread of affliction that represents affliction. He takes his bread and he breaks and says, this is my body. Says all of the affliction, all of the suffering, everything that happened to Israel in that time, that's me. It's bound up in me.
Joel Brooks:It points to my body, which is about to be broken. He then takes the cup, which is the the cup of redemption. And he says that this cup that you would drink to remember the redemption of Exodus, actually, this cup is my blood, which makes the Exodus possible, and it's poured out for the forgiveness of sins. And so Jesus, he gives the real meaning of the bread, and he gives the real meaning of of the wine. And then he gives no reference whatsoever to the lamb.
Joel Brooks:Read all of the gospels. He doesn't make any reference at all to the main course of the Passover meal. No reference. And almost every commentator you read is going to point this out that Jesus either removed the lamb or the point is so obvious that he is the lamb. I'm the lamb in which this points.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna be my blood that allows judgment to pass over you. I'm the lamb that's gonna pay your debt so that your firstborn won't die. And so on that original Passover, Israel is saved from the Egyptians, only from the Egyptians. They're delivered from slavery, and they're delivered from oppression. But through the blood of Jesus, we are saved from those things, but more.
Joel Brooks:We do have a very physical salvation. Don't just instantly make the salvation of Jesus spiritual. We have a physical salvation. We'll be given new bodies. There will be a a a new earth.
Joel Brooks:We will still work, but we won't feel the toil of work. We won't be a slave to anyone. It'll be done out of joy and to the glory of Jesus. But it's real and it's tangible. But additional, it's more.
Joel Brooks:Since it's the eternal lamb that is slain, these things last forever. And God doesn't just demolish slavery and oppression. He demolishes death and sin. Gone. This is the lamb who in Genesis 22, Abraham says, God himself will provide the lamb.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the lamb who when John the Baptist saw him, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I mean, this is this is helping understand just some of the things in Jesus's life, like when he when he walked into the temple one time. He walks into the temple, and he sees a sacrificial system going on, and people just kind of buying buying the the the sacrifices, and it is is just business. It's just a business. And Jesus, he just starts throwing over tables.
Joel Brooks:He starts getting a whip, and he starts whipping people, and he starts acting insane. What is going on? He said, don't you get it? These sacrifices point to me. My death.
Joel Brooks:You're mocking my death. It is not business as usual. You cannot have that. This is me. Points to me.
Joel Brooks:We're in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus is sweating drops of blood and he is praying, father, remove this cup from me. What cup? The cup of redemption. The cup he just took at the passover. His blood shed for the forgiveness of sin.
Joel Brooks:Gotta remove this cup for me. Do I have to go through this? Does it have to be my blood that is painted on the doorpost? Remove it. But Jesus drank it to the dregs.
Joel Brooks:He drank it to the dregs. Just as the Israelites, when they shared this meal together in the the confines of their little home, And the the the shore passed them by, but yet they heard screams all throughout the land of Egypt, and it was horrible yet beautiful. Because those screams meant their salvation. In the same way we look at Jesus on the cross, crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it is both horrible and beautiful, because we see our redemption.
Joel Brooks:We see our redemption when we look at the death of the firstborn of all creation. But the story of the lamb, it doesn't end there. It doesn't end there. In the Passover meal, there's 4 cups of wine. It's it's best probably to think of those as 4 toast.
Joel Brooks:Four toast that they would have. And it was during that 3rd cup, likely that 3rd cup, which is a cup of redemption that Jesus said, this is my blood. Is the blood of the new covenant. And then there's this final cup. There's this cup of joy.
Joel Brooks:It's the last cup you would take, the last toast you would have, and Jesus doesn't partake of this cup. He withholds from it. It was this cup that you read in Matthew. He says, I tell you the truth. I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom.
Joel Brooks:There's still one more cup, the cup of joy, but I'm refraining. I won't drink it again until the kingdom comes. And so the Passover meal with Jesus is left unfinished. It's left unfinished. But when Jesus does return, it's no longer gonna be called a Passover meal.
Joel Brooks:You see in Revelation 19, this this meal is gonna be called a marriage supper. The marriage supper of the lamb. When he returns, and it will be filled with joy. A feast, a celebration in which we are reunited to finish that joyful meal. And and we're gonna celebrate that meal tonight as we partake in the Lord's supper, as we partake in communion.
Joel Brooks:And I want you to hear these words from the gospel of Matthew. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to the disciples. And he said, take, eat. This is my body. Then he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, gave it to them saying, drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness forgiveness of sins.
Joel Brooks:I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in you with you in my father's kingdom. Pray with me. Father, we are here to celebrate the lamb. That Passover lamb that so clearly points to Jesus, who didn't open his mouth, who didn't defend himself, but who was slaughtered so that we might be forgiven and delivered. Redemption is in his blood, and we thank you for that.
Joel Brooks:We are here to celebrate. And as we look to the elements in this table, we look both in horror and also joy. We have mixed emotions, because we realize the horrible sacrifice that was made, but we also realize that it purchased our redemption. And so we give you thanks. Thank you for giving us this meal in which we might remember this.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
