What should we do to respond to God’s grace? For the first nine plagues, God didn’t ask His people to do anything. They sat back and watched God trash the land of Egypt with signs and wonders that were increasingly devastating. The locusts showed up in chapter ten, and ate everything that the hailstorm of the previous chapter had left alive. Then God made the whole land dark, showing the people who worshipped a sun-god called Re that it is the Lord, the One True God, Who is really in charge. And then God said He would take away the firstborn offspring of every man and animal in the land.

Now, God had protected His people from some of the earlier plagues. The land of Goshen, where the Israelites were living, saw no swarms of flies (Exodus 8:22), and had none of their livestock die from disease (9:4, 6). God let no hail fall upon His people (9:26) and gave them light during the three days of darkness (10:23). But for this last plague, God asked His people to do something so that their firstborn children might be spared. He asked them to trust Him, and to make a public sign of their faith.

Why did God do this? Because the sign of their faith was a clear foreshadowing of the cross of Christ. Exodus 12:5 tells us that the Passover lamb was to be unblemished, and Jesus was the only Man Who ever lived Who was without sin. The people were to put the blood on the doorposts and the threshold of their houses – a picture of Jesus’ hands and feet which were nailed to the cross. And to make this connection even more clear, Jesus died on the cross exactly at Passover time (Mark 14:12). Yes, it is the shed blood of God’s firstborn Son that causes God to remove the death penalty from all those who trust in Him, passing over us and keeping us safe.

In other words, God’s Old Testament people were called to take the blood of Christ on themselves so that they might be saved. And we are called to do the same thing, trusting in His sacrifice alone to set us free from the eternal death that we all deserve. And just as they put a sign of their faith on the outside of their houses so that everyone could see it, we are also called to demonstrate our faith publicly, as we live Jesus’ life of self-sacrificial service and unconditional love.

So how will we show our faith in Christ today?

Exodus 12:1-14 (ESV)

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.