By Alex Florez
Scripture Reading: Exodus 2:23-25, Exodus 6:13, Exodus 12:1-3, Exodus 12:6-14, Exodus 12:21-27, Exodus 12:50-51, Psalm 40:17, 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, John 1:29
The terms offered at the inaugural Passover were pretty straightforward: “When the LORD passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you” (Exodus 12:23). It’s a simple transaction, but it represents a shocking dichotomy. On one hand, the elegant image of the unblemished lamb providing substitutionary atonement for an entire nation of firstborn sons. On the other hand, an evening of incalculable bloodshed. We must contend with both—our burdened spirits need the lowly, gentle Jesus and, at the same time, we require His blood as propitiation for the plagues of sin and death.
After sitting with the selected passages in Exodus today, the phrase that I cannot get out of my head is “slaughter at twilight.”
Picture it with me: the thin, ethereal quality of light as the sun withdraws, the bleating of animals as men put whetted metal to flesh. Children sense the panic radiating off the adults. Mothers shed silent tears and reluctantly prepare their families for this supposed march to freedom. The evening breeze is redolent with the coppery scent of blood. Death is in the air.
I imagine that everyone who experienced the first Passover lived with frighteningly vivid memories for years, but how much time passed before the memorializing lost its connection to the panicked urgency of the first “slaughter at twilight”?
To be sure, the passage of time and the fair-weather faithfulness of the Israelites did not denigrate the efficacy of God’s salvation. But for humans, forgetting seems to be in our blood.
It’s startling how easy it can be to oversimplify the life of Jesus. I tend to compartmentalize His suffering because I want the reassurance of the salvation narrative without the horror of His agonizing death. It comes naturally to echo the declaration, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and then carry on about my day.
This Advent season, I’ll hear plenty of sermons and sing a bunch of carols about the birth of our Lord, but I don’t want any of that to soften what it meant for Jesus to be the Lamb of God—the perfectly innocent, only begotten Son of God who would die such a gruesome, ignominious death. Lord, may I never trivialize the shedding of your blood.
With Jesus, we have a sacrifice so significant, blood so precious and powerful, that nothing further is required to quench the wrath of God. As the hymn goes, “Jesus paid it all,” and no more blood need be spilled for our debt to be washed away forever.
Let us be a people who take the reality of our Lord’s sacrifice to heart and always remember what he endured to set us free. Let us condemn “the destroyer” together, and let’s get excited about seeing, recognizing, and heralding the Lamb of God, Jesus Himself.
Written by Alex Florez
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