The Lamb at the Door

A father dips a bundle of leaves into a bowl and reaches up to the wooden beam above his front door. Inside, his children are watching, wide-eyed. Tonight is a night like no other. Tonight, the doors must be marked.

The people of Israel are slaves in Egypt. For generations they have made bricks under the hot sun for Pharaoh's building projects. God has sent Moses to tell Pharaoh: let my people go. And Pharaoh has said no, again and again. Nine terrible plagues have struck the land: water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, sickness, boils, hail, locusts, and three days of darkness. Still Pharaoh will not let them go. Now God tells Moses that one last plague is coming, the hardest of all. At midnight, the firstborn in every home in Egypt will die. But for Israel, God gives instructions. Very careful instructions. Instructions about a lamb.

God says to Moses and Aaron: this month will be the first month of your year. A new beginning. On the tenth day, every family is to take a lamb. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, they share with their neighbours. The lamb must be perfect, without any blemish, a one-year-old male, from the sheep or the goats. They are to keep it for four days. Imagine the children of each house getting to know that little lamb, feeding it, watching it. Then, on the fourteenth day, at twilight, every family in Israel is to kill their lamb. All at the same moment, all across the land.

Then comes the strange part. They are to take some of the lamb's blood and put it on the two side posts and the top of the doorframe of their house. They are to roast the lamb and eat it that night, with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast, because there is no time for bread to rise. And they are to eat it dressed for travel, belts fastened, sandals on their feet, walking sticks in hand. Eat it in a hurry, God says. It is the Lord's Passover.

Why the blood? God explains. “I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will strike all the firstborn. The blood will be to you for a token on the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will be on you to destroy you.” Behind every marked door, the families wait. They are not safe because they are better than the Egyptians. They are safe because of the lamb. And God adds: remember this day. Keep it as a feast, every year, for all generations. And they did. For over three thousand years, Jewish families have kept the Passover. And on the night before he died, Jesus ate the Passover with his friends. Paul would later write: Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed for us.

By the time of Jesus, Passover drew enormous crowds to Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus, who lived through those years, describes priests counting the lambs sacrificed at one Passover before Rome destroyed the temple. He gives the number as two hundred and fifty-six thousand, five hundred. Whatever the exact figure, the whole city would have been full of families sharing their lambs, just as God had told them that first night in Egypt.

The lamb at the door. You'll find it in Exodus chapter twelve, verses one to fourteen. A perfect lamb, a marked door, and a family kept safe. So here is a question to carry with you. The Israelites were saved not because they were good, but because of the lamb. What does that tell you about how God rescues people?