When He Sees The Blood

Moses called all the elders of Israel together and said to them, “Go, pick out a lamb or young goat for each of your families, and slaughter the Passover animal. Drain the blood into a basin. Then take a bundle of hyssop branches and dip it into the blood. Brush the hyssop across the top and sides of the doorframes of your houses. And no one may go out through the door until morning. For the LORD will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the LORD will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down.” Exodus 12:21-23

IMAGINE what it was like in Hebrew homes on this night. God’s instructions were that they had to take a lamb into their home. Then, four days later, as the sun was beginning to set, Dad had to take the innocent lamb that everyone had become so fond of and slit its throat. Perhaps many firstborn sons asked him, “Dad, do we really have to kill the lamb? He has done nothing to deserve this.” To which the father replied, “Son, either the lamb dies, or you die.”

The Israelites’ killing of lambs and sprinkling of the blood was an act of faith. The blood on the lintel and two doorposts was proof that they were taking God at his word about the judgment to come and the protection he would provide through the death of the lamb. And it is the same for us. If we take God at his word that judgment is coming, the proof is that the blood of the Lamb has become our covering, our hiding place, our source of protection. Our lives are marked by that blood.

Many people think a Christian is someone who believes in God and tries to be good, or someone who lives by the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount (as if anyone could!). But what we and our children must understand is that a Christian is a person who recognizes that he or she is a sinner deserving nothing less than the terrifying judgment of God and who takes refuge only in the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

Lord, how I wish I could do something tangible and physical to ensure the safety of my children from judgment. Instead I must trust you and thank you for providing the Lamb of God who takes away sin. I ask you to give ________ a deep sense of need for her life to be marked by his blood.