Please be seated. Happy to be with you here this day. I'm Tony Giles, one of the pastors, and I was asked to take just a moment and give you a little bit of a window into some upcoming events in my and my family's life. Some of you know, many of you who've been around know that it was about four years ago that the elders of your church said yes and gave me a green light to say yes to a ministry that works with missionaries called Surge that also does gospel renewal. And the big idea there is if we have anything to say to the world, it's because the gospel is always renewing our own lives. My work has been primarily with pastors here at Stateside. But this Saturday, Lord willing, I will leave on a plane and land on the coast of Spain To meet first with leaders of missionary teams of 300 missionaries from 26 countries for a week of that renewal of praying together, being together, recovering from Covid and everything that goes with it. And after that week of meeting with the leaders, the missionaries and their families all come. So for those two weeks, I will be on the coast of Spain. I'm in a part-time role with Surge. And some of you know that our daughter Rebecca, a missionary supported by our church, is full-time with Surge. So the nice part is that while Mary Lynn will not be there, for those two weeks, sadly. Rebecca will be. And following those two weeks, she will meet us for a week through Scotland together where Rebecca used to live and she's now our tour guide as she has moved back. So that is upcoming. A little bit later in the service, Joe has agreed to pray for me and this trip and what's going on there. And the way I've talked about this with others is I've been praying and finally beginning to see that my heart is catching up with my plans. So that's my prayer to you, and you'll see listed in the pastoral notes today, which is why I'm doing this. Nate has taken some of my recent newsletter, and it is in your pastoral notes right inside the front cover. And I would love it for you to take that as a way to pray for me, for us, over these next couple of weeks in particular, starting Saturday morning of this next week. Thank you for your prayers, your encouragement, and to the elders for their ongoing support of this other work that I get to do. We're going to look at the text before us today. Our sermon text is a long one. It is chapter 11 and part of chapter 12, beginning with chapter 11 of Exodus, verse 1, extending through chapter 12, verse 13. Hear God's Word. The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will 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 asked every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, 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 handmill, 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. 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. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first 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. 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 their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire 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 inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 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. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Pray with me. Father, we come before you this day, the one who calls us to himself, who gathers us here, who knows us by name, who knows our hearts, who knows our needs, who knows the bentness of our lives, and the eagerness of us here today to hear from you. Lord, would you be our teacher. Would you take your word, open our eyes, apply it to our hearts. For the sake of Christ, we pray. Amen. Well, the sermon title that you have each week actually falls underneath the name of the series. Do you remember the series name? Delivered. Studies in Exodus. And we're just getting going. But we're before today, we come to what might be considered the prelude or maybe the first installment of that deliverance from the Egyptian bondage that has marked this book from its beginning. Israel has been in bondage for 400 years. They've been doing what the Pharaoh allowed them to do and commanded them to do. And it has been wearisome, and they have cried out first to God, then to Pharaoh, and we're going to step into that today. What we're going to find today is the central thing that makes Jews who they are, even today. The thing that makes Jews who they are, and a revised version of that is what has become the central element or focus of Christian worship. It's the bloody death of a helpless victim. The bloody death of a helpless victim becomes the centerpiece of what we do as we gather here later at this table, week after week and day after day. Of all the possibilities that it could be, why that? Well, I think we're going to find out why both this week and next when we stick with this story and see how the people of God took what happens here and they carried it forward. But I think we're going to see it in this passage today. We're going to see why this is so central when we see two figures emerge. This has been between Pharaoh and Aaron and Moses to this point. But we're gonna see two other figures emerge. One in chapter 11 and one in chapter 12. And it's not Moses. It's not Pharaoh. It's two other figures. As we begin to see them for who they are, we begin to see why the bloody death of a helpless victim is the centerpiece of what we do and who we are. The first figure is the Lord of Death. Now, chapter 10 ends with some striking words. Just a moment, we will consider how Pharaoh has put himself in a posh, in a place, he has taken up a role that he would call the Lord of Death. And I say that because of how chapter 10 ends. You can look at that with me and see, it's not in our text today, but it ends with this. The Pharaoh said to Moses, get away from me, take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face, you shall die. I'm gonna call that Pharaoh's empty claim. To be sure, Pharaoh had any kinds and numbers of swords at his disposal and people ready to wield them. But when Pharaoh declares, Moses, you will not see me again and live, that he's stepping out onto a limb that we might call, and I'm gonna call today, delusional. It's a delusion of power. And we've seen that. We see it around us at times. Those who exaggerate their own significance, believe their own uniqueness. Mostly we see it in individuals. Psychiatrists would tell us with a narcissistic personality disorder. Pharaoh might be there. Just saying. This is how Philip Riken puts it. Philip Riken is the president of West Wheaton College who writes, the plague of darkness Plague number nine proved once and for all that Pharaoh was not the son of light. Yet even after the God of Israel proved that he alone ruled both night and day, the king of Egypt continued to have delusions of deity. Why would he say that? Well, in his final audience with Moses, Pharaoh makes that outrageous claim I just read, that he held the power of life and death, saying to Moses, the day you see my face, you will die. And if that sounds familiar, it's because later on, Those words spoken by the one true God, when Moses went up on the mountain and asked to see God's glory, he was told, you cannot see my face for no one may see me and live. That's where you heard that before. It didn't. It's not just Pharaoh making up words, but that's how God has revealed himself. And it was a danger that apparently Moses had some instinct about, because it was at the burning bush, you might remember, in chapter three, where Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. You see, God is so awesome, Riken writes, in his holiness that to see him is to perish. Thus for Pharaoh to assert the same power was an act of sheer arrogance. He was claiming a prerogative that belonged to God alone. For nine plagues, it's been Moses and Aaron bringing the plagues to no avail. Nine times Pharaoh says, go away, but don't leave. You're not leaving. leave my presence. But life got harsher and harsher for nine plagues. And now with number 10, God says, I'm coming myself. You know, I'm thinking about that this week. I couldn't help but think about a scene from a 1993 film, R-Rated, a well-earned R-Rating, by the way, Tombstone, where Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp. And Wyatt Earp and his brothers have come to Tombstone to leave behind their law-enforcing days. They've put that behind them. They're gonna buy a business and settle down. But once they do, they realize and they learn quickly that to retire as a peace officer in Tombstone had its challenges. And the challenges went by the name Cowboys. This was a ruthless band of renegades who bonded together and had no trouble shooting their way through life, doing what they wanted to do. And the Earps stayed away. They kept their distance from the cowboys. They let things go until one of the Herb brothers was killed. When Wyatt, in fury and anger, yells at one of the cowboys strewn in the street, you called down the thunder. Well, now you've got it. You see that? As he opened his coat to show a badge, it said, U.S. Marshal, the retired lawman had come out of retirement to take care and to deal with the murder of his brother. He goes on to say, and the cowboys, by the way, were recognized by the red sash that they wore. And he says, I see a red sash, I kill the man wearing it. So run. You tell them the law's coming. Tell them I'm coming and hell's coming with me." Well, those words were laced more with vengeance than justice. Unlike our God. When God says, I'm coming, it's unlike the way Wyatt Earp goes after the boys that killed his brother. Unlike Yahweh, who comes to us in a righteous indignation. All of God's indignation is righteous, by the way. The men in our church, a lot of them, have just read J.I. Packer's Knowing God. Here's how he describes the wrath of God. To some, wrath suggests a loss of self-control, an outburst of seeing red, which is partly, if not wholly, irrational. To others, it suggests the rage of wounded pride or plain bad temper. Surely, it is said, it would be wrong to ascribe such attitudes to God. Because that's not what his anger is. That's not his wrath. He doesn't fly off the handle. It's not capricious. God's wrath in the Bible is never capricious. It's never self-indulgent. It's never irritable. It's not like the human anger that we know how often ours is. It is instead, Packer writes, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. Let me say that again. It is a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. That's what's unfolding here before us. This is how John Piper put it. God's wrath is his love and action against sin. God is love and does all things for his glory. He loves his glory above all else. And it is a good thing. Therefore God rules the world in such a way that he brings himself maximum glory. That means God must act justly and judge sin, otherwise God would not be God. God's love for his own glory motivates his wrath against sin. Somebody described God's heart like this, that when God's heart fills up with love, mercy is what pours out. And you and I can be Glad for that. That comes up later in our text. When God's heart fills up with love, mercy is what pours out. When God's heart fills up with wrath, it's justice that pours out. So keep those pictures in mind as we go. What we're taking a look is Pharaoh's empty claim. His pretending, his assumptions, jumping in and claiming things that are rightly God's. To be a Pharaoh, you had to believe that you were a God. But in contrast to Pharaoh's empty claim, what we see here as chapter 11 unfolds is Yahweh's powerful decree. It's not an empty claim. It's a powerful decree. When God says something, guess what? That's what happens. And we see that played out here. Verse one, the Lord said to Moses, yet one more plague I will bring on Pharaoh and upon Egypt. And guess what happened? A plague. It was a plague unlike the others. It was a final blow. It was the coup d'etat. It was the the the end point of a series of plagues. when he says, and by the way, that reflects back and echoes back, you might remember, or you could look later at the Exodus 4, where Moses has heard this, where he heard God say to him, say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve you. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will, kill your firstborn son. You may remember that that was in reaction to Pharaoh killing firstborn sons. That's where the story begins, right? Moses was in the bushes, in a basket on the river. It was after the firstborn son, that's where this thing started. And then God comes behind it and says, Israel is my firstborn. And as you treat them the way you're treating him, I will take your firstborn. It's justice. It's not vengeance. It's not white hot fury gone wrong. It's God being God. His powerful degree is this, he says in verse four, I will go out in the midst of Egypt. And when he says, I will go out, it's the very same word that describes Joseph. Remember that part of the story? When Joseph landed in Egypt and went out in the midst of Israel, the same word, same phrase. When God says, I will go out, it's just as Joseph had gone out to do what? To execute his authority, to carry out his role as an authoritative force in that land. And when Yahweh says, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, he's carrying out his absolute authority in a different way, in a compelling way, exercising his dominant authority. His decree is that there would be a firstborn dying, that the firstborn in every home was in jeopardy. that every firstborn in the land of Egypt, every firstborn. How many is that? Well, we're not told. But what we are told is there was not a firstborn who was not included. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die. And that extended to the highest level Egyptians. Nobody was immune. It was the Pharaoh's son was included. But so was the slave girl's son. It wasn't, there wasn't a respect about place in society. From the highest to the lowest, every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, and there shall be a great cry throughout Egypt such as there has never been or ever will be again. What was that like? I mean, you gotta use your imagination to think that You hear a cry over here, and then there's a cry over here, and then you're surrounded by cries. There's a cry coming from every home. This idea of crying is a motif in the book of Exodus. Israel had cried to Yahweh for deliverance in chapter 2. Israel had cried in vain to Pharaoh in their anguish, chapter 5. And now it was the Egyptians who will cry in anguish at the judgment of God. And then this decree goes a bit further. He says, that's going to happen and Pharaoh will not listen to you. He will hear the warning. He will hear the predicament. He will hear what lies ahead and he will not listen to you. Why is that? Is he just that slow? Is he just that stubborn? Well, you can draw your own conclusions, but this is what the text says. They will not listen to you that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. I want you to hold on to that thought for a bit. We're going to come back to that, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. That's the why behind the dilemma. And as And before the plague is instituted, before it begins, the Lord of death, who we're now recognizing, is not Pharaoh. But the Lord of death is the Lord. He is the one who is over life and death. He is the one who brings death. or spares us from death. God is the Lord of Death. And that's one figure that emerges here that's important to hang on to as we begin to see how the story comes together. But it's not just the Lord of Death, it's the Lamb of Life. is the second figure to emerge. You know the story. You know how this goes. I will read it once again, just this part of it. It's too important not to, or to assume, or to skip over. It's in chapter 12, starting at the beginning of verse 3. I'm going to read four verses here. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamp. A lamb according to their father's houses. What does that mean? We'll get to that. According to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. This is what it means. And if a 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. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the 14th day. That's four days in your home. of this month when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight." This little lamb that's been in the house for four days. The kids have played with it. And the lamb of life, and the prescription is, Father, take the lamb. Take the lamb and slit his throat. And as the blood pours out, as it drifts down on the white coat, take the blood with your hand and paint the doorposts and the lintel of your home. The weakest animal, the most helpless victim, These are the kinds of things that sound confounding and offending even to modern people. But there's something behind these that we cannot dispense with. And that is the land that was slain by each household was a perfect match for the requirements of the holy God. What do I mean by that? It's not the lamb that we thought we could do without, the runt of the litter. It's actually the best. The best that there is, that is what, the one without blemish. It has to be, this lamb has to be whole and perfect, as close, as perfect as you have. A lamb without blemish was the perfect sacrifice. It matched the requirements of God. As we read earlier in Hebrews chapter 9, we do know, don't we, that Christ himself was the one who offered himself without blemish to God. The lamb that was slain was a perfect match for the requirement of God. He was without blemish. When we walk into this room, we come with blemish. All kinds. Every kind. I don't know your blemishes. I'm talking about blemishes of the soul, blemishes of the heart, the things that make you and me unqualified to be that sacrifice. Because we don't match the perfection of God. But this one does. perfectly matches the requirement of God, but it also perfectly meets the needs of the people. I think that's what's going on when he talks about, if you wanna make sure that the lamb that you sacrifice is a lamb you can consume, and if it's too big for your family, go get another family. Because it has to be perfectly distributed, perfectly addressing the needs of the people. It perfectly matches the requirement of God. It perfectly meets the needs of the people. And this lamb of life is the one God has in mind when he says to his people, when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will befall you to destroy you. And later on in Hebrews, we get another take on what is happening here when Moses is described this way. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. Two figures emerge. It's not Moses, it's not Pharaoh. It's the Lord of death and the Lamb of life. And what do they have to do with you? What do they have to do with us? Well, first, the Lord of death. Do you know what the mortality rate is? It's a trick question. It's 100%. We don't escape it. If we escape the grave, it's because our ashes have been scattered. But it's before all of us, and we don't know the day, we don't know the time. We're not promised tomorrow. There is a Lord of death who is also the one who offers us life, and it comes through the Lamb of life. But because no one escapes physical death, We have to guard ourselves from a Pharaoh syndrome that we can manage things or that we are in control. I'm gonna manage my own life. Does that sound familiar? I'm gonna manage my own death. I'm gonna make sure it's smooth. The Lord of death, who is the Lord of life, knows the day of our death. And he has made provision for that day that can be yours this day. The Lord of death is one figure who emerges But so does the lamb of life. This lamb, just as God provided a lamb for Abraham on Mount Moriah, Jesus is the one, the lamb, that God provides for you and me. Peter put it like this. You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. What are those? The futile ways inherited from your forefathers. That could be anything. It could be the way you approach life. It could be from the ways you try to make life work. The futile ways inherited from your forefathers. The things that you generationally learned. Or the things that you've learned on your own. Feudal ways of life. You've been ransomed from those, Peter says, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb with a blemish or spot. You think he knew Exodus? This idea of the bloody lamb and the sacrifice I mentioned earlier, we hear that and we kind of want to step back from it at some point. Blood, sacrifice, and for the modern person it just sounds archaic and ancient and leftover truths from a days gone by. Somebody put it like this, that's the group Those are the people, that's the individual who would say, a God without wrath brought people without sin into a kingdom without judgment by a Christ without a cross. But in the face of that, what we find is a God, a lavish one is love, who comes to us with a sheltering refuge. that is yours, friends. And it's bloody. When Paul wrote Romans, he writes out and he starts talking about the dilemma that the gospel deals with. And the first group he discusses and describes is the pagan world. We get that, right? He describes the Gentile world. Yeah, them too. And then he gets to the Jews, and guess what? It's you too. And if you were writing today, he might have included Christian church, because we all fall short of the glory of God, he goes on to say. We all come up short. You see, the Jews are no better than the Egyptians. They weren't saved because they were better. They weren't saved because they were better candidates. They were saved because they were more moral. They might have been. But that wasn't the basis. When we read here that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel, the distinction is not based on race. It's not based on class or privilege that we saw. It's not based on religious practice. Instead, the distinction is simply this. It's those who shelter beneath the blood of the Lamb. You cannot shelter, friends, in any church, regardless of how evangelical it is. You must personally apply the blood of the lamb. Not generally involved, but personally sheltering under the blood of the lamb. And the question before us today is, are you sure that your confidence is solely in the lamb of the blood? the blood that was shed, the lamb that was slain, the lamb of God. One Old Testament professor, in closing, says this. This is John Currid from Reform Theological Seminary, professor of Old Testament. The Passover is not primarily about deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. What? Wait. The Passover is not primarily about deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. Nor is it mainly about the humiliation of Pharaoh and Egypt. Well, it is both of those things. But hear what he's saying. It's not primarily about the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt. It's not mainly about the humiliation of Pharaoh and Egypt. Rather, its essential purpose is the glorification and exaltation of Yahweh. That's why Piper said what he did. That's why we read in this text, verse 11, chapter 12, it is the Lord's Passover. I thought it was Egypt's. I thought it was Israel's Passover in Egypt. It's the Lord's Passover. And how is that? Well, it's not just that he's behind it all. It's that we take up John the Baptist's cry. Behold the Lamb of God. Looking at Jesus of Nazareth, looking at the Son of God who came in the flesh, behold the Lamb, who is this? Do you know who it is? The Lord of death. The Lord of death is the Lamb of life. The one who made this world, the one who orders it, the one who made you for himself is the one who took on flesh. The Lord of death became the lamb of life and is today. The lamb of life has been raised at the right hand of God, the father, the Lord of death and lamb of life united together is the one who comes to you in the gospel. The God who made you, who knows the number of your days and the hairs on your head, is the very Lamb of life. And we don't back away from that. And we step into it. And when we do, when we step into it, like the door frames and the lintel of the home were painted with blood, you, friends, are painted. with the blood of Christ and receive the righteousness of Christ. You see, we're a painted people. Because the Lord of death is the Lamb of life and He is yours by faith. What are you trusting in? Is it anything besides the blood of the Lamb? Didn't run to him. Run to him today. Pray with me. Father, meet us, we pray. It would help us to see more and more of the wonder and the beauty and the majesty of your love that we would begin to see this is your. Deliverance that is your Passover. But you have done for us in Christ the Lord. May we step fully into it. And as And as the Israelites were told to eat in such a way that they were ready to run, may we believe you and be ready to serve, to take the goodness and the glory of the gospel into the life that we live, all for your glory, because your glory is worth it. In Christ's name we pray, amen.