Exodus 12:29 -13:16 | “The Tenth Plague and the First Passover, Part Two”

Preston Highlands Baptist Church

Remembering is about Hope

Where does hope come from? The Bible says that remembering God is what brings us back to hope and hope back to us. Lamentations 3:21-24 , “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”

Do you see what it’s saying? It’s saying that hope comes from remembering the unending love and mercy and faithfulness of the Lord, from believing that the Lord is all you need. It’s saying that remembering God is how we walk in hope.

Remembering is Important in the Bible

You can see why remembering is very important in the Bible. During the Easter season we think about our future hope and rejoice and look forward to our resurrection in light of Jesus’ resurrection. But in the Bible, looking back and remembering the past is just as important.

The psalmist compares “forgetting the works of God” to having a heart that isn’t faithful to God (78:7-8). When Ezra was getting ready to go to Israel to check on the status of the Israelites in Jerusalem, he devoted himself to “study the Law of the Lord…and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). He devoted himself to teach the truth where it was already known, doing repetition, not innovation. He wanted to make sure the people remembered what they knew.

In 2 Peter 1, Peter is facing death and the thing he’s afraid of is that his hearers would forget the truth that they know. They know the truth (v. 12), but as long as Peter lives he wants to keep reminding them what they know (vv. 13-14). He intends to “always remind them” and thinks it’s “right” to do so (vv. 12-13). So he makes “every effort” to help them remember what they know.

The Passover Must Be Remembered

In our study of Exodus, we’ve come to chapters 11-13, or the final plague. A couple weeks ago, we looked at chapter 11 where the final plague is threatened and the first half of chapter 12 where the Lord gives Israel instructions for the Passover. Today we’ll look at the second half of chapter 12 and the first 16 verses of chapter 13.

The main thing for us to see today is that the way Israel remembers these events is just as important as the events themselves. God establishes the ceremony of the Passover before the events of the exodus happen (12:14-28). The bigger thing happening here is how they’ll remember the thing God does, which is why he gives them instructions for it before he does it.

Why would he do that? Because if they forget what he’s done, they’ll forget who they are and who he is. If they forget they’ll start to lose their identity as his people.

Delivered from Death

In our text, 12:29-13:16, we’ll see what they’re remembering (12:29-42) and how they remember it (12:43-13:16).

First, what are they remembering? They’re remembering when God delivered them from death (12:29-30) and from Egypt (12:31-42).

Verses 29-30 tell us what happened during the tenth and final plague. The description of the most destructive plague is given in two verses. This reminds me of, “And they crucified him” in the Gospels. Only a few words to describe events that send shockwaves through history. The horrific consequences of Egyptian resistance to God and abuse of his people over many years comes to pass in a single night.

The judgment included every segment of society with no exceptions, from the very highest to the very lowest (v. 29). There was no favoritism. Everyone was judged: rich and poor, young and old, slave and free.

The entire Egyptian society experienced the judgment of God: “there was not a house where someone was not dead.” Every single family lost someone that night. Egypt made Israel cry and wail (2:23, 3:7); now it was their turn to cry and wail.

How Could God Be So Harsh?

Why would God bring such terrible destruction on an entire people? Wasn’t it just Pharaoh who rejected him? Two things need to be clear here. God’s justice is based on his goodness. The reason God brings judgment is because he’s good. He created and loves the world and everyone in it, so anyone who hurts the things he’s made is subject to his judgment. If he didn’t love the people he’d made, he wouldn’t care about those who hurt them, like Pharaoh.

Pharaoh was hardly the only one guilty of oppressing the Israelites (1:22). His evil orders had to be carried out by thousands of Egyptians. Those who see and know about injustice and stand by and do nothing are complicit. Doing nothing in the face of evil is an injustice in itself.

Was Israel Exempt from the Tenth Plague?

Why couldn’t God have just sent the tenth plague on the Egyptians and then they let Israel go? Why the Passover? Because he wanted to engrain on Israel’s collective memory the truth that no one escapes the judgment of God unless they take cover under the blood of a spotless lamb.

Israel didn’t escape because of their ethnicity or because they had the right religion or because they lived better than the Egyptians, but because they had faith in the blood of the substitute lamb.

The tenth plague is different from the others because in it the Lord himself comes down to execute the judgment (11:4, 12:12, 23, 29). The absolute Lord and Judge of the whole earth came down into Egypt that night. Israel’s problem that night wasn’t how they’d escape from Pharaoh but how they’d escape from Yahweh.

They, like us all, were fallen in sin and deserved God’s justice. Their real issue that night was how they would stand in the presence of the Judge of all the earth. Their ethnicity or good behavior wasn’t going to protect them. The only thing with the power to solve their problem that night was the blood of a lamb.

The blood had this power because it satisfied the Lord’s justice, which demanded a life for a life. It says in verse 30 that someone was dead in every house in Egypt. There was “someone dead” in the Israelite houses too, namely, a spotless lamb had died outside and been brought in to be eaten by everyone in the house.

Delivered from Egypt

Israel was delivered from death through the death of a substitute. They were also delivered from Egypt (12:31-42).

“Bless me also” in verse 32 reminds us of Esau saying to his father Isaac after Jacob steals his blessing, “Have you but one blessing father? Bless me, even me also, O my father” (Gen. 27:38). Esau and Pharaoh want the blessing of God but they don’t want to repent.

Verses 35-36 tell us how Israel financed their trip. They’d need money to buy and trade along the way in the wilderness, and they didn’t know it yet, but they’d need lots of gold and precious metals to build their King a palace in the wilderness. The Lord was providing what they needed even before they knew they needed it.

Verse 38 is a beautiful picture of God’s promise to Abraham beginning to be fulfilled (Gen. 12:3). Other “families of the earth” were blessed by attaching themselves to Israel that night. An ethnically diverse group exited Egypt, likely consisting of some Cushites, one of whom Moses takes as a second wife later on, and probably many repenting Egyptians who were convinced that Yahweh was the one true and living God and that life with him and his people was their best hope for a future.

Verse 40 almost sounds like a funeral, but it was really a resurrection. Israel’s time in slavery was over and they were free. They were born as slaves but were now raised to walk out in newness of life. European settlers came to the U. S. and established Jamestown in 1607. So Europeans have been in America for less time than Israel was in Egypt. Imagine if all of a sudden we all had to leave and go live in a land we’d never seen. This was a radical change.

Verse 42 says that the Lord “stayed on watch” for Israel that night so that they would “stay on watch” for him in remembrance “throughout their generations.” Remembering the event was just as important as the event itself.

How Are They to Remember?

So what are they remembering? That God delivered them from death and from Egypt, which parallels how Jesus delivers us from slavery to sin through his death on the cross and from slavery to the fear of death through his resurrection.

Now let’s see how they’re to remember it (12:43-13:16). God tells Israel to remember their deliverance in three ways: through the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the consecration of the firstborn.

Remembering through the Passover

This section on the Passover emphasizes who can participate (12:43-49). This automatically rubs our modern sensibilities the wrong way, as we assume that everyone should always be allowed to do everything. But that is not how any religion works. Every religion consists of a faith and practices. So for Jews, or Christians, to say, “You have to believe and do these things to be part of our community” is fair and legitimate. The secular person who flattens all religious distinctions is the one who’s intolerant and unkind toward people who think differently than them.

Since it was a “mixed multitude” going out of Egypt, who could participate in the Passover was a real question. The instructions here essentially say that the Passover is for those who’ve officially joined the covenant community through circumcision. This applied to females whose dad or husband was circumcised. Circumcision qualified someone to observe the Passover.

This applied to anyone willing to confess Yahweh as Lord and join their lives to his community. Anyone of any class or race could be part of Yahweh’s people so long as they confessed the faith of his people and received the sign of that faith, namely, circumcision. To take part in celebrating the deliverance of God’s people, you had to become a part of God’s people.

Christians carry this same principle forward by requiring a person to be baptized before they take the Lord’s Supper. Every denomination places baptism before taking the Supper, though there are differences on who’s qualified to be baptized. So when we take the Supper and I say, “You must be a baptized follower of Jesus to take the Supper with us,” I’m not doing anything new.

If a person wasn’t circumcised, they couldn’t take the Passover. If they were circumcised, it’d be wrong for them not to take it. In the same way, whoever is baptized as a believer should observe the Lord’s Supper. The reenactment of the events of our deliverance help us remember our deliverance and reveals that we’re still part of the people who’ve been delivered.

Remembering through the Feast of Unleavened Bread

The second way Israel was to remember their deliverance was through the Feast of Unleavened Bread (13:3-10, cf. 12:14-20). This week-long Feast began with the Passover meal and was marked by not eating any leavened bread and not working on the first and seventh days. This was meant to remind them of the haste with which Israel left Egypt (12:39).

The exodus was so important for them to remember that they needed more than one day. As Alec Motyer says, “Passover was of such outstanding importance that its annual remembrance had to be protected from becoming merely episodic, a day that goes as quickly as it comes.”[1]

Remembering the exodus wouldn’t be casual tip of the hat, but a life-altering refocusing of attention of Yahweh and his work of deliverance. Shouldn’t the death and resurrection of Jesus for our deliverance also alter and rearrange our lives and schedules? Remembering Jesus with other followers of Jesus every single week is not only commanded but also reveals that our lives truly have been altered by what he did. If church is a “I’ll go if I can, if I’m not too tired, if I’m not too busy or have too much homework,” then you haven’t perhaps understood the radical, life-reshaping nature of what Jesus has done for you. Gathering with the covenant community is part of our identity, part of who we are.

Remembering through the Consecration of the Firstborn

The third way Israel was to remember the exodus was through the consecration of the firstborn (13:1-2, 11-16). There’s a lot of emphasis on the firstborn in the tenth plague. The firstborn will die if the house isn’t covered by the blood (11:5). And here it says that the firstborn must be devoted to the Lord or redeemed.

Why so much emphasis on the firstborn? Because from the beginning the Lord told Moses that he was sending him to Egypt for a “contest of the firstborn.”[2] Israel was God’s firstborn (4:22), so they would be safe if they were under the blood. Everyone not under the blood would lose their firstborn to prove that God’s firstborn son will be victorious over Egypt’s firstborn.

When we get to the New Testament, we learn that the Lamb is the firstborn, a merging of these themes. Jesus was the firstborn who received the judgment of God and he was the spotless Lamb who became the substitute to save his people from the judgment of God. On the cross, Jesus, the firstborn Lamb, receives judgment and saves from judgment.

Regular Rhythms of Remembrance

Remembering is very important in the Bible. God wanted Israel to remember their deliverance from death and from Egypt by observing the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and by devoting the firstborn to him. This was to be done perpetually. They must never forget.

Things we do repeatedly shape us. We’re all being shaped by something. It’s safe to say that our digital technologies are shaping us more than we realize. Whether it’s our phones, computers, gaming, social media, or virtual reality, we’re being shaped by technology, just as we always have been. The invention of the printing press, automobile, airplane, and central heating and cooling shaped how we live and how we think about living.

We’re usually more concerned about the content of our media without realizing that the medium itself is shaping us in profound ways. Samual James, in his book Digital Liturgies, says, “American evangelicals have had a lot to say about cultural software but very little about cultural hardware.”[3] His point is that our technologies are shaping us, whether we see it or not. This doesn’t make them inherently bad or evil, but it does mean that we need to be aware of the ways they’re shaping us and be able to identify the ideas that are behind them and understand how they shape us even if we aren’t conscious of the shaping that’s happening.

The Lord understood that his people would be shaped by something, so he gave them regular rhythms of remembrance so that they’d be conformed into his image, not the image of the world around them. He wanted his people to reflect his glory to the nations, so he built into their lives a steady stream of practices and rituals to help them reflect him well.

What Can We Do?

What can we do to make sure we’re being shaped by God and not by the world? This text shows us three things we can do. First, we need conversion, or to become part of God’s people. We need to join ourselves to Jesus through faith and then join his covenant community through baptism and church membership.

Second, we need content, or to immerse ourselves in the word of God. The Lord said he wanted his people to take his word and put it on their hands and between their eyes so that “the law of the Lord may be in your mouth” (13:9, 16).

And third, we need community, or other people to help us grow. God gives us families and roommates and churches to sharpen and encourage and pray for us. Community is built, not found, so if you’re not connecting well, then start going to community group, men’s or women’s groups, training class, come early and stay late.

Remembering Him Who Remembered Us

We need each other because life is hard. In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah asks the Lord to “Remember my affliction and wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me” (vv. 19-20). Jeremiah is overwhelmed with pain and wants God to do something about it.

Several hundred years later, just before he died, Jesus gave a striking command to his followers. As he broke the bread in the upper room, he said, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk. 22:19). He wants us to remember him because what he’s about to do on the cross means he remembers us. He walked into our sin and suffering and his soul was the one bowed down so that our hearts could be lifted up with hope again. His aim was to capture and hold the memories of all those he was going to die for. He knew that we must remember him or our hope would die.

Has Jesus captured your memory and attention? Do you practice regular rhythms of remembrance to help you remember him? We must remember him who remembered us. May we never forget to remember him.

[1]J. A. Motyer, The Message of Exodus, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), 150.

[2]Ibid., 137.

[3]Samuel D. James, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 35.