Blood on the Doorposts

Read it: Exodus 12–14

Moses went back to Egypt, as God told him, and stood before Pharaoh with God’s message: “Let My people go, so that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness” (Exodus 5:1). Pharaoh’s answer: “Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD” (Exodus 5:2).

He was about to find out.

The plagues

What follows (Exodus 7–11) is a series of ten disasters, usually called the plagues: the Nile turned to blood, then frogs, gnats, flies, disease on the livestock, boils, hail, locusts and three days of darkness. Many of them strike at things Egypt worshipped, like the river and the sun. God is showing who is really God.

Each time, Pharaoh promises to let the people go, and each time he changes his mind. The Bible says both that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Exodus 8:15) and that God hardened it. Both are true: Pharaoh chose his stubbornness, and God gave him over to the choice he kept making.

The tenth plague is the most terrible, and we shouldn’t rush past it. God warned that every firstborn son in Egypt would die. Remember how this story began: Pharaoh had thrown Hebrew baby boys into the Nile. Before the plagues began, God had told Moses to warn him: “Israel is My firstborn son ... let My son go ... But since you have refused to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son!” (Exodus 4:22–23). Pharaoh had been warned, over and over. The last judgment is heartbreaking, and the Bible doesn’t pretend otherwise.

The Passover

But God gave His people a way to be safe. Each household was to choose a lamb, “an unblemished year-old male” (Exodus 12:5). At twilight they were to kill it, and “take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses” (Exodus 12:7). They were to roast the lamb and eat it with flat bread made without yeast, because there was no time for dough to rise, and with bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery. They were to eat dressed for travel, “with your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand” (Exodus 12:11).

Then God said: “The blood on the houses where you are staying will distinguish them; when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13).

Notice what keeps the Israelites safe. Not that they were better people than the Egyptians. They weren’t. They had grumbled and doubted. What protected them was the blood of a lamb that died in their place. What mattered was the blood on the door, not the people behind it.

“Now at midnight the LORD struck down every firstborn male in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:29). That night “there was loud wailing in Egypt; for there was no house without someone dead” (Exodus 12:30). Before dawn Pharaoh finally gives in: “Get up, leave my people” (Exodus 12:31).

God told Israel to keep this meal every year as a memorial, so that when their children asked, “What does this service mean to you?” they would answer, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt” (Exodus 12:26–27). Jewish families still celebrate Passover today. And Exodus notes that “a mixed multitude also went up with them” (Exodus 12:38). Even here, outsiders joined God’s people.

Christians date the exodus differently. Some place it in the 1400s BC, others in the 1200s BC. All agree that God really did rescue His people from slavery in Egypt, and that the rest of the Bible looks back on it as the great rescue.

The sea

The people leave, led by God Himself: “the LORD went before them in a pillar of cloud to guide their way by day, and in a pillar of fire to give them light by night” (Exodus 13:21). Remember the God who said, “I will surely be with you”? Here He is, visibly.

Then Pharaoh changes his mind one last time and sends his chariots after them. The Israelites are trapped between the army and the sea, and they panic: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us into the wilderness to die?” (Exodus 14:11).

Moses answers: “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the LORD’s salvation, which He will accomplish for you today” (Exodus 14:13). “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14).

Moses stretches out his hand, and “all that night the LORD drove back the sea with a strong east wind that turned it into dry land” (Exodus 14:21). The Israelites walk through “with walls of water on their right and on their left” (Exodus 14:22). When the Egyptians follow, the waters come crashing back.

“That day the LORD saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians” (Exodus 14:30). And on the far shore they sing: “The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation” (Exodus 15:2).

Where Jesus is in this

Jesus chose the Passover meal for His last supper with His disciples. He took the bread and said, “This is My body, given for you”, and the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:19–20). The next day He died, at Passover time. Paul puts it simply: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). John even notices that, like the Passover lamb, whose bones were not to be broken (Exodus 12:46), Jesus died without a broken bone: “Not one of His bones will be broken” (John 19:36).

We are safe from judgment the same way Israel was: not by being good enough, but by sheltering under the blood of the Lamb. Peter says we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19). And Jesus’ death and resurrection is the greater exodus, a rescue not from Egypt but from sin and death.

Think about it: The Israelites were safe because of the blood, not because they were better than the Egyptians. Why is that such good news, and why do people find it hard to accept?

Go deeper: The Key Teachings of Dwight L. Moody — Moody said the love of God is learned at Calvary, preached Christ as our substitute, and reached for the Passover: the destroyer did not ask whether the people in the house were good or bad, only whether the blood was on the door. Start with chapter 5, “Redeemed by the Blood”.