The Sign of the Blood

God saved His most severe judgment on Egypt for last when He sent plagues on Egypt. The tenth plague, the death of all the firstborn in Egypt (Ex. 11), would bring untold sorrow and pain on the Egyptians. But why the firstborn? Part of the answer is found in Exodus 4:22. The Lord regarded Israel as His firstborn son, and since in a manner of speaking Egypt had taken the Israelites from God by enslaving them, God would take the firstborn sons of Egypt.

In taking the firstborn of all the Egyptians and their animals, however, the Lord was not teaching that His people were innocent of sin. As God Himself states in Deuteronomy 9, it was not because of their superior righteousness that God saved Israel and gave them the land of Canaan. Moreover, the very marking of the doors of Israel with the blood of the lamb also shows us that the Israelites were not innocent. In today’s passage, we read how the blood of the Passover lamb marked out the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when God was passing through the land and putting to death all the firstborn sons (Ex. 12:13). Obviously, it was not as if the Lord actually needed the blood posted to figure out who were Israelites and who were not. God knows everything, even the words we are thinking before we speak them (Ps. 139:1–6). He certainly could have discerned between the Egyptians and the Israelites without the blood of the lamb. The blood, therefore, was really a sign to the Israelites, as we read in Exodus 12:13. It was an indication that God would pass over them and not strike their firstborn sons dead, but not because they were less sinful than the Egyptians. Instead, God passed over because an atoning death had already occurred in place of the firstborn Israelites—the death of a spotless lamb. All this pointed forward to Christ, the true Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). Believers in Jesus are spared the Lord’s destruction not because we are more righteous than those who have not bowed the knee to Christ. We are spared because Jesus shed His blood in our place to cover our sin.

The blood of Jesus, anticipated in the old covenant Passover, is our only hope. Matthew Henry comments, “The blood of sprinkling is the saint’s security in times of common calamity; it is this that marks them for God, pacifies conscience, and gives them boldness of access to the throne of grace, and so becomes a wall of protection round them and a wall of partition between them and the children of this world.”