Exodus 11-12: Death Comes Calling

The final plague. Death. 

What... was … Pharaoh... thinking!?!? I mean for real! Moses has told him over and over again “Let my people go! If you don't, such and such terrible thing will befall you!” Then it happens just like he said it would. His track record is 100%. Did Pharaoh just think it wasn't going to happen this time?!? Even his underlings were saying “Dude, just let them go! Egypt is ruined!” I've read theories that each of the plagues on Egypt corresponded to a god that the Egyptians worshiped, that the plagues were basically the I AM running rampant through the Egyptian pantheon and the final plague took out the last god standing. The god-king: Pharaoh. Perhaps he had started to believe in his own divinity? Perhaps he truly believed that he and his family were immune from this Unknown Power from the desert? That this God's hand could not surely reach so far as to touch Pharaoh?

But he had already been touched by this God. Take a look at 11:9. No, go ahead. I'll wait....

I've got to be honest, part of me just wanted to blow by that verse. It makes me feel uncomfortable. But this has been mentioned time and time again throughout the account of the plagues. The Author of this text really wanted to make sure we understood the reason why Pharaoh continued down this stupidly destructive path. He tells us multiple times in order to make sure we don't miss it. We aren't supposed to just blow by this aspect of the Exodus. Or shove it under the couch to make our God more palatable. There are hundreds of theological explanations out there designed to make us feel better about God's actions here in this section of Scripture. But I think there is value in coming to a place where you find that the actions of the God of the Universe are entirely not to your liking, and then wrestling through the implications. What does this say about God? What does it say about me if I've got a problem with it?

Then we come to the Passover. Death is coming. It is coming for everyone. It's indiscriminate. Everyone pays in blood. The only question is... Whose?

Whose blood will pay? Whose blood will satisfy the price? The firstborn of the Israelites were spared because the life of another had been given in their place. They were marked out by the blood of the slaughtered lamb dripping down their doorways. The bleeding red doors were a sign: “The price has already been paid. Death has no claim on this house”

This is one more picture of the death of Christ and its effect upon us. The Lamb Without Blemish has been slaughtered, so that we may live. His blood is the replacement for our own. The debt of our sin that we bore for our whole lives has been erased! When I truly stop to think about it I can't help but join the hymn writer in celebration:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!