Exodus 12:1-13

“Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, ² ‘This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. ³ Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: “On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

⁶ Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. ⁷ And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. ⁸ Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. ⁹ Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. ¹⁰ You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. ¹¹ And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So, you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.”

¹² ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. ¹³ Now 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 the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.’”

Jesus is the central character of the whole Bible. This story of the Passover is one of the most famous stories of the Bible up there with David and Goliath, and of course Christmas as we celebrate at this time of the year. Movies like The Ten Commandments have burned this into the minds of millions of viewers over the years. We have worked to show Jesus through the Old Testament in our previous lessons. In Genesis, we saw Him with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We saw Him in the person of Joseph, and now we are hundreds of years later, and He is in the Passover. Let’s get caught up.

Joseph is dead, and the new Pharaoh, the new king of Egypt, does not know about him and his reputation. This new Pharaoh does not know what Joseph did and how the Jews are seen in the land. He just knows that they are having a lot of kids and soon they will outnumber the Egyptians. This new Pharaoh brings in new laws that allow the midwives to kill all of the Hebrew boys upon birth, but God intervenes, and as far as we can tell, none of the boys are killed.

Then we see the birth of Moses; he is hidden until he is 3 months old, then set in a little ark in the river. He is rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, and he is fundamentally adopted and lives as an Egyptian prince until he is 40 years old.

One day, while out and about, he sees an Egyptian guard hurting one of his Hebrew brothers, and he kills the guard and hides his body, or so he thought. Soon, it is clear that his sin is known, and he runs to the land of Midian and ends up marrying a lady named Zipporah and becomes a shepherd for his father-in-law. Forty years later, Moses has an encounter with God that we all know as the ‘Burning Bush’ encounter, and God then sends him and his older brother Aaron back to Egypt to demand that Pharaoh let the Jews go.

While there in Egypt, God performs one miracle after another known as the Ten Plagues, each attacking one of the false deities that the Egyptians worshipped. The last plague, the one we will explore, is an attack on Pharaoh himself and his bloodline. The Egyptians worshipped Pharaoh as a god; the son of Ra, the sun god. As such, his son would also be a god and, of course, the next Pharaoh. God uses this belief of the Egyptians to attack one of the gods of Egypt and, at the same time, establish the Passover feast, one of the permanent feasts of Israel, as established in Leviticus 23.

In this Passover, a perfect lamb is killed in the evening, its blood is caught in a basin, and then the man of the household would paint the doorposts and the lintel at the top with the blood. The blood would drip and pool at the threshold, forming the sign of the cross in blood. That night, God himself would pass through the land and kill the firstborn of man and beast.

Exodus 12:12-13, “For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. ¹³ Now 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 the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

The blood is all that protected the people. If you obeyed, killed the Passover lamb and put the blood on your doors, then waited inside as the Lord had commanded, no one of your family or livestock died. No death. The blood of the lamb kept the people safe. Jesus, we are told, is our Passover lamb. He is the Lamb slain before the ‘foundation of the world.’ Revelation 13:8, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

We are told in Hebrews that there is no remission of sins, no removal of sin without blood. Hebrews 9:22, “And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.” Jesus is our Passover lamb, killed at the Passover, that pure blood of the perfect Son of God that covers my sin and yours if you have put your trust in Him.

Colossians 1:20, “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”

Hebrews 9:14, “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

We can go on, but I hope that you get the point. The whole world is about to celebrate the Christmas season and Jesus’ birth, BUT He was born to die. Most love the babe in a manger; few love the Man on the Middle Cross. Rather, they avoid Him and deny Him, they accuse Him of all manner of evil, and choose to live in their sinfulness. Jesus is the Passover lamb that takes away the sins of the world. But He is also the Holy God who will come and judge those that rejected His free offer of salvation. They will die like the thousands did that fateful night back in Egypt; they will die an eternal death.

Jesus is the story of the whole Bible. Rejoice if you know Him and His blood is covering your sins and transgressions. Sing loud this Christmas, those of us who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Genesis 37:12-28

¹² “Then his brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem. ¹³ And Israel said to Joseph, ‘Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.’ So, he said to him, “Here I am.”

¹⁴ Then he said to him, ‘Please go and see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks, and bring back word to me.’ So, he sent him out of the Valley of Hebron, and he went to Shechem.

¹⁵ Now a certain man found him, and there he was, wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, ‘What are you seeking?’ ¹⁶ So he said, “I am seeking my brothers. Please tell me where they are feeding their flocks.” ¹⁷ And the man said, ‘They have departed from here, for I heard them say, “Let us go to Dothan.” So, Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. ¹⁸ Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. ¹⁹ Then they said to one another, ‘Look, this dreamer is coming! ²⁰ Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, “Some wild beast has devoured him.” We shall see what will become of his dreams!”

²¹ But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, ‘Let us not kill him.’ ²² And Reuben said to them, ‘Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him’—that he might deliver him out of their hands, and bring him back to his father. ²³ So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. ²⁴ Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it. ²⁵ And they sat down to eat a meal. Then they lifted their eyes and looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing spices, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry them down to Egypt.

²⁶ So Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? ²⁷ Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh.” And his brothers listened. ²⁸ Then Midianite traders passed by; so, the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.”

We are now several years past when Jacob had his own encounter with Jesus, and he is back in Canaan and has his entire family there. He has lost Rachel; she died giving birth to Benjamin, his 12^th son (Genesis 36:16-19). And now he is surrounded by his sons and daughter Dinah. They are shepherds, and sheep is their business. Joseph, his first son from Rachel, is his ‘pride and joy,’ and life is good as long as Joseph is good. This favoritism builds a divide between the ten older sons and Joseph. It would seem that Joseph and Jacob are unaware of the hatred that the ten have for their younger brother. Jacob sends him to check up on them as they tend the flock, and they kidnap him and sell him into Egypt. This begins a thirteen-year journey where God uses Joseph to rescue his family from death by famine.

Well, Pastor Sean, where is the Jesus picture? Where is Jesus? There are two men in the scripture about whom no sin is recorded; one is Joshua, and we will get to him in the book of Joshua and his encounters with Jesus. The other one we will explore today; Joseph is that other one.

There are no sins recorded as being committed by Joseph. Of course, he did sin; he is a man, and Romans 3:10 tells us that there is none righteous like Jesus, no, not one. However, God chose not to record any sinful failures of Joseph’s. Joseph is an Old Testament Christ type. He is betrayed by his own people. We just read that he is sold into Egypt for 20 shekels of silver; there is a rescuing of the nation (in the form of feeding them and caring for them), and there is a repentance towards the one they betrayed, like we will see the nation do with Jesus when He returns. There is a resurrection of sorts in that Jacob thought that Joseph was dead (Genesis 37:31-35), and when he sees him, it is like he receives him from the dead.

In addition to the ‘coat of many colors’ that his father gives him, the real source of the hatred between Joseph and his brothers is the dreams that God sent him. These are recorded for us in Genesis 37:1-10. In these dreams, his family is seen bowing to him, and when he tells the dreams to them, there is a hatred that arises in them towards him. Jesus was hated by His own people, hated by the very brothers that He was raised with (John 7:1-5), and as far as we know in regard to His brothers, only two of them come to belief in Him as the Messiah, James and Jude.

In the story, Joseph is the beloved son, and he is betrayed and sold for money. He ends up in Egypt, and there he lives and honorable life, yet he is falsely accused, convicted and imprisoned as an innocent man. He is able to prophesy and tells the future to the king’s baker and cup-bearer (Genesis 40:12-23). He also predicts that they would leave Egypt and that they should take his bones with them (Genesis 50: 24-26).

The story of Joseph is one of the most amazing stories of the Bible. One of betrayal, despair, hatred and jealousy. It has chapters of despair and long periods of waiting on God to act and rescue. There is restoration, forgiveness, and realization of God’s superintendence of His plan, even when we can’t see the future. There is a central theme that runs through the story of Joseph, and we find it written in Genesis 39:3,

“And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand.” Also in verse 21, “But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.” Also in verse 23, “The keeper of the prison did not look into anything that was under Joseph’s authority, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.” The Lord made all that Joseph did to be good, all those around him could see it, God gave him wisdom and the ability to interpret dreams, and God blessed him over and over again.

If God be for you, no one can really be against you. This is the lesson to be learned, and even our seemingly horrible situations can be made into victories if we are willing to wait on God and put Him first.

Joseph never stopped trusting God (Genesis 40:8), “So Joseph said to them, ‘Do not interpretations belong to God?’” He did not give up trusting and holding on to God.

Jesus cried out to God in the garden, on the cross, and throughout His journey here on Earth. God has given Him a name above every name, and at His name every knee shall bow.

God will take us through the dark times of life and hold us, giving us favor with those around us as He performs His plan and His will. Even when our own people hate us and betray us, we can grow in grace and come to the conclusion that Joseph did in Genesis 50:19-20. Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”

And we can bless and care for our enemies; see Jesus going to get Saul of Tarshish, His sworn enemy, and redeeming him. Jesus in the Old Testament, Joseph a beautiful picture of Christ.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario