The Lord has just finished giving instructions to Moses about how the first Passover is to be observed. Moses now relates those instructions to the elders of Israel. The elders will then see to it that the instructions are carried out in their own households and in everyone else's.
"Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, 'Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning." (Exodus 12:21-22) Once the people are inside with the Passover meal they are not to go back outside until the exodus begins sometime in the early morning hours. I don't know exactly what time of morning they begin to move out but the plague will strike at midnight and Pharaoh will call for Moses and Aaron while it's still dark to order the Israelites to leave Egypt. When that happens the Israelites will start packing all their worldly goods to head out, so whether they step foot outside before daybreak or whether the sun is just beginning to rise, I can't say for sure. Either way, it will be a new day; it will be after the plague has passed by at the midnight hour.
Our world in 2020 has been going through a plague and the citizens of many nations have been advised to stay out of the public as much as possible during the first several weeks or first couple of months of the pandemic so that the medical system won't be overwhelmed with too many cases of Covid-19 at once. If the hospitals and medical centers overflowed with Covid-19 cases, not only would the medical professionals be unable to treat each patient with as much attention as they need, but people suffering with other illnesses would have difficulty getting into emergency rooms or getting admitted to hospitals due to lack of space. I personally think it was necessary for us to follow the social distancing guidelines as well as we could to keep that from happening---to "flatten the curve" as the infectious disease specialists referred to it. Some citizens took quick steps to follow the guidelines we were given while some citizens refused to follow any of the health guidelines or to obey the mandates that were temporarily put in place by our leaders. In reference to those who have not taken any steps to protect themselves or those around them, I feel it's important to take a moment to consider what would have happened if the Israelites had refused to obey the Lord's instructions regarding the first Passover. The plague would have fallen upon any household whose occupants didn't stay inside on the night death stalked the streets of Egypt. I'm not trying to make a political statement here but I am making the statement that it was prudent and Biblical (based on today's passage and based on Romans 13:1-7 which involves respecting the government and obeying the laws of the land) for us to follow the guidelines provided for dealing with the outbreak in our nation. Now, having said that, is a prolonged period of quarantine in our country sustainable? No, because our economy and infrastructure would collapse. But for a short period of time it was doable. And that's all the Lord is asking the Israelites to do in Exodus 12: to stay out of the streets for a short period of time---for only one night in their case. And as far as we can tell from the Bible, every Israelite followed the guidelines provided for the night of the tenth plague and every Israelite home was spared from the plague of the firstborn.
Staying inside during the plague wasn't the only rule the people had to follow in order to escape loss of life. Suppose the Israelites had only partially obeyed the Lord? Suppose they'd stayed behind closed doors during the night but had not applied the evidence of their faith in the Lord: the blood on their doorframes? Partial obedience is still disobedience, and the plague would still have struck their homes. Moses made this clear to them by saying, "When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and He will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down." (Exodus 12:23)
The people are to exercise not only common sense by protecting themselves by staying indoors, but they are also to exercise their faith. There's a limit to what we can physically do to protect ourselves from a plague. We can avoid unnecessary trips to crowded areas, we can wear masks, we can use hand sanitizer, and we can wash our hands more frequently than usual. But in order to live our lives and to obtain necessary supplies and to make money to pay our bills, we are not going to be able to protect ourselves one hundred percent from Covid-19. It just isn't humanly possible. And if we fixate on that fact we may find ourselves becoming incredibly anxious. We may start to obsess about whether we're doing enough to prevent harm and next thing you know we could start having trouble sleeping at night, or losing our appetites or eating unhealthily, or being unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. When we reach that point we can actually weaken our immune systems and that will have the opposite effect of what we're trying to achieve, so we need to mix faith with our common sense precautions. That's what the Israelites did on the night of the tenth plague. That's what we can do in our own day. As for me and my house, we're doing the best we reasonably can to protect ourselves from illness, but at the same time we're praying to the Lord to protect us. There's a limit to what we can do but there's no limit to what the Lord can do. When we've done all we can do, we must leave the rest up to Him, and that's what we find the Israelites doing in our passage today. They stayed indoors as they were told but they also made a statement of faith in the Lord's ability to protect them.
Moses informs the people that the Lord intends them to observe Passover as an everlasting ordinance to remind themselves of the great and mighty work the Lord did for them in Egypt. "Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as He promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when He struck down the Egyptians.' Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron." (Exodus 12:24-28)
"At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, form the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead." (Exodus 12:29-30) The only place in all the land of Egypt where there is not wailing and mourning is in the land of Goshen where the Israelites obeyed the Lord and stayed inside and displayed the evidence of their faith on their doorframes. From that night on up until this very day the Jewish people observe Passover as a remembrance of the Lord's protection from the plague and of His divine deliverance from their slavery in Egypt.
How will you remember the Covid-19 plague of 2020? We are living in a time when a major historical event has occurred but it can also be a time of a major religious reawakening. Our faith can grow during the pandemic if we'll spend more time in prayer and in God's holy word. Prior to the pandemic, maybe we'd grown kind of lazy and complacent in our faith. Maybe we'd taken assembling at church for granted. Maybe we hadn't been maintaining a healthy prayer life. All that can change for us right here and now. We have a choice: we can remember the pandemic as a time of hardship and fear or we can remember it as a time when our faith grew in the Lord. When the Lord establishes Passover as a perpetual ordinance for the Jewish people, do we find them telling generations to come about how terrible and frightening the plague in Egypt was? Or do we find them telling their children about how faithful the Lord was in response to their obedience and faith? In the story of the Passover, their focus is on the Lord, isn't it? In the years to come I would hope our own tales of the plague will focus on the great things the Lord did for us. I would hope our stories will involve how much closer we drew to the Lord and that we'll talk about how much more we read the Scriptures and prayed. And most of all, I hope the extra Scripture reading and extra praying lingers on long after the hardships of this year have become a memory. I hope we develop faith habits that remain with us for the rest of our lives.
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