Roger Severino

MOSES: GOD RESCUES HIS PEOPLE FROM SLAVERY, Reflections on Exodus 12 and the Passover

Last week’s blog focused on God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants. As the story moves along through the rest of Genesis, we learn that this promise goes through Isaac, then through his son, Jacob, later named Israel. Jacob is the father of twelve sons, whose descendants become known as the, “twelve tribes of Israel.” The latter part of Genesis primarily follows one of these sons, Joseph, who encounters many great trials –including being carted off to Egypt as a slave – but through God’s providence is ultimately elevated to a high position in Pharaoh’s kingdom. When the Book of Exodus begins, Joseph and his brothers have died but the Hebrews grew and multiplied in the land (Ex. 1:6-7). After many years, a new king arose who knew not Joseph and who enslaved the Hebrew people because he was afraid of their growing numbers (Ex. 1:8-14).

Because the Hebrew people have grown and multiplied, Pharaoh instructs the midwives to kill all male Hebrew children to keep their numbers from increasing. By God’s providence, Moses is saved from the threat and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter as a member of the royal family. 

After many years, God calls Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery and establish a covenant with them. By the time we get to Exodus 12, God is enacting His tenth and final plague of judgment on the Egyptians for refusing to let the Hebrews go.

In Exodus 12, we find the following major elements:

  • The Passover (12:1-28)
  • The Tenth Plague: Death of Egypt’s Firstborn (12:29-32)
  • The Exodus (12:33-42)
  • The institution of the Passover (12:43-51)

God calls Moses to lead the Hebrews out of slavery and begin the journey towards the Promise Land. The exodus event becomes the great theme of deliverance and salvation throughout the Old Testament, and a picture of God’s ultimate salvation in Christ.

Jesus’ last supper with his disciples was a Passover meal. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are celebrating the new covenant’s version of the Passover. Both Luke 22:20 and 1 Cor. 11:25 refer to the cup as the, “new covenant in my blood.” The Passover commemorated God’s deliverance of His people from Egyptian slavery by the exodus event. The blood on their doorposts was a means of protecting the Hebrew’s firstborn. Jesus takes this important tradition and inaugurates a new covenant, established not by the blood of a Passover lamb, but through His own blood, shed on the cross for our salvation and deliverance from the slavery of sin. This is the foundation of the new covenant. Likewise, Paul makes this connection in 1 Cor. 5:7 when he references Christ as, “our Passover Lamb,” who, “has been sacrificed.” In salvation history, the Passover and exodus event are crucial in foreshadowing the salvation that God will more fully achieve through the cross of Christ and the perfect and spotless Lamb whose blood was shed on our behalf.

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.[1]

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 1 Pe 1:18–19.

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