Exodus 5:1

Let My people go

Exodus 5:2

Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.

Not just Moses vs Pharaoh, it is Yahweh versus the gods of Egypt.

Exodus 9:12

But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh

The light doesn't create the substance, It reveals it for what it is.

If you keep stiff-arming conviction, you don't stay neutral. Your heart gets harder.

Hebrews 3:15

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Exodus 11:4–6

So Moses said, "Thus says the Lord: 'About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

Exodus 11:10

Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

The more you reject truth the more blinded to truth you become!

Romans 1:24

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Romans 1:26

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Romans 1:28

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

"God gave them up" = "God handed them over."

God let them experience the natural trajectory of what they've already been choosing.

If God "gives them over," that means He had been holding something back. Which means, God is not being mean here; He has actually been merciful the whole time.

When you repeatedly resist truth, God eventually confirms you in the direction you've chosen.

Exodus 12:3

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household.

Exodus 12:5–7

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

Exodus 12:12–13

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 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 no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

Exodus 12:21–23

Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

Exodus 12:29–31

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, "Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said."

"Passover" = to protect, to shield, to guard.

Isaiah 31:5

Like birds hovering, so the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it; he will spare and rescue it.

When a biblical writer repeats a word multiple times and then breaks the pattern, that break is the point. — Tim Keller

Exodus 12:23

The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

God restrains & stops restraining.

He stops restraining the destroyer.

destroyer — šāḥaṯ — not a name for God

God also restrains the destroyer from bringing death to those whose houses are marked by blood.

There was only one way to survive the coming judgment: Blood.

Protection was in the blood applied.

If the wages of sin is death, and all have sinned, then the astonishing reality is not that judgment sometimes falls, but that it does not fall immediately. — John Stott

What mark is on your life?

Leviticus 17:11

The life of the flesh is in the blood.

Blood is life!

Sin cut us off!

When Jesus shed His blood on the cross as the perfect spotless lamb of God, He was not just demonstrating love, He was giving life so you could have life.

Jesus was the Lamb.

Hebrews 4:15

He was tempted in every way, yet without sin.

Jesus didn't stumble into the cross. He marched toward it.

John 10:17

I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me.

Our life is found in His life, Jesus' life, His blood, applied.

Ephesians 2:12–13

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ… having no hope and without God in the world… But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.