This is a picture for us. It’s a picture of the invisible reality of sin. When people are born into this world, we’re born in slavery to sin. Whatever conquers you, you are subject to it. Sins are bitterness, hatred, anger, fear. Sin afflicts every person. Behind sin and empowering it, are demonic spirits. So people born into this world are born in slavery to sin, and life is hard. There are disappointments, betrayals, difficulties, setbacks.
In the midst of it, people try to find relief of the pain. They become addicted to various things. Then their addiction is a bondage. Addictions to drugs, then the drugs steal their health and their finance. Addicted to pornography. Addicted to alcohol and nicotine. So this is slavery – people were made very bitter. The Bible tells us that behind Egypt, there was an invisible spiritual world. The Egyptians worshipped many different gods. They had gods for all kinds of manners of things.
So the reality is this – the people were in slavery and the power behind that slavery were demonic spirits working through the Egyptians. The people began to cry and ask God to help them. So God sent Moses to help them; and when Moses came in, said to the Pharaoh – “Let my people go. The Lord says – let my people go.” Pharaoh says: “Who is this Lord? He’s not my God. I will not let them go.” So God began to bring plagues on the nation of Israel.
Let’s come and have a look at it now. We’re going come right to the very last one and we’ll look at this in Exodus chapter 12. Here in verse 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.”
Verse 5 – “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.” He said: “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.”
Notice here in verse 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.”
Verse 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, for I am the Lord.”
Verse 14: “‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.”
Verse 22 and 23: “And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until 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 not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.”
Verse 29 - 31: “And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck 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 livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead. Then he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise, go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel. And go, serve the Lord as you have said.”