Our pastor’s sermon this morning included the fact that when God told the Israelites to sacrifice the lamb and put it’s blood on the doorposts (Exodus 12), the Israelites knew that the Egyptians’s main god was represented by a lamb. Every god of the Egyptians was represented by an animal and the lamb was the representation of the main god.

So…it was dangerous for the Israelites to follow Almighty God’s instructions to slaughter a lamb within the Egyptian land. The Egyptians could be very upset that their “god”‘s image was being harmed. So it wasn’t an easy decision which I’d never understood to be dangerous about making that choice to slaughter the lamb and put its blood on the doorpost.

Pastor Marvin pointed out, “Can you imagine that one or more Israelite wives would ask their husbands, ‘Honey, can we just smear the blood on the closet door?'” No, they couldn’t. It had to be a public demonstration of their faith, even though they could easily think and fear that the Egyptians would be very upset with them. And their lives could be in danger.

He also pointed out that the Israelites might think, “Well, this isn’t very culture friendly. We might turn off our neighbors to the Gospel by offending them.” Doesn’t that sound like us as we try to at times package the Gospel more attractively? Don’t offend! And certainly, there could be some good reasoning into that, but in this case, God called upon them to do something that stood out and was potentially highly inflamatory–culturally thinking.

But their obedience delivered them from having their first born son killed by the angel sent by God. And then God delivered them from slavery.

Well, those points were new to me. How about you?