To Encourage You

Exodus 12:12 “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.”

Do you realize that each of the plagues that God sent upon Egypt was a mockery of Egypt’s many gods?  Egypt worshipped the god of the Nile River.  His name was Hapi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapi_(Nile_god).  In their belief system, it was Hapi that brought annual flooding to the Nile River and sustained the lives of the people by depositing fertile soil on their crop lands.  Then the true God turned the Nile River to blood, and thereby nothing more than a source of death. 

Egypt had a frog goddess. Her name was Heqet, the goddess of fertility.  “As a fertility goddess, associated explicitly with the last stages of the flooding of the Nile, and so with the germination of corn, she became associated with the final stages of childbirth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heqet).”  Then God brought a plague of frogs on Egypt, so that rather than a symbol of life, frogs became a scourge as swarms of the things came into their houses, their bedrooms, on their beds, into their ovens, and into their kneading bowls.  When they died, they were gathered into awful, stinking heaps (Exodus 8). 

Then there was the Egyptian god Geb. This god was a god of the earth.  In the third plague, God made the dust of the earth turn into lice that plagued the people rather than blessed them.  And so it went, 10 plagues on 10 false gods. 

In the final plague, God demonstrated that all the gods of the Egyptians could not save the lives of their firstborn.  They were completely impotent.  You see, it is God alone who saves.  In the Passover Lamb, He was pointing to the One who would come to save the world. This was Jesus, the Son of God.  God told the Israelites that each family was to kill a lamb and place its blood on the lintel and the two doorposts of the house.  He promised life to all who would do this, for if the death angel saw the blood, he would Pass Over the house. 

What wonderful shadows of the truth of the work of salvation on our behalf today.  Just as in Egypt, people today have a tendency to trust on many things other than God for their well-being.  It may be their bank account, their job, their health, or the wealth and power of their nation.  Whatever it is, in the end, none of those things has the power to save a soul.  They are all utterly impotent.  It is only in Christ, our Passover Lamb, that salvation is available to anyone.  He bore the wrath of God against the sin and the idolatry of the whole world on the cross.  By His all-sufficient sacrifice Jesus “took our illnesses and bore our diseases (Matthew 8:17).”  He made it possible by His mighty power so that that one day “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4).” 

It was our sin, our idolatry, our rejection of the truth for which Jesus died.  In contrast to Pharaoh, King of Egypt, who justly bore the penalty for his own sin, Jesus, the King of Kings, has unjustly bore the penalty for ours.  As the old hymn says “A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, He taketh my burden away; He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved, He giveth me strength as my day. . . When clothed in His brightness, transported I rise to meet Him in clouds of the sky, His perfect salvation, His wonderful love, I’ll shout with the millions on high.” 

Is He your wonderful Savior?  Do you know His wonderful love?  You can if you but turn to Him in repentance and accept the wonderful sacrifice the one and only Passover Lamb has made on your behalf.  There is no other god, there is no other thing, that can save you and me.  He alone is the Savior.