God’s first rule to the Israelites, before He took them out of Egypt, was to sacrifice a lamb; but not just any lamb. It had to be a yearling, without blemish. Take note, this was a sacrifice to God so it had to be perfect. It could not be their least desirable animal. If it were the least desirable it would not be a sacrifice. The definition for sacrifice in our world has the definition of a loss or something you give up, usually for the sake of a better cause. How often have you thought of the sacrifices parents make for the sake of their children? All a parent has to do is to remember the time and sleep they gave up to rear a child. Even forgetting the financial cost, it is a sacrifice to take total care of another human being. But in the realm of worship a sacrifice is the act of offering something to a deity in propitiation, which is the act of gaining or regaining favor or goodwill of someone or something, such as the ritual slaughter of an animal or person. Or the sacrifice could be used to give homage, respect or reverence to God, or even to someone like the Pharaoh who thought he deserved the treatment that was reserved for God.
This sacrifice was the ritual slaughter of an animal to show total respect for God. On the fourteenth day of the month they weren’t allowed to slaughter it until twilight at the end of that day. From the slaughtering of the sacrifice they were to take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts, and on the lintel of the door fame, or the top board of the door frame. That blood was to show the Egyptians that they were killing one of the Egyptian gods and flaunting their action. They were showing respect to their own God and total disrespect to an Egyptian god.
That very night they were to roast the lamb over an open fire and immediately eat it. It is thought that roasting would be the quickest way to cook that meat but it had a second advantage. Roasting over an open pit would be the surest way to remove all the blood from the meat. Remember, they were not permitted to eat blood. Later, the Lamb of God would sacrifice His blood for our sins. If there were any lamb leftovers they were not permitted to eat them the following day. Now not only were they instructed how they were to eat that lamb, but they were instructed as to their attire while eating that meal. They were to eat it with their loins girded, their sandals on their feet, and have their staff in their hand. Not only that, but they were to eat in a hurry. No dawdling over this meal! And not only that, but they were not permitted to eat the leftovers the next day. They had better eat them all or dispose of them.
Then God tells them why these instructions were so very important: That night God will go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first born of Egypt, both man and beast. But then He goes one better and says, “I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt.” This is evidently meant to convince them and us that only God is God and other gods are false.
The sad part of the situation today is that even though every nationality recognizes a god, they don’t know who the God of creation, the God of the Bible, and the one true God is. That truth applies to people in every country of the world God created. In our own nation one out of every four people do not believe in organized religion. These people call themselves the nones. We are told we need to get used to the nones and their practices because they claim they are not going anywhere, and some believe that in the coming years they may even dominate the cultural landscape. As well as the nones we have people who say they have faith, just not in a God who judges peoples actions. Faith in the one true God has been replaced by ‘spirituality’. A lot of people won’t say the word God because that’s not popular. But they will say universe.
And of the ones who do believe in religion, well, it is not even God who they believe in. One of the religions that is extremely popular is yoga! After all the main focus of yoga is meditation because when you are performing the poses, you are meditating and that’s very spiritual in their minds. We look back at the Egyptians and wonder at their lack of knowledge of the One True God and yet we must look around and realize many of us who live in the Christian Nation of the United States of America are no better off than the Egyptians were.
When we go back to the Bible narrative, it says, after telling the Israelites what they were to sacrifice and how they were to do it, God gave more instructions. Those instructions about being dressed for flight when they ate. He informed them that that night He would go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first born in the land of Egypt, including both man and beast. He also said he would mete out or easier to understand, He would pass out in measure, punishments to all the gods of Egypt.
He continued with, ‘the blood on the house where you are staying shall be a sign to you when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.’
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