Exodus 9-12

We're right in the middle of God judging the Egyptians in His plan to release the Israelites from captivity. Don't be fooled, God isn't trying in failing to get them freed. God's plan is to fulfill each one of these plagues and then at the culmination of them to have His children released, on His timetable.

Exodus 9 and 10 show us God judging the Egyptians by:

1: Killing their livestock
2: Sending painful boils to all the people
3: Sending hail storms and destroying their crops
4: Sending Locusts to eat all the crops that the hail missed
5: Sending darkness upon all of the land

Each time a plague comes, Pharaoh says that he starts to fear the Lord but each time he does, Moses sees through his lies and says that Pharaoh is just putting on an act. At the end of each plague, God hardens Pharaoh's heart even more and he would not let God's people go....just like God had said.

After the plague of darkness, Pharaoh, who is really mad that he can't stop what God is doing, tells Moses that if he sees him again that he will have Moses killed.

Then in Chapter 11:1, God says:

"Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here."


God begins to set the stage for the completion of His diving plan to set free the people of Israel. Moses says,

"Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5and 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. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, 'Get out, you and all the people who follow you.'

God reveals that His divine plan includes killing the firstborn of all in Egypt as judgment for their wickedness and refusal to bow before him in repentance and faith.

God at this point tells the Jews to slaughter lambs and paint the door posts of their houses with the blood of the lambs. This is God's protection of the children of Israel: where the blood is, the spirit of death passes over and does not kill the first born of that house. Where there is no blood, the first born will perish.

Then,

"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." (Exodus 29-31)

"There was not a house where someone was not dead." What a terribly horrible sentence. What a terribly holy judgment upon Egypt. The firstborn of Egypt paid the price of Egypt's hard hearts. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons.

There are SO many lessons to learn from this huge block of Scripture.

I will close with what I think the main point of the passages is:

God's plans always come about and always on His schedule; He fulfills His will regardless of what we think or do about it.

God's plan from the beginning was to set his children free from Egypt by killing the firstborn of Egypt and protecting the firstborn of Israel with the blood of lambs.

This was going to happen. It was a part of His redemptive plan for mankind from the beginning. It was a step in the grand meta-narrative of Scripture to redeem His Bride and hold fast to her. God is about accomplishing His purpose and glorifying His name. This is seen supremely in how God planned from the beginning to justify sinners by the blood of another Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you been set free from your slave master of sin? Have the door posts of your heart been painted with the Blood of the Lamb? Have you been born again out of your dead self in the land of sinful Egypt and into the promised land of new life?