Post Up - Exodus 12:1-13

12:1-13 - Chapter 12 is very long, 51 verses, and kind of overwhelming, but let’s see what we have here. After the disastrous meeting with Pharaoh, God comes to M&A and gives them a timeline for what comes next. Interestingly, it starts with apparently God giving them a new calendar system, which I’m not going to go into. TB explains how God’s phrase of “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you,” coordinates with the current Jewish calendar, our Julian calendar, the lunar, solar, fiscal, harvest, etc calendar. It’s very confusing and not that important to my purposes here, so I’m not going to mess with it too much.

Now he sets forth the method of the Passover, which is celebrated by Jews all over the world since this time, like 3400 years ago. On the 10th day of the month, they are to pick out a ram or goat, male about a year old “without blemish”, the on the 14th day they kill it and use it’s blood to paint the door posts of the house. Then they roast the ram and eat it, “and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs.” It has to be thoroughly cooked, not boiled, “but roast with fire; his head and his legs,” and with the edible inner parts, and it has to all be eaten “and ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.” So there’s no making sandwiches with it the next day.

Additionally, it is to be eaten within one single household, or shared between smaller households so that there is nothing wasted. TB explains that as God loving all his creatures and not wanting any of the animal wasted. The people doing the eating must all be circumcised males and regular females I assume, any guests or travelers who want to participate can, but the men must all be circumcised first. TB suggests that this is to prove that all are alike unto God, and that makes sense to me because anyone can participate in God’s covenants as long as they themselves are prepared and accept the terms of those covenants, which I thought was a pretty clever way to demonstrate this.

The people are to be ready to go, to flee Egypt at a moments notice, “with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s Passover.” The Lord is taking full ownership of this evert, saying that He Himself will be the ones visiting death and destruction on the Egyptians “and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.” And the purpose of the blood on the door posts is to demonstrate to God “for a token… I will not destroy your, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smith the land of Egypt.”

He’s not delegating this task to M&A, He’s not sending His angel to do it, God is personally going to be the one who takes the lives, which is interesting if you think that God loves all his children, even the ones who don’t know or believe in Him, so this act alone, the fact that he is willing to remove spirits from this life who have waited so long to be born, simply to start a movement in favor of another group of people. Really, there’s no justice in that.

Where’s the justice in a baby being killed because it was the first born. There’s no justice in the suffering of the family who remains behind. So all that tells me that there has to be justice on the back end, in the next life, and mercy because that’s who God is. There must be justice in order for God to keep His actions in harmony with universal law, that’s the whole reason why there was an atonement. So if He’s willing to perpetrate such a seemingly unjust act, then there must be something later that will make up for it. There was a part of TB’s lecture on chapter 11 where he said something to the effect of, “if you think that God’s only purpose is to work for your own good in this life, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re wrong. God’s only work is to bring about his own purposes, to do His will and build His kingdom.” I was a little taken aback by that, but after a few minutes of thought I realized that he’s right, that is true.

God’s purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, that’s it, that’s His work and His glory. But the way that the universe works, the way that justice and mercy must be played together is such that, in order to at some point save ALL men, a lot of that work is going to have to be done on the back end. This life is wildly unjust and unmerciful, just ask the 99% of people who have never heard of the gospel in this life, just ask anyone who was mistreated ever (which is everyone), just ask any child who was abused. This life is rough, and it’s not fair, and God can’t work to fix all that for everyone in this lifetime, therefore, we have to trust that it’s going to be worth it once we can fully see and understand the plan at the end.