Exodus Devotional | Exodus and Easter, Day 5: Is This What Salvation Looks Like?
The Book of Exodus
The Greatness of God to His People in Need
Exodus and Easter, Day 5
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.” - (John 15:26-27)
It’s a busy day for the Israelites. They’re scurrying about, the women preparing the bread. The men are slaughtering lambs and covering their homes’ doorposts with the blood. Children are nervous and confused, sensing those same nerves and confusion from their parents. Unlike most evenings, where the children get to play with one another in the streets until bedtime, they’re commanded to come inside at dusk. Normally, women and men would spend the evening talking to their neighbors--not this evening. Everyone does what God commanded through Moses and then the doors and windows are shut. They roast the slaughtered lambs, eat their bread, and pray in hushed voices. As daddies scoop up their children for bed, they look to the mommies and assure them, “We did everything we were told. It’s done. We’ll be safe.”
For this evening, every Hebrew is in quarantine and few fathers and mothers get an easy night’s rest. Their eyes are on the children’s sleeping heads, measuring their breaths and praying for the Lord to passover their home tonight.
Over a thousand years later, another lamb is slaughtered. His followers have already been told that if they don’t eat of his flesh and drink his blood, they can’t belong to him. He’s taken, stripped, beaten, and mocked. His blood drenched a splintered cross, fashioned by brutal soldiers. His death was excruciating, not just in the physical pain of it, but in the extreme unjustness of it. Tonight, his few followers and disciples, weak in faith and filled with fear, overcome in desperate sadness, have their own quiet evening, locked away in their houses.
Is this what salvation looks like? This doesn’t feel like a joyful day. This doesn’t make anyone feel like celebrating the Promise, finally fulfilled. This is fear, trembling, darkness...it’s the death of lambs. We’re literally covered in the blood.
This is Good Friday--a day that doesn’t feel good while we live through it. But, we will see it as good. It may take a few days. Tonight, we are confused by Jesus’ final words: “It is finished.” I did everything the Father told me to do. It’s done. They’ll be safe. It’ll be clear to us on Sunday, after the weeping and wailing are done. It’ll be clear to us when we see an empty tomb and the Lamb alive again.
On Sunday, we’ll shout, “Hallelujah! He did it! We didn’t see how, but we do now...he did it! He’s alive and we’re saved! Everything he said is true!” But...that’s for Sunday. Tonight, we take the flesh and blood of communion, we huddle close together in our homes--doors and windows shut--and we pray quietly. We ponder the slaughtered Lamb, his blood over us, and his words: “It is finished.”