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00:00The Ultimate Danger, A Divine Provision
00:05The final plague will be unique in its effectiveness.
00:08It is important to ask and answer the question, why? The answer is that it is unique in its
00:14infliction. The other plagues were imposed, but this time God himself is coming into the heart
00:20of Egypt. This is the significance of Exodus 11-12. These chapters raise the ultimate question,
00:28how are we to stand before God when he comes in judgment, when probation is at an end,
00:34when every opportunity of repentance and obedience has been frittered away,
00:39and when there is no hiding place? Once before, when death threatened, the Lord himself provided
00:45a lamb to die instead of Isaac. Maybe, therefore, Israel and Egypt does not find it strange that
00:52their recourse when death threatens is to take—a lamb. The same basic principle instead of is to
00:59apply, that is, the principle of equivalence or substitution. First, there is a lamb for each
01:06household, then there is the need to count the number of individuals for whom the lamb will
01:10cater, and finally an assessment is made of each person's need. This, I think, is the reason for
01:17choosing the lamb four days ahead of its death, so that the choice might be leisurely, thoughtful,
01:22and exact. It is also the reason for the burning of any surplus. The lamb is for only one thing—to
01:30be a substitute for those for whom it is to die, and the burning of what remains makes it exactly
01:35so. We will read tomorrow that there is a death in every house. In the Egyptian houses it is the
01:42dreadful death of the firstborn, in Israel's houses it is the lamb that dies. And it dies
01:49not just for Israel's firstborn. No, the Lord had said, Israel is my son, my firstborn. The lamb is
01:57the substitute equivalent for the Israel of God, the whole people whom the Lord intends to save.
02:04Reflection As one hymn puts it,
02:06Dear dying lamb, Thy precious blood will never lose its power.