The Blood on the Doorpost
I’m reading Exodus in my daily Bible-reading right now, and I just got through the part where the Lord commands the Israelites to put a lamb’s or goat’s blood on the doorpost in order to save their firstborn, because if the destroying angel saw the blood, he would pass over that house and the firstborn children (and adults) would be rescued. I was just thinking about how, when the Lord told them to do that, they secretly must have been thinking, “Well, how in the world does a lamb’s blood save us?” And yet now, as we Christians look back, we see so clearly a foreshadowing of Christ’s death on the cross, and what He accomplished by the shedding of His blood. I was just thinking that sometimes the Lord may ask us to do things that seem strange, illogical, or even embarrassing, but He always knows exactly what He’s doing. Why did the Israelites have to kill the lamb and put the blood on the doorpost? Well, when we look at the gospels, we see that Jesus—often referred to as the Lamb in Revelation and different places through the Bible—was put to death on a cross for our sins. His blood was shed by man in order that man might be saved. How does His blood save us? Well, because we are so atrociously sinful (and if you’re thinking you’re not that bad, you’re wrong: just one sin was enough to get Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden, enough to spiritually separate them from God, and enough to cause them to die physically—not immediately, perhaps, but they would have lived forever had they not sinned), that we were not allowed to enter heaven. Sin has no place in God’s presence. But because we are so inadequate to help ourselves, Jesus, the perfect living God, had to take a human form and die for our sins. But it wasn’t the physical death that saved us: it was the spiritual death He had to experience. Every sin we’ve ever committed, He took the punishment for, as if He had done it. He suffered eternal punishment for us on the cross. But, because that also would not be enough to save us, if He died and stayed dead, He rose again, conquering death and hell, and revealing that through Him we can conquer death and hell, too! Our bodies will indeed die, just as His did, but our spirit lives forever, and eventually He will take our bodies and transform them into perfect forms, fit for living in heaven with Him.
The death of the lamb represents Christ’s death for us. The blood on the door represents the Christian’s sins being covered by His blood, and washed away, just as pure and clean as if one had never done them. We are now under God’s protection, and Satan and hell cannot touch us. The Egyptian first-born children died, because not one of them put the blood on the doorpost, so the destroyer could not pass by them and let them live. Just the same, if we don’t accept and acknowledge Christ as our Savior and as the only way we can live and get to heaven, we too will be destroyed. We will be cast into hell, permanently separated from God, and always in torment. For eternity.
Anyway, my whole point is, God has reasons for doing things. “His ways are above our ways, and His thoughts are above our thoughts.” We can’t always tell what He’s doing, but He always has a good reason. I’d say getting saved from my sin and saved from going to hell is a very good reason to obey Him!
