Eating with Your Coat On

Exodus 12:1-20

Verse 11  This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand.  Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

    Yesterday we started talking about this special hope we have through Christ.  It is this hope that the Israelites in Egypt understood.  They had been slaves for generations and held onto the promise that God had given that they would be able to return to the land promised to Abraham after 400 years.  The time they had hoped for was now upon them.

    They had witnessed multiple plagues brought upon the people who had been oppressing them.  And now they were hearing about a plague more horrible than the rest.  Children were such a blessing to the people of God and they cherished their children even more in the last 80 years as one pharaoh had called for the murder of all their newborn sons.  The thought of many of the people they knew losing their oldest sons would have been tough to think about.

    Moses had told them that they were to expect wailing like they had never heard before (Exodus 11:6).  There must have been some apprehension about the well-being of their own sons and yet God had given them something to do to mark their homes safe.  The lack of wailing in their community was to be evidence of God setting them apart (Exodus 11:7).  God was giving them hope.

    The truth was, the gift of hope He was giving them was Himself.  He wasn’t saving them to let them be on their way.  He didn’t save them for themselves, He saved them for Himself.  And that is the hope of Christmas too.

    He sent Jesus as our Passover Lamb, setting us aside for Himself.  He applies the blood of Christ on the doorposts of our hearts sealing us as His own.  Had Christ not come to earth as a little babe, He wouldn’t have been able to live the life of a sinless person.  It is only in His being the perfect Son of God that qualifies Him as our Savior.  He is our only hope, at Christmas and the whole year through.

Making It Personal

    What does it mean to you that Christ lived a perfect life so you can have hope?  Do you sin carelessly as if His sacrifice didn’t matter?  How do you display the hope you have in Him?

Making It Personal Kids

    How does it make you feel that Jesus had to die for your sins?  Does that give you hope?  How can you share that hope?

Closing Prayer

    Father, thank You for this huge gift of hope.  Help us understand how living as You have called us to live, sets us apart from the world around us so that it is evident we are Your people.  In Jesus’ name, amen.