The Wonderful Horrible Passover, Week 4 Day 3, Exodus 12

The Wonderful Horrible Passover, Week 4 Day 3, Exodus 12

Of all the things that you can read about in the Old Testament, I find the Passover both the most amazing and the most awful.

This event solidified Israel’s place as a nation and as God’s people.  But the cost to the people of Egypt was unthinkable. 

And I go back and forth between this being the natural outcome of man’s sinfulness and an act of a harsh and cruel God.  Not that it’s my place to judge God.  But I know I couldn’t make that choice.

I wonder if there couldn’t have been some other way, any other way?  After all, if He’s God, can’t He do anything?  Was Passover and the death of all of Egypt’s first born the only way to move forward God’s plan of making a nation, to move forward God’s plan of salvation?  What an awful terrible price.

But God is a God who is willing to pay the terrible awful price to save those who will be saved.  And the God that sacrificed the first born of Egypt was also willing to sacrifice His own Son.  An awful terrible price. 

And in thinking about that I realize that the horrible awful price could only be required to pay a horrible awful debt, the price for my sins, the price for our sins.

And that is a scary awful thought.  That I and my sin were a part of the reason that Egypt paid that horrible price is too awful to consider.  That I am a part of the reason that God would pay the horrible awful price of salvatuon is too much to consider.

So I see myself removed from this story.  And that makes God the bad guy.  How could He do that?  But if I have a part to play, if my sin added to the debt that had to be paid, then do I bear part of the blame?  And if the angel of death and death of the Son somehow was required because of me and the things that I’ve done, that is just too much to consider.  It’s easier to blame God.  It’s easier to let Him take and the fall.  Let him take the accusations and the anger.  Because to consider that I had some part in the decision, in the path to salvation that God chose, that is a thought too hard to consider.

I couldn't make a choice like that.  I couldn’t make that great of a sacrifice.  God was ready to make the choices that had to be made to move forward His plan of salvation.  God was ready to sacrifice His own Son for His plan of salvation.  And only God could make that choice. 

How can something be both awful and great?  When what must be done is horrific, unthinkable, unimaginable, and what is to be gained is of value beyond comprehension, salvation.

I couldn't make that choice.  But because God could and did, we all have a possibility of new life in Him.

God, it’s difficult to consider that I had a part in the sacrifices that needed to be made.  But I can find comfort.  I find comfort that You were able to make the choices that needed to be made.  I find comfort that you considered each of us worthy of making those sacrifices.  I can find comfort that You were willing to make that sacrifices that needed to be made.  Thank You God for making the choices that made our choosing You possible.  God, You are both awful and wonderful and beyond my comprehension.  Amen

Leonard