“Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good” (p 171, The Magicians Nephew, by C.S. Lewis)
“and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” Revelation 1:5
Everybody has a little Pharaoh inside them, a hard little corner of the heart, that says I will not let my sin go. Everyone has a little Israelite that wants to go back to the slavery of sin even after God has rescued them from it.
In the Old Testament book of Exodus, we read how God allowed his people to be enslaved to the Egyptians so that he could rescue them and demonstrate his power. Pharaoh was worshiped as a god in Egypt and when Moses the Israelite showed up saying “the God of the slaves is bigger than you and all your Gods, and he says let the slaves go,” Pharaoh sneered and made them work harder. So God buried Egypt with plagues. He blanketed their cities with frogs, lice, flies, turned their drinking water to blood, blistered their skin, ruined their crops with hail, killed their livestock- each plague worse than the last. Between each one God sends Moses to Pharaoh to ask: “Had Enough?” And each time, little Pharaoh says, “I will not let the slaves go.” Finally God told Moses that He was going to send one final plague that would get Pharaoh’s attention and free His people forever: Death. The story of the final plague goes like this:
Exodus 12 - 21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. 28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. 29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said.
So God struck down the first born son in each Egyptian family and death passed over each house marked with the blood of the spotless lamb. Sound familiar? The holiday that Jesus was celebrating with his disciples that we know as The Last Supper was Passover. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God, (1 Corinthians 5:7, 1 Peter 1:19) his blood is the blood that saves us from slavery to sin, eternal death in hell which is the furious and righteous wrath of God on stubborn sinners who like Pharaoh, refuse Him. John the Baptist sees Jesus walking towards him, and says “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) Jesus blood on the cross takes away the wrath of God. Just as God struck down the first born of Egypt to free his people, so God struck down His own son to free his people once and for all. Christ said “It is Finished” and died. At that moment his blood was splashed onto the doorways of everyone who would believe in him and death in hell passed over us, and we were freed from slavery to sin.
So are we free?
A few miles out of Egypt, the Israelites, free after 400 years of being free labor and dying under the stones that built the pyramids of Egypt, wanted to go back. The Israelites, God’s people, after watching God wreck the most powerful nation on earth, and shove Pharaoh to his knees, stood around in the desert and said, “We miss exotic food. We want to go back.” They had freedom, but would rather have Ruth’s Chris steak. They were so mad they didn’t have good food out there in the desert that they wanted to go back and be slaves for it. Thats how cheap God’s people were willing to sell him out. That’s how blind we are to the power of sin in our lives.
Jesus gets betrayed by one of the guys in his church, sold out to the cops who beat him like they’re tenderizing a raw steak, drag him into two trials and finally get him convicted on a technicality because the judge is up for reelection. Sentenced to death, Jesus has to carry what amounts to a telephone pole down main street and up a hill, he nearly passing out from the blood loss of being whipped, while the locals trash talk and spit on him. When he gets to the top of the hill outside town, they drill him with lag bolts to literally attach what’s left of his body to the pole and stand it up, leaving him to sweat himself dry, bleed out, and suffocate slowly to death in the sun. And he looks down from that cross at each one of us and says “You are free. I do this for you.”
But here’s the problem: each of us in our hearts has a little Pharaoh who says “I won’t let go of my sin.” Each of us has a little Israelite who says, I want to go back and be a slave to sin because it’s so much fun. The Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt and be slaves for pizza and beer. We want to go back to our porn, our drugs, our laziness, our wasted time, our gossip, our secrets, our greed, our mountains of fast food and our intellect that says we’re smarter than God and we know what’s good for us. We won’t be told what to do. We will argue, whine, disagree, and tell God firmly on our terms that we like being slaves, that we would rather destroy our lives. Thanks. We don’t care if he butchered and crushed his own son so we didn’t have to be slaves to the sinful stupidity that degrades and destroys us, Sin that wrecks families, marriages, communities, relationships and cultures. We’d rather kill ourselves, and kill each other than ever obey the crucified creator of everything around us. And every sin we run to commit, is a sin Christ had to die for. We pile it up on him. On the cross, Christ became a drug addict, a molester, a murderer, a pickpocket, a stalker, a porn addict, a pervert, a tax evader, lazy, a glutton, a racist, a liar. He became a pimp, a prostitute, a serial killer, a traitor, a coward, and a religious guy.
The beating to death that God took was so sin would not beat us to death. Because if you sin, you die. Thats what Romans 6:23 says “The wages of sin is death.” In Adam, all die. Our first father, Adam, sinned, and so everyone who sins, dies. Christ, the second Adam, lived a sinless life, passed the temptation test that Adam failed, yet took the punishment for sin. In this exchange, he overcame the curse of death for sin. He took our sin and gives us, who believe, his perfect life. Putting it simply, Christ is the only thing that stands between every one of us and the eternal, furious, and righteous wrath of God. For those who believe, when we die, we will stand before God and Jesus will say “He’s with me. She is with me.”
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