God in his mercy had appointed for exempting them from the general calamity.
We propose to consider, I. The means prescribed —
God might have preserved his people without any particular means ; as he did when he sent forth an angel to destroy almost the whole Assyrian army. But he intended this deliverance as a type of a far greater deliverance, which he should afterwards effect through the incarnation and death of his own Son; and therefore he appointed certain observances which should lead their minds to that great event —
1. They must kill the paschal lamb —
[Though the passover differed from all other sacrifices, inasmuch as no part of it was burnt upon the altar, yet it is expressly called a sacrifice6; and it was ordered to be repre- sented under that character to all succeeding generations f : and St. Paul himself speaks of it as prefiguring, in that particular view, the death of Christ g.
Here then it is most instructive to us, as it teaches us, that, without a sacrifice offered unto God for us, we cannot obtain favour in his sight, or escape the judgments which our sins have merited. We do not presume to say, absolutely, what God might, or might not, have done ; because we know nothing of God except as he is pleased to reveal himself to us : but, as far as the revelation he has given us enables us to judge, we are persuaded that a vicarious sacrifice was necessary ; and that, without such a sacrifice, God could not have been " just, and at the same time the justifier" of sinful manh ]
2. They must sprinkle its blood —
[The destroying angel might have been instructed to discern between the Israelites and the Egyptians without any external sign upon the walls : but God ordered that the blood of the lamb should be sprinkled on the lintel, and side-posts of the doors, in order to shew us yet further, that the blood of Christ must be sprinkled on our soids. The blood of the lamb did not save the Israelites by being shed, but by being sprinkled : and, in the same manner, it is not the blood of Christ as shed on Calvary, but as sprinkled on the soul, that saves us from the wrath to come. Hence the Scripture so often speaks of our being " come to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel1." We must, as it were,
« Deut. xvi. 4. f ver. 26, 27. « 1 Cor. v. 7.
h Rom. iii. 25, 26. ! Heb. xii. 24. and 1 Pet. i. 2.