God fulfils his promises

This promise, too, was unconditional—there was nothing Abram could do to make it come about, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. At this stage there is no clue given as to how the promise might be fulfilled—indeed Abram and his wife were quite old, and he initially doubted that God could deliver on his promise, but by God, they did give birth to a son: the first sign that God was faithful.

In the book of Exodus, the nation of Israel is already quite large—‘the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so the land was filled with them.’ (Exodus 1:7). But they were still strangers in the land: it was not their own, but Egypt’s. The Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites, forcing them to work for him.

The Israelites’ stay in Egypt was not at all a happy one—this was not the land God had promised. God instructed Moses to demand from the Pharaoh the release of the Israelites; but he refused. The story of the plagues is well-known. The most terrible, though, was the last: the death of each firstborn.

The film Prince of Egypt depicts the episode particularly powerfully. The Pharaoh was doing wrong by God, going against his will. In the last plague God’s judgement was brought to the Egyptians—but also to the Israelites. They could not be spared, since they had not obeyed God either (they had begun to doubt that he could save them—see Exodus 6:9). The difference was that God provided protection to those who would accept it.

Saved by a perfect sacrifice

Each Israelite house was to sacrifice an unblemished lamb or goat and smear its blood on the door-frame. See Exodus 12:12-13. The blood was to be a sign that a death had occurred, both to God and to the inhabitants. The firstborn would be spared in that house, because of the death of the animal. This is substitution: the Israelites were spared God’s judgement by the death of another. Not because they didn’t deserve His judgement, but because he had provided another in their place.

But how does this fit in with the search for the serpent crusher—the one who would reverse the effects of the fall?

Many years later, Jesus took Passover supper, instituted to remember that first flight from Egypt, with his disciples, but with a difference. The central point was not the lamb’s sacrifice, but his own body and blood (cf. Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24). He was identifying himself with the lamb which had been sacrificed to save Israelites from God’s judgement at that first Passover.