Rather than beginning with Exodus 1, as most Bible explicators would do, I have instead chosen to begin with Exodus 12 because it is my intention to focus our energy on the actual directives handed down to Moses, rather than the "cool," "neat," or "interesting" stories that most Sunday School teachers, to their shame, manage to pick out for their pupils. The Torah has never been designed to be merely a story book--it is instead the heart of the Old Testament, the very foundation without which none of the other books of the Bible (including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) can stand.
Let me begin by clearing up one very common misconception: The "Law" that followers of Jesus such as Paul and Peter spoke against was not, repeat NOT, the Torah. They were, after all, Jews themselves, and holy men, not rabble-rousing revolutionaries bent on destroying faith and nation for self-perceived priorities. It would have been unthinkable for Paul, a former priest schooled under Gamaliel, to turn his back on the very scriptures he so often mentioned in his letters as proof of Jesus' divinity, and it would have been even more unthinkable for Peter, whose zeal for righteousness was such that he was unable to enter the courtyard of Cornelius, a Gentile, without great internal struggle and the direct intervention of God Himself, to turn his back on the teachings that shaped his nation and his identity.
Instead, what Paul and Peter were opposing was the institution of systems and structures that effectively created a new corpus of "laws" equivalent (in the minds of their adherents) to the Torah. The Judaean priesthood essentially created a "new" Bible of rituals, rules, and regulations, which blotted out the simplicity and love inherent in the original text of the Torah. This is ultimately what blinded their eyes to the truth of Jesus' divinity, and why Jesus said that though they "searched the scriptures" because in them they hoped to find eternal life, they failed to see the fulfillment of those same scriptures when he was walking in their midst.
Today, we live in a society in which the church says, effectively, that the Torah, the Nev'im, and the Ketuvim (otherwise known as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Other Writings that comprise the Old Testament) have no meaning in the believer's life. Since we are Gentiles, not Jews, we are told that those commandments back there in the Old Testament are not for us, and even if they were, we have been absolved from following them because of Christ's sacrifice. But you can't comprehend Christ's sacrifice without knowledge of the Torah and the commandments contained within it--what one is left with, without this knowledge, is simply a whitewashed version of paganism, in which Christ (like the gods of most religions, both new and old) is a sugar daddy who lets his children get awaqy with anything, including murder.
The main corpus of commandments in the book of Exodus begins in chapter 12, and those of you who are Jewish should at least have some passing familiarity with the words below:
This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb [a] for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it till morning--if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 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.
Yes, this is a bloody ceremony.
Then again, in our country (the United States), hundreds of thousands of cattle, pigs, sheep, and (yes) lambs are slaughtered, brutally, each year for a far less noble purpose. The Israelites were a nation of slaves, bound within the walls of Egypt, and even though the Lord had struck down the produce and vitality of that nation in order to convince its rulers to let them go free, Egypt's Pharoah still refused to listen. The Lord then had one more task, one that would ensure that the people of Egypt would not only let their slaves go free but send them off with their gold and silver, their jewels and their household possessions.
This act is summarized below:
On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
In order for the Israelites to be freed from slavery, an entire generation had to die--human blood, to atone for the human blood that was being kept in bondage. In the same way, Jesus (who was crucified during a celebration of Passover) bled white so that we who are so bound to the shackles of greed, hatred, and foolish arrogance may be free ourselves.
A Christian is more than merely a "Jesus worshipper"--a Christian is someone whose acceptance of Jesus' blood sacrifice is joyous, heartfelt, and transformational, not just in him-/herself but in others. Being Jewish is not a barrier to receiving Christ as your Lord and Savior--after all, the Jews were always intended to be God's priesthood to all the nations of the Earth--and being Christian, much as the American public seems to assume otherwise, is not equivalent with being a Gentile. It is one of the greatest tragedies in human history that the very people Jesus longed to see ushering souls by the thousands into the kingdom of God rejected the author and finisher of their faith. Those of us who are Gentiles should take a little more care, as Paul notes in Romans 11, to attach proper respect and reverence to a God whose chosen people our forefathers harassed, persecuted, and attempted to exterminate.
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