This plague would be unique. Everyone must personally respond—for or against a lamb.
Now we’re at the grand finale, preparing for the plague of all plagues. If we have been paying careful attention, we know what it is. It seems a very long time ago, but can you recall the first thing Moses was to say to Pharaoh? Listen: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn’” (Ex 4:22-23). Isn’t that something! God told him in the beginning where things would end if he stubbornly refused to let Israel go. But how patient God had been! Frogs, lice, flies—very irritating. Then damaged livestock, diseased bodies, destroyed crops—much more serious. And darkness, with three days to think things through. Wouldn’t a man like Pharaoh remember something like the threatened death of his oldest son? They say a man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package, and obviously the king had only himself in mind. But did God have the right to take his life? Of course He did! God gives life, sustains life, and can take it any time He deems suitable. It’s due to “the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed” (Lam 3:22). But on this particular night at midnight, death would come to every house, either the death of the firstborn, as God said, or the death of a substitute lamb. The sorrow in the households unprotected by the blood of the lamb would result in “a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before, nor shall be like it again” (Ex 11:6). And at that point, Moses said, the grief-stricken inhabitants would cry as with one voice at him, “Get out, and all the people who follow you!” (v 8). And, said the servant of God, “After that I will go out.” Details to follow in Exodus 12!