Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is God's Judgment Always Just? | Torah | Exodus 12:29-42

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

If God is good, how can he kill firstborn babies in Exodus? Is God really a just judge, or is he a moral monster? Is God ever unjust? In today's episode, Patrick uses Exodus 12:29-42 to discuss God's balance of justice and grace. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 12:29-42 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. Back when I did college ministry, I remember doing a speaking series on objections to faith. These are the objections that people brought for, and they said, because of this, I can't believe in God. And so we let students send in their objections. And most of them were questions or propositions that I'd heard before. But there was one that was totally new. I just never heard someone say this. A student wrote this in. He said, in Exodus, the book of Exodus, the final plague is the killing of every firstborn Egyptian,

from newborns all the way to adults, from the wealthiest and most powerful all the way to the least. How could a good God execute so many people for no crime but being a firstborn? I met up with a student to hear more about the question, and I was surprised to learn that at least for him, This was the central holdup in his faith and going further and his journey with Jesus. And I really appreciated his integrity. I mean, he read this passage and it deeply bothered him. It bothered his sense of moral rightness and wrongness. Here's what happens in Exodus 12.

And again, this story is grave. It's difficult to read. Verse 29. At midnight, Yahweh 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 born in the dungeon. and all the firstborn of the livestock. 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 or there was not someone who was dead. 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 Yahweh, as you have said, take your flocks and your herds and be gone. And bless me also. The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land for the They said, we shall all be dead. Now, we have to remember who the original audience of this passage was.

The original audience were the descendants of the Israelites who were enslaved by the Egyptians. They were the descendants of the Israelites who had been treated harshly and terribly by the Egyptians. They're the descendants of the Israelites who had to kill their own firstborns by the decree of Pharaoh because he had xenophobic fears that the Israelites would become too strong. and tried to take over Egypt. So perhaps the answer to this hard question starts with the original audience. I simply doubt that they felt much sympathy for the society that treated their forebears so monstrously and awfully.

In fact, the Israelites might point out that God often allows a nation's injustice to fall on its own head. And so there's a kind of retributive poetic justice in the act. The Egyptians who tried to kill all the firstborn of the Israelites are now receiving. what they ordered. And yet we have to say this is different than the way this happens in most other cases. For example, God punished the Assyrian Empire for its grotesque violence. How did he do it? Well, poetically, retributively, he did it with the grotesque violence of Babylon. And then he punished the grotesque violence of Babylon with the grotesque violence of Persia. And so the cycle went forward

with the Greeks and then the Romans. But in this instance, God is not handing unjust humans. into the hands of unjust humans. God himself is the one commanding the plagues. And the angel of death on God's decree is the one who does the deed. So what do we make of that? Well, perhaps this story really does turn God into a moral monster. Or maybe the opposite is true. Maybe it shows that God is a just judge. You see, before God, all humanity, every living human deserves the punishment of death. Now I know to modern years, sound really extreme. But perhaps a little illustration will help explain the point. Imagine that you're a high schooler and you slap another high schooler across the face. What happens? Probably detention, maybe a Friday night school. But let's say that a teacher

intervenes and now you slap that teacher across the face. What happens? Well, the punishment ratchets up. All of a sudden now, you probably have a suspension. But let's say that the on-duty police officer intervenes after you slap the teacher and now you slap him. Well, what happens? well, he's going to slap some handcuffs onto you. Now, let's say that you escape and you make it your next mission to go slap the president himself. Well, what happens? You'll probably be shot dead before you can even reach him. Now, I know what someone could respond with.

They could say, look, what's the difference between slapping the president and slapping your friend? Why does one deserve one punishment and one deserve death? Well, the difference is there, and we intuitively understand that different positions deserve higher degrees of honor and reference. And when you dishonor those positions, the results are different. Insulting the president is different than insulting your friend. And at certain levels, those insults really can become deadly. So you have to ask the question, what happens when we do something worse than slapping God, the creator of all things, God, the one who defines all moral laws, God whose glory is greater and higher than any president, any king, any magisterial human figure,

what happens when you do something worse than slap him across the face when you break his moral law when you vandalize his creation with your sinful words when you harm the creatures that he loves and that he's created when you harm your own body which he loves and he treasures you see every human myself included is born in sin we're born having slapped the greatest most honorable noble and deserving being in the universe. And this takes us back to Egypt. You see, this was a nation which had developed an entire demonic system of enslavement, harsh treatment, starvation, hard work, and even genocidal murder. You see, this entire society and the system which it operated had done something much, much, much worse than slapping God across the face. They were destroying beings and creatures that he

made, that he loves, that he knows. So who is better suited to judge that society? than God himself. And unlike the Babylonians defeating the Assyrians, God's justice in this instance, it will not be solelyed by human failure. There will be no grotesque violence, punishing grotesque violence. God's justice does not lead to further injustice. God's justice, in this case, is the final word, which not only brings about retribution for the wrongdoings of Egypt, for society's wrongdoings, but it also restores, it also heals what that society's injustice had caused. lost. Stop and think about this for a second. God's justice here ultimately heals some of what Egypt had set wrong. Specifically, this one act overturns permanently the injustice of slavery, of enslaving

the Israelites. And God took it one step further because he ensured that when these freed slaves left, that the Egyptians were going to remunerate them, repay them for the work that they did while they were slaves. Again, God is healing what was set wrong. He's making right what had been made wrong. Verse 35, the people of Israel had also done, as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing, and Yahweh had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so that they let them have what they asked. Thus, they plundered the Egyptians. God's restorative justice is so thorough that he even sees to it that the wealth of the Egyptians, the wealth that was made on the backs of Hebrew slaves, would be given back to the Hebrew.

You see, far from repelling me from faith, this story of God's justice proves that Yahweh is a good judge. In fact, he's not just a good judge. He is a perfect judge. But I want to highlight one final note, though it might be the most important note. Justice is never God's final word. And Israel should know this. You see, the angel of death only passed over houses that had painted the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their doorpost. the lamb died in the place of the firstborn.

And so the message to Israel, all those people who painted that lamb's blood on their doorposts, that their firstborn wouldn't die. This was the message they got. You too, just like these Egyptians, you too are under God's just judgment for your own evil, for the things that you've done wrong. But God has ransomed you from that judgment through the blood of the lamb. In fact, the Egyptians were free to follow the example of the Israelites. They didn't have to follow under God's judgment.

their firstborn need not die they too could have hidden under the blood of a sacrificial lamb and in exodus 12 we learned that actually some egyptians did this verse 38 a mixed multitude went up with israel did you catch that when the israelites flee in egypt it's a mixed multitude meaning that there were egyptians who were with them meaning that there were egyptians who hid under the blood of their own lambs and so in this chapter we not only see God's perfect justice, but also his perfect grace, his perfect kindness, his perfect mercy, even to those in a society that enslaved people. And I can't help but think this was his truest deepest desire for every Egyptian living in Egypt, that he would forgive them, that they would put the blood of the lamb on their doorpost, that they would repent of their sins,

turn from what they'd done wrong, and seek his forgiveness and grace and mercy. You see, Jesus is our sacrificial lamb. He died in our place. His blood ransoms us from the cost of our sin. The cost that our sin justly deserves death. And this reminds me of a profound truth by which all Christians have to live. God alone is the only perfect judge. And this is why Jesus said to us,

judge not, lest ye be judged. Lest you become like Babylon in your own outrage. lest you mirror the grotesque outrage and violence that you think you're fighting against. God is perfectly forgiving. He has forgiven you, and he may very well forgive your enemy. This perfect merger of love and justice isn't a reason to doubt God. It's the reason that we need him. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.