Many people would rather avoid talking or thinking much about death, but the Bible is straightforward about this problem—and about God’s promises and acts of deliverance. The feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread reminded God’s people about his care and salvation for them.

For the Passover feast, families chose a lamb that was free of defects, and it was slaughtered in memory of Israel’s rescue from slavery in Egypt. Many years earlier, the king of Egypt had refused to set the Israelites free, so the Lord sent a plague of death on the land. But in every Israelite house marked by lamb’s blood on the doorposts, the plague would not enter. The plague “passed over” those homes, but death came to the firstborn sons in all the other households in Egypt, and the king finally let the Israelites go free (Exodus 12).

This event pointed to Jesus’ sacrifice many years later as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Though Jesus was blameless and without sin, he gave his own life as a sacrifice so that all of God’s people, who believe in him, can be freed from their slavery to sin and the sentence of eternal death. Now anyone who takes shelter behind the shed blood of Jesus is spared—and freed to enjoy new life in him!

Thanks be to God for bringing us out of death into life, so that if we are in Christ, nothing but the shadow of death will fall on us, and we will be spared its full effect!