G'day.

Welcome to stories of a faithful God for kids.

Dave Whittingham here.

What's your favourite celebration in the year?

Is it your birthday? Christmas?

The anniversary of when you were first toilet trained?

Hmm.

Maybe your parents celebrate that one more

than you.

What about your wedding anniversary?

Do you celebrate that? Hang on a second.

This is a podcast for kids.

You guys aren't married, I hope.

You might be one day, but you might not be.

I don't know.

It'd be really weird to start celebrating your wedding anniversary if we don't even know if

you'll get married.

What about celebrating when you finally become

a fully qualified builder? That'll be an exciting day.

What am I talking about? I've got no idea if you're going to become a

builder or a plumber or a doctor or ballerina or cowboy or soldier or a paleontologist or

the inventor of the very first ever thing, the greatest invention ever invented by humans.

How silly to talk about celebrating something when we don't even know if it's going to

happen.

In today's story, though, God tells the

Israelites how to celebrate the most wonderful, the most exciting moment they've

ever had in their lives.

But it hasn't even happened yet.

Because God's faithful, though, because everything he says will happen, actually does

happen.

Then they can already start getting excited.

It's time for our next episode of stories of a faithful God for kids.

At the end of our last episode, Pharaoh had just told Moses to get out, never come and see

him again.

If he does, he'll die.

And Moses is like, ok, if that's what you really want, I'll do it.

Because it doesn't hurt Moses, it doesn't hurt the Israelites.

It only hurts the king.

He needs Moses to pray to God for him and ask

God to stop the plagues.

This is a bad decision by the pharaoh.

Now, God had told Moses, one more.

One more plague, one more punishment for

Egypt, and then all the Israelites will be allowed to leave.

Let me read his words to you and see if you hear the really weird thing God tells the

Israelites to do.

It's so strange.

This is from Exodus, chapter eleven, verse one.

Now, the Lord had told Moses, I have one more way to punish the king and the people of

Egypt.

After this, the king will send all of you away

from Egypt.

When he does, he will force you to leave

completely.

Tell the men and women of Israel to ask their

neighbours for things made of silver and gold.

Umm, ok.

Ill just pop over to my egyptian neighbour shall I?

Hi there.

Its me from nextdoor.

Yeah, the one with the noisy kids.

Hey, weve question for you.

Could you please give me all your silver and gold?

That's not a normal conversation to have.

Right?

But God's so strong and powerful, he's actually made it so that the Egyptians will

give all that stuff to them.

Verse three says the Lord had caused the

Egyptians to respect the Israelites.

The king's officers and the egyptian people

already considered Moses to be a great man.

Now, God hasn't sent this last plague yet, but

Moses is so confident that God will do what he says.

He'll do that before he leaves Pharaoh.

He tells him about the last plague.

And it's a really scary one.

In fact, it's more scary than any of the other

plagues.

We've talked before about what we deserve.

If we ignore the God who gives us life, we deserve to have that life taken away.

And that's what God's going to do to all the firstborn sons in Egypt.

The first son to be born in every family.

Are you a firstborn son?

What about your dad? Was he the firstborn son in his family?

Or your uncle? I'm not a firstborn son, but my older brother

is.

Lots of people in Egypt will die, but most

won't.

Which reminds us that even now, God's not

giving the Egyptians everything they deserve.

He isn't taking all their lives, just the

lives of the firstborn sons.

That's scary enough, though.

This is what Moses tells Pharaoh from verse four.

He says, this is what the Lord says.

About midnight tonight, I will go through all

Egypt.

Every firstborn son in the land of Egypt will

die.

The firstborn son of the king who sits on the

throne will die.

Even the firstborn of the slave girl grinding

grain will die.

Also, the firstborn farm animals will die.

There will be loud crying everywhere in Egypt.

It will be worse than any time before or after

this.

But not even a dog will bark at the Israelites

or their animals.

Then you will know that the Lord treats Israel

differently from Egypt.

Then all your officers will come to me.

They will bow face down to the ground before me.

They will say, leave, and take all your people with you.

After that, I will leave.

Then Moses very angrily left the king.

You might think that pharaoh would chase after Moses, beg him to ask God to stop.

But God had decided to show his power and fairness in Egypt.

So he made pharaoh stubborn.

And Pharaoh did nothing.

Now, you may have picked up here that just like with other plagues, God's going to keep

the Israelites, his chosen people, safe.

This time, though, he's going to do it in a

different sort of way.

It's something that becomes very famous.

It may seem weird, but it's actually really important to the whole story of the Bible.

The Israelites have to do something.

They have to take a lamb.

It can be a sheep or a goat.

The lamb must have nothing wrong with it.

You can't just get the lamb that's about to drop dead in the field.

It has to be the best.

The whole family in the house is going to eat

the lamb.

If there aren't enough people in the house to

eat the lamb, you have to team up with another family to share the lamb so that there are no

leftovers.

Now, the next bit I'm going to tell you gets a

little bit gory, but stick with it.

You can't just eat the lamb whenever you want

to.

This is a meal that all the Israelites are

going to have at the same time.

It's going to happen on the 14th day of the

month.

Their months have different names.

To ours, this month was called Abib or Aviv.

On the 14th day of Aviv, as the sun's going

down, the Israelites will kill the lamb.

Then God tells them to take some of the blood

and paint it on the sides and tops of their front door.

By the way, don't do that at your home.

After doing that, they have to close the door

and stay in the house.

They have to roast the lamb and eat it all up.

God tells them to eat it with bitter herbs and a special type of bread that we'll talk about

in a minute.

They're going to eat it all.

If there's anything left, they have to burn it all in the fire.

After explaining how they have to eat it, God tells the Israelites what they have to wear

for the meal.

Do your parents ever tell you what to wear to

a party? Let me read what the Israelites had to wear.

In chapter twelve, verse eleven, God says, this is the way you must eat it.

You must be fully dressed, as if you were going on a trip.

You must have your sandals on, and you must have your walking sticks in your hand.

You must eat in a hurry.

This is the Lord's passover.

When I was a kid, my family used to go on holidays that it took a whole day to get to.

We'd have to leave really early in the morning.

That meant that the night before, your bags had to be packed.

Everything was in the car.

Your clothes were laid out so you could just

jump out of bed and climb into them because we had to leave really quickly in the morning.

Well, that's what's going on for the Israelites.

They've been in Egypt for over 400 years.

But now, really quickly, all of a sudden,

overnight, God's going to save them.

He's going to rescue them.

They need to be ready to leave at a moment's notice.

God says that on that night, the night of the 14th, he's going to punish the Egyptians and

save the Israelites.

This is what he says from verse twelve.

He says, that night, I will go through the land of Egypt.

I will kill all the firstborn of animals and people in the land of Egypt.

I will punish all the gods of Egypt.

I am the Lord.

But the blood will be a sign on the houses where you are.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you.

Nothing terrible will hurt you.

When I punish the land of Egypt, do you get why the blood is on the door?

It's a sign to God saying that no one in that house needs to be put to death.

Why? Is it because they haven't sinned?

They've never done anything wrong? No. It's because the lamb has died in their

place.

The firstborn people don't have to die because

the lamb has taken their death.

So when God comes to that door, he can say,

yep, a death has already happened there.

I don't need to go in there.

He'll pass over that door.

That's why it's called the Passover.

After God tells them how that night's going to play out, then he tells them how to celebrate

it every year.

Like I said at the start, it's a bit weird to

plan a celebration for something that hasn't even happened yet.

But God's already proven that everything he says will happen happens.

So you can already start planning the celebrations, because even though it hasn't

happened yet, God said it would happen, so you know it's gonna happen.

They're going to celebrate every year for seven days.

Over those seven days, they'll eat that special bread we mentioned before.

It's bread without an important ingredient, something called yeast.

You put yeast in bread to make it grow big and puffy.

If you don't have it in there, it just stays kind of flat.

On the night that God rescues his people, the night of the Passover, God's going to rescue

his people so quickly that they won't have time to make the bread properly.

They won't have time to put the yeast in and wait for it.

To rise, they just have to eat it flat.

At the celebration they'll have every year.

It'll start with a special night meal with lamb and flatbread.

That's called the Passover meal.

But for the next seven days, they'll also eat

the flat bread to remind them of that great salvation.

The time when God rescued them from slavery, rescued them from Egypt, brought them out with

power and strength.

Do you know, on the night before Jesus died,

he ate a meal with his disciples? It wasn't just any meal.

It was the Passover meal.

years after it first happened.

But at that meal, jesus did something amazing.

He changed what the meal was all about.

The Passover in Egypt was the great salvation

story of the Old Testament.

But Jesus shows that there's actually an even

bigger salvation story, a greater one that we need to remember.

Jesus and the disciples are all around the table.

And Jesus picks up some of the bread, the same bread without yeast, that reminded them of

when Israel was saved from slavery.

And then we read this in Matthew, chapter 26,

verse 26, it says, while they were eating, Jesus took some bread.

He thanked God for it and broke it.

Then he gave it to his followers and said,

take this bread and eat it.

This bread is my body.

What? His body?

That seems a bit weird, but don't panic.

He's not asking them all to be cannibals.

Jesus calls himself or gets called all sorts of things.

He gets called a door, a lamb, water.

They're word pictures that tell us something

important about him.

This time he's saying, this bread, instead of

reminding you about the Passover, should remind you about his body.

We'll find out why in a minute.

Then he does something else.

In verse 27, we read, then jesus took a cup.

He thanked God for it and gave it to his

followers.

He said, every one of you drink this.

This is my blood.

Which begins the new agreement that God makes

with his people.

This blood is poured out for many to forgive

their sins.

His blood?

Sure, blood was a part of the original passover, the blood of the lamb, because the

lamb died in the place of the firstborn.

But now Jesus is making it all about his

blood.

And he says that his blood will be poured out

so that many people's sins can be forgiven.

All this happens on the night before Jesus

dies.

The next day, he gives up his body to be hung

on the cross.

His blood comes out on the cross.

He's not dying because he's sinned.

He's perfect, just like the lambs were meant

to be at the first Passover.

And just like at the first Passover, Jesus

dies so that others don't have to.

He takes our death for our sin.

That way God can pass over us and not punish us.

If your trust is in Jesus as your king and savior, then Jesus is your Passover lamb.

God has already passed over your sin and you're safe from ever being punished by him.

Back in Egypt, the afternoon of the 14th of Aviv has come.

The sun's going down.

Most of the Egyptians don't know what's about

to happen, but the Israelites are getting ready.

But that's a story for next time.

Don't forget that there's the longer, more

detailed podcast stories of a faithful God.

The parents might enjoy that one, but you

might as well.

I don't know.

It would be really great if you could rate and review the episode, leave a note for me or get

in contact@faithforgod.net dot most importantly, please share the podcast with

others so that more people can hear about the faithful God.

See you soon.

Thanks so much for listening, adults.

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for now.