Letter to the First-Born :: By Asher Mandel
The Jewish holiday of Passover will be celebrated from 4/12 – 4/19. The Jewish people commemorate that wonderful night some 3,400 years ago when the Angel of Death slew the first-born of the Egyptians but “passed over” the houses of the Israelites being held as slaves in Egypt. By the next morning, God’s chosen people were ready to leave for the “Promised Land”!
Now, if you ask 10 Jewish people why the Angel of Death passed over their ancestors that first Passover night, 9 of them will confidently tell you, “It was because they were Jewish!” Perhaps only 1 out of 10 will recall that it had something to do with the blood of a perfect lamb. Here is the answer from the Jewish scriptures:
“Announce to the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each family must choose a lamb or a young goat for a sacrifice, one animal for each household…. They are to take some of the blood and smear it on the sides and top of the door-frames of the houses where they eat the animal…. On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord! But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:3,7,12-13).
One family Passover years ago, I asked those around the table the question posed above and got the same response predicted above. Even when I corrected them, they all looked at me with vacant stares as if their eyes were scaled over, because they were!
“God has put them into a deep sleep. To this day he has shut their eyes so they do not see, and closed their ears so they do not hear” (Romans 11:8).
But the good news is that once a Jewish person trusts Christ, the veil is taken away from their eyes (2 Cor. 3:14)!
In Romans 11:11, Paul tells us that it is God’s plan for the Gentile sons of God to “make Israel jealous” so that they will come to faith in their Messiah.
“I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them (Israel) jealous.”
Dear Christian Family, it will soon be “Resurrection Day.” Are you grateful to God for raising Christ from the dead? The Bible has promised us that,
“The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you” (Romans 8:11).
In Exodus 4:22, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh that “Israel is my “first-born son.”
Below, I have written a “Letter to the First-Born” for those among my readers who may want to make a “thank offering” to God by reaching out to His “first-born son.” Please pray and ask the Lord to place into your minds the names or faces of any Jewish acquaintances He may want you to send this letter to. If you choose to be especially bold, send it to some local rabbis in your area. God will see your effort and remember it, and you may qualify for the reward promised in Mt. 25:40:
“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’
Dear Jewish friend,
I call you friend because, as a Christian, I owe God’s chosen people a great debt of gratitude! I am grateful to the Jewish people for preserving the scriptures so faithfully so that I could benefit from them today. I am grateful to the Jewish prophets for giving us such a clear picture of the two advents of our beloved Messiah (Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 11:1-6). I am grateful to the people of Israel for proving to the world that our God keeps His promises (Amos 9:14-15).
It is because of my gratitude that I want to give some good gift back to them. At this Passover time, my gift is a question: “What was it that caused the Angel of Death to “pass over” the homes of the Jewish people in Egypt on that first Passover night? If you said, “It was the blood of a perfect lamb!” you would be correct. But have you ever considered that God provided this picture to us in order to illustrate an even greater truth?
As a Bible believer, I have been taught the importance of this verse from Leviticus 17:11:
“…for the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the Lord. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.”
True Christians love the Jewish God for providing us with a “perfect lamb,” Yeshua, to shed his blood on the cross to atone for our sins 2,000 years ago! Your own prophet described this concept perfectly in Isaiah 53:3-6 when he wrote this:
“He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.”
If we, by faith, believe that Isaiah is speaking of the “Suffering Messiah” (as ancient rabbis called him) and we personally ask God to apply Yeshua’s blood to the door of our hearts to forgive our sins, we can then be made “kosher” with God and made ready to go to the “Promised Land” of Paradise when we die.
I pray that you will consider the words of the Jewish prophets I have quoted here and place your faith in Yeshua, the “lamb of God”! If you have any questions or comments about what I have written to you today, please feel free to get back to me or to email my friend Asher Mandel at is53@att.net. Asher has been a Jewish believer in Yeshua for 50 years and has volunteered to try to answer any questions you may have for him.
Thank you for reading through this letter. In closing, I want to remind you of the promise God gives us in Jeremiah 29:13:
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
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