Door
WORD PICTURE: DOOR
Scriptural Reference: 1 Corinthians 5:7 (2nd Sentence)
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
1. Hold up a dollhouse or Lego doorway (or go take a good look at a real one). Read 1 Corinthians 5:7 (the second sentence). Is this passage from the Old Testament or the New Testament? Note that in the Old Testament, darkness and death were erased or kept away by the blood of animals (see Genesis after the fall).
2. Read or paraphrase Exodus 11-12 (perhaps even watch the appropriate excerpt from Prince of Egypt or The Ten Commandments). Make the point that Death would pass over the houses that had blood over their doorframes.
Exodus 12—The Passover
12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
What I Shared
What helped me was building a little doorway with my son, and then we looked at that section of Genesis where God performed the first blood sacrifice after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. This little doorway helped me see that God is very organic. It’s about blood as the very basis of life. Life equals blood. So, by the same token, no blood equals death. And it gets better: blood (life) is the antidote to death. That’s pretty basic/organic. I can actually understand that.
So then I started to think of the ways I need that blood to cover me. Examples abound of things I’ve done MY WAY instead of GOD’S WAY. My most recent problem is that I told somebody something that was not true. I had thought was true, but it turned out it wasn’t. I had borne false witness! It is really good news when you blow it like that and then you realize you can just confess it and be forgiven. So I did -- and I was. I can put little bitty things like that under the blood as they occur, but I can also put huge things -- like my tendency to embrace guilt -- under the blood. I’m like one of those Israelite doorways -- covered by the blood of Jesus, our Passover Lamb.
So -- in what area do YOU need the blood to cover YOU? Are there any ways you are doing things YOUR way and it’s not working? Any habits or activity about which you have shame or sickness or guilt?
Remember, what we say here doesn’t leave here.
All Scripture references from the New International Version of the Bible (NIV).
Copyright by Whitney McKendree Moore, May 2002