Week 18 Discussion Guide: The Plagues and Passover

Opening

Begin by reciting this week’s memory verse together:

“The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.” – Exodus 12:13 (ESV)

Think about a time when you were protected from something you did not fully understand at the time – a danger you only recognized afterward, a provision that covered you before you knew you needed it. What was your response when you finally saw what had been done on your behalf? Hold that memory as we discuss a night when blood on a doorpost was the difference between death and deliverance.

Review: The Big Picture

This week we watched the most sustained confrontation between the God of Israel and the powers of this world anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Moses stood before Pharaoh: “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” Pharaoh refused. And God responded with ten plagues that systematically dismantled the gods of Egypt – the Nile turned to blood, frogs that mocked the fertility goddess, gnats that forced the magicians to confess “This is the finger of God,” flies, livestock disease, boils on the magicians’ own skin, devastating hail, locusts that devoured what the hail left standing, and three days of darkness so thick it could be felt – Ra, the supreme deity of the Egyptian pantheon, rendered impotent. Through it all, Pharaoh’s heart hardened – sometimes by his own will, sometimes by God’s sovereign hand, both operating simultaneously in a tension the text presents but does not resolve.

Then, before the tenth and final blow – the death of every firstborn – God did something unprecedented. He instituted a meal. An unblemished lamb, slaughtered at twilight, its blood smeared on the doorposts and the lintel. A family eating in haste, sandals on, staff in hand, dressed for departure. At midnight the destroyer passed through Egypt, and where the blood was, the destroyer passed over. The night that broke Pharaoh and birthed a nation was not merely a political event. It was a liturgical one – a meal commanded “as a statute forever,” designed to be reenacted by every generation until the Lamb it foreshadowed would come.

Discussion Questions

Day 1: “Let My People Go” (Exodus 5:1-6:13)

1. Things Get Worse First. Moses delivers God’s demand, and Pharaoh responds by stripping the slaves of straw while maintaining the same quota of bricks. The suffering increases after God intervenes, not before. The Israelites blame Moses: “You have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh” (5:21). Have you experienced seasons where obedience to God made things worse before they got better? What does this pattern reveal about the difference between God’s timing and ours?

2. “I Am the LORD.” In Exodus 6:2-8, God reaffirms his covenant identity with a cascade of “I will” statements – I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you, I will bring you in, I will give you the land. Six promises anchored in one declaration: “I am the LORD.” How does the repetition of God’s sovereign commitment function as an answer to the people’s despair? What does it mean that God’s response to complaint is not rebuke but self-revelation?

Day 2: Blood, Frogs, Gnats (Exodus 7:1-8:19)

1. Judgment on the Gods. The Nile turns to blood – a strike against Hapi, the river god. Frogs swarm the land – Heqet, the frog-headed goddess, made grotesque by excess. Gnats arise from the dust, and the magicians confess, “This is the finger of God” (8:19). The plagues are not random catastrophes but targeted demolitions of Egypt’s theological infrastructure. What does it mean that God’s judgment takes the form of exposing false gods rather than merely punishing people? Where do you see modern “gods” – cultural certainties, institutional powers – being similarly exposed?

2. The Magicians’ Limit. Pharaoh’s magicians replicate the first two plagues but fail at the third. They can imitate the work of God up to a point, but they cannot sustain the imitation. What does the failure of the magicians reveal about the nature of counterfeit power? How does this pattern – imitation that reaches a limit and then confesses – appear elsewhere in Scripture or in the world today?

Day 3: Flies, Livestock, Boils, Hail (Exodus 8:20-9:35)

1. The Division. “I will put a division between my people and your people” (8:23). Beginning with the plague of flies, God draws a visible line: Goshen, where Israel dwells, is untouched while Egypt suffers. The distinction is not based on Israel’s merit but on God’s sovereign choice. How does this principle – separation by grace, not by worthiness – anticipate the logic of the blood on the doorpost? How does it challenge the assumption that God’s favor is earned?

2. Pharaoh’s Heart. The text says Pharaoh hardened his own heart (8:15, 32) and that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (9:12). Both are presented as true, simultaneously, without apology or resolution. What do you do with this tension? Is it a contradiction to be solved, or is it a theological reality to be held – the same architecture Paul invokes in Romans 9:17-18 and that explains the cross in Acts 2:23?

Day 4: Locusts, Darkness, and the Final Announcement (Exodus 10:1-11:10)

1. Darkness You Can Feel. Three days of darkness “so thick it could be felt” (10:21) – Ra, Egypt’s supreme god, silenced. Pharaoh’s own officials beg him to relent: “Do you not yet understand that Egypt is destroyed?” (10:7). The plagues have stripped every layer of Egyptian confidence. What does it mean to live in a culture whose gods have been exposed as powerless? How do people respond when the things they trusted most are shown to be empty?

2. The Purpose of Hardening. God tells Moses, “I have hardened his heart… that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians” (10:1-2). The hardening is not arbitrary cruelty. It serves a revelatory purpose – the display of God’s power becomes a story told across generations. How does knowing that God’s mighty acts are meant to be narrated – passed from parent to child – shape the way you think about your own faith story?

Day 5: The Passover (Exodus 12:1-42)

1. The Lamb. Unblemished. Male. A year old. Selected on the tenth day and kept until the fourteenth. Slaughtered bein ha’arbayim – “between the evenings,” at twilight. Its blood applied to the doorposts and the lintel. Its bones unbroken. Every detail is precise. Why does God prescribe the Passover with such specificity? What does the care of the instructions reveal about the significance of what is happening – and what it foreshadows?

2. “When I See the Blood.” The blood on the doorpost does not indicate that the household inside is sinless. It indicates that a substitute has died. The firstborn of the lamb takes the place of the firstborn of the family. And the phrase “when I see the blood” places the efficacy not in Israel’s doing but in God’s seeing. How does this principle – salvation resting on what God sees, not on what we achieve – reshape the way you understand the gospel? What comfort does it offer?

3. The Meal That Remembers. God commands the Passover to be observed “as a statute forever” (12:14). Each generation reenacts the night, retells the story, tastes the bread. “When your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover’” (12:26-27). The Passover is not merely commemorated. It is participated in. How does the liturgical nature of the Passover – the insistence on bodily reenactment rather than abstract remembrance – shape the way you think about the Lord’s Supper?

Synthesis

1. Christ Our Passover. Paul writes, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Jesus is crucified on Passover afternoon, at the hour when the lambs are being slaughtered in the temple. His bones are not broken (John 19:36), fulfilling Exodus 12:46. At the Last Supper – a Passover meal – he transforms the oldest liturgy in Israel into the newest: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). How does seeing the Passover as a portrait of the cross change the way you read Exodus 12? What does it mean that the blood that saved Israel and the blood that saves the world is the same blood – separated only by the distance between shadow and substance?

Going Deeper: Connections Across the Week

• Substitution as the Grammar of Salvation. The Passover lamb is the earliest and most visceral expression of substitutionary atonement in Scripture. A life is exchanged for a life. The firstborn of the lamb dies so the firstborn of the family lives. The blood on the doorpost is not a reward for obedience but a covering for the vulnerable – and the covering works because God sees it, not because the household deserves it. This logic runs through the entire sacrificial system that will be established at Sinai, through the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 (“he was pierced for our transgressions”), and through the cross itself, where the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. The grammar has not changed from Exodus 12 to Calvary. What changed is the identity of the Lamb.

• The Hardening and the Cross. The dual hardening of Pharaoh’s heart – sometimes his own doing, sometimes God’s – is the same theological architecture that explains the crucifixion. Human responsibility and divine sovereignty operate on the same event without canceling each other. Peter’s Pentecost sermon holds both: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The men who killed Jesus were morally responsible. God’s plan was sovereignly accomplished. The tension is not a problem to solve but the deepest truth about how God works in a world where human agency and divine purpose coexist. Genesis 50:20 said it first. The plagues confirm it. The cross fulfills it.

• From Meal to Meal. The Passover is not a one-time event but a perpetual meal – commanded “forever,” designed to collapse the distance between past and present. When Jesus sits at the Passover table on the night of his betrayal and says, “This is my body… this is my blood of the covenant,” he is not replacing the Passover. He is completing it. The bread that remembered Egypt now remembers Calvary. The lamb eaten in haste by a people fleeing slavery is now the Lamb whose body is broken for a world fleeing death. Every time the church gathers at the Lord’s Table, it reenacts the same movement: a substitute has died, the blood has been applied, and the destroyer passes over. The meal that began in Exodus 12 has never ended.

Application

• Personal: The phrase “when I see the blood” places salvation entirely in God’s hands. The blood does not make the household worthy. It makes them covered. This week, bring to God the areas of your life where you are trying to earn what can only be received. Ask him to teach you the difference between striving for acceptance and resting under the blood. Write Exodus 12:13 on a card and carry it with you. Let the simplicity of the promise dismantle the complexity of your self-justification.

• Relational: The Passover is a household meal. It is eaten together, in community, by a family preparing to leave everything familiar behind. The deliverance is corporate, not merely individual. This week, consider how your faith is shaped by the community around you. Is there someone in your group, your church, or your family who is standing at the threshold between death and life – spiritually, emotionally, relationally – and needs you to stand with them? The blood on the doorpost covered the whole household. No one was meant to face the night alone.

• Formational: God commands that the Passover be narrated – “When your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’” the answer is not a doctrine but a story. This week, practice telling the story of God’s deliverance in your own life. Not a theological argument. Not a set of propositions. A story: this is what God did, this is what it cost, this is how I was saved. The Passover endures because it is told. Your faith will endure for the same reason.

Closing Prayer

Close your time together by praying through Exodus 12:13. Thank God for the blood that covers – not because you are worthy but because the Lamb has died. Praise him that salvation rests on what he sees, not on what you achieve. Confess the places where you have trusted in your own merit rather than in his provision. Ask him to make the Passover real to you – not as ancient history but as present reality, the same blood that saved Israel saving you. Pray for eyes to see Christ in the bread and the cup, the Lamb in the altar, the cross in the doorpost. And ask the God who struck Egypt at midnight and spared every household marked by blood to pass over you in mercy – today, tomorrow, and on the last day.

Looking Ahead

Next week the exodus happens. Israel walks through the sea on dry ground. Pharaoh’s army drowns. And on the far shore, Moses and the people sing the first great song of deliverance in Scripture: “The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Exodus 15:2). Then the wilderness begins – manna from heaven, water from a rock, and a people learning to trust the God who delivered them. The blood was the beginning. The journey is just starting.