Courage in the Gospel | Exodus 11-13

Can you imagine being told, after years of captivity, “You’re finally going to be free” and not knowing if you are going to live long enough to see it? In the summer of 2025, a video circulated of Israeli hostage Evyatar David in a tunnel in Gaza. He is thin, emaciated and digging in the dirt. He speaks in a weak voice in the video, “I haven’t eaten for a few days in a row. Time is running out.” He was captured on October 7, 2023, by Hamas, and he would be one of the last living hostages released on October 13, 2025. Weeks before his release, he was put in solitary confinement in darkness, and just days before his release, he was told to dig his own grave. But then everything changed. Suddenly, he was set free and reunited with his family. I can’t imagine the emotional whiplash of going from “dig your grave” to hugging your family in freedom. A few weeks ago, a reporter asked him, “How are you doing now?” He said, “I am still adjusting to living life as a free man. But at least I am no longer in hell anymore.”

The emotional whiplash of a death announcement to freedom is exactly the tension found in Exodus. Before Israel walked out of Egypt in freedom, they were told something terrifying: death was coming at midnight. But it would be through the death of a Lamb that they would be set free. Their freedom would not come because Pharaoh changed his mind or because they were good enough to earn it. Freedom came because God Himself provided a way for death to pass over His people so that they could live. This is the gospel message. If you are a Christian, this is your testimony. In the Passover, we learn how to have courage in the gospel, because we see that Jesus died the death we deserved to die through substitution, so that we could receive a deliverance we don’t deserve through His salvation.