04/12/2025
Shabbat shalom and Happy Passover!
As you prepare for and celebrate Passover, please enjoy my song, My Deliverer: https://youtu.be/EBYPD9o_sMM?si=ZJE3lnWlqXwdQpoM You can also find it on any streaming service.
One of my favorite things I learned writing my Passover devotional, https://amzn.to/3XXDkV0, is what the Hebrews were covering when they painted their doorposts. Enjoy this excerpt from my book:
"The Egyptians believed that to enjoy a good afterlife, their names had to be remembered on earth. To have their names forgotten was the worst fate imaginable. One way they attempted to have their names be remembered was by chiseling them into stone. Pharaohs and rich Egyptians accomplished this on tombs, monuments, and pyramids, but for lower class Egyptians and slaves, stone was not easily accessible. Their homes were made mostly of mud and straw, which do not withstand the test of time, but their doorposts and lintels were made of stone so the custom developed to carve their names into the doorposts and lintels of their homes to try to ensure that their names lived on so they could have a better afterlife.
When the Israelites first came to Egypt in the time of Joseph, they lived in tents, but over time they built their own more permanent structures, most likely in the same way the Egyptians built theirs. They had adopted many of the Egyptian ways of thinking, and they had much to unlearn. When YHWH asked them to smear the blood of the Passover lamb on the sides and top of their door frames, He was asking them to cover their names with the blood of the lamb. This was an object lesson intended to begin to teach them about YHWH’s way of salvation. Their names on stone did not ensure life in the hereafter; only the blood of a perfect sacrificial Lamb could do that.
We, of course, need to learn the same lesson, and commemorating the Passover each year is a great way to remind ourselves of the important truth that it matters where our names are written. Revelation 20:15 and 21:27 both talk about a Book of Life that determines who lives on into eternity, and it is only by the blood of the Lamb, our Messiah Yeshua, that we can have our names written in that book."
Happy Passover, my friends!