When something works, we try and replicate it to varying success. In cooking, this trial and error in making something delicious with the perfect satisfaction is often recorded in a recipe. When we have developed enough recipes, we gather them in a cookbook, and future generations can look at what we have made and replicate it. However, in recipes that are filled with long and complicated steps, people are tempted to cut out some of the steps. Unfortunately, many times, when steps are skipped or altered, the meal does not come out looking the way it was intended.

In the following passage, God delivers a recipe of deliverance for the Hebrew people. Follow these directions, and deliverance will be yours, but if you cut corners and don’t obey this God-given message, things won’t turn out how they would hope. The instructions are specific, and God provides the only way that the Pharaoh will grant them freedom. This will be a day of remembrance for the Israelites, because no corners are cut or instructions skipped. 

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 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. 14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 12:1–14.

Just as God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt, God delivers us from the slavery of sin that bonds us to the punishment of death. To bring freedom to the people of Israel meant that death was coming for many, and even when God sought to have the people freed by many other methods, nine plagues failed to convince Pharaoh to let God’s people go. Thus, death became necessary. Similarly, we failed to follow God’s previous instructions and guidance for salvation by continuously falling short of the standards in the law and perpetually cutting corners, looking for an easy way. However, Jesus followed the instructions exactly as they needed to be followed and thus provided remediation for sin. No corners were cut, even though Jesus knew the difficulty and what following the instructions meant for His life.

The result of not following the law or cutting corners is death. Nonetheless, it doesn’t stop us from looking for a shortcut. The instructions given to the Israelites in this passage were specific; the instructions from God called out the specific sacrifice, time, and method. Follow these instructions exactly, and death will pass over your homes; if not, the penalty is death. Our minds read this and wonder if maybe we would have cut a corner here and there to be able to get past some of the qualifications. Our society has careers built upon finding loopholes in laws and tax codes to cut as many corners as possible. However, there are no loopholes in God’s law; it requires us to follow it, or the penalty is death. Fortunately, Jesus paid that penalty for us but reminds us that even though we have sinned and subsequently redeemed, we are still commanded to follow God’s recipe to love God and love our neighbor.

According to God, there is no cutting the corner of the command to follow Jesus in loving God and our neighbor. There are no acceptable excuses to follow Jesus in love; it doesn’t matter how difficult we find it to carry out. We must share God’s love with everyone. It is cutting corners to omit anyone from our purview, even if we vehemently disagree with them. God has laid out the church’s mission is to bring the people to the source of salvation, Jesus. However, when the church dehumanizes and participates in the cycle of hatred and violence, it removes itself from love. The church doesn’t get to cut the corner of offering love to those who are hard to love, nor does it cut the corner of striving after unity with all. God has given the church a mission to bring people to an understanding of salvation through Christ Jesus. Through this mission, the church will change the world as long as it follows the recipe of God, not the world’s recipes.

God laid out a recipe for us to help build a beautiful, grace-filled world and even provided the necessary ingredients to make it. God gave us grace through Jesus, a perfect demonstration of what loving people look like, and a church to carry out the mission. The people of God lack nothing to construct a kingdom of love, grace, mercy, hope, and peace, but we must get out of our own way of corner-cutting to make things easier on us. Quit cutting corners and start following Jesus, and the church that will be built on that will look a lot more like Jesus and less like the organizations and governments of the world.

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Published by JRMITCH85

I am often asked what describes you, which is a hard answer because sometimes I move in a thousand different directions. Some call me an engineer, others call me pastor, a few call me captain, some call me friend, others call me dad, and one calls me sweetheart. All of these things are descriptors and are accurate, but they don't fully capture me. My favorite place is in the mountains, enjoying the beauty of nature and God's creation, running and hiking around with my family and friends, and taking photos to cement the memories. However, the people that know me the best know that my favorite thing to do is come up with crazy adventures that push the limits of what our minds and bodies can do. My faith in God is important to me and drives me to look at creation the way I do. Because of my faith, I look at these adventures and running races from Half Marathons all the way to 24 hour races, as well as several Obstacle Course Races, as an opportunity to push the body God gave me as an act of worship. Hopefully, someday soon, I look toward running longer races and bigger adventures. My hope is that humanity can understand that the wild is a gift, and we need to care for it and quit destroying it by the way we live.

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