BibleProject | Holy Week & EasterSample

Returning What Was Stolen

Ask 100 Jewish people from the 1st century to name the greatest redeemer of all time, and all 100 would answer, “Moses!” God used Moses to reclaim the Israelites from Pharaoh’s possession, to guide them to a better land, and to instruct them how to love God and others well.

On the night of Israel’s first Passover, described in Exodus 12:1-28, everyone was preparing for departure from Egypt. Pharaoh had enslaved them centuries before, but God planned to break his hold that night with a death plague.

Every family’s firstborn male would die, God said, whether human or animal, Egyptian or Israelite, unless they spread a lamb’s blood over their doorposts. They could then roast the lamb, serve it with bread and wine, and share a meal. That night, God passed over, or protected, every home that had spread the lamb’s blood on their doorposts.

With this death plague, Pharaoh’s empire falls, and God takes the Israelites back into his possession to bless them. As today’s video explains, this is what redemption looks like, and Passover has celebrated God’s redemption on this night ever since.

Now, fast-forward to the scene in Matthew 26:17-30 and imagine you’re one of Jesus’ disciples, sharing Passover with him. You expect to celebrate Moses’ great salvation. But during the meal, Jesus says the bread now represents his body, and the wine, his blood. He presents himself as the lamb whose blood protects humanity from death.

As you eat and listen, it finally clicks: This meal is no longer only about Moses. Jesus is a new Moses, leading a new exodus. But this time, it isn’t just Israel being rescued from Egypt. It’s all humanity being rescued from death’s grip and restored to God’s possession. He invites everyone to join—Israelites, Egyptians, Romans, everyone—because everyone belongs to the God who made them.

Instead of leading a people through the Red Sea, toward the land of milk and honey, Jesus leads all humanity through death, into life in God’s Kingdom, where every human has been redeemed, that is, returned to God.

Reflection Question

• Today’s video showed how the Bible often sees redemption through the lens of repossessing something that’s been taken away. What changes when you think about how people have been “stolen” from God by death and are being returned to God, or redeemed, through Jesus?