Blood on the Doorframe

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12:1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 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 lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, 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 live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14 “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance. (Exodus 12:1-14 NRS)

Happy Wednesday! Friend, make it your best day ever by being the best person you can be! Love all people. Smile more. Give more! Prayers for this old man as he prepares to preach in the home office of First Gonzales this Sunday at 8:30 and 10:45! May God give me a word to share with all people.

It's that time of year for the Procrastinators of America to get their taxes done! And yes, dear Sainted Reverend Thom Elliott, my friend and brother in Christ Jesus, I think of you often, but more so as I get my information in order to file in time for the last possible day to send Uncle Sam what I render unto him. And that involves me printing the 2025 calendar month by month so I can look over how many medical-related trips I made to Gonzales, and Mission, Texas for health and dental trips. Oh, and I can't forget San Antonio for vision-related jaunts. And tis funny how the online calendar shows every detail but the printed version does not, so I have bring the printed calendar here so I can write in the details I need. And speaking of calendars, this passage has the God of the Universe resetting the calendar!

There's a moment in this passage where God does something that feels almost strange for the God of the universe to bother with: he stops to reset the calendar. "This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you." Before a single plague finishes, before a single Israelite takes a step toward freedom, God says, essentially, "mark this on your calendars — everything starts counting from here now." When God is about to do something enormous, he doesn't just act — he makes sure you remember when it happened. This wasn't going to be a footnote. It was going to be the new starting line for how an entire people measured time.

Then come the instructions, and they are wonderfully, almost comically specific. Every family is to take a lamb — one per household, unless your household's too small to finish it, in which case you team up with your nearest neighbor and figure out the math together based on how many people can actually eat it. The lamb has to be without defect, a year-old male, and you don't just grab it and slaughter it right away — you keep it, watch it, live with it for four days before the appointed time. There's something almost tender in that detail. This isn't an anonymous animal grabbed at the last minute; it's something the family has had underfoot, part of the household, before it becomes part of their salvation.

On the fourteenth day, at twilight, the whole assembled community slaughters their lambs. And then comes the part that changes everything: they're to take some of the blood and put it on the two doorframes and the top of the frame of the houses where they eat the lamb. Not sprinkle it inside for good luck. Not paint it somewhere private and decorative. Put it right on the doorframe — the most visible, unmissable part of the house, the thing everyone walking by would see.

I love imagining this scene a little: an entire nation, in one single night, painting blood over their front doors, roasting lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, dressed and ready to move with their sandals on and staff in hand, eating in a hurry like people who might have to run at any moment. It's not a quiet, contemplative meal. It's Passover eaten standing up, coats on, bags practically packed — dinner and an escape plan rolled into one.

And then God tells them exactly why the blood matters: "The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." The blood isn't a magic charm that wards off evil on its own merits. It's a sign — something visible, something that testifies to whose household this is, something God himself promises to look for and honor. The destroyer doesn't pass over because the family behind that door was more righteous than the family next door. He passes over because of the blood. Full stop. Nothing else about that night saves anyone.

If that sounds familiar, it should — because this is the exact shape of the gospel showing up more than a thousand years before Jesus ever walked into Jerusalem for his last Passover meal with his disciples. Blood applied to a doorframe, marking a household as covered, sparing it from judgment that fell everywhere else. It's not hard to see why Paul would later call Jesus "our Passover lamb" without much explanation needed — the story had already been telling us what to look for.

And then God adds one more instruction that I find strangely moving: this day shall be a day of remembrance for you, you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, throughout your generations, as a perpetual ordinance. God isn't just rescuing this generation of Israelites. He's building a memory into the DNA of a whole nation, so that centuries later, families would still be gathering around tables, still asking "why is this night different from all other nights," still telling their children about the blood on the doorframe that meant death passed over their house.

There's something worth sitting with here about how God saves. It's specific. It's visible. It requires trust — because imagine being the one family on the block wondering if maybe this time the blood thing was overkill, maybe we don't really need it. It's applied, not assumed. And it points, unmistakably, all the way forward to a cross.

PRAYER: Lord, thank you for the blood that covers us and the judgment that passes over because of Jesus, our true Passover Lamb, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take a few minutes today to thank Jesus specifically for being the Lamb whose blood covers you, rather than assuming your safety is automatic.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Win the world for Jesus with your love!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Wake Up and Owe Nothing But Love

Hear and View devo: https://bit.ly/4xD4q3u

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:8-14 NRS)

Happy Tuesday, dear Friend! Be a surprise blessing to many today by doing unexpected outrageous (for you) things! Blessings will be yours all day long! This is an adventure after all! Make it a fun one! Prayers for this old man as I prepare to preach at First Methodist Church in Gonzales this coming Sunday at 8:30 and 10:45! I may be a bit rusty!! Crusty too! lol.

I remember very vividly the day I paid off my credit card. Yes, I had fallen into the illusion of credit cards. I applied for a Foley's credit card and was elated that I was approved! I remember having supper with an old friend, and one of his old friends, who was bragging about having an American Express card. "They give them to anyone who applies!" he said, and dummy here applied and again, APPROVED! I also applied for a MasterCard and guess what, again, approved. I didn't rack up a lot of debt; Amex had to be paid monthly, so anything I charged during a month had to be paid at the end of that same month, and Foley's, well, I didn't buy expensive clothes, so I never really used it. But the MC was something else; and I charged gas and food on it; and of course, I was working with Ma Bell and making very good money for a single man; then I went away to seminary and I went on faith knowing I had to pay off my new car and other charges; and the day came I owed MasterCard nothing! And to celebrate I went and bought a new pair of boots to use in the snow there in Denver. And that was the beginning of what seemed lifetime debt to MC nation. Debt is no fun.

And here comes the Apostle Paul acting like Dave Ramsey in this passage with his "Owe no one anything..." Yeah, right! If you've ever had a loan you couldn't quite shake — the kind that shows up in your mind at 2 a.m. reminding you it still exists — you know exactly the itch Paul is describing. Debt lingers. It follows you around. It's the one bill that never seems to close out.

And Paul says there's exactly one debt he's comfortable with you carrying forever, never paying off, always owing a little more: love. Every other debt gets settled eventually. This one doesn't, and that's the point — you're never going to wake up one day and think, "well, I've loved my neighbor enough now, I can stop."

Then Paul does something that would've been almost scandalous to a first-century Jewish audience: he says the entire law can be summed up in a single sentence. Whoever loves another has fulfilled the law, because the commandments — don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet, and whatever other commandments there are — are all summed up in this: love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, so love is the fulfilling of the law.

Think about how radically simplifying that is. The Pharisees had built an entire industry out of parsing 613 commandments into finer and finer categories — which ones apply on which days, under which conditions, with which loopholes. Paul walks in and essentially says: you can stop counting. If you actually love your neighbor — really love them, not just tolerate them from a safe distance — you've already kept the whole list, because love doesn't do the things the list is trying to prevent. It's like discovering that instead of memorizing six hundred rules for a card game, someone just tells you: don't be a jerk, and you'll never break a rule again.

Then Paul shifts gears into something with real urgency: besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. He's telling the Roman church, and by extension us, to check the clock — salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. The night is far gone, the day is near. So let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

It's such a vivid image — waking up, throwing off the covers, putting on daylight like it's something you can wear. And then Paul gets almost startlingly specific about what needs to be laid aside: not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. It reads like a list someone wrote after attending one too many parties that went sideways. Paul's not being prudish here — he's naming the stuff that keeps people stuck in a fog, groggy and half-alive, sleepwalking through their own lives instead of actually living them.

And then the final instruction, which I think is the real heartbeat of the whole passage: instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

That phrase — "make no provision" — is such practical wisdom dressed up in old language. It's not just "resist temptation when it shows up." It's "stop leaving the door unlocked for it in the first place." Don't stock the fridge with what you're trying to avoid. Don't keep the relationship active that you know is pulling you toward darkness. Don't set your alarm for the version of yourself you're trying to wake up from. Paul knows that most of our failures aren't sudden ambushes — they're the predictable result of provisions we made for them days earlier, half-consciously, hoping we wouldn't actually have to follow through.

Put on Christ instead. Not as a costume you wear to church on Sunday and take off Monday morning, but as your actual wardrobe — the thing that determines how you show up in every ordinary interaction, every debt you never quite finish paying off, every neighbor you're called to love instead of merely endure.

PRAYER: Lord, wake us from our sleepiness, clothe us in Christ, and let love be the only debt we never stop paying, in Jesus' strong name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one "provision for the flesh" you've been quietly leaving in place, and remove it today.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Live in a way that says you love all people and want them in the Kingdom of God.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.