“Then the Israelites went and did this; they did just as the Lord has commanded Moses and Aaron. . . Then all the Israelites did this; they did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. On that same day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt according to their military divisions.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are some things that simply matter more than others. There are some details that are more important than the rest. In the final analysis, some actions will be noted as more significant than anything else. This is what we are seeing here as we finally come to the end of Exodus 12. God gave a lot of instruction (with many, many more yet to come) in preparing the people for the final judgment against Egypt and their departure from the land. In the end, though, only one thing really mattered. It’s the same thing that ultimately matters most for us too. The fact that it gets repeated just helps to emphasize the point. Let’s talk today about doing what God says.

One of the greatest gifts God has given us as the only creatures who were made in His image is the ability to make meaningful and consequential choices. We alone out of all the creatures on earth can make choices that carry genuine consequences for ourselves and for the world around us. But can’t animals make choices too? I mean, they decide whether to go right or left. They decide whether to eat or sleep. Yes and no. Yes they do one thing instead of another, but there is no conscious, rational thought behind their actions. They are entirely driven by instinct. We are not. We can consider our options and actively choose one thing instead of a whole range of others. And once we have decided, there are meaningful consequences to our decision. The world is not the same after we pick as it was before. It may be only slightly different, but it may also be profoundly transformed. What’s more, we don’t always – or even often – recognize which is which.

The shorter way of expressing all of that is to say we are free. God created us and gave us a freedom that is utterly astounding to consider. He is God. He is the creator of everything we see and don’t. He is sovereign over His creation. He has not relinquished power or position in that regard. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He should get His way every single time. Yet while His will ultimately will be accomplished. He allows us the freedom to engage with Him and His world and even to set the terms for how we will interact with His will. What I am getting at here is this: We have the ability to do what He says or not do what He says at any given moment.

When God has come and presented us with the chance to join Him in His activity, we don’t have to join Him. We can say, “No.” He won’t force Himself on us. This accomplishes the incredible outcome of allowing us to freely choose to love Him in a deep and committed relationship. We can’t do that apart from Christ, of course, but with His help, we can enter into a covenant of life with Him wherein we freely recognize and submit to His lordship and in return He grants us the gift of eternal life in His eternal kingdom. That’s pretty remarkable when you think about it.

On the other hand, though, this gift of freedom from God gives us the illusion of autonomy. We can far too easily convince ourselves that we are really and fully in control of our own destiny and that no one gets to have any input into the path we choose to take through this life. We start to imagine that we are a law unto ourselves and that our will ultimately will be done. This, of course, is nonsense, but it is deeply tempting nonsense to believe, and it can be made to seem awfully noble, good, and appealing of an idea.

Connecting the dots with what we find twice here in Exodus 12 (and when we find repetition like this, especially in the Old Testament, it is a signal that we need to sit up and pay close attention because the author considered this to be the most important part of what he was writing), when God came to Moses and Aaron and told them what was going to happen and what Israel needed to do in order to take part in it, the people collectively had a choice.

They had the choice of whether to go along with God’s crazy instructions or to say, “No thanks, we’re good here.” They had the choice of whether to leave Egypt or remain where they were. They could have heard everything Moses and Aaron told them God wanted them to do, picked and chose which parts they were really willing to put into practice, and forgot about the rest. They could have said, “The feast sounds good, but the whole smearing blood on the house thing is just weird. We’re not doing that.” There were lots of things they could have done with God’s commands, in fact. But they didn’t. They obeyed them. “They did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.”

We have this same freedom today. Any time God comes and asks us to do something, we have the ability to decide whether to do it or not. He still doesn’t force Himself on us today. But wait, don’t you also believe that there is a day coming when Jesus is going to return in power and when “every knee will bow – in heaven and on earth and under the earth – and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”? Absolutely I do, but until that day arrives, God allows us to choose to do what He says or not. In fact, even in that day, God will honor the ability He has given us to make meaningful and consequential choices.

Both of those words matter when it comes to thinking about the freedom God has given us. The choices we make are meaningful. They carry eternal weight. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before…you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.” That’s a lot of meaning. And it is laden in all of our choices. All of them. Even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant ones. Never let yourself believe that deciding this or that doesn’t matter. You are always choosing whether to dishonor God or honor Him. Now, there may be several ways to honor God in a given situation such that you don’t need to be paralyzed with fear and indecision on a regular basis, but even the decision of whether or not to brush your teeth on a given morning carries great weight when you understand that you are making it to glorify God or not.

The ability God has given us to choose, however, is also a deeply consequential one. This is something we forget at our peril. Just because God will not force us to do as He has commanded does not mean He doesn’t have a preference in our choosing. It does not mean choosing other than the path He has called us to take won’t have consequences both for us and for the people around us. It will. Sometimes those consequences will seem small and insignificant such that we are willing to bear them in order to get what we want. Yet just because the obvious negative consequences of a particular choice to choose our path instead of God’s appear minimal doesn’t mean they really are. Sometimes the choices we consider to be the least significant wind up carrying the most weight; they wind up having an enormous impact that we never even suspect in the moment of choosing or even long after that. (Consider our conversation this past Friday as an example.)

And, ultimately, one of the consequences of our choosing to honor Him or not is whether we live forever with Him or spend eternity separated from Him. That’s a lot of weight to bear. But God made us to bear it. And bear it we will. This is a gift that cannot be returned or revoked. We can only enjoy it or be burdened by it. The best choice we can make is always to honor Him by doing what He says, just like Israel did here.