Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jensen Holt McNair and right now we're going through exodus.

Growing up there were many days that my sister and I would be watching a movie and all of a sudden

it would pause. One of us would yell hey hey, and blame the other one for stopping the TV, until we realized it was my mom with the remote. And apparently, she had been trying to talk to us. But we were so wrapped up in the TV that she had to talk to us, but we were so wrapped up in the TV that she had to pause it to get our attention,

to make us focus on what she was saying because it was important.

In today's passage, the author of Exodus is doing something like this for us.

We've been deep in the narrative of the plagues for the past five chapters.

The last chapter left off with God warning Pharaoh that a terrible plague was coming if he didn't let the Israelites go,

and Pharaoh yet again didn't relent.

We're on the cusp of a huge moment in the story.

It's the part of the movie where the music would become ominous and loud

and you'd be glued to know what was going to happen next.

And then, the first 28 verses in chapter 12 lay out a very detailed description of how the Passover

feast and the Feast of Unleavened Bread should be carried out by the Israelites. There's a change in the pace of the story as we slow way down to learn about how people should gather together and what kind of animal they should sacrifice and how they should cook the

animal and how they should eat the animal and what they should wear while they eat the animal and what to do

with the leftovers when they're done. It's a pause for the readers, but also for the Israelites living

in the middle of this story. A pause to help them take a breath and focus on what God was saying to them because this part it's important.

And while all these details may not seem important at first, when we understand what they do, what they mean for the Israelites, I think we'll

see just how important it is to pause and remember what God is doing here in Chapter 12.

Now remember God has just promised to send a final plague and this plague is to kill every firstborn in the land of

Egypt and in the beginning part of chapter 12, God is laying out what the

Israelites need to do in order to be safe from this plague. Like we said, they're given specific

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