Where the blood was sprinkled, salvation was the result; and where no blood was seen, the plague fell. God passed through the land that night in judgment, and “there was not a house where there was not one dead” (Ex. 12:30). In the houses of Israel there was one dead: the lamb, the victim, the substitute. In the houses of Egypt there was one dead: the firstborn. In the houses of Israel the lamb had died instead of the firstborn, and that brought peace to many a household that night.

You might have gone up to a young man in one of the households of Israel, who was the firstborn, and asked him:

How is it with you tonight? Have you peace?—Perfect peace!

How do you feel?—I do not rest on my feelings, but on the word of Jehovah. The blood is upon the lintel. It was my father’s work to put it there, but I assure you, I took good care to see that it was done; my life would go this night if the blood were not there. But the blood is there, and Jehovah has said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

And are you at rest? At perfect rest. The blood is the basis of my peace, not what I feel.

Peace is not a feeling; it is not an emotion; it is not an experience; it flows from the fact that the claims of God have been met by the Lamb of God, and God respects His precious blood. As one has said, the blood of Jesus has reached, and touched, the very memory of God, for we read in Hebrews 10:17, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” Its value God alone knows. You and I do not know the value of the blood of Christ. We do value it surely, but our valuation of it is very poor and inadequate. God knows its value perfectly; He esteems its worth fully; and He says to you and me, “Trust that blood; get under its shelter.”