When you’re close enough to see the dog’s tongue – you’re close enough to become meat. More than once, I’ve had not-so-friendly encounters with canines, leaving me shaking from shock – not to mention bleeding. In a split nano-second, the old docile collie was transformed into the scariest beast on Planet Earth. A wet, whetted tongue flashed from a wide set of jaws, and lips curled to expose the deadliest canine teeth one could ever imagine – yes, the sweet old collie lunged at my exposed arm. The dog owner pulled the phone away from her ear long enough to speak to her beast diplomatically: “Boy, stop! Don’t do that. Lie down!” On another occasion, a silent rottweiler sunk his teeth into my hand, causing great pain and much blood and a hospital visit. My dog experiences contradict conventional wisdom: “his bark is worse than his bite.” True, a barking dog is scary and frightening, but from personal experience, a biting dog pushes the envelope even further.
The Lord told Moses: “At the stroke of midnight, death is going to strike every home in Egypt – from the palace princes to the enslaved people who work the hand mills. There will be no exceptions. Every firstborn in families and among cattle, sheep and pets will die. An unprecedented piercing cry from each Egyptian home will create a deafening crescendo as people wail their losses through the night. But the children of Israel will be sheltered, protected and preserved.”
Moses then relayed this message to the hardened and brutally cruel Pharaoh. Did the Pharaoh scoff when Moses confidently added this:
But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’ Exodus 11:7
Dogs aren’t known for being quiet after dark when there’s the slightest stir in the house or a foreign noise outside. Why are dogs mentioned at this juncture? In Egypt, where dogs were sacred in honour of their dog-god, the barking Anubis, canines were everywhere. So, one would expect considerable howling, barking, snarling and biting in the streets the night all the firstborns died.
Moses told Pharaoh: “You might think all your dogs will go into attack mode if any such thing happens at midnight. Let me tell you, we will be totally safe. Our God will protect His people, so much so that not even a dog will snarl or flash his wet tongue or bare his white fangs at us. You will know then that God distinguishes between us and you. There will be no question, whose God reigns supreme!”
Dear child of God, just like the Children of Israel were sheltered by the blood on the night of the Passover, you are sheltered by the blood. The Lord puts a ‘distinction’ between those who are IN Christ and those who are not. You are on the inside, safe, secure and eternally sheltered.
If the Lord looked after the minutest details back then, even keeping the dogs from barking and snarling against His own people, He can look after you today. Yes, the God who stops dogs from barking and lions from biting can shelter you today.
The Lord puts a difference between His children and those outside in the world.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril or sword? …Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Nothing, absolutely nothing, not one imaginable thing can “separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:33,37,39
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