At Rooted, we love recommending resources that help parents and churches disciple young people in the Word. Andrew Wilson’s book Gospel Stories won Rooted’s Best New Book for Bible Teachers award at the end of 2025, and we recommend it as an equally helpful read for parents. We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from our friends at 10Publishing. Use discount code ROOTED for 35% off the cover price when you purchase direct from 10ofThose.
My father-in-law drives like a maniac. He tears around town in his red truck, speeding, going the wrong way down one-way streets, running red lights, cutting off other drivers, and even going around roundabouts anticlockwise. Yet in twenty years of driving his red truck, he has never once been stopped or cautioned by the police. His red truck is a fire engine, with a flashing blue light on top. And the flashing blue light makes all the difference.
We are all familiar with symbols of membership that allow us certain privileges, whether or not people have any idea who we are. I get into Britain because of my passport, not my knowledge of the rules of cricket. ATMs give me cash because I can enter my PIN, not because of my ability to handle money. What matters is not my behavior on the day in question, or even my moral character as a whole; what matters is the number, the thumbprint, the document, or the flashing blue light. It makes all the difference.
Perhaps the most powerful example of this in history was the Passover. Pharaoh remains adamant: the Israelites will not go free, despite having his nation carpet-bombed with frogs, gnats, boils, locusts and the rest. Moses threatens that the firstborn of every Egyptian family will be killed unless he releases the slaves. Pharaoh says no. So Yahweh sends the destroying angel through Egypt at night, killing every firstborn son, bringing catastrophic destruction and grief upon the nation. Only the Israelites are exempt, protected from this plague by an extraordinary symbol of the grace of God:
“Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin… For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.” (Exodus 12:21-23)
The only thing separating the Israelites from death was the blood on their doorposts. Good behavior didn’t shelter them from destruction, nor ongoing obedience to God, nor an elaborate deal by which they promised to follow him forever. The blood on the doorpost made all the difference.
Just think for a moment about the scandal of this arrangement. In some cases, the Egyptians facing Yahweh’s judgment may have been better people than some of the Israelites who were saved. The wicked Israelites received the same privileges as the godly ones, simply because blood decorated their doorpost. That red smear wasn’t one of the factors God took into consideration when deciding who to rescue and who to destroy. It was the only factor. Like the flashing blue light on the fire engine, the blood on the doorpost was the symbol of membership, and it made (quite literally) all the difference.
That is grace. Grace is how God works. When we look at Jesus, our sacrificial Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7), we see the same principle in operation. We see that our rescue from the slavery of sin rests not on our performance, but on his sacrifice. We see that through faith in his blood, rather than through our efforts, we are not destroyed. We see that when the Father looks at our lives, he justifies us on the basis of Jesus’ obedience and law-keeping and zeal for God, not on ours. The only factor, the only factor, that he takes into consideration is whether or not we have cried out for the blood of the Lamb to save us.
It makes all the difference.
This selection is excerpted from Gospel Stories: How the Greatest Story is Richer, Deeper, and More Wonderful Than We Think by Andrew Wilson, which won Rooted Ministry’s Book Award for Best New Books for Bible Teaching. In fifty-seven short narratives, Gospel Stories explores the beautiful, triumphant, often heart-breaking, and always glorious stories that make up the gospel. Prepare to be stunned and in total amazement at the many-faceted gospel story, the greatest story ever told. Used with permission from 10Publishing.
Visit 10ofThose.com and log in or sign up for an account to use the code ROOTED for 35% off Gospel Stories and discounts on hundreds of other resources that point to Jesus.
