The God Who Delivers and Redeems (Exodus 6:1-9)
An Exposition of Exodus 6:1-9 (Part 1 in a 3 Part Exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7)
My goal in life is to help people behold the glory of God in Christ. I am convinced that God’s ordained means to that end is the exposition of his Word. I pray that this three-part exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7 will both model sound exposition and help us to behold the glory and beauty of Christ. It will benefit you to have your Bible open as we work through these passages together.
The God Who Delivers and Redeems (Exodus 6:1-9)
In Mark Chapter 4, Jesus shares The Parable of the Sower. In that parable, the sower is the preacher of the word of God who sows the seed, which is the word of God. The seed that is sown, the word that is preached, falls on four different soil types. As the word is preached, it falls on the path, and birds devour it; the rocky ground and the sun scorches it; it falls among the thorns which grow up to choke it out; and on the good soil where it produces, grows, and increases because the sown word is received and believed.
The disciples ask Jesus, "What does this parable mean?" In explaining The Parable of the Sower, Jesus says concerning the seed that falls upon the rocky ground: "And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with it joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away."
In many ways, the Israelites in Exodus Chapters 3-6 could be described as the rocky ground in Jesus' parable. God has heard their cry for rescue from their slavery and oppression. God has appeared to Moses in the theophany of the burning bush near the Mountain of God. God has given Moses his word and his promise to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt, liberating them and delivering them from their oppressors. God has commissioned Moses and Aaron to go to the Hebrews and preach this word of salvation and deliverance.
We saw in Exodus 4:31 that they believed this message, received it with great joy, bowed their heads, and worshipped God. However, when Moses and Aaron go to Pharoah in Chapter 5 and proclaim to him, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness." Pharoah rejects God's superiority and sovereignty and responds to God's word by increasing the oppression and persecution of the people of God. He increases their burdens by no longer giving them straw to make bricks while demanding they produce the same amount of bricks. When they fail to produce the quota of bricks, they are mocked and beaten. In response to Pharoah’s increase in the severity of the persecution, the foremen of the Israelites went to Moses and Aaron and said in 4:21, "The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us."
Then in response to their words and their plight, Moses turns to God and asks, "O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all." (Exodus 5:22-23) Moses’ question, “why have done evil to this people?’ is accusatory. He believes in this moment of suffering and affliction that God has failed to be good and failed to keep his promises.
You see, they received the word of God with great joy, and they responded in worship; however, when tribulation and persecution increased against them, they began to question and reject the prophet of God and the word of God, and even Moses begins to question the goodness of God.
This questioning of the goodness of God is part of what Eve did in the Garden when she is talking to the serpent. As she goes above the line, adding to the word of God, she says to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" (Genesis 3:2-3) You can almost hear in her words that she is beginning to question the goodness of God. "He will not let us eat of this tree. He will not even let us touch it." She is adding to the word of God. In her mind, God is withholding this thing from her and Adam because maybe he is not as good as they thought he was.
Moses questions, "Why have you done evil to this people?" We must realize that when the goodness of God is doubted, questioned, or denied, the door for apostasy, sin, rejection, and the falling away from the faith is swung wide open. This is so because if God is not good, he is not trustworthy; if God is not trustworthy, he is not worthy of our worship, and if he is not worthy of our worship, he is not God.
Well, here, as Moses accuses God of not being good, as Israel appears to be the rocky ground on the precipice of being scorched by persecution, God, in his grace and mercy, patiently deals with them, reasserting his plan and purposes to redeem them and save them. God will not let them fall away because he has chosen them to be his.
God tells Moses in 6:1, "Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land." God condescends to Moses, saying, "Now I am about to act. Now I am about to assault the gods of Egypt and Pharoah. Now, I am about to strike them with the promised wonders and plagues. And Pharoah will respond by sending you out."
Not only do we have the promise of 6:1, but in the following paragraph, God continues to condescend to Moses and speak to Moses in the most beautiful way. In verses 2-5, God reveals himself to Moses in a way that was unknown to the people of God before. Then in verses 6-8, God makes stunning and remarkable promises to the people of God and, in doing so, defines himself to them. And finally, in verse 9, we will see that Moses faithfully preaches the word of God, but the people of God are incapable of listening to him.
I want us to follow this outline as we work through this passage. In this passage, we will see a gracious and merciful God who will not allow his elect to be the rocky ground of Jesus' parable.
The Further Revelation of God (6:2-5)
In verses 2-5, we see the further revelation of God. It truly is fascinating what happens here. In this moment of crisis, when the people of God are suffering intense persecution, when they are rejecting the prophet of God, even when Moses himself is questioning the goodness of God, God comes to Moses with a message about himself. God condescends to Moses to further reveal himself to Moses.
Now, we may be prone to think that in a moment of crisis, amid our suffering, we do not need doctrine and theology. Rather, we truly need real practical answers, not abstract theological ideas. But to think in such as way is to error. A.W. Tozer once said, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." In the midst of our suffering and affliction, if we begin to believe that somehow, someway, God is no longer good, or that he has failed, or that he is no longer sovereign, or compassionate and caring, then there is nothing more important for us in that moment, than for our faulty thinking to be corrected. There is nothing more important than for us to have our flawed theology reoriented so that we can behold the proper glory of God and rightly understand his plans and purposes even in the midst of our suffering. Nothing is more important than for us to be firmly planted in the good soil and stabilized upon solid ground.
God understands this need. God understands that men and women act as they think, and if they are thinking wrongly about God, they will act wrongly, especially in their suffering. You may have never considered it this way, but nothing is worse for you than having bad theology. This is because the consequences and implications are so severe. Flawed theology will flaw every other aspect of your life. So, here, God does not come to Moses with some practical advice. He does not come with some feel-good message. Rather, God comes to Moses in the moment of his disorientation and reorients him to right thinking about the person, nature, and charter of who Yahweh truly is.
Notice that God begins with the declaration of who he is. "I am the LORD" or "I am YHWH." This royal self-designation of who God is, reveals his identity. "I am Yahweh" brackets the entire conversation with Moses. We see it here in verse 2, then in verse 6, and finally in verse 8. In verses 6 and 8, it brackets the promises of God, and it lets us know that this promise section is truly a definition of who Yahweh is.
As God begins to speak to Moses, he says four things to him in verses 3 through 5. First, God says to Moses, "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." Here, God explicitly connects himself to the patriarchs. He is saying to Moses; I am the same God who called Abraham out the land of Ur of the Chaldeans. I am the same God who made covenant promises to Abraham to make him a great nation, to promise him a land inheritance, and to make his offspring as numerous as the stars. God is reminding Moses and the people of Israel that they are worshipping and being led by the same God that appeared to their fathers. He is reminding Moses of his providential care for this people through the generations. He is not some new deity to appear on the scene. Yahweh is the God of their fathers.
God is saying to Moses; I appeared to them in the same way that I am appearing to you. However, he says, I appeared to them as El Shaddai, translated here as God Almighty. When God reveals the names concerning himself, he does so as a means of revealing his nature and character. We have, in a sense, lost the precise meaning of El Shaddai, but based on the context of its use in Genesis, it speaks of God as being the all-sufficient God of blessing. He is sufficient for his people's needs, and for keeping his promises made to them; he is the God who is Almighty.
Notice what he says in verse 3, "But by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them." God is saying, "I appeared to them as El Shaddai, but to you, I am appearing as Yahweh. I am giving to you a further revelation of myself. I appeared to your fathers as the all-sufficient promise-making God of blessing, but to you, I am appearing as the promise-keeping, covenant-keeping God of salvation and redemption. You are going to know me in a way that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know me; they knew me as the God who made promises, but you are going to know me as the God of Salvation who keeps promises. That is what is happening here; God is giving his people in Egypt a further revelation about himself.
This does beg the question, did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not know the name, Yahweh? It is a legitimate question because the patriarchs clearly use the name in Genesis. Operating from the presupposition that we reject liberal ideas that deny Mosaic authorship, such as the Documentary Hypothesis, two viable options have been put forth by scholars.
First, it could be that Moses, writing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy during the wilderness wandering for the generations that came out of Egypt in the Exodus and were about to take the Promised Land, anachronistically wrote the name Yahweh back into the Genesis account since this is the name that they have come to know God by.
A second view that is more probable is that they knew the sound and the letters, but they did not know the meaning. That is to say, they did not know Yahweh to mean that God is the God of salvation and redemption. John Currid writes, "The patriarchs did not fully experience the essential nature and power of the name Yahweh. As we have seen, that name reflected a God who fulfills his promises. The promise of a coming exodus and redemption from slavery was not fulfilled during the time of the patriarchs but belonged to the distant future. The fact that the name Yahweh was made known to the Hebrews in the time of Moses meant that fulfillment was now imminent."[1] Also consider J. Alec Motyer, who comments, 'It was the character expressed by the name that was withheld from the patriarchs and not the name itself."[2]
Either way, The point for Moses and the people of God is that God is further revealing himself as the promise-keeping, covenant-keeping God of salvation and redemption. This revelation goes beyond what the Patriarchs were able to know about God.
Secondly, God says to Moses, "I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners." Here, God is reminding Moses that he has established his covenant with these people and that this covenant includes the promise of the land of Canaan. God is letting Moses know that he is about to bring that plan to fruition by leading them out of Egypt, bringing them into the land of promise, and giving it to them as their possession. It is a reminder that God has not forgotten his people and that he intends to keep his promise to their fathers, and that he is indeed good.
Thirdly, God tells Moses, "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves." Here, God is reminding them that he is not only the God of transcendence but also the God of immanence. He is the God who is above all things and over all things, and he is also the God who hears our prayers, who hears our groanings, who listens to us and draws near to us.
This serves as a reminder that our God is a compassionate God who loves his people, and he bends the knee and offers his ear to listen to our prayers and deepest groanings. It reminds us today that we always have an audience with the Sovereign Creator of heaven and earth. Know, brothers and sisters, that he is listening to us; even right now, he is listening to the deepest groanings of our hearts. So come before him with prayers, draw near to him with confidence that he is listening.
Fourthly, He tells Moses, "I have remembered my covenant." This does not mean that God has forgotten his covenant promises and is reminded of them because of the groanings of Israel. God is not to be pictured in the heavens thinking, "Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, I made a covenant with these people; now I remember." Rather as John Currid writes, "The final phrase, 'I have remembered my covenant,' means that God is ready to put the covenant and its promises into effect. In other words, he is prepared to act, and to do so soon."[3] If you recall, God heard their groanings in Exodus 2:4, which led to the theophany with Moses. Now he hears their groaning, which leads to his action of executing the covenant promises and the plagues against Egypt.
During Moses' trials and tribulations, God condescends to him and reveals himself to Moses. It is a reminder that the most important thing that we need is not simply practical advice but that what we need more than anything else is a right and proper view of who our God is. A proper view of God will carry us through the darkest moments and the most ferocious storms. It is fascinating that what God reveals to Moses is truly the ultimate revelation of who God is. He is the God of the Exodus. He is the God of salvation. He is the God of redemption. There is in some way no further revelation to be made known about God. This is who he is. This is his character and nature. Therefore, trust in him, believe in his promises, and behold his glory.
The Remarkable Promises of God (6:6-8)
In verses 6 through 8, Moses records for us the remarkable promises of God. After God reveals himself to Moses, he moves on to issue a seven-fold promise to the people of God. He gives Moses seven "I will" statements. I will bring you out; I will deliver; I will redeem; I will take; I will be; I will bring you into; I will give. Here, God is making his promise to be the God of the Exodus, the God of salvation and redemption.
Notice that the declaration of this promise is bookended with the royal-self designation of God, "I Am Yahweh." What does this name mean? It means these seven things. This is who God is. Here in this promise section, God defines himself and defines the name Yahweh. Moreover, we must realize that what God does here for Israel in Egypt is ultimately what he will accomplish for us in Christ. The Exodus event is a foreshadowing, a paradigm, a template of the ultimate salvation that God accomplishes in and through the person and work of Christ. What God promises to do for the people of Israel in these verses is what he more fully and completely accomplishes for you and me through Jesus Christ.
Let us now consider these seven promises. I want to consider them under four headings, seeing what they reveal about our God.
First, we see God as the God of liberation, deliverance, and freedom. He says to the Israelites, "I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them." Here God is promising to be the God who draws near to his people to rescue and deliver them. For the Israelites here in Exodus, it speaks of their liberation from the oppression of the Egyptians, their deliverance from this foreign land, and their freedom from their slavery. But for us, we know the rest of the story. We know that the Exodus serves as a paradigm for the ultimate salvation accomplished in Christ Jesus. In the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has freed us from our slavery and bondage to sin and Satan. Through Christ, God has delivered us out of darkness and transferred us into his marvelous light. In Jesus, God has liberated us and will ultimately bring us out of the burdens of this life. Through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, God is leading us to the Celestial City, where there will be no pains, sufferings, burdens, afflictions, and tears and where we will ultimately enter into that eternal rest.
Secondly, God is the God of redemption. God says, "I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment." Here, God instructs us that he saves us and liberates us by the act of redeeming us. This word redemption speaks of two truths. First, God is telling Moses in the most remarkable way that he will be the Kinsmen Redeemer to his people. Just as Boaz will later draw near to Ruth and make her become family to him, God is promising to draw near to his people and make them family to him.
Redemption secondly speaks of paying the purchase price of our liberation. This is precisely what God has done for us in Christ. He has drawn near to us in the incarnated Son of God. In Christ, God drew near to us and paid the price for our redemption. Upon the cross, Christ Jesus bore the wrath of God that was due to us for our sins, he died the death that we deserve, and he paid the redemption price for our souls with his blood. He purchased us; he redeemed us from the abiding wrath of God. The author of Hebrews tells us of Jesus' purchasing sacrifice in 9:12, "he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption." Brothers and sisters, this is the Good News: the God of the Exodus, is your God, and through the sacrifice of his only begotten Son, he has purchased and secured for you an eternal redemption. As the author of Hebrews says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Repent and come to him, for he is the God of redemption.
Thirdly, God is the God of covenant faithfulness. God now says, "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God." This is the language of covenant, and it speaks of God's eternal faithfulness to those he sovereignly brings into covenant with himself.
God takes us to be his own possession; he makes us to be his own inheritance. O. Palmer Robertson, in "The Christ of the Covenants," writes, "Throughout the biblical record of God's administration of the covenant, a single phrase recurs as the summation of the covenant relationship: 'I shall be your God, and you shall be my people.' The constant repetition of this phrase or its equivalent indicates the unity of God's covenant. This phrase may be designed as the 'Immanuel principle' of the covenant. The heart of the covenant is the declaration that 'God is with us.'"[4]
The theme of God making his chosen people to be his own and his dwelling among them is one of the unifying themes of the bible. We can trace God's desire to dwell among his people throughout the Scriptures. In the Garden, God dwelt with Adam and Eve. In Exodus, God takes the Israelites to be his; he is their God, and he dwells among them. He meets with them at Sinai, and his glory will eventually dwell in the Tabernacle and will lead them in the wilderness and into the promised land. God will later dwell with his people in the Temple upon Mount Zion. In the time of the Gospels, God dwelt with his people in the person of Christ, as John tells us, "And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us." In the New Covenant, God dwells with us in the Church through the abiding presence of his Holy Spirit. And now God is leading us into the consummation of the Promised Land, our heavenly dwelling where we will behold his face and dwell with him for eternity. This is the glory of 1 John 3:1, "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." See and behold the love of God for us, that he would make us to be his own and that he would desire to dwell among us.
Fourthly, God is the God of eternal blessings. In the last two, "I will" statements to Moses, God says, "I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession." For the Israelites, this means they will receive the inheritance of the land that God had promised to their fathers. This will be all new to them because they have never owned anything.[5] Recall what God said of them in verse 4; they were sojourners. What they did own was a promise; Abraham and the patriarchs owned a promise that one day they would take ownership of the land that they were merely sojourners in.
So, when Sarah, Abraham’s wife, died in Genesis 23, in Hebron in the land of Cannon, Abraham went to the Hittites and purchased a cave to bury his wife in the land of promise. This whole chapter of Genesis is devoted to Abraham's purchase of this cave in Canaan to bury his wife. And the question is, why? Why does he buy this cave, and why does Moses focus so much attention on it? The answer is because Abraham had a promise—a promise that this land would one day be the possession of his people. His purchasing of the cave was a purchase of the first portion of the promised land. It was a foreshadowing of what was to come. It signified their faith in the promise. It was Abraham's way of personally taking hold of the promise.
Here, God is about to fulfill the promise to them; he is about to bring them to the land and give it to them as a possession, their inheritance. This promised land is merely a foreshadowing of what we have in Christ. The earthly Canaan is a picture of the enteral blessing that awaits us in Christ Jesus. If you are in Christ Jesus, there awaits an eternal inheritance far greater than mere land. There awaits the heavenly city where you will behold the unfiltered glory of God for all eternity, where you will enjoy the promise of the beatific vision.
Peter writes of this inheritance, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you." (1 Peter 1:3-4) You have this promise of this inheritance; grab hold of it just as Abraham grabbed hold of the promise made to him. It is yours, and it is sure.
So then, let me encourage you to think and meditate on these seven promises. This is who our God is. He is the God of deliverance, redemption, covenant faithfulness, and eternal blessing. Behold the glory of God in Christ as you reflect on how every one of these promises and the entire Exodus event merely foreshadows all that God ultimately accomplished for you in Christ.
Philip Ryken beautifully writes, "All that is left for us is to know Jesus as our Savior and our Lord. Salvation is not about us doing something for God; it is about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. All that is required is to trust in Jesus, believing that he has turned the "I wills" of salvation into the "I have done its" of the gospel."[6]
Israel’s Inability to Listen (6:9)
Finally, in verse 9, Moses preaches this message of Yahweh, and the people of God are incapable of listening to him. God says "I will" seven times, and they respond with one resounding "I won't."
It is fascinating that Moses is no longer despondent. God met him in his crisis and revealed himself to Moses, and Moses had his thinking corrected by God. He returns to Israel with this message of God's name, nature, character, and promises, and they refuse to listen to him because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. The Hebrew literally reads because of their ‘shortness of breath and harsh slavery.’ In this verse, I believe we are meant to hear the grace of understanding from our God. They are broken. They are so exhausted and demoralized that they cannot even catch their breath. It is hard to listen when you cannot even breathe. It is hard to listen when your suffering feels like it will consume you at any moment. It is a difficult yet familiar place to be when you are too hurt to hear and too burdened to listen. But let us be reminded that it is precisely in moments like this that we need this picture of God the most.
Here is what I want you to see as we close. The people of God are so beaten down and broken that they are rendered incapable of listening to Moses' preaching, and yet God is about to act in a mighty way. What we are being reminded of here is that in every aspect of salvation, it is God who is the one who acts. They cannot even bring themselves to listen, yet God will redeem them and make them his own. Maybe you are broken today, utterly unable to catch your breath. Let me encourage you to behold the glory of God in salvation, to see his "I will's" as fulfilled in Christ, and let me encourage you to turn to him, to grab on to his promises with whatever strength that may remain within you, and find rest for your weary soul in his sovereign grace.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Chase
[1] Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 137.
[2] Motyer, J. Alec, The Revelation of the Divine Name, (Leicester: Theological Students Fellowship, 1959), 15-16
[3] Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 139.
[4] Robertson, O. Palmer, The Christ of the Covenants, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 45-46.
[5] Stuart, Douglas, The New American Commentary: Exodus (Nashville: B & H Publishers, 2006), 172.
[6] Ryken, Philip Graham, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 175.