Exiting Egypt Chapter 6 P7

Exiting Egypt

“God’s Great Encouragement”

By Dennis Lee: Chapter 6 P7

6. I will bring you

I will bring you into the land, which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 6:8)

This has been God’s central promise to Abraham. And the wording is significant. God said He swore. Imagine what this would have looked like and sounded like. “I God, to hereby promise on Myself give to your descendants this land, and I raise My right hand to you in pledge.” Actually, God said, “I swear by myself” (Gen. 22:16).

The writer of Hebrews said it like this, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself” (Heb. 6:13 NKJV).

7. I will give you

I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord (Ex. 6:8)

God will not only bring them to the Promise Land, He will give it to them. At this time the Canaanites inhabited the land, but they were only keeping it warm for the Israelites. You might say that God kept them there as caretakers so that the land wouldn’t be desolate and barren, but fruitful.

In much the same way, God has given to us the promise of heaven as our heritage, as our future home, and has promised it to all who believe. Jesus said,

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (Jn. 14: 1-3 NIV)

And so, Moses tells the people, and their response was close to the response of the paratrooper who had just opened up his emergency chute only to find that it didn’t deploy. Now they are saying, “Oh great, I bet the truck isn’t there as well.”

The last time Moses told them this, they were given an impossible task, which, in the words of the foremen, “put a sword in Pharaoh’s hand.”

Read Ex. 6:9-13

The people rejected God’s offer through Moses. They probably didn’t even believe that it was God who was speaking through Moses. And the reason was because of the anguish of their spirit and the cruelty of their bondage.

So often, the circumstances of our burdens cause us not to listen. Our pain drowns out God’s word.

And so Moses let God know that His plan to deliver the people isn’t going to work, first because the people aren’t listening to him, and second because he isn’t a good speaker. And so once again Moses is trying to get out of His calling, but God commands that they “Go.”

It is the same command that Jesus gives to us. He said, “Go and make disciples.” People might not listen to us, they might reject us, they might ridicule us, and so we try, like Moses, to get out of our calling, but God commands us like He did Moses to “Go.”

Just for the record, verses 14-25 are quite an odd genealogy. It records only the first three sons and tribes of Israel, not all twelve. The reason is so we know the heritage of Moses and Aaron, especially that they are from the priestly tribe of Levi.

And so, God prepares to save His people, and to do so He reveals Himself, who He is, and then He makes seven promises, and by He is saying, “Be still and know that I am God, and you will then see the salvation of the Lord.”

That is what He did for Israel, and that is exactly what He will do for