The Partial Kingdom 1 - Land Of Hope And Glory Series

We didn’t really look at Genesis 15, but let me remind you what God’s promise was to Abraham 400 years before: (Gen 15:13-16) "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ... 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

God hasn’t forgotten his promise. He’s just been waiting for the right time. As we’ll see in a moment it was necessary for God to wait until the time was right to bring his people back so they could take the land of Canaan for themselves. But now the time has come and so God calls Moses to lead his people out. But remember, it isn’t Moses who’ll rescue his people. No:

The rescue would be God’s

There was no way that Pharaoh was going to listen to Moses, even is he was raised in the king’s own household. The Israelites were far too useful an economic commodity for him to just let them go.

The only way they’d escape Egypt would be if God intervened. And so we read that God sent plagues on Egypt: plagues of increasing intensity. Plagues that were first matched by the Egyptian magicians either for real or by sleight of hand. But they soon gave up. The plagues got gradually worse and worse but still Pharaoh refused to budge. Until at last God said he’d kill the first born son of every household in the country from the king’s son down to the lowest in the land. Even the firstborn of the cattle would die. This was to be a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. It was a disaster that the Egyptians would never really get over.

But it also forms the setting for one of God’s great acts of salvation: a saving act that would be the prefiguring of God’s greatest act of salvation. God told the Israelites that on a particular night he’d go through the land and every firstborn son would die, as a sign of his judgement on the gods of Egypt. But whenever he saw a house with the blood of a lamb on the door posts he’d pass over it and no-one in that house would be harmed.

That night they were to hold a special feast of roast lamb. They were to eat it with their cloaks tucked into their belts, their sandals on their feet and their staff in their hands. They were to eat quickly so they were ready when the time came for God to bring them out of Egypt.

And so it happened. Every house in Egypt except those of the Israelites was affected. Pharaoh summoned Moses and begged him to leave. They took the bread they’d been making that hadn’t yet had yeast added to it and cooked it on the way. So they had bread that’d last them through the early days of their journey. The Egyptians urged their Israelite neighbours to hurry and leave the country. They gave them silver and gold and clothing to hurry them on their way. So God not only rescued them but allowed them to plunder the Egyptians as though they’d won a great battle.