Now let's go back to Exodus 6. I want you to see the confidence that rings from God, that He is able to complete what He starts.
Who can stand before Him? Does He have the ability? Does He have the power? Does He have the wisdom to complete what He sets out to do? He says, I appear, I established, I heard, I remembered. I will bring you out. I will rid you of their bondage. I will redeem you. I will take you for a people. You shall know that I am God, and I will bring you into the land. I will give it to you. Are you beginning to get some kind of an idea why they wrote of salvation in the past tense? They had faith in it, that what God says He will do, He will do. It was as good as done, if they would just live by faith, and yield.
Did you notice God's agency? I tried to emphasize it. Hearing the cries of the patriarchs' descendants, God Himself takes the initiative to rescue them, to free them and redeem them. He chooses to take them as His people and He does not just leave them defend for themselves once they are free. He then visibly leads them as we know by the pillar of cloud and fire to the Promised Land and just gives it to them as their inheritance. He does not mention it here, but He also gave them water, He fed them, He protected them from the sun, He made their shoes and their clothes last, and He promised to fight all their battles. As we are fond of saying, all the Israelites had to do was walk.
What God is doing here is establishing Himself as Israel's Savior, first of all to Moses, by proposing all that He would do for them in order to relieve them of the burden of their slavery. He did all that He said, and He thus became Israel's Savior by breaking Egypt's power to hold them in thrall.
We are all familiar with these verses, but I just wanted us to note the clear word that it is God who is doing all the work, and at the same time teaching His anointed to take on the mantle of responsibility that will lead to His honor and glory as He is expanding His Family.
What He is announcing here is that the relationship is going to change. Yahweh is the name that He uses to indicate "a relationship established."
