Then, August 22, I will start preaching through the book.
"In Exodus we begin face to face with a sheer mystery. We are never told why the sovereign purposes of God required that his people should go down to Egypt or why, having pledged them his presence in that alien land (Gn. 46:4), his care of them should take the strange form of persecution (Ex. 1:8-10), cruel sorrows (1:15-16) and threatened genocide (1:22). The early narratives of Exodus make us face the fact that 'days of darkness still come o'er me; sorrow's path I often tread'. Yet the chapters are equally clear that there is a mystery of care parallel to the mystery of suffering, a secret power of preservation and increase which proves greater than the power of the enemy (Ex. 1:12). The chosen agents of infanticide proved to be moved by a spiritual fear that turns them from their grim task (1:17) and, marvel of marvels, out of that hostile, genocidal royal house, there emerges a tender-hearted princess, moved by an infant's tears (2:6). Exodus 1–2 are fully a match for the book of Esther in its understated theology of the hidden providences of the God of Israel."
--Alec Motyer
