God’s Distinction Between Egypt and Israel Defined (Exodus 12:29-42)

“The importance of the teaching of the faith within believing families is an Old Testament tradition (Deut 4:9–10; 6:4–9, etc.) that needs to be reemphasized in every generation of the Christian church. We, too, are a people of memory and hope, for it is memory that generates hope. When Israel ‘forgot’—as the prophets accused them—they went astray. When Christians ‘forget,’ the same thing happens. We simply lose the plot. We forget who we are, to whom we belong, and what story we are supposed to be in.”

—Christopher Wright, The Story of God Bible Commentary: Exodus

Who Is the Lord? (Exodus 7:14-18; 10:21-29)

“Perfect power does not absorb, exclude or overwhelm and dispossess other dependent powers and agents, but precisely the opposite: omnipotent power creates and perfects creaturely capacity and movement. … what God in his perfect wisdom, power and goodness causes is creatures who are themselves causes. The idea whose spell must be broken is that God is a supremely forceful agent in the same order of being as creatures, acting upon them and so depriving them of movement.”

—John Webster, “Love is Also a Lover of Life”

The Firstborn Is The LORD’s (Exodus 4:21-26)

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

—Romans 8:15-17

God's Pleasure in His Provision (Exodus 2:1-10)

“Though there be no light for us, but in the beams, yet we may by the beams, see the sun, which is the fountain of it. Though all our refreshment actually lies in the streams, yet by them, we are lead up onto the fountain. Jesus Christ, in respect of the love of the Father, is but the beam, the stream; where in, though actually all our light, our refreshment lies. Yet by him we are led to the fountain, the sum of eternal love itself. Would believers exercise themselves here in, they would find it a matter of no small spiritual improvement in their walking with God.”

—John Owen, Communion with God

The Need for Redemption (Exodus 1)

“The conclusion affirmed by the narrative is that wherever YHWH governs as an alternative to Pharaoh, there the restfulness of YHWH effectively counters the restless anxiety of Pharaoh. In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.”

—Walter Brueggemann