The New Jerusalem will be the mutual dwelling of God and man. The redeemed of God will be the tabernacle for the dwelling of God (21:3), and the redeeming God will be the temple for the dwelling of the redeemed (v. 22). This is for the expression of the processed and consummated Triune God in His nature and glory (vv. 18b, 21b, 10-11, 23) in the redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite man for eternity (vv. 12-21a). This is the consummation of the history of God in His union with man.

In the previous chapters we saw God’s history in the book of Genesis. Now we want to go on in the book of Exodus to see God’s working on His elect through Moses. In this chapter we want to see how God delivered Israel out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness.

Exodus shows us that God took a big step in His move by coming down to deliver Israel out of Egypt (3:8) and bring them into the wilderness (v. 18). Egypt typifies the world where people are occupied with making a living and where people can enjoy a life with pleasures. The world is a place of easy living and pleasure and also a place of sin and idolatry. Today the entire world is the real Egypt, full of sin.

The children of Israel coming under Egyptian slavery and tyranny was foretold to Abraham by God in Genesis 15. God came to comfort and encourage Abraham, promising Abraham that He would give him a son (vv. 1-6), and then He made a covenant to confirm this promise (v. 18). God’s speaking to us is in three stages. First, we have His word; His word becomes a promise; and then His promise becomes a covenant. The covenant confirms the promise. God spoke to Abraham in his deep sleep, and a great darkness fell upon Abraham (v. 12), indicating that the history of his seed would not always be bright in that they would be under a dark time of tyranny and affliction under the Egyptians for four hundred years (vv. 13-14). In telling Abraham the future history of his descendants, God was confirming to him that he would surely have a son, an heir.

Eventually, after Joseph died, the book of Exodus says that a new Pharaoh rose up in Egypt who did not know of Joseph (1:8). At that time the children of Israel began to come under the persecution, tyranny, and slavery of the Egyptians. Because of the increasing multiplication of the Israelites, Pharaoh charged the people to kill all the newborn males among the Israelites (vv. 15-16, 22). He also forced the Israelites to make bricks to build up his treasure cities (vv. 11-14). Exodus shows us the children of Israel suffering all kinds of afflictions under Egyptian slavery and tyranny.

Eventually, Moses was raised up by God for their deliverance. He became the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He lived in the palace of Pharaoh, was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was powerful in his words and works (Acts 7:21-22). Then he spent forty years in the wilderness to be tested, to be perfected, by God. When Moses was eighty, God called him and said, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Exo. 3:7-8). In order to rescue, to deliver, the Israelites out of the Egyptians’ hand, God needed to come down. God came down first to the wilderness where Moses was in order to call him.