But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”
God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgement. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’”
Exodus 6:1-8
We are shown in these verses the hidden communing between Moses and the Lord as the contest began to grow in intensity. Faced with the intransigence of Pharaoh, Moses 'took it to the Lord in prayer', and God graciously reassured him about the ultimate outcome of the matter, covering once more the same ground as before, and showing him the immutability of the promises (cf Psalm 42 and Psalm 77). The reference to Abraham in 3 seems particularly significant. It is as if the Lord were challenging Moses to remember that Abraham had 'believed God' on the bare promise that he had been given, and that he must do likewise. 'You stand in a noble succession, Moses, and you must rise to your high calling'. Thus, once again, over against the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and the worsening of the conditions of slavery, God sets the wealth of His promise in 6-8. Note the sevenfold 'I will' and the glorious 'I am the Lord' which makes them certain. It was worth Moses' while taking it to the Lord in prayer to hear this. How wonderful - and how needful - to be reminded that no circumstances, however unpropitious or forbidding, can ever make any difference to the promises of God, since He simply makes use of these circumstances in the fulfilling of them. There is a great lesson for us here in the calm reiteration of the promise with the rumbling of the storms of Egyptian wrath in the background. What are storms, if He has spoken?