Ex. 6:6-7 , “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 judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.'" Moses uses the anthropomorphisms here both of God’s outstretched arm to deliver and his uplifted hand to swear an oath to Abraham regarding the land. Thus with us God makes both oath and promise to deliver us eternally in glory, and His hand of providence will fulfill that promise (Heb. 6:17-20, Heb. 13:5).

Ex. 13:3, “Then Moses said to the people, ‘Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand. Eat nothing containing yeast. Today, in the month of Abib, you are leaving.’” God’s mighty hand delivered Israel from Egypt, and they were never to forget it. He gave them the Passover meal as a regular reminder, as He gives us the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper which point to the mighty hand that delivers us through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Deut. 5: 15, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” A further reminder was their weekly observance of the Sabbath. It was to be no mere ritual but an ever-present reminder of their deliverance by the hand of God. Thus we need to view the Lord’s Day with exactly the same awareness of a mighty deliverance, even greater than Israel’s deliverance from Egypt which was but a type and shadow of ours.

This great truth was recognized in later years when Nehemiah led the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the exile in Babylon: (Nehemiah 1:9-11) “but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your dispersed be under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." God’s mighty hand redeems and delivers!