God’s Promise to Abraham Fulfilled

Abram, later to be renamed Abraham, left his land of birth and made his journey to Canaan because the Lord promised that He would give the territory of the Canaanites to Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 12:1–9; see 17:5). Not long after taking up residence in Canaan, Abraham learned that his children would not inherit the promised land right away. Instead, they would spend four hundred years “in a land that is not theirs” as slaves. At the close of those four centuries, the Lord promised to judge the nation that enslaved Abraham’s descendants and to take them back to Canaan with many possessions (ch. 15).

Today’s passage—as well as the books of Exodus through Joshua—tells us that the Lord kept His promise. As we read in Exodus 12:40–41, Israel spent 430 years in Egypt and then the Lord brought them out. At many times throughout their Egyptian sojourn, the Israelites probably wondered whether God was indeed going to be faithful and keep His word to Abraham. No doubt their faith waxed and waned. But those who believed in the ancient promises to their forefather Abraham did not believe in vain. The words of the Lord are pure and absolutely truthful (Ps. 12:6). He never fails to keep His commitments. God’s taking Israel out of Egypt exactly when He told Abraham that He would confirms His faithfulness, and it gives us reason even today to continue believing the Lord even when He seems slow in keeping His word to us. Indeed, He is not slow to fulfill His promise but will act at just the right time (2 Peter 3:9; see Rom. 5:6).

Israel was to observe the night of the exodus as “a night of watching kept to the Lord” (Ex. 12:42). Because God watched over them to protect them and deliver them in Egypt, the Israelites were never to forget the night on which He set them free. Indeed, God’s people must remember His great salvation. Today we keep the Passover not according to the rules of Exodus 12 but by trusting in the true Passover Lamb, who freed us from slavery to sin and communes with us in the Lord’s Supper. Matthew Henry comments, “This first passover-night was a night of the Lord much to be observed; but the last passover-night, in which Christ was betrayed (and in which the passover, with the rest of the ceremonial institutions, was superseded and abolished), was a night of the Lord much more to be observed, when a yoke heavier than that of Egypt was broken from off our necks, and a land better than that of Canaan set before us.”