Exodus 3:13

Exo. 3:13. "And they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?" They would be the more apt to inquire this, because they had now been so long in Egypt, where they had served other gods, that they had in a great measure forgotten the God of their fathers. Had it not been for God's mercy to them in thus renewedly making Himself known to them, the case would soon have been with them as it was with other nations, who soon after the Flood forgot the true God and degenerated to the worship of idols (see Ezekiel 20:5). God chose them, they did not choose Him. He remembered them, and His covenant with their fathers when they had forgot Him. Israel was a people that God formed for Himself; He took them when they were (the body of them) idolaters and ignorant of Him, and made them His people. He redeemed them from the gods of Egypt, from their idolatry as well as from their taskmasters; and that was the most glorious redemption. Here is a notable instance of the Church's being hidden and obscured, as it was under antichrist before the Reformation. There were, doubtless, left amongst them some true worshippers of God thinly sown among them, as it was under the tyranny of that city which is spiritually called Sodom in Egypt. The Church was now in the wilderness as it was then (see Ezekiel 20:7-10; 2 Samuel 7:23; Leviticus 17:7; Joshua 24:14; Ezekiel 23:3-8). We have another remarkable instance of the like nature in the time of the Jews' captivity in Babylon, another great type of the Anti-Christian Church (see Jeremiah 16:13).