'Chapter 1-2'

In these chapters, the prophecy comes to be and an oppressive government comes into power and oppressed the weak and the destitute. This may be one of God's bigger pet peeves. His justice is horribly offended when a strong person or group oppresses a weak person or group. So, at this point the Amorites have become so wicked that God, in His righteousness, has deemed them irredeemable. If He really is God, he knows when people are not going to come back. He does not go willy nilly destroying people, as evidenced in Jonah, which we'll get to. So, the Israelites cry out to God to save them from oppression. God has a soft spot for the children of His followers. So Israel's children ask to be delivered from oppression and they are. God raises up Moses. God's way of doing things should become apparent soon. I'll make a post soon just on the concept of vocation, as Moses is a great example. So Moses is raised up by God to lead Israel and he ends up through some exquisitely planned moves by God living as a son of the princess of Egypt. Moses saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite and he killed the man. He takes on one of God's characteristics in hating oppression, but he reacts wrongly, on his own. Let this sink in as a sign of how important faith is. Faith allows us to approach the horribleness that is sometimes manifest in life with the greatest strategist and biggest strong arm on our side. If we kill the oppressor and bury him in the sand, then we can ruin our chance of God bringing us in to fix things with all the armies of Heaven behind us. So at this murder being revealed to Pharoah, he flees to a place called Midian and gets a local woman for a wife. His father-in-law exemplifies something that we will see again and again, but I'll come back to the righteous outsider later.

'Exodus'

The Exodus is an amazing event. In that time, God made a people for himself, pretty much from scratch. God predicted the whole thing in Genesis. He said, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here..." So, just as he said, God allowed his people to be slaves and then brought them out in great power.
I am not really sure why God allowed the Children of Israel, that is Jacob, the third patriarch I mentioned before, the grandson of Abraham, I'm not sure why his children became slaves in Egypt. Egypt has had a long history and has been and was at the time Exodus took place a powerful empire. I cannot say it was the Israelites fault, but I can and should mention an important reason why they were not in the land God promised them. In the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, God makes it clear that Abraham cannot take possession of this land that God has given him yet. He says, "In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." So it seems that God is mercifully putting off His righteous judgment a little longer, but He knows that the Amorites, which is also intended to insinuate their neighbors, will only get more wicked and the day will come when the Israelites will be able to act as God's instrument of justice to destroy a wicked people.
But I get ahead of myself. So the Exodus both prefigures the future redemption of mankind from sin all together and is the next step towards God making a refuge and an instrument for His holy agenda on earth.
The Israelites were slaves in an oppressive, idolatrous regime in Egypt and they showed God's righteousness and power in Egypt and God showed His power to Israel that they may believe. So God is simultaneously making a statement to a world that has rejected and forgotten Him that He is not dead nor is he done with mankind.
The second half of the book details the adventures that the people have under Moses and the beginning of the Law that he is setting out for them.

The Law

We looked at Genesis as a study in faith and I mentioned that this is part of a process that God was using to 'set the world to rights.' The next part of the History of the Redemption is that of the Law. There are three steps to God's making us holy again. The first is embodied in the Law. The Law is the tool God used to teach his children to be obedient. This is the way we always learn and that's why God makes Scripture that way. The story of the world mirrors our lives. When children are born, they are selfish. One of the first words they learn is no and that is the essence of the disobedience that got us into trouble to begin with. So first parents just teach their children to be obedient. Obedience is the key to righteousness. The Law also begins to set them off as the people of God and to make them act differently from everyone else. So, the Law teaches us to be obedient. I'll focus in on Exodus next.

A Short Interlude on the Centrality of Faith

In recent days, it has become popular to say that Christianity is a way of life and that it is more important to be good than to believe in certain doctrines. It is very important to Christianity that we be good, but we must understand, above all, that faith is of the utmost importance. It is faith that saves us. No good works will save us and good works alone will not change the world. Our goodness is a weak, incapable goodness. Let me repeat, our being good or seeking justice will NOT change the world. We cannot do that. This does not mean that we should not try to change the lives of individuals by common and uncommon kindnesses. We should give to the poor and fight for the oppressed. All of that is good and when we believe all of those works must come or our faith is null and void. But we must believe in God, the God of historical Christianity, who sent his Son to die and be raised from the dead as the first-fruits of a New Creation. If we do not accept the gospel, then all our goodness and all our hope is worthless. Our love is human love. Our love is not Love, it is not He who is Love Incarnate. I hope this is a reasonable explanation of the problem I see.