Exodus 3:1-17: Moses and the Burning Bush

INTRODUCTION

I graduated from the University of Kansas. The year the university opened its doors in 1866 its first chancellor chose as the great seal of the university a picture of Moses bowed before the burning bush.

The center of the seal is a picture of Moses bowing before the burning bush. The inscription on the seal reads (as translated from the Latin): “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt,” which is from the Bible, Exodus 3:3.

According to promotional material put out by the university, the fire in the burning bush represents knowledge in many myths and stories. The bowed figure of Moses represents the humble attitude of the scholar in his unquenchable pursuit of truth and knowledge.

That seal with Moses and the burning bush is on my diplomas.

In a stained glass window of the university chapel where we were married is a picture of Moses and the burning bush.

Smith Hall, which houses K.U.’s Department of Religious Studies, has a large stained glass window depicting the burning bush and outside the building, facing the window is a huge statue of Moses kneeling before the burning bush.

I think it is interesting that my university uses that image to depict its mission. But that is not really what the story is all about.

Today I want to talk about this famous story, one of the most important in the Bible.

BACKGROUND

You remember the story about how the cruel ruler Pharaoh decreed that all the Hebrew boy babies would be thrown into the Nile for the crocodiles to eat.

When Moses’s mother saw how beautiful her baby boy followed the Pharaoh’s instructions by making a little boat of bulrushes and setting it among the reeds at the water’s edge, so it wouldn’t float away.

When Pharaoh’s daughter came to the river to bathe, she saw the little boat, saved baby Moses and raised him in the palace as her own child.

When Moses grew up he was educated. He had prospects for a good life, but he got into trouble.

Moses had learned that he wasn’t an Egyptian but a Hebrew, and the Hebrews were the slaves who built Pharaoh’s building projects.

It so happened that one day Moses was out and about and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. This offended Moses’s sense of justice. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

But now Moses’s life was in danger. So he fled far from Egypt into the land of Midian and sat down by a well.

Then the seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water from the well. Moses watched as they filled the trough for the sheep and goats. Then some rough shepherds came and drove the girls away from the water they had drawn so that their sheep could drink it.

We don’t read that Moses beat up the shepherds, but we do read that Moses watered the girls’ flock.

In these two stories we learn that Moses, although he was raised a prince, had sympathy for people who were poor and oppressed.

The father of the girls invited Moses home, put him to work and gave him one of his daughters for his wife.

And so Moses because a shepherd and passed some years keeping the flock of his father-in-law.

Moses no doubt thought that the interesting part of his life was over. He assumed that he would live and die in the wilderness of Midian, as a shepherd.

I. One day when Moses was out with his sheep something really amazing happened. We read about this in Exodus 3.

A. “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning yet it was not consumed.”

In scripture fire is a symbol of God’s presence and of his holiness. Fire symbolizes God purifying, cleansing, and consuming sin. The writer of Hebrews writes, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28).

So Moses said to himself, “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”

And God called out of the bush: “Moses, Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here am I.”

Then God said “Do not come near: put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing in holy ground.”

In those days, it was considered respectful to remove one’s sandals when entering a holy place.

Israel’s priests performed their duties barefoot.

People came into the presence of a king barefoot.

Muslims even today preserve the custom and show their respect for their god by entering their Mosques barefoot.

B. “And God said: ’I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (v6).

Moses knew that he was from the Hebrew people. But he had been raised in Pharaoh’s court.

Perhaps he didn’t know much about the faith of the Hebrew people, but he had evidently heard of his ancestors: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

C. Now that God had Moses’s attention, he said, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” (3:7-8).

And God told Moses that he would send him to Pharaoh, and he will lead his people out of Egypt.

II. But Moses has a problem. He has been away from the Egypt for years. Why would anyone believe him?

A. Why would Pharaoh listen to him? Even more of a problem: why would the Hebrew elders listen to him?

Moses has grown up in the court of Egypt. He doesn’t even know the name of Israel’s God.

The name of Israel’s God—Yahweh—appears many times in Genesis. (The name “Yahweh” doesn’t appear in our English Bibles because whenever that word appears in Hebrew the translators have substituted the word “The LORD,” written in capitals.)

But we read in Exodus 6:2 that God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by another name, which means “God Almighty.”

So God gives his name to Moses. He says, “I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD (that is, Yahweh) the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: this is my name for ever.” (The name Yahweh in Hebrew means “I Am.”)

It appears that knowing this name would authenticate Moses’s mission to the elders. Moses had been raised as an Egyptian. Perhaps he didn’t have the knowledge of the faith of Israel that the elders would have had.

In those days, names weren’t just labels. Names revealed character. And this name “I AM” revealed God as the Eternal, Unchanging One. The one who exists in himself, who is all sufficient, and the one who causes everything else to exist.

We change. We sin and we repent and sin again. We learn and grow. We change our minds. We gain wisdom and sometimes become foolish.

But God is always the same. He is always wise and gracious and righteous.

When God says, “I am who I am,” he means, “You can trust me through and through.”

From this point on in the Old Testament God is usually called Yahweh, the word translated in our English Bibles as “The LORD.”

B. So this is the story of how Moses was called by God for the greatest mission so far in history.

Moses will be the greatest leader the Hebrew people will ever have until Jesus comes.

Moses will be God’s instrument to bring about miracles of judgment on Egypt to bring about a change of heart in cruel Pharaoh.

Moses will lead his people out of slavery into the desert of Sinai, where they will become truly a nation.

Moses will receive God’s law including the Ten Commandments, the instructions for the true worship of God, and the laws for the nation of Israel.

Moses will save the nation from destruction when they sin by interceding with God for them.

He will lead them up to the border of the Promised Land—the land flowing with milk and honey that will be their homeland.

APPLICATION

So what is the meaning of the story for us?

We are not Moses.

We have not seen any great vision of God. We have not been given any great mission.

I will tell you why I think this story is so important.

The story of Israel is our story.

The story of the liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt is the background for the story of Jesus.

According to the New Testament, we believers are also “Israel.” The story of Israel has become our story.

The early Christians understood Jesus as the Deliverer from the slavery of sin. That is why he is called our Savior. That is why Jesus is called “The Lord,” it’s the name used of God in the Old Testament.

Jesus is “the Lord”; Jesus is also the New Moses. Jesus brings us the law for living in his parables and  in the Sermon on the Mount and his other teachings.

When Jesus’s enemies tried to make fun of the truth of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus used the story of Moses at the burning bush.

He told his enemies these words of God to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

By this, Jesus declares that when God binds a person to himself in the covenant relationship of faith, that bond can never be broken. Even death cannot break that bond. The one whom God has taken to himself he will never let go. Even though we die, we will rise again to live with God.

And Jesus clearly referred to this story when he told his enemies, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” His enemies, knowing that in those words, Jesus was claiming to be the LORD of the story of the calling of Moses, took up stones to kill him.

For these reasons, it is important that we know the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.

CONCLUSION

Each of us has a part to play in God’s work in the world.

A few of God’s people have great parts to play, such as Moses did.

Most of us have less important parts in God’s story.

But all of us are to be laborers in God’s vineyard of the world.

All of us have a part in bringing in the Kingdom of God.

When we pray “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are committing ourselves to participate in that great work of redemption.

We pray, we love, we serve, we give. And so we bear witness to the unbelieving world that God is our Father and Jesus is our Savior.

May God help us to be faithful—as Moses was faithful—to that which he has entrusted to us.