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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 3:1-8
Well, this morning we begin chapter 3 in the book of Exodus, and as I hinted at last week, chapter 3 is such a significant text, such a significant part, not only of the story of Exodus, but really the unfolding storyline of Scripture itself.
We have an opportunity for several weeks to spend some time in chapter 3, and I hope at least if not this morning, by the end of our time in this chapter, you'll see the significance of it, feel the weight of what God is doing.
A wonderful book that I read a few months ago by a man named W. Ross Blackburn on the book of Exodus in terms of biblical theology, and he subtitled the book, The Missionary Heart of God, and his focus is on the way that the story of Exodus unfolds with the desire of God to reveal himself to his people as sort of the core of the book, the self-revelation.
Of God.
And if we agree with that assessment, then we'll understand that chapter 3 is perhaps one of the most significant chapters in the entire book, perhaps only rivaled by chapter 19. So this morning we begin Exodus 3.
We're preparing, of course, for greater revelation to come. We're only going a few verses this morning. The divine name will be disclosed in verse 14, and that will be perhaps the great mountaintop of this chapter.
So we have much more to say about Moses, much more to say about the burning bush as we move toward chapter 3, verse 14. Picking up from the last several weeks, we're reminded the Lord had told Abraham in Genesis 15 that his descendants would be captive in a land that did not belong to them, to a people that were not their own, and they would be afflicted, but that God would bring them out.
And we saw last week the major movement of God preparing to bring forth this very promise he made to Abraham as the people began to groan for deliverance at the end of Exodus chapter 2. And that groaning was heard by God, not because he hadn't heard it before, but because he heard it in such a way that now was the time he was going to act.
Now he would take measures to bring about the promised redemption. Now he would take his people out of that land unto a goodly land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, as we'll see even in this chapter.
That takes us directly to the events of chapter 3. We're wanting to pay close attention to how God reveals himself, because that's the whole point of chapter 3, God's self-revelation. And as I was preparing this message, I thought, even a few days ago, maybe I'll go all the way up to verse 14, but we'll spend a few weeks on verse 14, and I thought, no, no, I can only go to verse 10, and then I realized late last night I can really only go to verse 8, and now I'm realizing I don't even think we'll get past verse 4, there's just so much to say in this chapter, so buckle up.
We're going to be looking this morning only on this first picture of the God who calls, the God who calls. Next week, we'll complete verses 1 through 8, and we'll consider the God who knows and the God who delivers.
So self-revelation of God is the key. We're beginning first this morning with the God who calls. Next week, we'll add to that the God who knows and the God who delivers, and then we'll carry on with verses 9 through 14.
So this morning, we're looking primarily at the God who calls, and we're going to let the application sort of flow through the verses as we go. So beginning in verse 1, Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Now, if we follow Acts chapter 7 in the summary that Stephen gives, Moses is now 80 years.
Old.
He's an octogenarian, to use the technical term. I think we might have one or two octogenarians in our church body. Moses is now 80 years old. Half of his life has been spent in this desert of Midian shepherding the sheep that don't even belong to him.
They belong to Jethro, his father-in-law, who was introduced to us as Reuel in chapter 2. So Moses is 80. For 40 years, he's been in the land of Midian. For half of his life, he's been out of Egypt, dwelling in the desolate places, leading his sheep into the bare patches of pasture as he can find it in the land of Midian.
Half of his life, 40 years, as an 80-year-old man. Maybe this is sort of midlife crisis, a lot of weird packages showing up from eBay and Amazon at the tent door.
Now, what did you buy?
Why, you know, we can't afford a Corvette. Oh, I've got to relive my youth. My life is over. All these years, all these decades have been wasted. He has very little to show for 40 years in the land of Midian.
He doesn't even have his own cattle. The need for grazing land draws him far and wide. He leads the flock to the back of the desert. This would be, the Midianites would be facing toward the east, and so he's going west.
So in the Hebrew, it's the back of the face of the east, so that's west. And he's leading the flock to the back of the desert. He's leading them to forage through the desert. This is foreshadowing the fact that Moses will one day lead a different flock through the wilderness, seeking the pasture that God will provide.
And we read, Moses came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Now this is known to us also as Mount Sinai, and it's interesting to see how the language of Horeb or Sinai is displayed throughout Scripture. In Deuteronomy, almost predominantly, this mount is called Mount Horeb.
But here in Exodus itself, we'll see Sinai comes into the fore as the prominent usage. So critical scholars jump all over this to say, these are entirely two different mountains, and in fact, they're entirely two different traditions that the master narrator, who's anonymous to us, has woven together, retaining the traditions and using the language of Horeb or Sinai, respective to each tradition.
Now we reject that idea. There's some reason to think that perhaps Horeb could be referring to the larger range, and Sinai's a particular peak, or it could be the facing sides of the same mount, whether the eastern side or the western side, Calvin takes that position, or they simply could be synonymous.
They could be used interchangeably. But the main point here is Horeb is Sinai, Sinai is Horeb, altogether it is the mountain.
Now this is a proleptic description, meaning at this point, when Moses is nearing this place, it's not known as the mountain of God. Moses himself doesn't say, oh, how did we end up here at the mountain of God?
It doesn't become the mountain of God until we keep reading the next several verses. So we have a description for the reader who's already familiar with the story, familiar with the mountain of God, and it's here proleptic.
Horeb will become the place where God made himself manifest to Moses. Importantly, Moses' own life has been a foreshadowing of Israel's coming life. Moses and his exodus from Egypt is a foreshadowing of Israel's exodus from Egypt.
Moses encountering God's revelation on the mount is a foreshadowing of Israel encountering God on the mount. The revelation of God's character, first and foremost in his divine name to Moses, and then the revelation of God's character through God's law as it's given to Israel.
So we're going to see this foreshadowing. It takes place in many ways throughout the unfolding story. Now, as we've said, Moses is 80 years old. He's been shepherding in the desert for 40 years, dwelling in a tent with Zipporah, his wife, Gershom, and Eleazar, his sons.
According to Deuteronomy 34, he has another 40 years to go. So two-thirds of his life are now past. Deuteronomy 34, verse 7 says Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eyes were not dim, his natural strength was not diminished.
So even at 120, he was still kicking. It reminds me when I was younger, I don't know why for a time this occupied my mind, but if it was later in the night and maybe I was working on homework or something or I was up, I would just let infomercials play on the TV screen.
And one of the ones that always came, there's always a Showtime rotisserie, I loved that one, that was a classic, and then Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer, and out came this man. I think he was born in 1914, and Jack LaLanne came out, hobbled out, and he was trying to push his Power Juicer and trying to show this is what has given him vitality and strength.
And you think, this poor guy, why are they making him do this? This is not the way to sell Power Juicers, poor Jack, it's time to retire. But Moses at 120 still had strength. His eyes had not grown dim, but still two-thirds of his life had passed.
And I want to highlight that because it strikes me that God brings Moses into his greatest activity when two-thirds of his life were already over. God does not call Moses at the ripe age of 22 when he's at the height of his strength.
When you go to the physician's office and they say, you're in what we call the sort of golden period of your life, you pretty much just come in and, you know, I look at your tongue and hit your knee and then you're good to go, we really don't have to be concerned at all until you hit your mid -30s, you know, you're golden.
And Moses has not been golden for decades. And yet God has not called him when he was golden, when he had natural strength, when he was at the height of his power and prestige. Notice that God let four decades go by where Moses was on the bench, as it were, completely inactive in terms of God's kingdom work.
And it was only when Moses was nearing the end of his life, the first and the second-thirds of his life had passed, that now God begins to call Moses to this great task. So He doesn't call him in youthful strength.
He doesn't call him when he's full of idealistic zeal. He calls Moses to the greatest act, the greatest energy, the most impossible mission when he had already undergone relative weakness and obscurity.
And I think there's a lesson for us. We're prone to think, well, my time has passed. Well, when I was a younger man, well, that ship has sailed. It's all downhill from here. Well, you haven't been reading Exodus 3 very carefully.
God's just gearing up for the work that He's called you to do. Now all the blind ambitions and naivety of youth are past. Now you know something of your own weakness and insufficiency. Now in other words, God can actually use you.
Now He's actually domesticated you through your own trials and struggles, through His own mercy and patience. Now you can be far more useful in His employ than you would have been decades earlier. Bruce Winter, one of my favorite writers, he's a historian of antiquity, and he commonly in Australia, he'll go to Bible colleges and he'll simply say, this is my advice for biblical ministry, Jeremiah 45 .5, seekest thou great things, seekest them not.
Seekest thou great things for thyself, seekest them not. Moses for 40 years has not been seeking great things for himself. He probably thought, this is it. I'm going to keep shepherding Jethro's sheep.
Someday Jethro will pass and they'll become my sheep and this is how I'll end my days. Gershom and Eleazar will be all grown up and their sons and daughters and their sons and daughters will help take care of me and my bride, Zipporah, and this is all we've got going for us.
Notice that God's call comes in an entirely unexpected way. Moses and Zipporah had long finished homeschooling. Sunlight was all packaged up. My father's world had been stuffed away in a closet a long time ago.
That was a distant memory now. All the toys from the great grandkids are around, you know, their fridge has all the birthday cards and postcards and they think we're just in the sunset of our lives. The last thing they probably were expecting is that God was going to call them to return to Egypt and bring out a nation into a land that he would show them.
This was just, for all intents and purposes, another day in the life of Moses, a day he had experienced a thousand times before, several thousand times before. It was a daily grind, as mundane as mundane could be.
And then, in that mundanity, God intervened. His call came in an entirely unexpected way. And the Psaltic give us, as believers, some hope, some hunger that God is going to surprise us with his encounter, that God is going to confront us on a day that we least expect him to do so, that we'll all of a sudden be overcome by the reality of God's presence and power before us, calling us, showing us, moving us towards something that we had not seen nor saw before.
Notice that Moses was not fasting, Moses was not praying, he wasn't saying, I just need to withdraw myself and really seek the face of God. All of those things are wonderful to do, it's just that Moses was not doing those things.
He was just trying to lead the cattle to pasture. He was not expecting God to call him at all, he was simply shepherding sheep. As Robert Rayburn points out, it was a surprise, as God often deals with men.
It's these encounters that are narrated for us in Scripture. Isaiah doesn't walk into the temple expecting something different on that particular day in Isaiah chapter 6. It was like the thousand of other times he had gone into the temple to worship the Lord and offer prayers to him.
But what happens on that particular day? It's completely set apart because the presence of God all of a sudden envelops the temple. In this vision, Isaiah sees the beauty and the glory and the holiness of God, and he melts away.
Paul, walking simply on to his next assignment, his next mission on the road to Damascus, he was not expecting all of a sudden for this bright appearing to cast him off his cattle, to fall and be struck blind, and then to hear the voice, Saul, Saul, why persecutest me?
Who are you, Lord?
He wasn't expecting that. He had been traveling that road long before. It was the last thing he was expecting. Remember, we learned in Genesis 46 that the Egyptians despised shepherds. So Moses had been at the very height of power, now he had gone to the absolute depth for.
40 years.
What was maybe initially repugnant to him, he had just embraced. I'm just a shepherd and this is all I am. I had my shot, I once had it all, and now here I am, reduced to nothing. I worked with a man, I tried to make contact with him over the years, as we used to be very close, and Elisha and I would have him over quite often, and I think after some medical emergency in his life, I really pressed him pretty hard on the gospel and ever since then it's been, I've been ghosted as far as calls and texts and emails.
But he had a similar story where he grew up as the kid with the silver spoon. His father started a very successful business, and so he grew up on the lap of luxury, compound right next to the Kennedy's, that's where he grew up, down in the Cape, multimillionaire, and then in the providence of the Lord's working in his life, all of that was taken away.
All of it was taken away. He didn't even have his own home. He lived in his office when I worked alongside him. He had been reduced to nothing. What a picture of Moses. He must have felt like a complete failure.
This is all that I've got going for me now. This is all that I have now. But what Exodus 3 points out to us is, all of that time was not wasted, it was God's.
Time.
All of these years, all of these decades were not wastes or failures, they were years and decades of preparation for what God was going to do. The Lord never wastes his employments, never wastes his terms of providence in the lives.
Of his people.
And I don't know if I'm speaking to someone who feels like the ship has passed, I'm slowing down, this is all that's left, it's only diminishing returns from here on out, and you need to look very carefully at the life of Moses.
The Lord called fishermen and he made them fishers of men. He used all of their experience as fishermen to prepare them and train them and give them insights into what it would look like for them to be fishers of men.
And so it is with Moses the shepherd. Forty years of learning how to shepherd sheep and lead them through this difficult terrain, learning how to deal with them so that they're preserved and that wild beast or infighting or rot does not take any of them.
And all of that is going to be used by God for Moses to shepherd an entire nation in the wilderness for 40 years. So first and foremost, this is the God who calls and he calls in an unexpected way, unexpected on the day it happens, unexpected because of the season of life you're in.
Surely there was a time when God could have used me, but that time is long gone. There was a time in Egypt when I was seeking to bring the deliverance, but my brethren rejected me. Surely now, 40 years later, there's no hope that God will use me when for 40 years God has been preparing to use you.
So God's call comes unexpectedly. And as I say, we're meant to hope and hunger that God will give his unexpected presence in our lives in this very way. It strikes me that we all are very similar to Isaiah, that we show up to the temple as it were here this morning, and the last thing we expect to meet is the presence of God.
We come, we prepare ourselves to worship God, but we're not prepared to actually be confronted with God. It would surprise us just as much as it surprised him to actually meet the Lord's presence here this morning that we've come to seek the Lord's presence in worship.
God's call comes unexpectedly. Well, moving forward in verse 2, we'll see more of the God who calls. The God who calls is shown to us in the angel of the Lord. Verse 2, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a.
Bush.
Now, before we get to the burning bush, let's consider the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord, if you have a good translation, that should be in capital A,.
Angel.
If you don't have a capital A, probably not the best translation, that's okay. Keep it anyway, but we've come across this phrase, we've come across this figure in the book of Genesis. Of course, angels and messenger is the alternate translation.
Angel is messenger, there's no separate word for the two, and so you have to distinguish is this a human messenger, is this a divine messenger, is it more than a divine messenger, is it the angel of the Lord, the messenger of the covenant?
And here I think we're on good footing to view the angel of the Lord, indeed as we saw the angel of the Lord earlier in Genesis, Genesis 16 as an example. The angel of the Lord here is used interchangeably with the Lord himself.
So we're introduced to the angel of the Lord, a sort of way of understanding the presence of the Lord, and yet in the conversing that Moses has, he's simply speaking with the Lord himself. We saw something similar in Genesis, and we were meant to carry that over into the book of Exodus.
So the angel of the Lord in verse two is simply the Lord, or God, of verse four. There's no introduction of a different character, it's not the angel of the Lord leaves and somehow God is speaking from heaven.
The angel of the Lord is the Lord. And notice that in all of the deference Moses shows to the angel of the Lord, to this theophanic presence of God, he's not rebuked. He doesn't bow down his face, he's not afraid to look, and all of a sudden this rebuke comes as John experienced in Revelation 22.
I, John, saw and heard these things, and when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship the feet of the angel who showed me. And he said to me, New King James, see that you do not do that. Such a weak translation, literal, but so weak.
I don't think it was that detached. Please see that you do not do that, you know, I am a servant like you. It was like, what are you doing, get up, you're going to kill us both. Don't worship me, I'm just an angel.
But when Moses falls down before an angel, when it's the angel of the Lord, there's no rebuke, you have chosen rightly. You should be afraid, you should hide your face, and you should melt into the ground.
This is the angel of the Lord. In passages like Exodus 3, from the inception of the church, Christianity has interpreted the angel of the Lord as a pre-incarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity.
In other words, this is the eternal son in a pre-incarnate appearance. And that's been held, as long as there's been a church, that's been the view of the church by and large. So the angel of the Lord is the Lord Jesus prior to His incarnation.
We want to keep that in view as we move on to the bush. So beginning in verse 2 again, moving on to verse 3, Moses looked, and behold, the narrative is meant to kind of draw us into the encounter, draw us into the moment, and look!
The bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight, why? The bush does not burn. So the narrative is slowing down, we're meant to kind of discover as Moses is discovering, we're brought into his own thought life, what's going on here, I'm going to go look.
The narrative is calling our attention, look, behold this, like he's beholding this, and let it turn over in your mind, what is going on here? He sees a bramble on fire, a brush fire developing. Forty years in the desert, you see a lot of brush fires, this isn't anything to notice, but there's something unique about this particular bush, and something unique about this particular fire, it's not what is happening so much as what is not happening.
The bush is aflame, and yet it is not being consumed by the flame. He says, I will turn now aside and see this great sight, the word great meaning extraordinary, as we spoke about at SLBC last week, what we mean by miraculous, something that goes outside of the natural way that God has ordained second causes to work, in a necessary way.
Fire consumes the dry bramble, and oxygen continues that flame to burn until that fuel source is disintegrated, and no longer able to sustain the flame. So God has in a miraculous way suspended that, and Moses immediately recognizes something is strange here, and he wants to go investigate.
When I was in college, a rather chapter in my life I'd rather not get into, but there was this wonderful class I took when I was really interested in cinematography, and I remember one class in particular, I was introduced to a filmmaker I hadn't known before, I won't mention his name because he's not worth looking into, but we spent part of the day, the anatomy of a scene, we looked at a 30 second scene, and we discussed every angle of how it was framed, and it stood with me.
The scene began with a protagonist in a diner, and it was meant to be very dreamlike, and so sometimes there'd be people in the back of the diner, but you'd never hear any noise other than the conversation between the protagonist and the person he was across from.
And then at other cuts, as it was going back and forth, there'd be no one, kind of like how our dreams function, things come and go, and it was all handheld shots, braced over the corner, and the protagonist was saying, there's something behind that wall, and I want you to come with me, because I've seen it, and I never want to see it again.
And as the scene unfolded, and we're kind of led with the figure walking slowly toward this wall, and then we're brought to the view as if we were the main protagonist walking toward the wall, and all of the silence of the traffic and the birds all seems to be somewhat normal, and just when you're least expecting it past the wall, there's this apparition that comes out and immediately retreats, and there's this sort of shriek, and then a buzzing, almost siren sound, and the man, his eyes basically roll back, and he falls down prostrate, and we're not sure if the other man saw what this man had seen, and I can't help but think of Exodus 3, something like that.
What was that approach like to this bush? Something eerie, something dangerous, something supernatural. What is Moses going to encounter? He's making his way toward this great sight, this miraculous scene, and before he can even get close to it, to wrap his mind around what's taking place, the Lord sees him coming, and the Lord, this is sort of anthropomorphic language, God being presented as a man, the Lord is now responding to Moses, even as Moses had responded to this sight.
When the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, here I am, and God said, do not draw near to this place, take your sandals off of your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
Moses is not allowed to get too close to investigate, he's cut off, we're expecting him to get right up close, he's cut off by the voice of God's call, Moses, Moses, a doubled call, something we've already seen in the book of Genesis, when God called Abraham in Genesis 22, Abraham, Abraham, or in Genesis 46, Jacob, Jacob, so we're meant to slow down, God is singling his attention upon this figure.
And notice that the first thing that God says is do not draw near, God gives a spectacle of the bush that is burning and yet not consumed so that Moses will draw near, and as soon as Moses begins to draw near, God says, don't draw near, just as the Lord's call is drawing him closer and closer, God's command is stay back, he's keeping Moses far, in other words, the Lord is exposing first and foremost his desire to draw Moses to himself, that Moses would come near to him, near to his presence, heed his voice, see his glory, but at the same time, because he is so holy, Moses cannot come near.
He draws him near, but then as soon as he's near, he says, stay back, and this we can see reverberated in Israel's temple, tabernacle, as we'll see even in the book of Exodus. Think of if you were an Israelite throughout these intervening centuries, one of the things you would do three times a year, you would prepare to travel to Jerusalem, to go to the house of God to celebrate with these wonderful festivals, and you would have been packing up your train, loading up your Camry, loading up the U-Haul trailer, all the Cheez-It bags in tow, this would have been such a great, wonderful draw, all across the land, Israelites venturing together toward the holy city to come to the holy mount, it's God essentially saying, draw near my people, come to me, and as soon as they get to the temple, pass the outer courts, stay back, you are not welcome in my presence, I've been drawing you near, but you cannot come any closer, for I, the Lord, am a holy God, there is but one that can enter into my presence, and that is the great high priest, who can enter but once a year, and only by the blood of the atonement, the Lord is drawing Moses near, and simultaneously keeping Moses far away, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground, it had not been the mountain of God before verse three and four, and this ground had not been holy ground before verses three and four, God's presence radiates that area with his holiness, now the area itself has been consecrated, it is now holy ground, take your sandals off your feet, the place where you stand is holy ground, of course still to this day in the Middle East, the removal of sandals is a sign of reverence, a sign of humility, if you remember back to Manadnock last year, Sproul made the point that this may have something to do with creatureliness, showing our creatureliness before God's presence, so first level, first approach of understanding, it's removing the filth and the dirt of the world as we've been trudging through it, and you're not going to bring that symbolically into the presence of something made holy, but then I think Sproul is right to pick up on Isaiah 6 and the angels covering also their feet, and so there seems to be something also of the creatureliness of this command, that the feet being connected to the ground, the man who is but dust being connected to the dust, that seems to also be something of significance here, let your feet be on the ground for you are but dust before me, do not enter into me casually, do not come into my presence as though you could just roam right into it or stumble your way through, but show reverence and bow yourself to the ground.
Now holiness is, as we've said many times before, fundamentally the idea of separation, fundamentally the idea of otherness, God is holy because He is wholly other and there is none who are holy like the Lord.
The ground at Sinai has now been made holy because the one who is holy is now present in this theophanic presence at this site. And of course here we're meant to see the distinction between the creator and His creation, we're meant to see the infinite now disclosing Himself in the finite, the one who is above all worlds that He has made, now disclosing Himself in a bush on the Mount of Horeb, a perpetually burning shrub, is the first symbol of the power and presence of God in the book of Exodus.
Not a flaming mountain, not the mighty Nile being turned crimson blood, but a bush, hardly noticeable until Moses drew his sight toward it. A bush, this small simple thing, this weak, fragile, vulnerable thing is the place where God discloses Himself.
Think of how the story of Exodus is going to unfold, the mighty acts of God and the plagues that He brings upon the nation, the way that He Himself will shepherd His people out through great calamity and all eyes will know this is the Lord when He parts the mighty waves of the sea and collapses them upon the hostile enemy, when frogs and parasites and flies and swarm the land and there's all these wonderful shows of His power beyond what humans could ever muster.
But here He discloses Himself in a simply, simply a bush. We see the humility of God, the condescension of God when He calls His people. When He calls His people, He does it often in a very still, quiet, patient, subtle, merciful, generous way and we see that here with Moses.
At the very least, before we go deeper into this, just looking at the setting before we talk about the bush itself, there's something to say about posture and place for worship, something to say about posture and place for worship.
A few of us were speaking some weeks ago, I think it was on a Saturday morning, and we're talking about the way that our posture affects our prayer life, the way that how we use and form our body affects our conception of the Lord and what we're offering or doing unto the Lord.
We experience that, experience that even as an elder in times for different reasons. We've had someone up here and we've prayed for them up here, but we've put our hands on them and the fact that we're in this place facing the whole body means it feels a lot different in my mind and a heart than if I was sitting in a row praying vocally along with everyone else facing forward.
The fact that our hands are embracing or connected to this person, there's already this mutual link that otherwise would be missing. There's something to say about posture and place and the physicality of our worship.
We are embodied beings. Now, certainly one of the greatest things about living in the age of the Spirit is we can worship God in spirit and truth, not having to go to a holy city, not gathering around a holy mount, not being dependent upon a holy priesthood.
Christ is our great High Priest and all those who worship Him wherever they may be and however they might be in spirit and truth. In that sense, we can experience something like Exodus 3 anywhere. That's held out to us as normative New Testament Christianity.
As the hymn puts it, Jesus, where 'er thy people meet, there they behold thy mercy seek'd. Where 'er they seek thee, thou art found, and every place is hallowed ground. Every place where Jesus' people gather to worship Him becomes hallowed ground.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the great Victorian poet, in one of her books, Orally, a very famous book of poetry, she refers to the bush from Exodus 3 and she says this, and truly I reiterate, nothing is small.
No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee, but find some coupling with the spinning stars. No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere. No chaff inch, a little finch that would pick out seed from the chaff, but implies the cherubim.
And, glancing on my own thin-veined wrist, in such a little tremor of the blood, the whole strong clamor of a vehement soul doth utter itself distinct. Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries and dab their natural faces unaware. A blackberry bush because that was one of the ancient Christian views of what this particular bush was on the Mount of Horrors.
You see what Barrett Browning is saying. Every bush is sacred, everything is suffused with the glory of God, and if you had eyes to see it, you could see everything around you as holy by virtue of what God has made, and I want to amen a point she's making at the front end to say we just look around us and think this is just, it is what it is, and we're like 18th century skeptics.
We have a very naturalistic view of the world. We don't mean to, but we do. We have not recovered a pre-modern understanding of creation, which is much closer to a biblical worldview than what we've had for the past 300 years, and so Barrett Browning is picking up on that.
We don't have the eyes to see it, that God has made all of this. We don't see the wonder of his artistry and the beauty and the glory of what he's made. Psalm 19, the heavens and the earth declare his glory, but to go against Barrett Browning, Exodus 3 is Exodus 3 for a reason.
Not every bush on Horeb is hallowed ground. Only this particular bush on the Mount of Horeb is hallowed ground. Only this bush is worthy of Moses not drawing near, but bowing his face to the earth and uncovering his feet before the angel of the Lord, and so that means that though we can worship God truly in spirit at any place, there is something unique, something anticipatory, something of weight when we gather in a place as believers to worship God.
Do not say to me, I can worship God as fully at my kitchen sink on a Wednesday morning as I can on a Sunday morning. Do not say that to me. We're missing something of the place in the posture of worship.
John Calvin, in his commentary on this, he highlights the way that we're affected. Moses is commanded to put off his shoes and by the bareness of his feet, he's brought to reverential feelings, right?
This is not ordinary. This is not ordinary. When we're putting things off in order to do this, we're brought into a place of reverential feeling. And on this account too, he's reminded of the holiness of the ground, because in our prayers, the bending of the knee and the uncovering of the head are helps to worship God.
Do you see what Calvin is saying? The way the posture helps us to worship God. He had indeed said, here am I. It was a testimony. His mind was teachable. He was prepared to obey, but it was good that he should be more actively aroused in order that he might come before God with greater fear.
If he just casually walked in in his New Balance sneakers and said, I've never seen a bush like that. Oh, here I am, Lord. Yeah. What would you have me do? He wouldn't properly fear the God who's revealing himself.
He wouldn't be properly prepared for what God would send him to do. I met a man some months ago. I think I mentioned it then. He's a preacher now. I haven't seen him in some time, but he used to come to the nurse meetings.
I remember one day at lunch, asking him a little about his testimony. And he said, well, I was a sailor and I was just completely lost at sea. No pun intended. And when I was on leave, I would just go to the bar and get drunk and womanize.
And that's what I lived for. As long as I was on leave and I didn't have the mundanity of the Navy ship, I wasn't living for anything beyond the weekend, anything beyond the port leave. But somehow I got connected to a Christian and somehow I got dragged along to this meeting.
And I don't think I even realized that it was a prayer meeting, but for some reason in God's providence, I ended up going. And I didn't know what to expect. I thought at the very least it'd be men that would be kind and greet me and try to be talking to me and finding some ways to elbow in some message of evangelism.
And I would politely sort of smile and then ditch and go back to the bar and carry on with my life. But when he opened the door, these men who were missionaries in Japan were lying prostrate on the ground, crying out to God for the people of Japan to embrace the Savior.
And he walked into that and he said, I had never seen anything like that. And I knew there was a deeper reality than what I thought was reality. And I knew that I needed to understand what these men understood.
Place and posture. If this most noble prophet of God, Calvin writes, had need of such a preparation, no wonder God stirs up our unwilling hearts by so many aids so that we can worship him in truth. And although the same command is not given to all which was given to Moses, I don't really care to see your toes this morning and I don't want you to see mine.
Thank you, Lord. Still, let us learn. This is the object of every ceremony. This is the object of what we're doing this morning. This is the object of what we'll do around the table with family worship.
This is the object of every aspect of our lives toward God. It's that we may perceive the majesty of God and offer him worship in a reverential way that regards his dignity and honor. Anything less is unbecoming of who he is.
And Moses has to see that. Don't come near. Take off your feet. Hide your face. You're coming into the presence of the Holy One. So why do so many churches today spend more time decorating their coffee bars than they do preparing people to come in reverence to adore God?
One other thing about place and posture. Part of the posture is not just how we physically present ourselves, how we physically occupy space and time wherever we are in our worship. Part of our posture is also our moral standing before God.
You are not able to truly prepare yourself to meet God if you're coming to him with, to use that imagery of the dirty sandals, defilements that you have not cared to ask for forgiveness for, you have not repented of.
You're stomping around in the mud. I remember poor Kenny Carlson's not here this morning. We used to gather in prayer there when they lived by Comet Pond. And I remember I was one of the culprits. I think there were a few of us.
There were these crab apples right outside the slider door. And they're just getting their house ready to put on the market. This cream colored carpet in the basement. And there we are with our winter boots, mushing up crab apples into the woven carpet.
Sorry, Pam. It's like coming to worship and we have this sin that's unexposed. We feel bad about it, but we won't dwell on it too long. We're not going to repent to the Lord. We're not going to ask forgiveness for who it's affected.
We're certainly not going to confess it. We're just going to go through the motions of Sunday. Hopefully we'll get some bread and some meat and some strength. And we'll just kind of keep that in the closet as long as we can.
You think somehow you can objectively have the same experience as you would otherwise. You think somehow you're on the same plane as anyone else would be. You think somehow that your moral standing does not affect the way that you're encountering God.
If maybe you're not even able to encounter God for that very reason. This is part of posture as well. As John Trapp said, put off the shoes of your sensuality and all your other sins. Affections are the feet of the soul.
Keep them bare. You love that? Affections are the feet of the soul. Keep them bare. Don't put filthy, muddy, worldly shoes on your affections when you come to worship. I shared this with Mike and Corey on Tuesdays.
It was so striking to me just to seal this point. There's something to say about our ability to comprehend who God is. To even understand and benefit His Word means for the believer, for the unbeliever, you come as you are.
You need to be safe or you can't understand anything. The flesh can't comprehend the things of the spirit. So I'm not speaking to unbelievers here. I'm speaking to believers. Those who need their feet washed in order to be in the presence of God.
We're not able to truly benefit from reading God's Word. The light will not shine forth from it. It will not be to us a living word. If we're not keeping our hearts close to the Lord, if we're not keeping our lives subject to the Lord, if we're not bearing all before Him who sees all, Christianity can never be a mere intellectual exercise.
In fact, to treat it as an intellectual exercise is to not understand or get anything out of it at all. And this is why you have some of the greatest biblical thinkers are atheists. They understand the text of the Bible and nothing of the truth.
They know the dead letter, but they don't know the living Word. And Gregory of Nazianzus, this ancient church father, was speaking of this, and he called this theological consecration. Listen to this.
This is an essay I read a couple weeks ago by Samuel Parkinson, and he's summarizing Gregory of Nazianzus. Discussion of theology is not for everyone. Only for those who have been tested and have a sound footing in study, and more importantly, have undergone or at least are undergoing purification of the body and soul.
This is ancient Christian language for sanctification. If you're not being sanctified as a Christian, if you have not been sanctified as a Christian, do not think that you will be able to receive things from the Lord.
Listen to what Gregory says. One who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous. To the defiled, all things are defiled. One who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the brightness of the sun.
Here's the word ablaze, and if morally your life has made your spiritual eyes weak, it's dangerous for you to look at that brightness. It's not possible to do theology in the abstract. This is Samuel Parkinson.
Without also having a pious life, the purity of our hearts when we approach God is required because God is a holy God. To approach the Holy One in any other capacity is to approach the One who is a consuming fire with dirty feet in a manner where there is no grace and there is no aid and there is no comfort.
It's to bring defilement into the presence of the Lord, even though we cannot avoid the heat of His holiness. Listen to this. God's own nature will never allow us the option of contemplating Him rightly in some compartmentalized way.
We might be able to compartmentalize our lives so that we don't have to deal with our sins and our damages to others, but God is not compartmentalized in that way. Do not think you can come to Him and box Him out and take little pieces of Him.
He won't let you. Where we consider Him with accuracy, intellectually, but with cold hearts and impure hands that are distant from Him, to the degree that we contemplate God rightly, we are participating in His divine mind.
To the degree that we're understanding His Word and applying it to our lives, we are thinking God's thoughts after Him, which is so holy that it must make everything in its presence holy as well. So Moses has this encounter so that he can rightly understand, rightly think God's thoughts after him, so that when he goes to the people to declare who the Lord is and what the Lord is doing, his heart and his mind have been made holy by the God who he has sought.
The holiness of Moses' life, enabling him to understand more of the holiness of God, even as the holiness of God is that which brings holiness into the life of Moses, and it cannot be other. I'm speaking to believers here.
Is it a surprise to you that you're not growing in holiness? That the Word to you is a closed book? There's a sheet that remains over it? Devotional life is so fatigued, you're not able to get the richness, the sweetness of it?
We imagine that our ideas are completely disconnected from our lives, that our minds are somehow intact and they're not connected to our actions or to our bodies. But God has made us whole, body and soul, and our lives and our actions and our choices and our sins affect our ability to contemplate and seek and understand who God is and understand and benefit from His Word.
This is how God has designed it. So let's talk now as we come to a close about the burning bush. And as I mentioned, this burning bush, we'll be seeing it now for a couple of weeks. And so I'm not going to highlight everything this morning that we will by the time we get to verse 14, but I want to show you something of how vast the symbolism is of this emblem.
Speaking of emblem, it's the motto of many Presbyterian churches, the French Reformed Church, the Church of Scotland has a burning bush in a sort of oval crest with the Latin motto, Nectamin consumabitur, which means, and yet it is not consumed.
And it was because they recognized this image of the burning bush as fundamentally an image of the church. Now, we're disposed to think of the image of the burning bush as fundamentally a display of the aseity of God, the self being of God.
We're going to get there when we get to verse 14. So disappointing if that's what you're bracing for. You're going to have to wait a few weeks for that. But let's talk about this imagery of the burning bush.
Well, first of all, fire is often a sign in the book of Exodus for the presence of God among his people. We're going to see that in chapter 13, 14, 19, the fire on the mountain, certainly the fiery pillar.
It's the sign of God's presence with his people, the sign of fire. And of course, the glory of the Lord looks like a consuming fire in Exodus 24. And that's what Hebrews 12 is picking up on. Our God is a consuming fire.
So fire, first and foremost, is definitely symbolic of the presence of God. However, there may be more to it. Going back to Philo, who was a ancient Jewish interpreter, he recognized that the burning bush may be symbolic of Israel, particularly Israel under affliction.
Here is this bush that's so vulnerable and weak, and it's just so, so close to being disintegrated. And yet God will not allow it to be consumed. He's preserving his people according to his promise. And I think Philo, who's not often on to many good things, is on to something there.
There's an important book, William McEwen, M-C-E-W-E-N. It's a 19th century book, but recently, like a few months ago, I think, Reformation Heritage reprinted it, and it's called The Glory and Fullness of Jesus Christ in the Most Remarkable Types and Figures and Allegories of the Old Testament.
Kind of a mouthful. It's finally been reprinted, and it's a very useful book. So I was looking at it this week. Another book that sits right alongside it, reprinted as well, is Benjamin Keech. You could probably look up allegories and find it, but originally it was printed as Tropologia.
That was Keech's own book of types and metaphors in the Old Testament. So let me go to McEwen.
He says,.
So, Jesus' humanity taken to his divinity shown forth in this image.
That's first level.
Then he goes on to say, well, it's more to say about the way this shows forth the Lord Jesus and his glory. Fire is not only an image of the presence of God, it's also certainly an image of the wrath of God, the fiery judgment of God.
When we think of the deity of Jesus supporting his humanity, even as he endured the wrath, the eternal flames of his father and the judgment that was due for his people. In fact, the Hebrew word here for bush, sometimes it's translated bramble, like a thistle bush or a pricker bush.
And the verb comes out of this to prick or to stick in the sense of wounding. It's a thorn bush. And most likely we're having here a sort of emblematic foreshadowing of the thorns being made into a crown on the Lord Jesus.
If you think of this burning bush with the thorns set ablaze. Think of the Lord Jesus on the cross, enduring the flames of wrath with the thorns around his head, as early Christian interpreters did. So we're going to go into more of that, the beauty of God's aseity, the incarnation, as well as the atonement of our Lord Jesus, but then also the church.
I just remind you, the Old Testament never gives us the interpretation of this burning bush. The New Testament never gives us the clues to what the burning bush connotes. And so I think we're open to understand it's multivalent.
There's truth at various levels. And we look at church history to see what theologians understood from this. And I think we're able to draw many, many insights into what this represents. And what I want to camp out on now is the bush as an emblem of the church.
And I'll be brief because we're short on time. Benjamin Keech, I mentioned his book, he says the bush is meant as the church of God under great affliction, under severe trial. In fact, he draws us all the way back to Genesis 15, where Moses actually was prefigured without being named when God told Abraham his people would be brought out.
But how did God give that vision to Abraham? Remember, he passed through with that smoking chamber pot, King James translation, that smoking furnace and the lamp. So there was this sort of pot that is burning, a sort of furnace, a mobile furnace, as it were, and a torch or a lamp.
And Keech said this represents first and foremost Israel's affliction in Egypt. But then also the lamp representing the law of God or the light of God's revelation or the promise of his salvation as Isaiah compares his salvation to the light.
And so we have here a further step in what God showed in another emblem to Abraham. McEwen. It's weak, obscure, contemptible state. Though there is real glory in the church, she can never compete with earthly kingdoms and outward glance, any more than a bush in the wilderness can compete with cedars from Lebanon.
But let the fire in which the bush burns signify the fiery trials to which the church has never been a stranger to in any age. Sometimes those fires have been of persecution. Sometimes those fires have been of division.
But the church has never been consumed, even as the bush was never consumed. And so shall the church never be destroyed, though it often seems as it's on the verge of being destroyed. Why? McEwen asks.
Because the angel of the Lord is in the midst of her. Moving on to another fiery emblem, think of Daniel and his friends in that blazing furnace and who is in the midst, the angel of the Lord, that figure that's mysterious.
And we understand it to be a Christophany, the presence of the Son of God there in the midst of the furnace with his people, lest they be consumed. So in spite of all the church proves invincible, though weak and despised, though something as fickle and passing as a bramble in the desert, though something as easy as a brush fire could destroy it.
God is in the midst of her. The Psalm 46. Therefore, she shall not be moved. More imagery of this church, looking up a little bit about the California wildfires, this struck out to me, you know, this these wildfires begin with just a spark, you know, a flat tire as a rim hits the pavement and a spark goes off the median.
And then, you know, the wildfires begin to devastate the land during 2020. This was a stat I read during 2020 alone, just the year 2020 in California. Over 8100 fires contributed to the burning of 4 .5 million acres, 4 .5 million acres.
Here's this bramble, this is nothing, this is burnt up in seconds, this is nothing. But it's not consumed. It's not consumed, it's just a bramble, it's so weak. How is this not consumed? The power of the Egyptian empire, the the most glorious army in the world, how are the Israelites not consumed?
Imperial might of Rome, who is like the beast? How is it that this ragtag gathering of widows and orphans and slaves, believers that name some god, what's his name? Crestus? We don't even know. How are they not consumed?
Believers gathering in basements in North Korea or Beijing under the auspices of a tyrannical government with all sorts of surveillance at their disposal. How is it that something so fragile and weak is not consumed?
That's the image that God gives to his people. And more than that, as Keech envelops in his writing, he says, it's just a bramble bush. There's no outward beauty to his people, sorry, no outward beauty, meaning the church of God.
Not clothed with outward beauty, not arrayed in purple and scarlet, not decked with gold and precious stones and pearls like the mother of harlots in Revelation 17, but low base. To worldly eyes, contemptible, all the beauty is hidden, Psalm 45, 13, the king's daughter is glorious within.
Rags without, glorious within, and so the world values her little like a bramble, like a brush fire, thinking it will simply pass. There's nothing here worth noticing. Just as Christ made himself of no reputation, so the church for a while remains among men in a like state.
No carnal eye that sees her would ever desire her. And the church is also a refuge, and Keech goes on to develop this image. He, from Song of Solomon, likens believers to birds, songbirds, that gather to sing praises, hymns, songs, spiritual, hymns, psalms, spiritual songs to the Lord and gathered worship.
And he says the church is then like this bush, the only place of refuge for these birds, and the Lord encompasses her with fire all around like Eden. And they're in his presence, protected, and nothing that defiles can enter.
It's the church glorified. So let's close with the call.
The call.
If we're looking in Exodus 3 at the self-revelation of God, and we're moving toward verse 14 where we, for the first time, understand the divine name of the Lord. And part of the self-revelation of God is to look at his character and what he's like, the first thing that we see is that it's the God who calls.
Moses is not calling out for God. God is calling out for Moses. The people of Israel are only calling out for God because God had promised long before that they would be brought into this very place and that he would bring them out.
So everywhere across the board, it is God who acts, God who wills, and it's God who calls. We see first and foremost the God who desires Moses, as he desires all of his people, to draw into his presence, even when the holiness of that presence says, keep away.
Come close, but come no closer. Draw near to me, but know that none can look upon me and live. First Timothy 6 .16. So we see the God who calls. Moses. Moses. Perhaps inaudibly, if you're a believer, he's called you in such similar ways, gently, subtly, unexpectedly, toning, toning, Angela, Angela, calling people to himself.
We know that his call is an effectual call because Moses answered that call. We've talked, and I won't rehash this, we talk about the general call. What I'm doing right now, preaching, is a general call.
And if you're not being led by the Spirit, if you haven't been ears to hear, these are just words, and they'll be soon forgotten. But if the Lord is opening your ears, you won't just hear my words calling, but you'll hear his still small voice calling, your name, to come to him.
And this we know from Exodus 3. No sinner will ever come to God unless he is called by God. Unless he is personally called by God. Unless he is effectually called by God. Unless he is irresistibly called by God.
Unless he is called by the grace of God to come, a sinner will never come to God. We're born not only in bondage, we're born in hostility. We're haters of God, despisers of what is holy. It must be God's call, God's invitation, God's conquering of a rebellious heart that ever draws us near to his presence.
We, like Adam, flee from his presence, hide from his presence, hide our sins from his holiness. But it's the call that disarms us. It's the call that invades our conscience, that pricks our heart. It's the call that causes us to respond, here I am, or Lord, who are you?
God must take the initiative if we would ever have a relationship with him. We don't go to God's door and knock, and I realize this is emblematic of the church more than the heart. God is the one who seeks.
God is the one who calls. God is the one who wills. Our sin and its blinding moral effects, our sin and the distance, the separation, the enmity that is now between us and God. When it should have been between us and the serpent.
That enmity makes it impossible for us to come near to God. But notice, God appeared to Moses in a flame, in a bush, and God called out to him. God is the one who calls. And then Moses turned aside, and then the believer responds.
That is always the order.
God seeks, God calls, and only then will the person respond to that call. It's never the other way around. So the question this morning, as we close, have you heard God's call? Have you heard God's call?
Have you responded to God's call? Jesus says, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Have you repented because you're a sinner? There's really only two camps that we have here.
We have the righteous, which clearly in the context are the self-righteous, and we have the sinners. And you don't get to say, I'm in between the two. I'm undecided. I'm the nuns. I haven't checked that box yet.
I'm on the verge. A few more years. I'm working it out. You don't get to make that call. Choose your camp. You're either self-righteous, far from God, uncalled by him, unresponsive to him, or you're a sinner.
And because you're a sinner, and you feel the guilt, and the weight, and the misery, and you're groaning, you've answered the call, and you've recognized the one who calls you is holy. And though you're afraid, it's irresistible.
You must draw near. The closer you come, the more afraid you are, but you cannot go away. You cannot do any other. Lord, to whom else will we go?
You have the words of life.
I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Are you an enemy? Are you hostile?
Are you worldly?
Are you backsliding?
Are you weary?
Are you stained? Are you sin-sick?
Are you hopeless?
Are you helpless? Jesus came to call you. He didn't come to call the people who have it all together, who, you know, I'm a sinner just like everyone else, but I kind of want my life to go this way, and these are things I love, and I want these things messed up or taken away, and in 15, 20, 30, 40 years, maybe then I'll turn to the Lord.
If only it was that easy. If only it was up to you. But it's not. The Spirit of God does not strive with man forever.
Is he calling you? He calls.
He takes that first step.
He calls.
It's a step that must be taken if anything is to happen. But then you must respond. Jesus says, compel them to come in. This is the height of what I can do to compel you, but I can't do what must be done.
Your heart of stone must be made flesh, that which is blocking your eyes and your ears. There's no bush to see, and there's no voice to hear, unless the Spirit of God is opening up all of that you need to be able to hear, and to see, and to act, and to respond.
God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He seeks to save that which is lost, and it all begins with his call.
Come to him. Come to him.
Has your life been a failure? Look at Moses, 40 years of failure. Hear his call and come to him. Is it not how you want it to go? Is this not what you had planned? Look at Moses. This wasn't his plan, I guarantee you.
But when God calls, you respond. When God calls, you respond. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.
He who calls you is faithful. He will do it.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, do the effectual call that only you can do. In our lives, Lord, help us uncover our feet, the affections of our soul that we may contemplate you and receive from you.
Help us, Lord, to understand the things that you have shown us in Exodus 3 up to this point, Lord, as individuals, as men, as women, Lord, as families, as a church body. These things we ask in your son's name.
Amen.