When God Appears - Exodus 3: 1-10

Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Faith Bible Church. Glad you're here and here in bodily form and also absent at home, those that aren't able and their health doesn't allow them to be here. Our prayers are with you, and thank you that you can still be a part of this church body because we are a church family.

The Church Family and Call to Worship

That's the way God intended us to be, is to gather together to fellowship and to commune with one another and to encourage one another in the faith. So thank you for listening in, and thank you for being here.

Just a few announcements. Yesterday, thank you to all those that came out and the ministry that Dave and Pam organized. We went downtown at the Union Gospel Mission. There were almost 15 of us out there.

What a great turnout. What a blessing that was. We started off at the Union Gospel Mission, listening to a wonderful gentleman give his testimony. He is just about ready to graduate from the mission there, and he just doesn't want to look back, but except look up to the Lord.

So what an encouragement that was. Thank you, Patrick, for that. For announcements, Women's Bible Study is next Saturday, the 20th at 10 o 'clock, so ladies, if you don't have the information of what's going over that, Barb would be happy to share that with you.

You probably have it. You ladies are pretty much on the ball with this stuff. So men, take note. They're very diligent in that. So thank you, Barb, for teaching the ladies. Church membership, if there's any interest in church membership, please see us.

That's an important aspect of, it's not like a club or a membership thing. It's just making a commitment, acknowledging your commitment to what the church believes and what the church teaches. So don't make more of it than it is.

It's just for consistency. If you're gonna teach our children, we wanna know what you believe, and this is a process of how we can know that. So when we talk about membership, that's what we mean, essentially, is to be of like mind.

So if you're interested and you're not a member, please see me or one of the pastor, Pastor Ilgen or Victor, and we'd be happy to talk to you about that and get you going in that direction. As a call to worship, I wanna read Psalm 100, and you can just listen along.

It begins, a Psalm of thanksgiving. Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves.

We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting.

His truth endures to all generations. And that's a beautiful passage, especially not just for our service today, in our praise of him as an outpouring of our praise and our gratitude and our thankfulness to the Lord, but also preparing our hearts for Thanksgiving, something our country acknowledges as families and as a country, we can begin thinking that way as well.

So would you please join with me in prayer? Lord God, we thank you, Father, that you have brought us here today, that, Father, we could be in many different directions, but, Father, according to your providence, according to your purpose, we are here together gathered to worship you.

I pray, Lord, that we might honor you, that we would bring you glory, because you are a God that is worthy of our praise. You are mighty in every way, and, Father, we are lowly beings, but, Father, by the grace of Christ, we can come before you and be your ambassadors and be testimonies and witnesses of Jesus Christ, and we thank you that we have that hope of eternal life with you, Father.

So God bless the service today, the songs and Pastor Ilgen as he preaches the word that, Father, lives would be changed, that we would take note of what you have given us in your word, because it's not there by accident.

It's something that we should take heed to meditate and to contemplate, Father, and to consider how it applies to our own lives. So, God, bless us now, we pray. May we bring you glory, Father. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

Hebrews 1 and the Supremacy of the Son

Futurity for this morning is Hebrews chapter one, verses one through four. God, who at sun-dry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by word of his power, when he hath by himself for his own sins sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

May the Lord have mercy to read this word.

And let's stand and sing, Be Calm My Soul.

God Appears to Moses at the Burning Bush

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter three, verses one through 10. Exodus chapter three, verses one through 10. Now 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.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.

So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. Then he said, do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground.

Moreover, he 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 upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

Let us pray. Father, we are so thankful that you are a God who appears, God who shows up to deliver. And Father, we pray that our mind would be focused on who you are and what you do and not on our own circumstances.

We pray that your spirit would teach us what you want us to know. In Jesus' name. This passage shows us what it looks like for the faithful covenant-keeping God to begin his redemptive plan. He begins by revealing himself to his designated deliverer, Moses.

God appears in his own way, in his own time, for his own people. At no time do we see that Moses demanded God to show up. At no time do we see that Moses initiated this and asked God to do a list of miracles to confirm.

This is important because God appears to his people his way in his time. In modern days, we have adopted this thought that we can tell God what to do and how to show up. How many of you have prayed a multiple-choice prayer?

Hey, God, if you want me to do this or go here, please give me this, this, and this. Let this, this, and this to happen. Then I will go. But God does not work that way. We don't give God a multiple-choice test and wait for him to finish and turn it into us.

But rather, we ask God to give us clarity of what he wants us to do. It's about what he wants us to do, his will, rather than my will and him fitting in it. And this is because he is the all-knowing God and we are ignorant human beings.

We are not omniscient. We have no right to give him a multiple-choice test when his answer is far beyond what the test asks for. God is not bound to show up in our desired way in our lives. Now, this does not mean God doesn't show up.

He does, but it is his prerogative on how he shows up. Today's text shows us that the holy God appears in his way to inaugurate his redemptive plan. The holy God shows up in his way to inaugurate, to initiate, to start his redemptive plan.

The first point is that God appears unexpectedly according to his way. God appears unexpectedly according to his way. As last chapter ended with God remembering and acknowledging his covenant people who are suffering and crying out to him, this chapter picks up where the last chapter left off.

It starts with God unexpectedly revealing himself to his designated deliverer, Moses. Verse three, now Moses, chapter three, now 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.

By now, many years have passed since Moses' departure from Egypt, and he has settled down as a shepherd with the Midianites. He is not expecting anything supernatural that day. He is doing his ordinary work for Jethro, his father-in-law, who received him when he was fleeing Egypt.

The fact that he is shepherding Jethro's flock suggests that he is not too well off. He doesn't have a flock of his own, and Moses is no longer a princeling of Egypt. He's no longer affiliated with the palace business, but he's a lowly shepherd in the land of the Midians.

In his mind, his days of liberating his people is far gone, it's over. He's just an old-aged foreigner who happens to be a shepherd. However, unbeknownst to Moses, he is about to encounter the living God.

And the hint is that he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Horeb is another name for the most famous mountain in the Old Testament, Mount Sinai. This is the mountain where the Lord will give Moses the 10 commandments.

This is the mountain where God makes his covenant with his people. Horeb is the mountain of God. It is where God chooses to reveal himself to his designated deliverer. As Moses is passing by with his flock, verse two tells us something extraordinary happened.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. To an old foreigner who is doing his ordinary job, God supernaturally shows up as a burning bush that does not consume itself.

God manifests himself as a self-sustaining burning bush. The fire does not need any fuel. The bush does not depend on anything else to burn but itself. In fact, it was so extraordinary, verse three tells us Moses decides to investigate this great sight.

How come the bush is not wasting away, though the fire continues to burn? To a shepherd who has been doing for a long time where he would burn bushes himself to maintain warmth, it was a spectacular sight that a bush that appeared out of nowhere and would not consume itself.

Here it is important to discuss the phrase the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is different from an angel of the Lord or angels of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is none other than the Lord himself.

First, he appeared a couple of times in Genesis. In Genesis 16, after Hagar, Sarah's servant, runs away because of Sarah's harsh treatment, the angel of the Lord appears before her in verse seven. Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring of the way of shore.

After the angel delivers the message to Hagar, Hagar marvels in verse 13. Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God who sees me. For she said, have I ever even seen him here and lived after he saw me?

Hagar knew after the angel of the Lord's visitation that she was visited by none other than God himself. And why does God appear as the angel of the Lord? One reason for that is due to God's holiness.

If God were to appear fully to anyone, they would simply die. Even the Egyptian servant, Hagar, wonders how she encountered the holy God, yet she lived. If God were to fully disclose himself before any sinful human, no one would survive, no one would stand a chance.

This is why God takes a different form to represent himself lest his intended audience dies due to the sheer weight of his holiness, his weight, the weight of his glory. One commentator, Douglas Stewart, compares it to video conferencing.

The person who is zooming in or FaceTiming is technically present, but not fully present. God is present as the angel of the Lord, but his full self is not present. God reveals himself in his own unique way and in his own time.

This is important today because many of us may have heard the argument, if God exists today, why doesn't he show up to me now? Why doesn't he do the miracles for me now? Or even worse, I won't believe until God shows up right now.

When we consider who God is and how holy he is, such a desire and request is extremely inappropriate. Who are we to demand how and when God shows up? If God showed up the way that we wanted him to, when we wanted him to, he would not be God.

You would.

Who are you to order God around? It's not a dog. Who are you to say that God has to take your order and follow it exactly the same way? It is an utterly perverse view of God. It is effectively de-Godding God and deifying yourself.

It's idolatrous. Now, how do we encounter God as God's people? The other extreme is to say that God does not interact with us. That's deism. The other extreme is to say God exists, but he doesn't interact with us.

He doesn't intervene like he did before, right? Because God still interacts with us and his people can encounter God. And that's through his word. Ever since creation, God has always disclosed himself through speech, through his word.

After Adam and Eve rebelled, God spoke to them. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, God spoke to them from Mount Sinai and gave them his word, the Ten Commandments. King David devotes the longest psalm in the Psalter only to talk about God's word.

He delights in it. He treasures it. He lives by it. He's protected by it. And this is no wonder Jesus, God in the flesh, is introduced as the word of God in John chapter one. Jesus, the word of God, is the full revelation of God who came to save the sinners by dying on the cross for them.

For Christians, we encounter the same God his way and that's through his word, both Jesus and scripture. Our only way to God is Jesus, the word of God. We have to trust him only and nothing else. After all, Jesus himself declares that no one can come to the Father except through me, not Buddha, not one of the millions of Hindu gods, not Allah, only through Jesus.

It is only through the word of God. And Christ is the only way that God has provided a reconciliation with his people. And how do we find Christ? We encounter Christ through scripture, the written word.

We trust only in Jesus that the Bible reveals. No traditions or visions. We seek God his way. We meet God through his word. That's how God chose himself. That's how God chose to reveal himself. Now the question is, what is the proper response to this God?

Fear Before the Holy God

When the holy God appears, the proper response is fear. When the holy God appears, the proper response is fear. After Moses approaches the burning bush, God calls Moses by name. So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses.

And he said, here I am. This is an important development. The true God speaks. The true God has full knowledge. Moses did not have to introduce himself because God knew Moses before he came. Because God knew Moses because he created Moses.

God knew who Moses was because he was the one who took care of Moses since he was a baby. God knew who Moses was better than Moses knew himself. That's who God is. Then God tells Moses how to properly approach him in verse five.

Then he said, do not draw near to this place. Take your sandals off your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground. This is the concept of holy place. Because of God's holiness, the location he chooses to be more distinctly present becomes holy.

The holiness of God shows the total separation of God from everything else. One of my Old Testament professors would say, God is utterly other. There is no one like him. No one is divine like him. No one is pure like him.

No one is good like him. No one is righteous like him. No one is loving like him. He is holy, holy, holy. His holiness encompasses who he is and here we find out that his holiness encompasses where he is.

Hence, God commands Moses to take off his sandals out of reverence because the ground he is standing has become holy as well. This is why to this day before the synagogue priests give the blessing to the people, they take off their shoes.

To this day, where God is, the location also becomes holy. This concept develops into the temple as well. The holy of the holy is where God would dwell and only one person, the high priest, would be able to enter after the sacrifice for his own sin and for his own people once a year.

And that's why Jesus claims that the gold is made holy because it's laid on the holy altar. The gold itself isn't holy in itself. It's holy because the altar is holy where God is. And ultimately, the perfect dwelling of the holy God is perfectly seen in Christ, the holy God who became flesh, because Jesus is the very presence of God.

Whomever he touches and whomever he was with became holy. This is why Jesus could touch a leper and the leper would be made pure and Jesus would not be made impure. This is why Christians are made holy in Christ despite our sinfulness.

No amount of sin can defile Christ. You can go to Christ with some of the most heinous sins and you will walk away pure and clean in Christ. And Christ will remain just as holy as he has ever been. That's the importance of the concept of the holy place.

Wherever God dwells becomes holy. Then this God introduces himself. Moreover, he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This deity is not some random God of Midianites or the random God of Egypt who showed up, but this is God of Moses' ancestors.

This is the same covenant-making God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Thus, the faithful covenant-keeping God of Israel is speaking to Moses right now. What is the valid response to this deity? And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God.

This is a consistent response to anyone who has seen God. God has to reassure Gideon, a judge, that he will not die in Judges six. The prophet Elijah hides his face in his cloak after hearing God's low voice in 1 Kings 19.

For a human being to encounter the holy, holy, holy God, the most appropriate and the most natural response is that of fear. How can a created being respond in any other way before the creator God? This is as natural as a rock falling when it is dropped from a tall building.

There's no other response but to fear and to revere God. Nowadays, modern men have found a way to twist this attribute of God, the holiness of God. They make God in their own image. I cannot imagine a God whom I have to fear.

Hence, they imagine God to be a soft, big-bellied grandfather up in the heavens who is delighted by every wicked thing that they do, who gives them a stamp of approval, that's okay, you're so cute. This is completely backward.

God's existence does not depend on our imagination. This is completely wrong. We do not and cannot create God in our own image, but we are the ones who are made in his image. For sinful people like us, God's holiness ought to scare us because we fall far short of his glorious holiness.

We are like dirty coals standing before a radiant diamond. He is utterly other. This is why we have to reclaim this healthy fear of God, not a fear of, oh my goodness, God is going to judge me now because when you're in Christ, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

Romans 8, one. But still, just because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ doesn't mean we lose all reverence for God. We must revere God. We must fear God. There's a healthy fear of adoration, of praise, and that is the correct view of the holy God who cannot stand sin.

Even the sinless angels who stand before him have to cover their eyes and cover their feet because he is so holy. They're not scared of judgment. Why should they be? They haven't sinned. But they fear God just as much, if not more, than we do.

The holy God who cannot be manipulated by human schemes. The holy God who resides in the unapproachable, infinite light who cannot be looked upon without covering our eyes. That's the proper response to this God, fear.

God’s Redemptive Plan for His People

Now, why did God appear to Moses? God reveals himself to initiate his redemptive plan. God reveals himself to initiate his redemptive plan. After introducing himself, God shares why he manifested before Moses.

Verses seven through nine are structured deliberately and beautifully to accentuate God's purpose, to focus on God's purpose. Verse seven starts with how God has seen the oppression of Israel and has heard their cry.

Verse nine ends with how the cry of the children of Israel have come up before him and he has heard their cry and he has seen the oppression. While verse seven starts with God seeing the oppression and he has heard their cry, verse nine starts with hearing their cry and seeing the oppression.

The order of seeing the oppression and hearing their cry is intentionally flipped in verse nine to create a beautiful chiastic structure or what I like to call a sandwich structure. The purpose of this strategic structure is to emphasize the focal point, the meat, which is shown in verse eight.

God's redemptive plan to deliver his people from the Egyptians and to bring them to the promised land. And I will let this text speak for itself. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters for I know their sufferings.

So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Now therefore behold the cry of the children of Israel has come to me and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Verses seven and nine show that God not only sees but God hears.

He knows their sorrows. The cry of Israel is a passionate plea of the people for God's deliverance. It is a gut-wrenching, soul-stirring outcry of an oppressed people. This God not only heard it but has seen the oppression that generated this helpless cry.

He is fully aware of all of it. That is what kind of God Israel has. And that is what kind of God we have. God who is with us in our suffering. God who senses the suffering of his people and what will God do for these people.

The center of it is verse eight, described in detail of God's redemptive plan. So I have come down to deliver them out of the land of the Egyptians and to bring them up from the land to a good and large land.

To a land flowing with milk and honey. To the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jerusalites. First, God will deliver his people out of the bondage of the Egyptians.

The main cause of their outcry. However, God is too merciful and gracious to leave them behind in the wilderness. His deliverance is not partial, but complete. He will take them to a good and large land.

The good and large would be the opposite of the harsh and restricted land of Goshen in which these Israelite slaves were stuck in. They were restricted in. They were compacted in. Moreover, this land is flowing with milk and honey.

Of course, this is a metaphorical phrase as the land is not literally flowing with milk and honey. In ancient Jewish culture, milk came from mainly goats. What would it mean for milk to flow from the land abundantly?

Milk would be abundantly be produced from the land because the goats are thriving. Why are the goats thriving? The promised land is abounding with good pastures, green and well-watered. Honey often meant this sweet syrup made from dates.

They didn't have a culture of keeping honeybees. They had honey from wild bees, but the Israelites didn't keep honeybees to harvest honey in their season. But oftentimes when they talk about honey, it's this sweet syrup that's made from dates, a Middle Eastern fruit that grew on trees.

And in fact, still they enjoy this date syrup in the Middle Eastern area. Again, the land that flows with honey would suggest a fruitful land, land that provides fruit abundantly. It's so abundant that the syrup just flows out.

It is a land that God is personally taking care of. It is a land that heavily relies on God's providential reign. It is where God will dwell among his people. That's the good and large land that God will deliver his people after the bondage of slavery.

This means God would have to take the land from the existing tribes who live there to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And we will later find out that these tribes have been worshiping false gods and making sacrifices of their children to their false gods in God's own land.

They have overstayed their welcome. And God was ready to cast them out from his land for his own people who would be worshiping only him. And God in his perfect time manifests himself to Moses to designate him to lead his people out.

When God delivers, he always involves his people. Not that God can't do it and God relies on Moses, but rather God enjoys and delights in working with his people. Verse 10, come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

God reveals his redemptive plan to the chosen leader so that his people may be brought out of Egypt. Moses is chosen as God's instrument of redemption. Moses is designated as the deliverer of God's people.

Now, would it have been more convenient for Moses if God showed up like this when Moses attempted to free his people earlier in chapter two? Maybe before the Israelites rejected him, the burning bush shows up.

He's my deliverer. How dare you accuse him? No, God will not change his redemptive plan because his way is the best way. He will operate on his time because his timing is perfect. God is never late. He will disclose himself his way because his way is impeccable.

God does not go with what we think ought to happen. God goes with what he knows will happen. He's in charge, not us. And this is crucial today because there is always a temptation for the church to adopt what is pragmatic, practical, what works, and reject God's plan for redemption.

Let's talk more about social justice and social reforms that the church can get behind. It needs to support the world in what they're doing and attract them into the church. We'll win them over, right?

You might have heard of that. They foolishly believe that staying current with the world will keep them relevant and even maybe beneficial to ministry. However, the Bible tells us the only one plan of redemption is that of Christ, that it is Christ crucified.

Social changes sound very nice in an imperfect, fallen world but that's not found in God's redemptive plan for his people. That is not up to us to change social structures. That is not the first goal of the church.

The church must not lose the grasp of God's only redemptive plan for the world and that is the person of Jesus Christ. The only way God is redeeming the world is through the good news that Christ died for us on the cross for our sin and that we're born again.

That's when the world gets better. The world only gets better when the individuals are changed from inside out. The church dare not start to change or attempt to change from outside in. When sinful individuals become new creation through the gospel of Christ, that's when society becomes more loving and more just.

It starts from the heart change. The church's job is not to flip that order that is putting the cart before the horse. The church remains attractive to the non-believers not by preaching the same message the world is preaching that is palatable to them, that they desire to hear but by preaching the message that will save them.

If the message offends the world, so be it but God will use the message to save his people. Instead of offering what the world wants to hear, we follow God's redemptive plan as he has revealed it and that's Christ.

Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that you do not confuse us in your own redemptive plan. You have laid it out clearly. You have revealed it to us in scripture how you're gonna redeem the world and Father, we pray that this church would hold fast to Christ crucified.

It is offensive to the non-believers but that sword that is offensive cuts surgically to heal, to revive and Father, we pray that despite the negative opinions that the gospel might have from the world that we would continue to focus on your redemptive plan because you're the true redeemer.

In Jesus' name, amen.

It's nice when they put scripture to song and let's stand for our closing song, Be Still and Know.