Sermon on Exodus 3. The Rescuer's Revelation.
From http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/resource.htm
G.S. Munro. Scottsdale-Bridport Presbyterian Church, Sunday, October 5th, 2003.

September 26th, 1983. Where were you at about 5am that morning? Who remembers? September 26, 1983. I remember. Not only was it my birthday, it was also the day Australia II won the America's cup. Remember the triumphant Alan Bond? He had everything going for him. A billionaire, and now a national hero. Or so it seemed. Since then the balloon has burst, reducing him to his pathetic status as the world's richest bankrupt. Even if he did manage to stash away a few millions, his credibility as a public figure was gone. What a comedown.

The man in Exodus 3 experienced a similar meteoric fall. In human terms, Moses was a spectacular flop. Imagine the scene. Vast areas of rocky and infertile land. Nearby a flock of wiry looking sheep. As they graze on the sparse and tough foliage, you notice watching over them, an elderly shepherd. He's been out with them for days, perhaps weeks. He's dirty from the work, and probably smells like a sheep himself. He looks like he's had half a lifetime in the desert sun.

How surprised you would be to learn that this old man was once a member of royalty. For this man, Moses, was one history's spectacular comedowns.

I wonder if Moses ever sat and thought about his life back in Egypt? His earliest memories would be of growing up as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. He would remember his schooling in the language and arts of many cultures. He would remember how as he grew up, people revered and honoured him.

As he ate his dried fruit and stale bread in the desert, and took a sip from his waterskin, perhaps he would recall the fine foods and choice wine of Pharaoh's table. As he looked at his old patched cloak, perhaps he thought of the fine linen and fashionable clothes. Then there was the harem. He had anything he wanted. But he threw it all away, for something he thought more valuable than Egypt's riches, namely faith in God. Not one of the many gods of the Egyptian pantheon that his adopted mother worshipped. Not even faith in the Aten, the sun disk that some Egyptians worshipped as the supreme God. But faith in the Almighty Creator of the heavens and the earth. The God of his Hebrew ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Faith in this God led Moses to refuse to be known as an Egyptian Prince any longer. He identified with God's people instead. In chapter two we saw how he came to the aid of a fellow Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian. But then Moses realised he wasn't the Rambo saviour he thought he was. Afraid of the king of Egypt, he fled to the desert of Midian. And he must have asked himself, was it all worth it? Moses thought his days as a would-be saviour were ended. But there, God prepared him for the great task ahead, not by making him a mighty warrior, but by humbling him. He was an ordinary shepherd for about forty years, until he grew old. God delights to use the weak, not those who think they are strong.

The bible says Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth. Exodus three is the reason. The thing that made Moses the most humble person on earth, was that he knew God better than anyone on earth. God has that effect on people. The better you know God, the more humble it will make you. And today we see how Moses met God.

Well, what does this passage show us about the God Moses met? The God we worship. I've divided the chapter into three, and:

In verses 1 to 6, we see that God is Holy and Distant from us.

In verses 7 to 9, however, we see that He is Caring and Close to us.

In verses 14 to 22, God is both the God of eternity and the God of history, who keeps his promises.

First, God is Holy and Distant from us.

We read, in verse 1, "Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, - he's called Reuel in the previous chapter by the way - the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (Horeb is also called Mount Sinai). There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up. When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am."

"Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground."

God is holy. Holy means "set apart," different, special. "As high as the heavens are above the earth," says God in Isaiah 55 9, "so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." God is so different, so superior in every way, that when people encounter his holiness close up, it always has the effect that it had on Moses in verse 6: "Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God."

God's holiness, unlike that of man-made gods, also has a moral content to it. God is not only separate and different, he is totally morally pure. That is why his holiness ought to make us afraid. Because we are not pure.

Verse 2 says that the LORD appeared to Moses in flames of fire. The bible often uses the symbolism of fire to describe what God is like. It's a symbol of purity and judgement. Like the fire which refines precious metal, this holy purity of God's character burns up everything in its presence that is not holy. That is why fire is also a symbol of God's judgement, and why people are always afraid like Moses when they stand in the terrifying purity of God's presence.

Our sin makes us afraid, and so it should. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, "Let us be thankful and worship God with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

Since Jesus is God in the flesh, we find a similar reaction to him, when people realise just who he is. In the story of the miraculous catch of fish, the apostle Peter looks at Jesus in wonder and exclaims, "depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

That's the first aspect of God's character - he is holy. He makes us want to run and hide from his sheer relentless goodness. And we can't approach him, or get into a right relationship with him, on our own terms. It has to be on his terms. Take off your shoes, this is holy ground, he says to Moses - in other words, approach me in the way I tell you to.

But a second aspect of God's character is in verses 7 to 9, where we see that, for those who do trust in him and approach him in the right way:

He is Caring and Close to us.

God is not just the God who is out there "watching us, from a distance," as Bette Midler sings. That is the God of Islam, not Christianity. Our God is the God who gets his hands dirty. The God who comes down to his people and lives with them. Verse 7: "The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.' And verse 9, "the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them."

God cares intimately for his creation. His holiness demands that he punish sin. But His love demands that he rescue his people. The Hebrews could do nothing to save themselves from Egypt. So God would rescue them, using Moses as his appointed saviour. In verse 10 he says, "so now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

You see, God's people are no better or more deserving than the Egyptians. As later events show, they are every bit as rebellious to God as Pharaoh. Salvation for them, as it is for us, was by God's sheer undeserved mercy. This mercy would in the end result in God becoming a man in Jesus, and dying for our sins.

We come now to verse 14, where we see the essence of God's being. God is the eternal I am.

Strange isn't it? God already told Moses that he is the God of his ancestors, back in verse 6. So why does Moses want to know his name? Well, names, especially the names of gods, were more significant to the ancients than they are to us. A name told you something about the person. Like Moses, which means "drawn up," because the Egyptian princess drew him up out of the water in the basket.

There may be a more sinister reason the Israelites wanted to know God's name. In pagan religion, to know the name of a god helped you to manipulate that god. By knowing certain secret names, you could use magic to get the god to do what you wanted. The name of the god told you something about his spiritual jurisdiction. Whether he was a storm god, or a sea god, or a god of harvests, and so on. His name, or names, would tell you what area of life he had power over, that you could manipulate.

But the god of the universe is not like man-made gods. He will not play this little game. He is the eternal god. Verse 14: "God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you." God will be who he will be, without the influence of anything in his creation. He exists apart from creation. He is not part of creation. He is not dependent upon creation or the history of human beings. We cannot manipulate him. His essence is defined only by relation to himself. I am who I am.

But the God of eternity is also the God of history who keeps his promises. Verse 15 "God also said to Moses "Say to the Israelites, "the LORD, the God of your fathers - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you."

God does have a name after all. In the NIV translation God's name, Yahweh, is translated as "the LORD" in capital letters. In the Old King James version, it was Jehovah. Yahweh in Hebrew sounds like a contraction of, "I am who I am." It conveys the idea of God's eternity and independence from creation. He has life in himself. When Jesus said, in John 5:26, that the son has life in himself, just as the Father has life in himself, he is identifying himself as Yahweh, the great I am.

Yahweh is the eternal God who acts in history, working for the good of his people Israel. It is his special covenant name.

The last verses of this chapter are a summary of chapters 4 to 11, where God does what he promises here - he punishes Egypt, and delivers his people miraculously from them.

Let me conclude:

The first lesson we learn from Exodus three is that God is Holy and we must approach him in the way he tells us to. He's the boss. We cannot be independent of him.

The New Testament reveals that we approach the Holy God through Christ alone. Not through our goodness, but his. He is the true Saviour that Moses was but a shadow of. Moses was just a man. But Jesus is the God-man. God in the flesh. In Jesus we see perfectly God's holiness and his closeness. The God of eternity, the I am, is the God who enters history. In Jesus, Yahweh came down and rescued his people, not from Egypt, but from death and hell. In John chapter 8, Jesus told the Jews "your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad. The Jews said, "you aren't even 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? "I tell you the truth," Jesus said, "before Abraham was born, I am." Then they tried to stone him, because he was clearly claiming to be the eternal I am, the God of the burning bush.

The Holy God still meets with his people today. You are right now, on Holy Ground. I don't mean the building. I mean, God is here. By His Holy Spirit dwelling in his people as we gather together. It is God's presence that makes our meeting holy, not where we meet. God is present among us whenever we gather in Jesus name. He is here by His Word and His Spirit, therefore when we meet as a church, we are in God's Holy Presence.

Finally, like Moses, God sends us on a rescue mission. I skipped over verses 11 and 12 before. In verse 12, Moses, great saviour that he is, tries to squirm out of it. "Who am I, that I should go?" But God doesn't let him off the hook. And notice the sign he gives him, verse 12: "I will be with you. And this will be the sign that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." BIG DEAL huh?! Some sign. The sign is that when it happens, they'll know God sent him. What's God doing here with Moses? Well he's asking him to trust, isn't he? Like Abraham, like us, all Moses had to go on was the bare word of God.

God has given us the gospel of life. He sends us to rescue people, just like he sent Moses. He says to you, go. And we can't squirm out of it. God does not send angels to people to rescue them with the gospel. He sends weak fallible human beings like you and me. But he promises the same thing he promised to Moses: "Go, I will be with you." He promises that the gospel will change people. Do you want a sign from God so that they will believe he's sent you? Then do what he says, go out and tell people about Jesus, and then you'll see that it's true when they believe the gospel and start worshipping him. Be sold on God. He is who he is.