MEETING GOD
Exodus 3
There is nothing so lonely as being in the wilderness. Perhaps you’ve been there. It is that place where all your dreams have
been shattered, where all your plans have been rendered null and void. It is the dry and thirsty land where God’s
word does not seem to touch you as it once did.
It is that desolate place where the fellowship of God’s people does not
warm you any longer.
If you have been a Christian
for any length of time, then you have probably had your ups and downs. You’ve gone through both the mountaintop as
well as the wilderness experience.
Wilderness experiences tend
to last a long time. At least it feels
like a long time when you are going through it.
The wilderness experience of Moses lasted for forty years. Something happens when you are in the
wilderness for that long. You begin to
get used to it. You become acclimatized
to the wilderness. When God says, “It is
time to leave,” you feel a strange reluctance to go.
This is what happened to
Moses. He got used to being in the
wilderness and when God finally called him to leave,
he came up with five different excuses why he could not go. We will not see all
of those reasons in this chapter. Some
of them will be continued in Exodus 4.
That in itself is a rather striking commentary. We are going to have two entire chapters
devoted to excuses. But before we get to
the excuses, we have an encounter. It is
one of the most striking encounters in history.
It is the encounter between Moses and God.
IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD
1. The
Place of God’s Presence: Now Moses
was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law,
the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the
west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the
|
The name Horebo
is taken from a root meaning, “to be desolate.” |
As
our chapter opens, forty years have passed.
Moses is still working as a shepherd for his father-in-law. He had never set out to obtain his own flocks
like Jacob had done with Laban. I
imagine that Moses was content with the status quo. There had been a time when he saw himself as
the liberator and leader of the Israelites from
It
was in the course of taking the flocks to new pastures that he came to the
west side of the wilderness, that is, the west side of Midian
where it connected to the Sinai peninsula.
The traditional location of Horeb is in the
southern part of the Sinai and there is no good reason to doubt the accuracy of
that tradition.
2. The
Manifestation of God’s Presence: And
the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a
bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush
was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2).
I
don’t believe the bush that Moses saw was anything out of the ordinary. It was one of thousands that dotted the
landscape of that dry land. What was
significant was what was happening to the bush.
It was on fire, yet its leaves were not turning black and its branches
were not being consumed. Had the fire
gone out, there would have been no mark on the bush to tell there had ever been
a fire there.
The
burning bush harkens back to an earlier manifestation of the presence of
God. It was the angel with the flaming
sword that was stationed at the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of
Life. In this case, the fire and the
tree are combined. The tree of life has
become a tree of light.
|
Genesis 3 |
Exodus 3 |
|
The tree of
life |
The bush of the
presence of God |
|
It was guarded
by a cherub with a flaming sword |
It was burning
but was not consumed |
|
The man and the
woman were cast out from the garden because of their sin |
Moses is told
not to draw near and he is required to remove his sandals |
The
tree of life in Genesis 3 represented that from which Adam and Eve and the rest
of the human race were removed. A cherub
was stationed at the entrance of the garden to keep all men away. We also see an angel described with the
burning bush. It is not merely a
cherub. It is the angel of the
Lord. It is the very messenger of God
and his presence signifies the presence of God.
Jesus
is our burning bush. God is described in
the scriptures as a consuming fire, but Jesus is the One who came and who died
in order that we not be consumed.
There
is a lesson here. Moses is going to be
called to return to
What
are you facing that scares you to death?
You can take comfort. God is
still in control and His presence is still available. He has not changed. If you are one of His people, then He who was
manifested in the burning bush has His presence within you.
3. The
Determination to Discover God’s Presence:
So Moses said, "I must turn aside now, and see this marvelous
sight, why the bush is not burned up." (Exodus 3:3).
I
imagine that Moses could have said to himself, “That
is interesting; there is a burning bush.
But I don’t have time for that sort of thing right now. There are sheep to be watched and fed and
watered and the last time I got involved in this sort of thing I was run out of
I
cannot help but to wonder how often the presence of God is made manifest before
us in one way or another, but we do not turn aside to see His hand in our
lives. Have you seen Him and ignored
Him? Make a determination that you are
going to look for His presence when it comes.
You may find out He is already there.
GOD’S REVELATION OF
HIMSELF
In verse 4, God calls to
Moses from the bush. Up to this time,
Moses may have considered this to be merely an unusual physical
phenomenon. Now he is confronted with
the supernatural presence of God.
1. The
God who Knows your Name: 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.” (Exodus 2:4).
As
God speaks to Moses, there is an interesting echo that resounds up and down the
halls of time. We can think of a number
of times when God has done this, each time with the double call of a person’s
name.
“Abraham, Abraham” (Genesis 22:11).
“Jacob, Jacob” (Genesis 46:2).
“Moses, Moses” (Exodus 3:4).
“Samuel, Samuel” (1 Samuel 3:10).
“Saul,
Saul” (Acts 9:4).
The
teaching of Christianity is rooted in the truth that God has spoken to
man. This is not merely an
understandable communication. It is
personal in nature. This is the God who
knows your name. This is the God who has
created you and who knows all about you.
2. The
God of Holy Ground: Then He said, “Do
not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which
you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5).
There
are two commands given here. The first
command was that Moses not draw near: Do not come near here. That is striking because we are told
repeatedly in the New Testament to draw near to God.
Draw
near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:8).
Why
is there a distinction? It is because,
with the coming of Christ, the way has been opened for us to draw near. Hebrews 7:25 says that He is able to save
forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make
intercession for them.
The
second command given here is for Moses to remove his sandals. This was holy ground. That does not mean there was anything special
about the sand and rocks in that particular area of the
What
significance does that have in your life?
It means that, if you are one of God’s people, then you have become holy
ground. This has an impact upon how you
see yourself and how you carry yourself.
Or do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that
you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19).
When
you come to Christ in faith, something tremendous takes place. The Spirit of God comes and takes up
residence inside you. You become
special. You become holy ground. Because of this, nothing is ever the
same. No matter where you go, you are
never truly along. The Spirit of God is
within you. He sets you apart and His
presence means that you must now act differently.
3. The
God of Your Fathers: He said also, “I
am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3:6).
The
significance of the reference to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that God had
promised each of these men that He would take His people out of
This
means that if you are a Christian, then you are part of a tradition. You have not joined a cult that started last
week. You are a part of something that goes
back four thousand years to Abraham. And
it goes back before Abraham to the first ancestor of the human race. And it goes back before that to the eternal
God.
Moses
realized all of this. How do I know
this? I know it because of his reaction
to God’s words. He hid his face because
He was afraid to look at God. He
realized that he was standing before the God of his fathers. His reaction was the same as the reaction of
anyone who has ever found himself in the presence of God. There is coming a day when every knee shall
bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord.
4. The
God who Sees: The LORD said, “I have
surely seen the affliction of My people who are in
God
is not cold and separated in the heavens.
He is not only a consuming fire.
He is also a loving fire. He
relates to your sufferings. The Lord is
the God who sees. He is separate and
distinct from all those deities that were worshiped in
5. The
God who Saves: “So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the
Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to
a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the
Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite” (Exodus
3:8).
The
Lord states His intention to deliver the people of
When
you speak to some professing Christians, you get the idea that they want to be
saved from the consequences of sin, but they do not want to be saved from the
power and from the presence of sin. The
salvation God provides is all-inclusive.
6. The
God who Sends: “Now, behold, the cry
of the sons of
God
does not talk to people merely to satisfy their curiosity. He doesn’t talk to people to impress them or
because He is lonely. He calls them that
they might serve Him. He has called
you. He has given you His word and He
has given you the message of the cross.
He has done this for a reason. He
has done it because He wants you to serve Him.
For we are His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10).
The
reason God saved you is so that you might do good works. It is so that you might serve Him. Is that your purpose in life? If it is not, then it is because you are not
one of His people.
THE RESISTANCE OF MOSES
Robert Deffinbaugh
entitled his sermon on this passage: “Beating around the burning bush.” I rather like that as an accurate description
of the actions of Moses in the rest of this chapter and in all of chapter 4 of
Exodus. As Moses first encountered the
presence of God and heard of God’s plan to deliver
|
Moses’ Excuse |
God’s Answer |
God’s Sign |
|
“I am not qualified” |
“I will be with you” |
“You shall worship God at
this mountain” |
|
“I don’t know enough—I
don’t even know your name” |
“I am that I am” |
“You will plunder the
Egyptians” |
|
“They will not believe me” |
“Throw down your rod” |
“The witness of the signs” |
|
“I am not eloquent” |
“Who made men’s mouths?” |
“I will be your mouth” |
|
“Send someone else” |
“Aaron will go with you” |
“He is coming to meet you” |
Each of these excuses will be
answered by the Lord and each answer will subsequently be followed by a sign
that will assure Moses of the truthfulness of the answer.
11 But Moses said to God,
“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I
should bring the sons of
Someone rather cleverly
entitled this first excuse as “Moses the unknown” and the following excuse in
verse 13 as “God the unknown.” But the
problem of Moses is not that he is unknown.
Rather it was that he is known all too well. He is a wanted man in
Furthermore, Moses hasn’t the
proper credentials. He has not been to
seminary. He does not have a Bible
college degree. He has not taken
Theology 101. It is a common
excuse. There are a lot of Christians
who seem to have the idea that only the pastor can do the work of ministry;
that he is paid to be good while the rest of us are good for nothing. God has an answer to this excuse. It is the answer to all who feel they are
unqualified. It is the argument of His
presence.
Notice that God does not
argue with Moses. He does not say that
Moses is qualified for the job. To the
contrary, He seems to agree with Moses.
Moses is not qualified for the job at hand. That is okay because God always uses
unqualified men.
Look at the disciples of
Jesus. If you were going to start a
corporation whose goal was to change the world, those would be the last twelve
men you would pick to be the top executives.
They were totally unqualified for the job.
God uses unqualified
men. That is the only kind of men He
uses. That is good because it means He
can use me. It means He can use you, too. The only qualification that will be needed is
that God go with him. The presence of
God is the answer to the problem of qualification.
THE NAME OF GOD
13 Then Moses said to God,
“Behold, I am going to the sons of
This is the second objection
of Moses. He points out that he does not
know enough theology to be a spokesman for God.
“Lord, when I get to
The Egyptians had a god for
every event. There were Isis and Ra and
Osiris and Amon and Horus and Ptah. There were literally hundreds of god and
goddesses and each had a different name and a different set of attributes. For Moses to claim that God had sent him
would only bring the question: “Which god sent you?”
He asks the question, “What
is your name? What sets you apart from
all the other gods of
For example, the name
"Jesus" is a Greek rendition of the Hebrew name "Joshua"
and means "Yahweh saves."
Thus, to believe in the name of Jesus is to believe in the saving work
which His name implies (John 1:12; Acts 3:16).
As Moses confronts God, he asks for a name.
God is going to respond, not
with one answer, but with two. The first
will be seen in the phrase in verse 14: “I AM THAT I AM.” Notice in the following chiastic chart that
this reply is given a place of central prominence. It is the central focus of the answer and
placed so as to draw our attention to it.
|
Then Moses said to God,
“Behold, I am going to the sons of |
|
|
|
(1) Now they may say to me, “What is His name?” |
|
|
(2) What shall I say to them? |
|
|
(3) And God said to Moses |
|
|
(X) “I AM WHO I
AM” |
|
|
(3) and He said, |
|
|
(2) Thus you
shall say to the sons of |
|
|
(1) “I AM has
sent me to you.” |
|
And God, furthermore, said
to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘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’” (3:15) |
|
1. “I AM
WHO I AM.”
This
first answer is the repetition of the verb “I AM.” This is the Qal
imperfect of the phrase "to be."
The fact that the imperfect is used means that we could translate this
as “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.” The name
indicates the attribute of continuing existence. He describes Himself as the Continuing God.
1. “THE
LORD” or “YAHWEH.”
It
appears that the Y is preformative to the root
word hayah, the older form and rare synonym of
havah ("to be") which would make it
a 3rd masculine singular Qal imperfect ("HE WILL
BE"). This would be a reference to
the previous phrase "I AM WHO I AM."
|
Dr. Barton Payne
suggests that this is to be taken as a paranomasia,
a play on words rather than an etymology. |
A problem arises in that
YAHWEH is said to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, even though in Exodus 6:3 the Lord says that He was not known to
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the name YAHWEH.
God spake
further to Moses, and said to him, "I am the LORD; 3 and I
appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name, LORD, I
did not make Myself known to them." (Exodus 6:2-3).
As early as Genesis 4:26 we
read that "men began to call upon the name of YAHWEH." There also seem to be references where the
name Yahweh was spoken to Abraham (Genesis 18:14; 22:14). We can surmise one of two possibilities:
This statement indicates that the
Patriarchs had an incomplete understanding of the name and its relation to the
verb which had just recently been revealed in Exodus 3:14.
The name was not emphasized in the days
of the Patriarchs. In favor of this
latter premise, it is noted that, although Yahweh is used often in Genesis, it
USUALLY appears in the midst of a narrative rather than in a place where one of
the Patriarchs is either speaking or is being addressed. On the other hand, Laban is pictured as using
the term Yahweh as he enters into a covenant with Jacob (Genesis 31:49). Indeed, even the mother of Moses has a name
which consists of a compound with Yahweh in its abbreviated form Yah (Jokhebed).
The name Yahweh is further
described in Exodus 3:14-15 as the name of the Lord "forever" and as
His "memorial name to all generations" (Exodus 3:15). The Hebrew text presents this as more of a
parallel:
|
This is My name... |
And |
This way I am to be
remembered... |
|
Forever. |
To generation after
generation. |
Over a thousand years after
Moses, a Galilean rabbi stood in the temple in
THE SUFFICIENCY OF GOD
1. God’s
Sufficient Concern: “Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them,
'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has
appeared to me, saying, “I am indeed concerned about you and what has been done
to you in Egypt.’” (Exodus 3:16).
The
foundation of the message Moses will deliver to the Israelites is in the fact
that God cares. Though they have gone
for hundreds of years without hearing the word of the Lord, He has not
forgotten about them or their plight in
We
need to be assured of God’s love and concern and care for us. 1 Peter 5:7 calls for you to cast all your
anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
2. God’s
Sufficient Promise: So I said, I will
bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite and
the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the
Hivite and the Jebusite, to
a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:17).
God
not only cares, He promises to turn that care into action. He gives a promise that He is going to
deliver the Israelites and bring them into a new land. He makes mention of the land of the
Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite
and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Why does He do this? Because there are some of
the same people that were mentioned when God promised the land to Abraham in
Genesis 15.
3. God’s
Sufficient Worship: They will pay
heed to what you say; and you with the elders of
Moses
and the Israelites are instructed to go to the pharaoh of
This
tells me something about the book of Exodus.
It is a book of deliverance, but it is also a book of worship. God is pictured as being intensely concerned
about worship. Why? Because what you worship
has a great impact upon what you are.
4. God’s
Sufficient Foreknowledge: But I know
that the king of
The
Lord is already aware that the pharaoh of
This
serves as a reminder of the foreknowledge of God. He is never taken by surprise. He knows the end from the beginning and His
plan is set accordingly.
5. God’s
Sufficient Provision: I will grant
this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall be that when you
go, you will not go empty‑handed. 22 But every woman shall ask of her neighbor and the woman who
lives in her house, articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing; and
you will put them on your sons and daughters. Thus you will plunder the
Egyptians. (Exodus 3:21-22).
When
the time comes for the Israelites to depart from the
What
a wonderful picture of the provision of the Lord! He is going to bring the Israelites out of
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