Exodus 3:1–15 (NKJV)
Moses at the Burning Bush
3 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. 2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”
4 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.”
5 Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” 6 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.
7 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. 8 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. 9 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 oppress them. 10 Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
13 Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”
14 And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” 15 Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’
I don’t usually post my manuscript because I do not strictly tie myself to it, but here it is. If you appreciate this, let me know. If nobody responds, I’ll probably not do it for very long. Thanks!
Proper 27c, 2022 - Exodus 3:1-15 - Who am I? Who is I AM?
Rev. Nicholas Schultz
Pentecost / Exodus 3:1–15; Psalm 148; 2 Thessalonians 2:1–8; 2 Thessalonians 2:13–17; Luke 20:27–40
Grace and peace to you in the name of Christ Jesus. Amen.
This week, I saw a poll that was done in April 2021. It reported at least 57% of people surveyed in the US are searching for meaning and purpose in their lives. 21% think about this on a daily basis and an additional 21% ponder it on at least a weekly basis. 59% agreed with the statement, “I have found a higher purpose and meaning for my life.”
These sorts of big questions are questions that everyone must wrestle with and ultimately, these questions are all tied to the questions Moses asks in our text this morning.
Who am I?
Who is God?
What is my purpose?
Hopefully, you know a bit about the story of Moses’s life before he meets the mysterious Angel of the Lord in the region of Horeb, at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He is a Hebrew boy, born under slavery and under a death sentence. Pharaoh, worried that his Hebrew slaves would rebel against him ordered all newborn boys to be murdered. Moses’s mother and older sister, Miriam, saw to it that Moses would not fall to this fate. Eventually, Moses ends up in the care of Pharaoh’s house because Pharaoh’s daughter took mercy upon him. In Acts 7, we learn that Moses learned the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deeds.
When Moses turned 40, he murdered an Egyptian slave master who was beating with one of his Hebrew brethren. When Moses learned that this was widely known amongst the Hebrews, he fled from Pharaoh to Midian. Midian is that area just to the east of the Sinai Peninsula. There he met his future wife at a well, which, apparently, is where you go to meet women. That is where Isaac Rebekah. That is where Jacob found Rachel. Even Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. Anyway, Moses marries Zipporah, and they have a son named Gershom.
Now, 40 years after fleeing Egypt, at the age of 80, Moses is tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro and Moses is far from home. He is in the area of Horeb which is on the Sinai Peninsula and he comes to Mt. Sinai, the mountain of God. Something truly amazing happens there. The Angel of the LORD… literally, The Messenger of Yahweh appears to Moses in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. But the bush was not consumed by the fire.
When God calls Moses, Moses has had quite a life already. His life had not turned out probably how he thought it was going to turn out when he was 20. It was definitely different than what he thought when he was 40. I imagine Moses had settled into his new life with his family and shepherding the flocks. We don’t know if he was content or restless. But what we do know is that he had a few questions for God.
His first question for God is, “Who am I?”
God says to Moses in verse 10 that He is going to send Moses to Egypt to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt. Remember, Israel went to Egypt during the days of Joseph. Jacob and his sons sought food from Egypt because of the famine that had gripped the land and when they got there, Joseph, the son and brother who was sold into slavery was in charge. So in 1876 BC, Jacob moved his family to the land of Goshen in Egypt where they were given good grazing land and they did well. But then a new Pharaoh came to the throne who did not remember Joseph and the family of Jacob, which had grown quite a bit, was enslaved. Under slavery, the people of Israel grew in number even more. They were quite a host by this time!
Moses knew this. He knew his past in Egypt. He was a murderer. He was a coward.
Sin has a remarkable transformational power on the mind and body of people. A friend of mine, Pastor Travis Berg succinctly says it this way: “Sin makes you dumb.” Sin shapes and molds who we are and what we think of ourselves. Take Moses as an example. As a young man, Moses is described as being, “Mighty in words and deeds.” There are some biblical scholars who, based on Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7, believed that Moses likely was a commander of Pharaoh’s armies and won many battles. He was confident, wise, and mighty with words.
But now, he is uncertain and he is not confident in his ability to speak before Pharaoh or lead a group of people. In chapter 4:1 Moses says, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, “The LORD has not appeared to you.” Moses is worried he will come across as if he were out of his mind. Then later in verse 10 he says, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
The more we sin the more our sins shapes us. Remember a few weeks ago we heard about Cain and Abel? After Cain murdered Abel, what was Cain afraid of???? Being murdered. Perhaps the best example of this from the Bible is David. David was a poet, a musician, a handsome and confident man who led armies and ruled over his kingdom with tremendous wisdom. Then he lusted after another man’s wife, committed adultery, tried to cover it up, murdered the man, and made others do it. After that point, David is not the same man. His kingdom and his family are in shambles. One of his sons rebels against him and usurps his throne and David can do nothing to stop it.
Medical scientists have been able to look at brain scans to see that when people are addicted to something, whatever it is: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, sex, pornography, scrolling on social media, watching tv, lashing out in anger at your spouse, your kids, your parents… so many things can go in there… when people are addicted to something brain scans show that the brain rewires itself. You brain is hijacked by dopamine. Your brain actually stops using pathways of nerve connections to other parts of the brain and what might seem to start out as a choice, whether to partake in a particular activity or not, becomes a prison.
In order to have the same release of dopamine, which gives you that good feeling when you do something, you have to go farther than you have before. That is why people progress from one drug to a harder drug. That is why people go from occasionally thinking, to obsessing, to actually doing what they know is wrong.
Sins of transgression (as opposed to sins of omission) works this way. Whether it is an addiction or a habitual sin, or maybe a one-time thing, there is a spiritual shock that happens when you sin, whether it be in thought, word, or deed. One way how the scriptures talk about this in 2 Timothy is that your conscience is seared or cauterized. It loses its sensitivity, and your conscience does not work as it should. It is a sort of spiritual scar tissue. Sin leaves its mark.
Sin’s power to shape your thoughts, your spirit, and even your body shouldn’t be surprising. We absorb the things around us. That is why the apostle admonishes Christians to surround ourselves with good things. Philippians 4:8 “8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”
The second question Moses asks is, “Who are you, God?” Who is God?
God reveals who he is to Moses in Exodus 3. And really, Exodus 3 is a passage that sort of sets the stage for all of history. God describes himself first as one who makes things holy. As Moses approaches the Angel of the Lord, he tells him to remove his sandals. The ground isn’t holy in and of itself. The ground is cursed, going back to the Garden of Eden. But this ground is made holy because of the presence of God.
This Angel of the Lord is God himself. Because God speaks through this messenger, most Bible teachers going back to the church fathers in the ancient church teach that the Angel of the Lord is Jesus, pre-incarnate. Yes, Jesus was born of Mary around 2-3 BC, but Jesus, the Son of God is eternal. The Gospel of John says that Jesus was there at creation and all things that were made were made through Him.
Then God goes on to describe who he is in history. Not only does he make things holy, He is the same God of Moses’s ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the God of Moses’s people. Even though Moses is far from his people God was not far off.
It would have been very tempting for Moses and Israel to believe God had abandoned his people. Jacob went to Egypt 430 years before. God’s people had been enslaved for generations.
But God had not forgotten his people. God takes an active interest in His people.
He sees them. He sees how they are treated by the Egyptians.
He hears them. He has heard their cries.
He understands them. He knows their sorrows.
Because God is a God who sees, hears, and knows what his people are facing, he comes down to deliver them. God reveals who he will be in the future.
That is who God is, he is a God who delivers his people from bondage. Not only does he remove them from their bondage but then he gives them good things. He gives them good land with plenty of room. And he gives Moses purpose when he says, “I will send you.”
When Moses falters and says, “Who am I that I should go?” God reveals himself to be not only a God who sends but the God who goes with you. Moses didn’t know all that he would face, but God promised to be with him whatever would come.
When Moses asks what God’s name is, God says to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
It is interesting to note that our Bibles often translate God’s response in all capital letters. The reason why is that there is an important play on words that is happening here and a couple different things we can learn about God from what he says.
The word for, “I AM,” in Hebrew is the exact same word in verse 14 as what God says in verse 12 when he says, “I will certainly be with you.” In the ESV and NASB translations, they put a footnote here that is helpful that says this can be translated as, “I will be who I will be.” The reason why is because ehyeh is an incomplete action. That means it can have a future tense idea to it like it does in verse 12.
There is a lot that can be said about this, but suffice it for this morning to say, what I believe God is doing here is saying to Moses, “What you need to know about me is what I am going to do. I’ll show you who I am by my work to rescue my people Israel from Egypt.”
There is also a connection between what God says in verse 14 and the name he uses for himself in verse 15. In verse 15, he uses his Divine Name: Yahweh. That name is based on the same verb, that God uses when he says, “I AM WHO I AM.” You can think of “I AM WHO I AM” as an explanation of the Divine Name: Yahweh. And we didn’t read it this morning, but what follows in verses 16-22 and really all of Exodus as an explanation of I AM WHO I AM.
In short, who is God? He is the only God, the God who rescues His people. God rescues us.
The last question which Moses doesn’t ask explicitly but which we begin to see the answer in our text is “What is my purpose?”
Perhaps a clearer way to ask the question is, “Since God has rescued me, what is His purpose for me?”
Israel was in bondage. Moses’ past and the way how his sin had affected him had created a sort of prison. He was estranged from his family and from his people. Maybe you feel imprisoned by your sin. Perhaps you see yourself somewhere on that path of going further and further down the line from thoughts, to obsession, to actualization of your sin.
God’s purpose for Israel is that she would be free from her bondage in slavery. God’s purpose for Moses is that he would be free from the bondage of his past sin. And God’s purpose for you is that you would be free from your sin as well, no matter how big and consequential. That is why God came down in Exodus 3 to speak to Moses from the burning bush. That Israel and Moses would be free.
And that is why Jesus came down, that you would be free. Christ provides you with freedom from your sin, freedom from death, and freedom from the power of the devil. Paul writes: Romans 8:2 “2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Christ has provided you with a great liberation from the forces that hold you fast in their grasp. He brings genuine freedom.
This freedom came at a cost, but that cost has been wholly paid by Christ himself upon the cross. He entered our fallen world and was subjected to the sentence of your sin and suffered sins’ punishment in your place. When you believe in Jesus and that His death and resurrection was for you, you are completely free, and “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
He has accomplished this freedom for you. This freedom is not a sort of absolute freedom to live however you want to, but rather to live as God wills. God designed you to live and flourish and he shows us how in his commands. We are to live, 1 Peter 2:16 “as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.”
And that is Your purpose: to live how God would have us live. To live in the way that our creator has designed us to live. You have been given freedom and new life to live while loving, worshiping, and praising Him, and serving Him by loving and serving our neighbors. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
2,537 words (21 minutes)
