"Burning, Yet Not Consumed" Exodus 3:1-8

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the preaching ministry of the Agopic Baptist Church in George, South Africa.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning, everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a blessing to sing together, is it not?

[SPEAKER_01]: I will admit that I come this morning feeling a little bit cold in my heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit, around the edges, I feel tired.

[SPEAKER_01]: At the beginning of the week, I had the flu.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, it just takes a while to shake that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I can see in the room there are families who are only half here.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have mummies that are home, you have a daddy that's at the hospital right now with a kid with a ear infection, I think.

[SPEAKER_01]: We just, we know that this week has been difficult for families, many families.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the tummy bug is going around.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you come here this morning and you are also feeling a little under the weather, tired, if the better half of you is missing,

[SPEAKER_01]: know that you're not alone, and that we come this morning to rejoice in our Lord to be delighted in God, and I hope you can take that home with you to your family that might not be here, and you can courage them in the faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you would, turn with me to Exodus chapter 3 as we continue our study through this book of the Bible.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: What we've seen so far is that Exodus in the Old Testament was often considered the gospel

[SPEAKER_01]: of the Old Testament, the good news of the Old Testament, where God's people are enslaved, they are in a terrible affliction, if they're in Egypt and God at the very beginning of Exodus, He provides a Redeemer, so what we saw.

[SPEAKER_01]: He provides a Redeemer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we saw following chapters, that God begins to prepare this Redeemer.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's preparing Moses,

[SPEAKER_01]: First, he prepares Moses through 40 years of being raised as an Egyptian prince.

[SPEAKER_01]: So God is using this time to prepare the Redeemer of Israel.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then we saw that Moses, who realized that God was doing something through him, that God was going to use him for the good of his people, Moses then takes things into his own hands.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when no one's looking, he steps in and with his hands, he kills, he murders an

[SPEAKER_01]: His Hebrew, one of his Hebrew brethren.

[SPEAKER_01]: And because of this act, he has to flee Egypt.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has to run into the wilderness and he ends up in Midian.

[SPEAKER_01]: There, God continues to prepare this man.

[SPEAKER_01]: He comes from being one of the princes of Egypt to being a shepherd.

[SPEAKER_01]: He becomes a husband and a father and a lowly shepherd and he's there for 40 more years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to have a chronology of Moses' life, it always helps help me to know that he was a prince in Egypt for 40 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was a shepherd in Midian in the wilderness for 40 years, and then God used him in leading Israel for 40 years in the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_01]: That really is the timeline of Moses' life and we're told he dies at 120 years old.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this morning,

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to come back to Moses here when he is 80 years old.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is at the end of God's time of preparing Moses to lead, and we're going to see how God steps in and he says, Moses, it's time to leave off being a shepherd of sheep.

[SPEAKER_01]: To leave this wilderness behind and to go and lead my people, the sheep of God, to lead them to Mount Sinai.

[SPEAKER_01]: to lead them out of Egypt to sign up.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we're going to read about this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to begin reading an Exodus chapter 2 verse 23 for context.

Exodus 2:23

[SPEAKER_01]: Just the end of that chapter.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then we'll read about how God steps into Moses' life visibly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exodus 2 verse 23.

Exodus 2:23

[SPEAKER_01]: During those many days, the king of Egypt died, this as well, Moses is in Midian, those 40 years as a shepherd.

[SPEAKER_01]: During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel grown because of their slavery and cried out for help.

[SPEAKER_01]: The cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham with Isaac and with Jacob, God saw the people of Israel and God knew.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter three verse one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father in La Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to horrible the mountain of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight by the bush is not burned.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, here I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then he said, do not come near.

[SPEAKER_01]: Take your sandals off your feet for the place on which your standing is holy ground.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Moses, hit his face for he was afraid to look at God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and I have heard their cry because of their task masters, I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

[SPEAKER_01]: to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Emirites, the Parasites, the Hivites, and the Jebite sites.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's stop there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to Lord and Prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Heavenly Father, I pray that you will give us eyes to see and ears to hear this morning and that as we see and hear that we will be filled with joy and hope in our great God,

[SPEAKER_01]: that you will give us courage to face another week in this world with all of its parals and troubles, heartaches and disappointments, sickness, death, that you'll give us courage to face another week and Lord that you'd give us boldness to speak to others about the hope that is truly within us.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Jesus name, amen.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we study about this bush that is burning, it is not consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fire of Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at when Moses is 120 years old, all the way at the end of his life, Israel is about to cross over the Jordan in just a couple days, but Moses is not being allowed to cross over.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's about to die, and he looks back over his life.

[SPEAKER_01]: He warns Israel saying, the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is part of his summation of his last words to Israel in Deuteronomy.

[SPEAKER_01]: His summation is the where, be very careful.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was Moses' impression after 40 years of dwelling in the presence of the fire of Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our passage today describes the very first time that Moses felt the terror of the fire of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we see here at the burning bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: The very first time he feels this terror of God's fire.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the book of Genesis, so before this, God had revealed himself as fire to previous generations.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's justice is demonstrated by fire when He drove Adam and Eve out of the garden.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're told that a flaming sword was placed to the east of the garden to guard the tree of life.

[SPEAKER_01]: a flaming sword.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was a picture of God's judgment, a justice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if anyone tried to force their way back to the tree of life, they would die by the flaming sort of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: God reveals himself also by fire when he made his covenant with Abraham.

[SPEAKER_01]: God is said to pass through the covenant sacrifices represented as smoke and fire as representation

[SPEAKER_01]: And then God's judgment is revealed on Sodom and Gomorrah through fire, raining down from heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's God's judgment falling.

[SPEAKER_01]: So His justice has been revealed as fire, His faithfulness to His promises or His presences revealed as fire and smoke, and His judgment is revealed by fire from heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, here in Exodus 3,

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord calls to Moses from a bush that is burning, yet is not consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like the bush, there's nothing special about the bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: The bush is just a, just just dried out, but yet living with some green, probably leaves on it, bush in the wilderness, but the fire is inside the bush, but it's not harming the bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: The bush is on fire, is filled with fire.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the fire is independent of the bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not getting its fuel from the bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: The bush is nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fire is self-sustaining.

[SPEAKER_01]: At first, Moses is curious.

[SPEAKER_01]: But his curiosity quickly turns to terror when the Lord warns Moses not to come any closer because the ground he is standing on is holy ground where it's told Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God, he is terrified, he hides his face, he doesn't want to die.

[SPEAKER_01]: The concept of fearing to look upon God is consistent throughout the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: If someone realized they were speaking to God, they usually fear instant death due to coming too close to the holiness of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is actually a good and reasonable fear.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Exodus 33 verse 20, the Lord tells Moses, you cannot see my face for men shall not see me and live.

Exodus 33:20

[SPEAKER_01]: God says there is the every good reason to fear me.

[SPEAKER_01]: for if you see my face, if you see me, you will die.

[SPEAKER_01]: God has spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't contain by a body.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he uses the word face.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you can't see my face or if you see me in that way, you will die.

[SPEAKER_01]: But God has another body.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the idea of seeing the face of God would to be to look full on with unveiled eyes at the all-consuming glory of God and no human being can survive the heat of his presence, of looking upon his presence, of experiencing his presence in that way.

[SPEAKER_01]: They simply cannot fall in human beings, cannot come into the presence of God in this way and survive they will die.

[SPEAKER_01]: God is dangerous.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the Old Testament reveals over and over again, that God is dangerous.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is, in fact, the most dangerous being in existence.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wild animals, tornadoes, hurricanes, evil rulers, demons, and the devil himself all have levels of danger.

[SPEAKER_01]: but their danger is limited by the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: They cannot harm us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those things cannot touch us, unless the Lord grants them enough leash.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for God's children, those who believe in Him who have confessed the name of Jesus, who are born again and belong to God as part of His family, as God's children, the Lord has promised that all these other terrors in the world they will have an end.

[SPEAKER_01]: There will be a day when they end for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in this life, He has promised that every temptation that comes upon us.

[SPEAKER_01]: He will provide a way of escape.

[SPEAKER_01]: So whether it's an evil in our life or a temptation, it will have an end, there will be a way of escape.

[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, all other dangers and existence are on a divine leash.

[SPEAKER_01]: They will end, and God will provide a way of escape for His people.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are limited.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, but if you despise the Lord, if you send against Him with a high and proud hand, if I refuse to repent when convicted by His spirit,

[SPEAKER_01]: then there is no leash on God.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no leash on God.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way of escape from the holiest God.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way of escape and there is no leash on the consuming fire of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is jealous for his glory among everything that he has made, and he will not be mocked by humanity forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: God truly is the most dangerous being in existence.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no leash on him.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no way of escape from him if you refuse the conviction of his spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: and continue in sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no escape.

[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, the fire of Yahweh is rightly to be feared by fallen humanity.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is clear throughout the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you come to the end of Scripture in Revelation and throughout the Gospels and the New Testament, I know that the message of love is clear and that the way of escape is painted clearly

[SPEAKER_01]: But what is also clear is that God is dangerous and to be feared if you continue to sin against him without repentance and faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: But how is Moses going back to our passage?

[SPEAKER_01]: How is Moses able to survive seeing, hearing, and being so close to God without instant death?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is a good question.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord speaks to Him, He's seeing the fire of Yahweh, how has He not died?

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a question that we can ask many times throughout the Scriptures when God appears to men.

[SPEAKER_01]: How is Moses able to survive this experience?

[SPEAKER_01]: While our passage tells us, this is a hint of how he's able to survive.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our passage speaks of the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord being the one that is appearing to Moses.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the one who's making it possible for Moses to see, hear, and feel the warmth of the glory of God, and yet live.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is the angel of the Lord that appeared to Moses in the burning bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then the rest of the remainder of the passage makes it clear that the Lord is in the fire has caused the ground to be holy by his mere presence and is the one speaking.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you just stop and think for a second, you might ask the question, which is it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this the angel of the Lord?

[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking visible, or is this Yahweh speaking visible?

[SPEAKER_01]: Which is it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's helpful to remember that the word angel simply means messenger or could also mean sent one, sent with a message.

[SPEAKER_01]: The one who brings a message.

[SPEAKER_01]: So based on context, the word may mean a created angelic bean, it often means that in the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: a created angelic being which serves God from heaven, or this word angel could mean a human messenger, it's used that way, a couple times, or as I believe is the case here, it could simply mean the messenger, the messenger.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in this passage it would be the messenger of the

[SPEAKER_01]: The messenger of the Lord will show up and begin speaking as the Lord Himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when He speaks and He appears, people identify Him.

[SPEAKER_01]: They recognize Him as the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yet the messenger of the Lord seems also to be distinct.

[SPEAKER_01]: This hurts our minds.

[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of Scripture will look back at Exodus and describe the messenger of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking from the bush, saving Israel from Egypt, giving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and leading Israel through the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_01]: It will speak of the Angel of the Lord in this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: One example is from Isaiah 63, verse 9, something for you to go back and look at later.

Isaiah 63:9

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I had never seen this passage in this way before.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had never contemplated this passage.

[SPEAKER_01]: in this way about the messenger of the Lord or the messenger of Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Isaiah 63 verse 9, Isaiah looks back at Egypt and the Bush and what's happening with the angel of the Lord.

Isaiah 63:9

[SPEAKER_01]: And he says about this, Isaiah says, calls him the angel of Yahweh's presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was a beautiful thought to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: The messenger of Yahweh's presence, or the one who brings God Yahweh's presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: The identity of the angel of Yahweh was difficult for the Jews to explain.

[SPEAKER_01]: The struggle to explain this.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I believe the identity of this messenger of Yahweh is revealed in the opening words of John's gospel.

[SPEAKER_01]: So John, chapter 1, verse 1, I believe he reveals this.

John 1:1

[SPEAKER_01]: Now if you're not fully convinced after today, that is fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Keep studying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Keep exploring the scriptures that I am convinced that John, chapter 1, verse 1, speaks of the messenger of Yahweh.

John 1:1

[SPEAKER_01]: And John 1, 1, he says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt like my eyes were open when I first came across this explanation for the messenger of Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because if he is the message of Yahweh coming into the world, could we not say he is the word of Yahweh, the one who was with God, and is God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I believe there is a strong connection.

[SPEAKER_01]: between the angel of the Lord and the Word that was with God and was God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I believe this is how the messenger of the Lord and the Old Testament can speak as God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Go look back through that passage.

[SPEAKER_01]: It tells us the angel of the Lord appeared and starts speaking as God himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other angels, Gabriel, Michael, they don't speak as the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: They come and says, the Lord, they come and say to people, the Lord has sent me, this is what the Lord wants, this is what the Lord wants you to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I stand before His presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's how angels typically speak.

[SPEAKER_01]: Only the angel of the Lord comes and starts speaking as if he is yaway himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I believe this is how,

[SPEAKER_01]: we can understand the messenger of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: How he can speak as God, be honored as God and demand obedience as God, because he has always been the Word of God who is with God and is God as John says.

[SPEAKER_01]: John then explains that the Word who never had a beginning who has always been with God and is God, that this Word became flesh.

[SPEAKER_01]: and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: Glorious of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the one we call Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: John wraps up his identification of Jesus as the Word of God by saying in John 18, no one has ever seen God.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one has.

[SPEAKER_01]: No one has ever seen God.

[SPEAKER_01]: God the only son who is at the father's side, he has made him known.

[SPEAKER_01]: When Moses looks at the burning bush, feels the heat, and hears the Lord speak.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is experiencing the glory of God through a gracious intermediary, the messenger of the Lord, who I am convinced is the word of the Lord, God the Son who makes God known.

[SPEAKER_01]: this is the grace and mercy of the dangerously holy God.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we saw.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is dangerous.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen in just recent weeks.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is dangerously holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: But his grace and mercy since his son has intermediary.

[SPEAKER_01]: To stand between God's people and God's all-consuming holiness, making it possible for sinners to approach God to see here and feel the joyful warmth of his glory in the earth without being consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's look further at the favor of Yahweh in this passage.

[SPEAKER_01]: in a way that Moses can, can feel him, see him, speak to him, but yet without being consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also in this passage, we're given a hint about eternal life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you read back through that passage, like I did at first, I don't see anything about eternal life in there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think once about eternal life, when I read through Exodus 3, the first time I was going through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Jesus Himself will look back to this burning bush scene and use it as proof that God loves his people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Those who come to Him in faith, humility in faith, God loves His people so much that He grants them eternal life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus points back to this in Luke 20 for 37.

[SPEAKER_01]: There, he's correcting the Sadducees.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's religious people who denied there was an afterlife.

[SPEAKER_01]: They thought you just lived and died.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's many in George today who believe that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have this life, you've got one life to live.

[SPEAKER_01]: The grave?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the Sadducees believed.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Jesus corrects them in Luke 20.

[SPEAKER_01]: Saying,

[SPEAKER_01]: But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the Bush.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we just read in Exodus 3, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living for all live to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus says, plainly, that God has granted life to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob beyond the grave.

[SPEAKER_01]: And not only these patriarchs, but all his people have found eternal life in him.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's favorite towards his people means that he sins his word to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: He promises life to his people if they will believe and follow him.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord goes further in our passage to describe His favor towards His people.

[SPEAKER_01]: First, look with me back at Exodus 2, 23, there at the very end of that chapter, 223.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help, they cried for rescue from slavery came up to God and God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob, God saw the people of Israel and God knew.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you heard those words.

[SPEAKER_01]: and you're suffering an Egypt, but you heard those words, it would fill you with hope.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if I was an Egyptian living in Egypt at that point, and I knew that the God of the Israelite saw her new, remembered that is coming in with this people, and the way it ends, God saw the people of Israel and God knew

[SPEAKER_01]: I would be shaking with fear, if I was an Egyptian, and I believed this was true.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then again, in Exodus 3, or 7 through 8, God repeats the same words.

[SPEAKER_01]: God says the Moses, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their task masters, I know their sufferings.

[SPEAKER_01]: and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Isaiah, that passage that talks about the angel of his presence, it hints before that that God in some way, in all of Israel's sufferings in Egypt, says that He suffered with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: It tormented God as they were tormented.

[SPEAKER_01]: We struggle to, how is that possible?

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the level of His care and love for His people that as His people suffer, God in some mysterious way, He grones with pain and His being.

[SPEAKER_01]: Somehow, I'm not claiming to be able to explain how that works.

[SPEAKER_01]: But God loves His people so much that as we suffer, He says, I feel your pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not as someone who's just looking on from above from heaven, just looking at us, suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know you're suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just hang on there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just what he's saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying I know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know your pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see, I see, I hear, I have come down to deliver.

[SPEAKER_01]: 20 says in Exodus 3-8.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've come down to deliver and to bring them up out of that land.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord hears, sees, knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: He remembers his promises, and he comes down to deliver and bring up out of the land of affliction.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a powerful description of the favor of God towards his people, no other God made by man's invention care so much for human beings, no other God.

[SPEAKER_01]: They see, they might know, they might be able to save.

[SPEAKER_01]: But our God does.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: To the degree that He says, I feel your pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know it to that degree, and I have come down to deliver.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will bring you up out of the land of affliction.

[SPEAKER_01]: for the Lord doesn't stop with only promising to deliver us from evil or from pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just, I'm going to rescue you up out of pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't stop there.

[SPEAKER_01]: He also promises to bring them into a good land, a land beyond their ability to attain.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's two emphasis here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Things he's emphasizing.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying, this land, I'm gonna bring you to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so good it's beyond your ability to attain.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to bring them into a land.

[SPEAKER_01]: He promises to bring them into a land currently occupied by warriors, fierce warriors, by fortresses, by giants.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the listing of those people's names are all about.

[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone knew anything about the Middle East and that time, about Cainan and about these people groups, they would know they are fierce warriors, they hide behind fortresses and they are a land of giants.

[SPEAKER_01]: These people listed.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a land beyond their ability to attain.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it is a good land.

[SPEAKER_01]: A land were told with farms and vineyards, which others tiled and planted, a land where kings and empires have fought over and would fight over later as well due to how coveted it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: God was going to grant all this to trembling, weak slaves.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what's going on here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Israel is not a mighty people, not the most numerous, not the wisest.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were an oppressed people who had been slaves for generations.

[SPEAKER_01]: That does something to people when they are slaves for generations.

[SPEAKER_01]: It breaks, often, they're will to fight even or to stand up.

[SPEAKER_01]: God was going to grant all these things to trembling

[SPEAKER_01]: weak slaves, if they would believe in him and follow him, this is the favor of Yahweh, for his people revealed in our passage all the way back in the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Christian, think with me for a second, this is an about a history lesson.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is an biblical history lesson because God

[SPEAKER_01]: has written and recorded all of these things to instruct and inform us about his favor for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the favor of God for you, Christian, toward you, Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you doubt that God loves you or cares about you as much as he did the Israelites,

[SPEAKER_01]: and you have yet to grasp a fraction of his love for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord sees your pain.

[SPEAKER_01]: He hears your cries for help.

[SPEAKER_01]: He knows intimately your sufferings.

[SPEAKER_01]: And every moment of every day, he remembers his covenant to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: because it's a covenant in the blood of his son Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: How could he forget?

[SPEAKER_01]: How could he for one moment, I think, about the covenant he has made to you for you are in Christ Jesus, washed by the blood of Jesus to inherit in his son Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: He sees, he hears, he knows,

[SPEAKER_01]: You and you are suffering not because of you are something marvelous to look up on or because I am something so mighty or because you are so holy that is not why He remembers his covenant to you because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ and whom you stand is beloved son Paul tells us in Romans 832

[SPEAKER_01]: about God, saying, He, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he, the Lord, not also with him, Jesus graciously give us all things, all things, all good things.

[SPEAKER_01]: He will.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's asking a question with the obvious answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord sees, he knows, he remembers, he will give us all good things.

[SPEAKER_01]: The always favor has extended so far to us.

[SPEAKER_01]: that he sent his own son, not as another burning bush or as a flame of fire to follow through this life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Many of us sometimes mistakenly believe it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would be better.

[SPEAKER_01]: If only I could see the burning bush, then I would know my life would just be sorted and I would know what to do with my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or if only I could follow the flame of fire through the wilderness of this world, then life would be so much better.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is a mistake.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a mistake.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's grace has poured out more in the sinning of His Son to take on human flesh, to be a man who would brightly burn as the presence of God in the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's who Jesus was as he walked around in your own earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was in the body of a man and he had taken on flesh is what the scripture's tell us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Taken on flesh born as a man by the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this was a man who brightly burned as the presence of God in the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: What?

[SPEAKER_01]: How much greater is that grace?

[SPEAKER_01]: How much greater is the glory of that?

[SPEAKER_01]: When the humble obedient, wonder-working, truth-speaking, crucified, and risen Jesus stands before His disciples, they know.

[SPEAKER_01]: They know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thomas falls down in proclaims, my Lord and my God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when this Jesus,

[SPEAKER_01]: When He is told about when He speaks through us, He is like a burning bush set on a hill that is never consumed.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's who Jesus is right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a burning bush set on a hill that is never consumed and it is His light which

[SPEAKER_01]: in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the only God who grants ever lasting life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when we believe in Jesus, we're not commanded to keep our distance like Moses was commanded.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the burning bush, he says, don't come any closer, let's you die.

[SPEAKER_01]: Take off your shoes, this is holy ground.

[SPEAKER_01]: Be careful, Moses.

[SPEAKER_01]: Be careful.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not commanded to keep our distance from the dangerous heat of God's presence.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, for all those who repent and believe, the presence of Yahweh then comes and dwells in us, we're told.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Moses is here.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's presence is there.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't dare look at it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's afraid.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's filled with terror.

[SPEAKER_01]: That will be the story of the wilderness and Sinai, fear, terror of the presence and fire of God and rightly so.

[SPEAKER_01]: But for Christians.

[SPEAKER_01]: For those in the new covenant, the grace of God has been poured out even more so that now, the presence of God when we come to Him in humility and faith, the presence of God approaches us.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says, come near and God says, I am coming and I will in dwell you through my Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fire of God is burning in every Christian.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do we grieve his Holy Spirit sometimes?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can we quench the Holy Spirit by pouring buckets of sin in our way we live our daily life?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Will he ever permanently, or not permanently will he ever be fully extinguished in the life of a truly born again believer?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, not fully.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're wondering, why am I not feeling the burning presence of God in my soul?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why did I feel that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I feel so weak and helpless every single day?

[SPEAKER_01]: Even though God is burning inside of me, a spirit is alive in me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: One reason.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're still trying to live this life in our own muscles and wisdom and understanding.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have it become to him and said, Lord, fill me, Lord, use me, Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just make the flames be stoked as I read the word and pray and come to you in faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we come to the word and faith, as we believe, as we trust in the Lord, and we lay our grief and our sorrows down at his feet and we hand over our heavy weights to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like stoking the fire of the Holy Spirit that burning in us so that he can fill us so that he can strengthen us.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we can have peace during pain, it's by the spirit of God within us as we stoke him into flame through the means of grace God has given us.

[SPEAKER_01]: My friends, we can cry.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are many good reasons to cry.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been talking with my daughters a little bit about that this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can we cry?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there ever a permitted reason to cry?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: There can be many tears of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tears where we sorrow yet not without hope like the rest of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we can have endurance through suffering.

[SPEAKER_01]: When we suffer, we cry out to God in the hope and we endure by the Spirit that is within us.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we can have boldness though we are weak.

[SPEAKER_01]: My friends, I felt so weak this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: Week, this week, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt so weak.

[SPEAKER_01]: Unit able to stand up and proclaim the glories of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some weeks I don't feel that way, I feel a little bit stronger, but every moment of every day of every month it is true about all of us that none of us are able or strong enough to proclaim the glories of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nor are our minds

[SPEAKER_01]: broad enough and deep enough to understand all of the glories of God revealed in Scripture.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have but began to swim around on the edges of the oceans of God's glory in the depths of who he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this week I felt it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yet through the Holy Spirit and trusting in Him and crying out to Him to give a strength

[SPEAKER_01]: as he gives a strength.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, as we think about the burning bush on in horror, which is actually Mount Sinai, it's another name for it.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we think about the burning bush, let us all this week determine to approach the Lord, calling on Him to pour out His favor on us though we are weak.

[SPEAKER_01]: trusting in Him that He will give us joy, peace, hope, endurance, and boldness to proclaim His goodness to others, because if we're not proclaiming His goodness in the earth, then we're missing out on one of the greatest joys God has for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: The joy of seeing someone else is eyes fill up with a light of God's presence, where they see and taste and hear about God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The dangerous fire of his holiness, that God has given us the privilege to approach and faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pray together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word.

[SPEAKER_01]: May you bless your people as we consider your promises, help us, Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are weak and we are prone to wonder.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are prone to doubt your promises were prone to disbelief.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are prone to believe that the solutions of this world and the wisdom of this world

[SPEAKER_01]: and what you've written in your word, what you've revealed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Forgive us, Lord, for that doubt and unbelief, and would you please, Lord, grant us boldness as we proclaim the goodness of God, towards us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We ask all these things in Jesus' name.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.