Exodus: A Burning Bush and a Spoken Word

So we are working our way through the book of Exodus, the Exodus story, which is a story about the rescue of God's people, which have ended up in Egypt.

Exodus is the second book of the Bible.

But even more so, it's the by the biblical story in one book.

Genesis gives us this background that works us into Exodus.

And Exodus is this great story about God's people being in slavery and God rescuing them.

And it treats in one book the whole Bible, we can see it.

And so it's constantly filled with picture after picture after picture of what God is doing throughout the scriptures and what he is going to do in the person of Jesus.

So what we have in this story is we have uh we talked about the Hebrews, we have God's people in Egypt, and last week we talked about how they are making bricks.

They are slaves, they have quotas, they're being beaten if they don't live up to the quota, and they are living and making brick after brick after brick.

But if you remember, just to review a little bit, they're also making baby after baby after baby.

I guess just really healthy marriages going on, and so they are multiplying, they are growing, and this slowly it just becomes more and more of a fear within Pharaoh because he's just thinking more and more and more, all right, we have them, we have them enslaved, but man, they could turn against us and they keep growing.

And so finally he says, you know what?

Let's just figure out a way for to stop this.

He's okay, let's just throw all the baby boys when they're born, throw them into the river.

Kill the baby boys, right?

Like just like just start to stop the population.

Well, there's this one little boy that's born, and this one mama who's not going to do that, and she decides she's not gonna do that, and so she nurses her baby and she hides her baby, but eventually the baby's just getting to the point where she knows she can't continue to hide the baby, and so she puts that baby boy in the reeds by the river, little basket, wraps him up, and the sister of the baby boy hides out, like nearby, and then Pharaoh's daughter comes down, so the king of the land, his daughter comes down to bathe.

She finds the baby boy, she has sympathy for the baby boy, and she says, Oh my gosh, I gotta do something about this.

And then here comes sister, remember the story?

Sister comes along, and sister says, Hey, can I help you out?

What'd you find?

And then Pharaoh's daughter says, Hey, do you know a Hebrew woman who could possibly nurse this baby?

And the sister's going, Oh, I think I could find somebody, my mom who's also the baby's mom.

She doesn't say that, but so she's thinking.

So, mama now is nursing her own baby into childhood.

That child who becomes named Moses, he goes into Pharaoh's house.

He's raised in Pharaoh's house, and we know the story, we talked about it last week, I'm just kind of catching you up.

Uh he grows up, and when he's an adult, he's out one day and he sees uh one of his people, one of his Hebrew people, being beaten by an Egyptian.

And he just sort of snaps.

And he hits the guy, and then he pounds the guy, and he beats the guy, and he kills the guy, and he buries the guy.

And he's probably hoping this is gonna pass by.

Like, not many, like maybe one or two people saw this, but this is probably gonna be I'm probably good, and the next day he realizes that's not good.

People know about this, and so he hits the road, he takes off, he heads east, he heads into the desert, he heads to this area called Midian, and he eventually marries, he has a son, he's out there, he's being a shepherd out there, and that's what today's story is about.

It's about this guy who's having an incredibly tough time.

He's on a path, he's on a road he would have never thought he would have been on, and yet it is there that he has this encounter with spiritual reality, with a reality beyond what he thought.

If I can just be pastoral for a moment here, for some of us, you you think, and I think it too often, you need the next thing, like the next, the next approval, the next moral achievement.

I don't know, even the next Christian book will do it.

And it's not.

What you need is to be metaphorical, as we go through this message, it'll make more sense.

What you need is you need a burning bush and you need a spoken word.

So let's look at Exodus 3, verses 1 through 3.

Exodus 3:1–3

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

And he looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.

And so that verse 3 is pretty interesting, this idea of like, I will turn aside.

It means another way to say it would be, I will detour.

I will take a detour from the path I was on.

And it sort of alludes to the fact that Moses' whole life has become a detour.

So uh my junior year of college, I'm in front of Tate Center in Athens, Georgia.

I'm in front of Tate Center.

I had just missed the north-south bus.

To go from North Campus up into South Campus.

I just missed, like, you know, like I show up, bus is pulling away.

I know it's going to be like five, six minutes till the next bus comes.

I'm doing the math in my head.

I'm going, oh, I'm just I don't know if I'm going to make it into class on time.

Is this calculus class?

And the lady yelled at you when you walked in late, and so it's like kind of all this stress.

And so I'm standing there and I'm going, I do I do I just sort of walk-run like the rest of the way, like and you kind of like everybody's seeing you do that, and they know what you're doing, and you feel weird about it.

Or in front of me is a city bus.

Now, only if I don't know if where you went to college or whatever, but if you went to Athens, you know this feeling that there's a city bus in front of you, and you know as a student you can get on it, but you don't know, you you have no idea where this bus goes, who rides these buses.

You don't know.

It's like this unknown thing that you keep seeing, but you just always get on the student buses, but there's a city bus in front of me, and I'm looking, I'm going, it's just up the hill.

Like, it's just like there's just no way it could go, it just couldn't go that really, really wrong.

And so I go for it.

I get on the city bus.

And I get on, and and clearly it's not filled with students, and I sit down and I'm really nervous, and it heads up into South Campus, and I'm great, great.

Like it's it's gonna work out, and then it turns to the right, and it kind of heads over towards like Oglethorpe housing, and and it heads over there, and then it's it's getting further and further and further away from where I needed to be, and I'm starting to get kind of that feeling inside of my stomach, and I'm going, like, can I stop the bus?

But I feel like too big of a moron at this point to stop the bus, and there's like all this shame if I stop the bus, and it's just getting so far from where I needed to be, and eventually I get off of it, and I I'm just I'm even unsure.

How am I gonna get back over there?

Like, I like it is so far of a walk to get back over there.

Class is out of the question, right?

Like I'm so far away.

And it was this feeling, and you felt it whether you got on the wrong bus or you took the wrong turn or you got lost in the hospital, and it's this feeling I never planned on being here.

And maybe you have felt that, maybe you feel that.

Like at the age of 25 or 35 or 55 or 75, how did I get here?

And it just feels like a detour, like there was a road I was supposed to be on, and I'm so clearly not on that road.

And Moses was raised to be an elite in Egypt, and he kills a man, and he runs off into the desert, and he's a shepherd.

And there's got to be this feeling inside of him like I never planned on being here.

And yet, yet, only by being in the middle of nowhere, like there's just nothing.

He's at the end of himself, the end of self-reliance.

At the end of all of this is when he becomes open to realities that are beyond himself.

See, it's in this place, it's in this, like I never planned on being here that we see this burning bush and we get this spoken word.

And this bush, this is crazy, right?

This is like crazy.

This is a little bit, I mean, this is some crazy stuff going on, and it gets his attention.

But you know what?

It's interesting.

If you saw a burning bush, it might not get your attention because you might look at it for about 10 seconds and keep going.

So there's something going on in Moses that he's like, he's reflective, he's contemplative, he's noticing things.

Like a lot of us would see something burning, you know, you're just kind of here in the desert, you just keep on moving.

But he notices that it's burning, but it's not going anywhere.

So there's something in him, a posture in him that he's ready to receive.

There's something going on in him where he is lowly and he is broken and he is quiet in spirit.

And so he takes this detour from his path over to this crazy bush.

And we get verse 4.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside, he detoured to see, God called to him out of the bush.

Moses, Moses, and he said, Hey, here I am.

You know, I don't know how you'd reply if you have the bush in a voice, it'd be weird.

Here I am.

So this now becomes a full-on mystical, extremely strange spiritual experience.

This guy with a personal encounter with God.

Verse 5.

Then he said, Do not come near.

This is what God says through the bush, through the angel, do not come near.

Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you're standing is holy ground.

Here's what it's like: it is like you approaching the president for him to autograph your pellet gun.

Like that's that's this moment.

Like you have approached a presence, you have no business approaching.

It's like, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, like right where you're at, stop.

Like you can't come in with that.

Except it's not a pellet gun in the situation, it's just the fact that Moses is not perfect and God is holy and perfect.

And that's where we get two observations in this story.

Maybe you can find some more.

I found two, maybe you find four.

Uh number one is we catch a glimpse of who God is.

See, we catch this glimpse that He is this holy, fierce brightness in the universe that wipes away anything of pain and hurt, anything of sin.

He wipes it away.

And then we then we get this picture of fire, right?

We saw it last week in Genesis 15 when we talked about Genesis 15.

And throughout the scriptures, uh, God's always revealing himself as fire, which is very interesting because fire is this interesting uh material where it can't be formed.

It's not like clay, it's not like some other stuff.

You can form it, you can kind of harness it.

I mean, fire just sort of just rages.

And yet, this fire is even more different because it's fire that's not dependent upon fuel.

So here's what it's saying.

It's saying God's saying, I am self-maintaining, I'm self-sufficient, I do not draw any life or any vitality outside of myself.

That's what God is saying.

That's what God is.

He is self-sufficient, he's self-maintaining, and he does not draw any life or vitality from outside of himself.

And yet, this holy, self-sustaining God, this God, when Moses starts to sort of complain and whine later in chapter three and head into chapter four, he is unbelievably patient and gracious with them.

Like if we just have the first part of the story, the first part of the glimpse, and we don't get the second glimpse, it's just bad news for us.

It's just stop, like no relationship with God.

But then the same God is patient and gracious, and what we get is we get that God is fiercely holy, and at the same time, he is sweetly gracious.

And we see this on the cross.

A perfect God Himself, incarnate in the world, hanging on the cross, innocent, taking upon our sin, taking judgment wasn't his.

And then what does he say?

Forgive them?

See, we don't have to pick.

Like we don't have to pick between like a like a like a fundamentalist God that's holy and he's gonna judge you, he's gonna get you, he saw that, and he's gonna get you.

Or like a like a real liberal, loving God that, you know, just anything is fair game.

We don't have to pick between these two.

God is fiercely holy and he is sweetly gracious.

That's the glimpse we get.

And then number two, the second observation is we come face to face with our reality.

Face to face with our detour.

See, Moses is on a detour, but what we see even greater is that Moses is a detour.

And God is graciously dealing with him.

And on some level, all of us, we feel like Moses.

Like, how did I end up here?

How did I get here?

How will I get through this?

We want to be patient and then we have another outburst.

We want to be content and then we're still insecure.

Like, we're how am I still afraid?

How am I still anxious?

We don't want to think that thought, and then we keep thinking that thought.

And what we need is we don't need more to do because the law has no power to bring life to our detoured hearts.

What we need is to be metaphorical, we're still fleshing it out.

What we need is a burning bush and a spoken word.

So I was having lunch with a friend this week, and uh we started talking, we started talking about my friend Jim.

I've talked about him throughout the last couple years.

And my friend Jim, he was the most sound biblical man I have ever known.

He knew the Bible so thoroughly.

He loved the Bible.

He loved uh big word, doctrine.

He loved doctrine.

And here's the thing what I found with a lot of people who love doctrine, they're not always the people I love.

And I don't know, you've been maybe you've been around people who love doctrine, and they're sort of like they're kind of harsh because knowledge has sort of become their God more than God himself.

But Jim was so different because doctrine it was the way in which he knew God in a personal way.

And so he loved all this doctrine, but it was so life-giving to him, and so many times he would come into a lunch or some meeting we would have, and and and he would he could talk doctrine, he could talk systematic theology, he could talk all this, but then so often he'd come in and he would say something like, you know, Russ, I was praying this morning, I feel like the Lord is telling me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, I was driving down the road, and I just feel like the Lord is telling me, uh.

And so here's my point.

Well, I love the humility of that.

I feel like the Lord is.

Like, not like the Lord told me, right?

Like I feel like, or perhaps it's the peanut butter and jelly, I don't know.

But I love the humility of like, I feel like.

But I also love this, and this is what he taught me, is that sound biblical thought and doctrine, it doesn't diminish personal encounter with the living God or hearing from the Lord.

Like this side of the resurrection and the ascension, the Holy Spirit lives in us to help us, to comfort us, to guide us, to speak to us.

And catch this biblical thought and doctrine informs the encounter.

It informs what you are hearing.

We can be both sound and mystical.

Let's not give that word away.

We give that word away, so I think we give that word away so quickly to other groups or another religion.

Let's not give that word away.

We can be both sound and mystical.

And the biblical thought and the doctrine informs what we are hearing.

Now, everybody's different.

Some of us, you drive to work and you're listening to worship and you're like crying, and then some of you you just want to read C.S.

Lewis and you're underlining everything.

I mean, we're all different, and maybe you probably should be both of these things.

But the point is this that we should become lowly enough in our detouring selves and hearts and quiet enough in our spirits to hear the word being spoken to us today.

And that word will be informed by sound biblical thought.

Christy and I were out to eat Monday night with an older couple who they just they like to take us out and they treat us well and they love us so well.

And the husband just asked us, he said, Well, what's been different in you?

And he went to Christy and then he went to me, what's been different in you in the last couple of years?

And I just said, you know, more responsibility.

That was my answer.

Like, more responsibility is like my kids are older, there's more responsibility there.

Church is doing great, there's more responsibility there, just more responsibility.

It's just the reality of it.

I mean, it's kind of the reality of getting older in general, just more responsibility.

And then you have like social activities and family obligations and kid activities, unless you remember the yard and the dishes and the laundry that you hide when people come over, right?

I mean, like all of this, you know this story, or it's the project, or it's the deadline, or it's what do those friends think of me?

Or it's the judgment you feel by that group or that person, and you just feel like you can't quite get a grip on everything in your life.

Is anybody with me?

Anybody?

And here's what I found taking a walk can be so nice.

Talking with Christie can be very helpful.

Meeting with my counselor and I need one can be very good for me.

But ultimately, I need a burning bush, I need a spoken word, I need to hear from the Lord.

Here's what Moses hears.

He he hears, he gets the word, like, hey, you're you're going back to Egypt and you're gonna tell Pharaoh, let my people go, and all kinds of stuff's about to happen.

But that's what he hears.

It's like a directional thing.

I feel like that's the hardest word to figure out.

Like there's a fork in the road, do I take this job or that job?

Do we move to Philadelphia or do we move to Phoenix?

Like, like I'm not good at that.

I'm not good at figuring that one out.

When you figure out how to determine that in God's will, you just come tell me, because then I'll start to preach exactly what you figure out.

That's very difficult.

That's wisdom, that's asking for people, it's praying, it's soul searching, is very difficult to hear that.

But then Moses gets this other word, doesn't he?

And it's a promise.

He says, What do I tell him?

Like, he's not gonna listen to me.

What do I tell you?

God says, You should tell him I am saying you.

And here's what he means.

He he means I'll be with you.

See, it's a it's a word, it's a promise.

And see, this is what we need on a daily basis.

We need something that's always true, always reliable.

This is what we need.

We need to hear from the heart of God the Holy Spirit speaking to us, and it's not a new word.

Not a new word.

It's the same old amazing gospel word, and what it is is it is you can stop all that work that you're doing to try to validate yourself.

You can stop that.

Jesus' work is enough for you.

You are loved even if you fail.

I will always be with you.

You, you, my child, I do not condemn.

I condemned him.

He was alone.

He went unloved for your sake.

You will never be unrighteous.

You will never be unrighteous.

Because Jesus' righteousness was put on you, and we don't deserve it.

Our sin cast upon him and his righteousness put on us.

We don't deserve that.

It's the same old amazing gospel word, and we need to hear it declared over us every Sunday, and we need to take it in every single day.

See, it's it's easy to read this story.

It'd be very easy for us to end it on needing a new word.

Like, oh, I just need a new word for today.

I just need I need something deeper, need something else, need some new word.

I mean, that can that can be an exhausting treadmill.

It can be.

I just need that new burning bush.

It can be an exhausting.

Maybe you'll get it.

It'd be great.

You could write a good book.

It'd be an incredible moment, right?

I mean, maybe it'll be so good for you, but don't put that burden upon yourself.

What we need is the same old amazing gospel word.

See, I mean, this story is primarily about God's rescue of his people.

Let's not make it into something it's not.

That's what it's about.

It's about God rescuing his people.

And if we're going to apply it to ourselves, the best application is the fact that God is pursuing a broken man.

I never planned on being here, and yet here is where God meets us.

It's a picture for us, a word spoken to Moses, but a foreshadowing word.

Jesus says, I am the word, a word spoken into existence centuries later.

Jesus the Christ, God Himself, holy and fierce, fiercely holy, but sweetly gracious.

And taking that brokenness upon himself, so he looks at us, and through the Holy Spirit, he whispers into the core of our beings.

You are loved, and you are deemed righteous forever.

So, brothers and sisters, may you hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit in you, whispering to your detouring fragile hearts in the I am, you are enough.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you are enough for us.

We need a burning bush and we need a spoken word.

But we don't need a new word today.

We need you.

And God, how we love fresh words from you, but help us to always rest our hearts in Jesus Himself.

And in the I am, we are enough.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.