Exodus 3--The Burning Bush

The Burning Bush
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 came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And 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 at God.

7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 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, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come, 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 bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for 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, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people 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.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ 18 And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, 22 but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

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We talked last time how Reuel would also go by the name Jethro, and we'll see there that Mountain of God will go by the name of Horeb, but later in Exodus and beyond will sometimes also go by the name of Mt. Sinai.  We see Moses out tending to the flock of his father-in-law, which seems like a better idea than Moses' wife and sisters-in-law doing it given how the shepherds of the area treated them--and one day he was out near Horeb and saw a burning bush that was not consumed.  This was a strange sight to Moses and to anyone else as bushes on fire usually make good fuel for the fire but they are consumed through the chemical reaction of combustion and the fuel is used up and then the fire is extinguished, but that wasn't the case here.  Moses through this too interesting to pass up some investigation and God used the burning bush to get Moses' attention and get him ready to listen to what God had to say.

We see God call out to Moses by name like He did with so many other prophets and see Moses reply in a similar way as others had, "Here I am."  Moses is given instructions about how to stand before God and not to approach Him because the ground on which Moses stood was holy because the presence of God was in that place and even the ground was full of His holiness at that moment.  We'll see later in Exodus that the animals that came close to the mountain and touched it while Moses was meeting with God would be killed instantly and the people were afraid to come near to God because they didn't want to die.

Moses understood something about what was going on and he hid his face from the Lord because no man can look upon the holiness and glory of the LORD and survive.  Notice I'm using LORD here--I'll explain why in a minute.  God identifies Himself as "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" which seems to be his preferred way of introducing Himself as it is a call to remember everything about His nature, character and attributes though what He has done in the past for His people.

Then God assures Moses that He has both seen and heard His people and that it is time for Him to fulfill His covenant with them and bring them up out of the land of Egypt as He had promised He would to Abraham.  So, God gave Moses a mission and a message to go to the people and let them know that God had seen and heard them and was about to provide deliverance for them--and they would listen--and to go to Pharaoh and tell him first that God's people needed to go and worship him and this was to be done 3 days journey away from where they were at, but when he didn't listen to this that Moses was to say, that the LORD said, "Let My people go!" and that this message would be accompanies with miraculous signs that would compel both the Pharaoh and the people of Egypt to do exactly that, and that the Hebrews would leave having plundered the wealth of the Egyptians without lifting a finger in war as they would be paid to leave.

A couple other very important items that I've skipped to this point.  Moses asks a question that to this point seems to have never been asked before, "God, what is your name?"  Up to this point we've seen the generic "El" or "Adonai" used along with some descriptive characteristic such as "The God Who Sees Me" or "The Most High God" or "Lord of Lord."  God's answer seems strange to us, "I AM, I AM" (the word "who" is not really there).  God's answer to Moses is that people know Him by his character and attributes which are revealed to us by what He has done.  God will start off reminding His people from this point forward "I am the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" but will often also say "I am the LORD your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" or "I am the LORD who brought you through Red Sea" (those things are coming, don't worry that you don't know or understand what those things mean yet).  From this point forward in the Bible, we will see "LORD" used to refer to this name of God, "I AM," and I will call it "the covenant name of God," because God uses this name when reminding His people of His covenant with them and when renewing His covenant with them after they have broken covenant with Him (though He will never break covenant with them).  In English, we've come to the word Jehovah by combining this name of God with the name "Lord," though LORD is most often used to refer to God the Father, and "Lord" is most often used to refer to God the Son.  However, we'll see some important places where Jesus will make "I AM" statements about Himself in the Gospel of John, and the Jewish people at the time have no trouble understanding what He's saying--their reactions make it clear as they attempt to kill Jesus on the spot for blasphemy (what the Law required) because they believed Him to be just a man, but He was claiming to be God in the flesh.  Don't miss this when we go back and study the Gospel of John in the near future.

Last, but not least, notice that God knows the entire sequence of events before any of this happens.  God is not surprised by the fact that His people would listen but that Pharaoh would not listen . He's already ready with the plagues that He's going to send and He knows exactly how much "justice" He needs to dish out and how "loudly" He needs to speak before certain people will listen--for Moses He just needed to show up in a burning bush and say "Moses, Moses."  For the people of God He needed to remind them of His identity and role in their history, but for Pharaoh, He needed to use his "mighty hand" to show Pharaoh that the LORD was God and Pharaoh was not (we have not talked about this to this point, but the Egyptians worshiped their king as part of the pantheon of gods they worshiped).  The people of Egypt would need to be shown that the God of Israel was superior to all of the false gods of Egypt, including the Pharaoh himself.

Even in all this though, we're going to see that Moses continued to make excuses about how he was the wrong man because he stuttered and wasn't good at public speaking and many other excuses--much like we see with some of the members of the early Church and we still see in ourselves in the Church today.  Come back next time to see how God dealt with Moses and his doubts and fears.