Exodus 3

We need the real God. We need Him with all of His power and love. It should not surprise us that the real God, the God that we need, is more than our minds can handle. He is God.

God intended to use Moses as a very significant person in His great plans for Israel. Life in Midian might have been Moses' choice, but then God appeared to Him, and the Lord would not be refused.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, a Midianite priest named Reuel and Jethro. In the course of caring for the sheep, He came to Horeb, the mountain of God, also known as Mount Sinai. God appeared to Moses here, and it was here where the Lord would one day reveal to Moses the Old Testament Law.

In this first encounter with God, “the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” This bush was burning but it was not consumed. It was a sign of the eternal nature of God. He was, is, and will be. He is the “I-AM.”

Moses did not immediately know what he was looking at. He turned aside to see the great sight, a bush that was definitely burning, but was not burned. Then Moses heard the voice of God. The Lord spoke to him from out of the bush, and thus began the experience of the human deliverer of Israel speaking directly with Israel's great eternal God.

First God spoke of His own holiness through His instruction to the man who would be the mediator of the Old Covenant. “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” God is holy. Whatever He calls holy, is holy.

Then God identified Himself to Moses as the God of Israelite heritage. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses was afraid.

We all might like to live a life of ease, ignoring the oppression of the covenant people of God. God calls His servants to care about the afflictions of His people. He will take Moses out of the relative ease of his family life in Midian, sending him back to the nation where a powerful ruler is oppressing men and women who are crying out to God. He hears them, and He will send Moses.

God will deliver them through the man that He has chosen. They will go from Egypt, but the escape from a place of trouble is only half of His promise to them. Deliverance is not only what you are being rescued from, but also where you are being sent to. He will bring them to a “good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” Of course there are other people already in that new land. They will be removed by the Lord, and the people that God has chosen will be given the territory that they once possessed.

God has seen the way that the Egyptians treated the Hebrews. This Moses who the daughter of Pharaoh rescued from the waters of the Nile will confront the leader of Egypt. Moses has a very hard time believing that he is the man for this task. He looks at himself and questions the wisdom of God's plan. But the Lord assures him, “I will be with you.” The Lord is able to use him in the confrontation of Pharaoh, and He promises that Moses and the people out of Egypt will serve God on this same mountain where Moses has seen the burning bush.

Moses questions the Lord as he hears this plan. The Lord assures Him with His own divine name, “I-AM.” This self-existent Being, through whom all things have their being, can be trusted in this very difficult mission. God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is far greater than Pharaoh, and He is the one who is calling Moses.

The people of Israel will leave their servitude in Egypt, and God will bring them out to the wilderness so that they can sacrifice to the Lord in that place. From the very beginning of this mission, the Lord makes it clear to Moses that Pharaoh will resist the Word of God. But God is powerful. He will show His glory before Pharaoh in acts of divine judgment.

God will make it impossible for Egypt to oppress the Hebrews any more. In fact, as they leave the land of Egypt, the people of Israel will ask the Egyptians for silver, gold jewelry, and for clothing, and the Egyptians will freely give their wealth to those they once subjugated.

We too easily forget God. His plans seem hopelessly unrealistic. Will the Hebrews ever be able to leave Egypt? Will a man like Moses be used for this task? He does not even appear to be very willing. Yet the Lord fully accomplished this mission. He rescued an abused people and brought them out from under the gaze of their hostile captors.

This should be an encouragement to our faith. Our Lord has redeemed us from an even more devastating bondage than physical slavery. Our deliverance from sin and death did not come through Moses, but through a different Man. He would face great oppression and persecution, but He was more than a match for any and all of His enemies. As He told them Himself, “Before Abraham was, I-AM.” He is the real God. No one can defeat Him.