At The Burning Bush Series

February 08, 2025

According to Acts 7:23, Moses was 40 when he left Egypt to become a shepherd in Midian.

Wild sheep can survive on their own – not so with domesticated sheep. They are skittish and easily frightened. They can’t protect themselves, so as a survival strategy, they flock together. However, flocking can also be a problem because sheep will follow each other blindly into dangerous places, over cliffs or even into fast moving rivers – they need a shepherd.

The life of a shepherd is difficult. It requires a humble and compassionate person who can endure and persevere because the hours are long and the conditions can be brutal. Shepherding is a very hands-on job: lambing, finding good grazing and knowing which plants to avoid, tending to the sick and injured, protecting the flock from predators, leading them away from dangerous situations and rounding up the lost sheep - a shepherd is never not on guard.

For Moses, this was the last place he expected to find himself – tending the flocks of his father-in-law. He had been groomed for power. He had attended the finest schools. Every whim had been catered to. He was brash, reckless and self-confident. Yet his position could not protect him from his choice to “help God.” And now he was looking after sheep….

40 years went by (Acts 7:30a) and while Moses was tending Jethro’s sheep, God was tending to Moses. He had been refining and pruning and transforming the former Prince of Egypt. Now a man of 80, Moses was finally ready.

Chapters 3 and 4 of Exodus are devoted almost exclusively to Moses’ calling. What we notice first, is that Moses was not the one who initiated the call – It was God who went looking for Moses. One day, Moses was tending his flocks on the far side of the desert near Mt. Horeb (Mt Sinai). He was minding his own business, when he saw something amazing – a burning bush that was not being consumed. Moses thought to himself, “I’ve got to go check that out.”

When God saw Moses wandering over, he called to him from the bush:

“Moses, Moses”

“Here I am”

“Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

"I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians – and bring them into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey -- the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt."

Dramatic pause ---- “Wait, what?! Care to repeat your last statement? Did you really just tell me to go back to Egypt for the express purpose of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt? Did I hear you correctly? (Not in scripture)

Can you imagine what Moses must have been thinking and feeling. 40 years ago – as a strapping prince of Egypt, sure, no problemo – but as an 80-year-old shepherd? Hard pass.

Here we encounter a very human problem. When Moses initiated his own call – when he decided he was ready to do something for God – he was very energetic. However, when God showed up unexpectantly and was the one doing the calling, Moses was less than enthusiastic, what might God ask him to do?

So, Moses went about explaining to God why he was not the man for the job:

• Excuse #1 – “Who am I?”

“I am a nobody, why send me to go before Pharaoh? I am in no position to bring out the Children of Israel.”

God’s response:

"I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."

• Excuse #2 - “Who are You?”

"Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God’s response:

“I AM WHO I AM. Tell the Israelites that ‘I Am’ has sent you.”

Translated Yahweh. This name of God is used over 6,000 times in the Old Testament, and is translated as “the LORD” in most bibles. It is God’s self-disclosure of His eternal, self-sustaining, self-determining, sovereign reality. He is the SELF-EXISTENT ONE. He has NEVER been defined or determined by any other thing or being other than Himself. It is not a lifeless god of Egypt who has called Moses. It is Yahweh, the eternal living God of the universe.