“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. 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. And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’ 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.’ Then he said, ‘Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 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.
“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, 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. 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. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.’” [1]
From the text before us, it seems evident that Moses knew about God, but he didn’t yet know God. He was vaguely aware that there must exist a higher power, but Moses had not personally connected with that higher power. Knowing there is a God and knowing God are two different things. In this description, it is apparent to me that Moses wasn’t so very different from many, dare I say “most,” contemporary Canadians. We know there is a God, even if we don’t acknowledge the reality of God’s existence. We seem to imagine that if God does not reveal Himself in some dramatic manner, He must not matter. Thus, we relegate the thought of God, and consequently the thought of personal accountability to God, to the dark recesses of our minds.
Perhaps we should listen to Agur the son of Jekeh when he asks,
“Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God.”
[PROVERBS 30:7-9]
In contemporary parlance, Agur appears to be based; he is balanced, his feet firmly planted on the ground. He isn’t seeking advantage over others, nor does he seek great wealth or excessive comfort. His great concern is that he does not dishonour God through what he holds or what he does.
Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh, requesting that the Israelites be permitted to go into the wilderness in order to hold a feast to the LORD. The request was modest, but we read, “Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go’” [EXODUS 5:2]. Pharaoh was adamant that he did not know the LORD, and therefore he felt no compunction to listen to the LORD. Though most of our contemporaries are not so crass as to openly refuse to obey God, they apparently feel much as Pharaoh felt. Why should anyone obey God when they refuse to acknowledge Him? And yet, He is God, and all shall at last acknowledge Him.
We Christians, we who are twice born members of the Family of God, have heard, and we believe the words of Scripture that teach us: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” [PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11]. Amen!
Though he had known the Lord only a brief while, Moses didn’t present arguments or attempt to debate the issue of who God is—he revealed the power of the Living God through his actions. Similarly, when any of us are challenged by someone asking who God is, the best answer that can be given is to reveal God by living a life that reveals His presence and His power through you. Responding in this way won’t do much to exalt yourself in your own eyes, but it will exalt the Name of the Lord. And that is how we are supposed to live in any case. Our Lord did command us, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” [MATTHEW 5:16]?
MEETING GOD — It seems evident from the account that Moses wrote that he knew about God. What isn’t apparent is that He knew God. There would need to be a meeting with God if Moses was to move beyond knowing about God and actually know God. I was visiting my friend Ben one Sunday afternoon when our conversation was interrupted by a knock at his door.
Answering the door, he greeted a young man of perhaps nineteen or twenty years or age. The young man introduced himself as a member of a youth Sunday School group from the First Baptist Church of Dallas and he was knocking on doors to invite people to church. Ben invited the young man into his home and introduced me.
We exchanged pleasantries, and I quickly got down to business, asking the young man to tell me about his spiritual transformation. It was obvious that my question threw the young man off, since he wasn’t sure what I meant.
“Well,” I said, “tell me how you became a Christian.”
The response of that young man was to state that he had been raised in a Christian home, and he guessed he had always been a Christian. I assured him that he hadn’t always been a Christian, but that if he was to be one who was saved and part of the Family of God, there had to be a meeting between himself and the Lord. At the time, I was a member of a church in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, but I was familiar with the ministry of Doctor W. A. Criswell, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of the city. I told the young man that his pastor taught nothing that I wasn’t about to tell him. And with that I led the young man on a walk along the Romans Road.
At the conclusion of our journey down that delightful old road, I asked him if he wanted to meet the Saviour. He assured me that he wanted to know the Lord. We knelt together and he confessed to the Lord that he was a sinner in need of salvation and asked the Christ to receive him as one seeking salvation. He was a good young man, quite religious and raised in a loving home, but he was lost. Like many people raised in a Christian home, people who attended church from their childhood, he knew about God, but he didn’t know God.
That was Moses! Nursed by his own mother, he had undoubtedly heard of the True and Living God, but he had never personally met God. He had heard the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, but he had no idea of how they figured into the story of God. Moreover, he had a vague idea that he was to be a deliverer. However, his concept revolved around his position as the adopted son of Pharaoh.
Let’s review the story that tells us how Moses arrived at his position standing before a speaking bush. The initial events are recounted in EXODUS 2:1-12. Pharaoh had ordered that all male children were to be killed at birth. It was an attempt at genocide. He intended to destroy the Israelite race. One family hid the little boy that was born to them, but by the time the child was three months old, he could be hidden no longer. In desperation, and perhaps not knowing what else to do, the mother made a basket of bulrushes and water-proofed the basket she had made. Placing the child in the basket, she set it adrift on the Nile River.
This was not a heartless move; it was more a move of desperation. The child’s sister, perhaps showing the concern a young girl would normally show for her younger sibling, watched the basket from a distance. As she watched, it so happened that a contingent of women walked down to the river. These women were attendants to Pharaoh’s daughter who was going to the river to bathe, a ritual required by her position. Pharaoh’s daughter noticed the basket floating on the water, likely impeded in its journey down the stream and caught by the reeds near the shore.
Sending one of her servants to fetch the basket, she opened it when it was on the shore. Inside the basket, she saw a baby crying, and the cries of that child moved her to pity. The cries of the child were more powerful than Pharaoh’s decree, for the woman formed the determination to take the child and raise the little boy as her own. The baby’s sister rushed to the daughter of Pharaoh and impetuously asked, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter ordered her to do so, and immediately Miriam rushed to find her mother. Who was more capable of nursing the child and caring for the little one than his own mother? And when the mother had hurried to the riverbank, the daughter of Pharaoh commanded, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.”
Thus it is that Moses was raised on the breast of his mother, Jochebed, who nursed him, who undoubtedly sang sweetly to the child as he rested at her breasts and recited to him the stories of his ancestry. But the child would be delivered to the daughter of Pharaoh when he was older, and he would be her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” The Egyptian term meant “Child from (the) Water.” Hebrew borrowed the word from Egyptian, and the term would mean “Extracted from Water.” [2]
For forty years the child grew and was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Legend implies that he became a general for the Egyptian forces. Whatever he may have accomplished, he was a powerful man. However, from those earliest days, he was aware that he was not really Egyptian. He appeared Egyptian, but in his heart he knew there was a heritage he could not fully ignore. And thus we read, “One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your companion?’ He answered, ‘Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid, and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known.’ When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well” [EXODUS 2:11-15].
The Egyptian prince fled to Midian, and in time he became a shepherd. He married a daughter of the priest of Midian. There, Moses fathered two sons, and he settled down as a sojourner. In the ensuing forty years, we read, “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their 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” [EXODUS 2:23-25].
Though the Pharaoh who had once tolerated Moses living in the palace, the same Pharaoh who had set in motion the slaughter of innocent Hebrew children, died, the situation for Israel had not improved. The people were slaves, and as slaves, freedom was just a word. Perhaps it wasn’t even a dream anymore. But God saw, and God knew. It was at this point that the Lord God intervened in history to reveal Himself to a defeated man who had once thought he was somebody important, though he had now become a nobody in his own eyes. Moses was just a shepherd, an unimportant man known only to a few people who accepted him as a nobody among nobodies living in a land of nobodies.
While tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Moses led the flock to the west side of the wilderness, on the sides of the mountain called Horeb. Everything changed that day. “The angel of the LORD appeared to [Moses] 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. And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’ 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.’ Then he said, ‘Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground’” [EXODUS 3:1-5].
The disembodied voice, coming from a bush that was aflame and yet was not consumed was at once mesmerising and terrifying! Moses had never witnessed such a thing in his eighty years, nor had he even heard of such a thing. Moreover, the voice continued, saying, “‘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” [EXODUS 3:6]. I reckon that’d get my attention! Moses had heard of God; he knew about God from his mother’s breast, but Moses had never met the Living God. Much as would be true of a child raised in a godly home with parents who prayed to the unseen God and walked in His way without ever having personally met the Lord, Moses knew about God, but he didn’t know God.
There are vast numbers of Canadians who know about God, though they have never met God. I sometimes wonder whether the majority of professing Christians, though raised in homes that ensured the children went to Sunday School, said their prayers before bed, and returned grace before meals, have ever had a personal encounter with the Risen Son of God. We need to admit that there is an enormous difference between knowing there is a God and knowing God. Then, we who claim to speak in the Name of the Living God need to confront men and women with the need to receive Christ as Master over life. Each person who knows the Lord Jesus, each one who has been born from above, needs to take it upon herself, or upon himself, to determine that they will not merely play a game that says they are followers of Christ, but that they will be followers of Christ. Each one who is twice born needs to determine that beginning with his or her own family that he or she will press their children or their grandchildren to know the Lord.
THE LORD SPEAKS — “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, 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. 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. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt’” [EXODUS 3:7-10].
When God speaks, we should listen. Unfortunately, because of our fallen condition we display a tendency to ignore the voice of the Lord, even when His voice is accompanied by great demonstrations of power. Pharaoh would witness demonstration after demonstration of God’s might as the Lord systematically confronted and bested the gods of Egypt. Yet, despite God’s mighty display, Pharaoh refused to obey the LORD or even to acknowledge His might. Like so many in this present day, Pharaoh dismissed the LORD by ascribing all that he would witness to happenstance, or an appeal to the experts to dismiss what had occurred, or by simply refusing to accept the reality of God.
Confronted by the demand that he set the people at liberty, he petulantly responded, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go” [EXODUS 5:2]. Who is the Lord, indeed. This proud king was about to find out Who the Lord is.
Who is the LORD? Pharaoh was not going to like what he was about to witness. Water turned to blood? The demonically energised magicians of Egypt did the same thing, thus implying that what had happened was a cheap trick.
Frogs covering the land? The magicians were able to bring up frogs themselves, though they could do nothing to rid the land of the slimy, noisy amphibians.
Gnats flitting about the faces of all living within the land? At last the magicians were powerless. For the first time, they counselled Pharaoh that he was witnessing the finger of God. Maybe it was time to cut his losses and quit.
Flies swarming over everything and everyone? When God removed the plague, Pharaoh changed his mind and refused to allow Israel to go free.
The livestock of the Egyptians dying while Hebrew animals were untouched? The selective devastation didn’t move Pharaoh’s heart in the least. Some people just won’t believe, no matter what.
Boils failed to move Pharaoh. The magicians were unable to relieve the pain.
Hail destroying the crops and even breaking the trees? At last, it appeared that Pharaoh was about to give in. The king sent for Moses and Aaron, pleading, “This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer” [EXODUS 9:27-28]. Now Pharaoh appears to acknowledge that he recognises the LORD. But as soon as thunder ceased, and the rain and the hail stopped pummelling the land, “[Pharaoh] sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants” [EXODUS 9:34]. Some people just never learn.
Locusts would cover the land, devouring what had not been destroyed by the hail. The servants of Pharaoh were now pleading, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined” [EXODUS 10:7]? But Pharaoh was still trying to negotiate with God as though he could do so; the determined king had no intention of obeying the LORD.
Next, a supernatural darkness would descend upon the land, darkness so deep that it could almost be felt. Yet, Pharaoh attempted to control the situation, pretending that he was in a position to dictate to God how matters should be carried out. When he couldn’t get his way, he blustered to his nemeses, “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die” [EXODUS 10:28]. That was the wrong thing to say to the servant of God. Moses calmly responded with chilling words, “As you say! I will not see your face again” [EXODUS 10:29].
God would send the death angel; in every home, the first born would die. The eldest child, the firstborn servant, the firstborn calf, the firstborn lamb—all alike would die. Only in a house that had slaughtered a lamb, dipping a bunch of hyssop in the blood of that lamb and touching the lintel and the doorposts would death be held at bay. The divine account reads, “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead” [EXODUS 12:29-30]. At last, Pharaoh got the message. He sent word to Moses and Aaron, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone” [EXODUS 12:31-32]!
God spoke to Moses, and though the beaten man demurred and attempted to refuse God’s appointment, the Lord would not permit that to happen. Just so, when the Living God speaks to you, you will be well advised to say, “Your will be done.” With the Apostle to the Gentiles, I ask anyone who is inclined to refuse to do what God commands, “Who indeed are you—a mere human being—to talk back to God? Does what is molded say to the molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use” [ROMANS 9:20-21 NET 2nd]?
God is active in the world He made, and He is not silent. Long ago, we read of the LORD’s comforting promise to Jacob, whom God had renamed “Israel.” “God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, ‘Jacob, Jacob.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes’” [GENESIS 46:2-4]. When the LORD spoke, Jacob had but to obey, trusting in the goodness of God. God was comforting His servant just as He comforts saints through His Word to this day.
God spoke to Moses as revealed repeatedly throughout the Pentateuch. The kings of Israel beginning with Saul and continuing with David and then Solomon and far beyond, the LORD spoke, directing their decisions. When a king obeyed, God blessed that man and the kingdom. When a king disobeyed the Word of the Lord, the king was punished and the land suffered. It is almost a formula that is repeated throughout the historic books of the Bible to read, “The Word of the Lord came to…”—Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha, Isaiah, Nathan, and so forth!
We repeatedly witness the Major Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel—prefacing the prophecies they are charged to deliver with the words, “The Word of the LORD came to me.” These men received the Word of God, and they faithfully delivered the truths with which they were charged to commit to writing. Almost without exception each of the Minor Prophets begin what they write with that same formula. The opening verses of Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Micah, and so forth, begin with the confession that what is written is given by the LORD Himself, and thus they confess, “The Word of the LORD that came to…” God was speaking, and the prophets would ensure that His Word would be known. It is precisely as the Prophet from Tekoa has testified,
“The lion has roared;
who will not fear?
The Lord GOD has spoken;
who can but prophesy?””
[AMOS 3:8]
Surely the revelation that Peter has delivered reveals that God speaks constantly to our world. Recall how Peter has written, “We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” [2 PETER 1:19-21].
God is well able to speak audibly is such is necessary. He arrested the maddened rabbi known as Saul of Tarsus when he sought to extirpate the nascent Faith known as “The Way.” The Risen Lord of Glory spoke, challenging him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me” [ACTS 9:4b]? The same Jesus spoke to Ananias to send him to present the Faith to that now humbled rabbi.
Here is the point for us to take home, because He is God, our Lord can speak with us audibly if He so desires. He does speak to us constantly through His Word which He has given for our guidance and for our benefit. This written Word doesn’t merely reveal the Lord to us, the Lord is speaking to us always through the Word He has given. Recall the words of the Psalmist when he writes,
“How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.”
[PSALM 119:9]
God’s Word accomplishes this because it is more than mere words written on paper or existing as electronic icons. Indeed, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” [HEBREWS 4:12-13].
Thus, with the Psalmist we understand that this Word is more than mere sentences and paragraphs liable to be ignored or easily dismissed. We have this Word, and if we are wise, we will store this Word in our hearts, as we are taught when the Psalmist writes,
“I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.”
[PSALM 119:11]
Doing this, we will be given life [see PSALM 119:25], strengthened [see PSALM 119:28], equipped to answer those who struggle to believe the Word of God [see PSALM 119:42], and I will be filled with hope [see PSALM 119:49]. Storing up the Word of God in my heart, I will be guided in paths that lead to righteousness [see PSALM 119:67, 101]. I will be enabled and equipped to encourage the downhearted [see PSALM 119:74], always walking in God’s divine light [see PSALM 119:105], Because of having stored up the Word in my heart, I am given divine protection [see PSALM 119:114], great joy [see PSALM 119:162], and deliverance [see PSALM 119:170]. Moreover, I will always have a song to sing [see PSALM 119:172]. Amen!
Here is the truth that each one hearing me in this hour should seize as their own—God does speak, and He does speak to you. His Word may be communicated as He desires, but most often it is communicated through the Word He has given, the Bible. We are enabled to know the will of the Lord because He has given us a complete revelation in this Word. Should there be a struggle to understand what the will of the Lord is, He has given all who are saved, all who receive the Son of God as their sacrifice, the Spirit of Christ to guide us into a full understanding of what is written. As a follower of the Christ, you are competent to know His will and to speak the truth to anyone.
GREATER THAN ME — God spoke, and though Moses had not known the LORD in a vital, living way before this encounter, he recognised that he was in the presence of One greater than himself. It is a good starting place for anyone finding themselves in the presence of the Lord GOD. Moses was not unlike many Canadians who grow up in the home of godly parents without ever making a personal commitment to follow the Lord. Then, when they are in their teen years, they are more influenced by the culture in which they are immersed than they are directed by the Spirit of Christ.
Parents, do not allow your children to be inoculated against the Faith! You have a vital few years in which you can ground your children in the Faith of Christ the Lord. You may be assured that if you do not provide a biblical grounding, the world about you will provide its own training for your children. The educational system is biased against righteousness. The entertainment industry is not a friend to godliness. The speech of this dying world is odoriferous with the putrefying stench of death. And without a biblical grounding from parents who not only instruct their children in righteousness but live a holy life that reveals the presence of the Risen Saviour, children will embrace the glittering façade of a world that masks the death that defines it.
Though you may have fumbled the opportunity to train your children in righteousness during the formative years, there is always hope. So long as your child lives, know that there is a God Who is greater than your mistakes and your foibles. Let me encourage you who have children who are older and who have left home for a life that is independent of you the parents. Don’t quit praying. Don’t quit pleading with your child to trust the Christ. Don’t quit loving your child and show your love by pleading with the Master to convict that child. God is greater than your past. Didn’t He promise,
“I will make up to you for the years
That the swarming locust has eaten,
The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.”
[JOEL 2:25 NASB 95]
If God could make up for the lost years Israel had suffered through their own negligence, and if the LORD could restore Judah and Jerusalem after they had destroyed their past, then know that He is well able to restore your hopes, to make up for what you lost. This is our God, the LORD Who is greater than us.
Comforting Israel, the LORD calls them to dare believe what He shall do as He speaks through His Servant Zechariah. The LORD says,
“As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.”
[ZECHARIAH 9:11-12]
He has a covenant of blood with Israel, and His covenant compels Him to set the prisoners free and promising them they shall be restored for what was lost.
As He delivers this promise, God uses a beautiful term, calling those who were once trapped through their own sinful negligence and disappointed “prisoners of hope.” That is what we are—trapped by our own negligence and disappointed by our own failures. But just as He spoke of His power to deliver His ancient people, know that He is well able to restore our fortunes, giving us hope and ensuring that we have a future. He is well able to fulfil our aspirations by delivering our children in His time and by His grace. God can do this because the Lord is greater than the past. That is the God we serve.
Among the Psalms is a beautiful expression of God and His greatness. It is a statement that you and I need to hear often. The one who has only met the Lord needs to know who He is. The one who has walked with the Lord for long years needs to be reminded of who He is. The one who is only now meeting the Lord needs to know who He is. And this beautiful Psalm tells us who the Lord is.
“With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
For you save a humble people,
but the haughty eyes you bring down.
For it is you who light my lamp;
the LORD my God lightens my darkness.
For by you I can run against a troop,
and by my God I can leap over a wall.
This God—his way is perfect;
the word of the LORD proves true;
he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
“For who is God, but the LORD?
And who is a rock, except our God?—
the God who equipped me with strength
and made my way blameless.”
[PSALM 18:25-32]
Isn’t this what we discover in the Lord Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour who redeems us and who set us free. Hasn’t He called us, promising, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” [MATTHEW 11:28-29].
A powerful statement is given when Isaiah writes the promise of the Lord:
“‘Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.”’”
[ISAIAH 45:22-23]
And this is the promise I now echo as I point you to the Saviour, Jesus the Son of God. He has promised life and the forgiveness of sin to all, saying, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [ROMANS 10:13]. Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Good News Publishers, 2001. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] “Moses meaning,” Abarim, Moses | The amazing name Moses: meaning and etymology, accessed 5 February 2025
