A Study of the Life of Moses
Sermon # 4
“The God of the Second Chance!”
Exodus 3:1-10
Dr. John R. Hamby
Moses had seen the suffering of the people and he knew that he was to be the deliverer but he was impulsive. He got ahead of God, he developed his own plan and his own timetable. The end result was that he killed an Egyptian taskmaster and was forced to flee for his life. He has now spent the last forty years in “God’s School of The Desert.” Moses after his major life-altering failure and all those years of obscurity in the desert that followed must have felt completely unusable by God.
In forty years in Egypt Moses had learned the skills of worldly leadership, how to be a leader of men. In “God’s School of the Desert” he had for forty years been taught the qualities of spiritual leadership: patience, maturity and sensitivity in listening to the voice of God. His forty year stay in the desert was not wasted. Moses had some rough edges in his life which had to be dealt with – such as his arrogance and quick temper. God was ready to move in Moses life – just as he may well be in our lives – to prepare us for some new sphere of service and usefulness.
We have all been guilty of some tragic blunders of moving out ahead of God. It is good to know that people are more important to God than programs. God is going to pick Moses up right where he left off with him, and put him back into his original place he had for him. When God wants us to go through a new door the first thing he does is get our attention.
In Exodus 3:1 we read, “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.”
Moses discovered that God is even as the King James Version says, on the “back side of the desert.” The “mountain of God” (3:1) called Horeb here is the same mountain called Sinai later, they are but two names for the same mountain. This mountain became the mountain of God because God was there. Not because of the significance of the place but because of who was there. Notice with me this morning four things about God’s call.
God Often Shows Up In Unexpected Ways v. 1
“And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.”
The specific call of Moses to the task of leadership came by means of “the Angel of the LORD” ( v. 2), which in fact was an appearance of the LORD himself.
The bush is just your basic desert scrub bush, just like countless others dotting the landscape. The Hebrew word that is used here names it “a thorny shrub.” The bush was not different or remarkable, but what was happening to it certainly was different and remarkable.
According to verse two Moses did two things, first he “looked” and second, he said something to himself. The bush was not strange but the fire was. It kept blazing and did not die down.
It is fascinating to read the many explanations offered by various writers to explain what happened; as various kinds of berries, angles of sunlight, or appearances of sunlight on colorful leaves, to create the “illusion” of a burning bush. What seems to be clear is that what Moses saw was on fire but it did not burn up. The event must have been out of the ordinary, because the reader is told that Moses turned aside to examine this more closely (v. 3).
Have you ever stopped to wonder if perhaps God had been trying for some time in less dramatic ways to get Moses’ attention, to get him to break his routine long enough to listen. There was a sign posted on the old Alaskan Highway which many of us in the Vilonia Metroplex, who live on dirt roads can identify with in the winter. The sign read, “Be careful which rut you choose because you’ll be in it for the next hundred miles.” Life is like that we get use to things, we develop our habits and routines. Perhaps God had been trying for some time to get Moses’ attention in the desert. I wonder how long He tries to get our attention.
God Often Shows Up When We Are Engaged in the Ordinary Things of Life.
What happened to Moses, happened on a seemingly ordinary day. One just like the over 14,000 days he had lived in the desert. Moses had settled down and perhaps come to terms with the idea that he would never the deliverer of his people. Day in and day out he carried out his duties as a shepherd and as a father and husband. Moses had now been doing the same thing for 40 years, it is highly improbable that believed that anything was going to change. But that is reckoning without God!
In the common ordinary everyday circumstances of our lives, God occasionally does something altogether extraordinary. He burns a bush, as it were. In our world today it could just as easily come in the form of some disruption of our routine – an accident or illness, an unwelcome change in circumstance, such as the loss of a job. God will often get our attention by causing some change in our day to day lives. We may call them “coincidences” but these are not chance events. They are God’s ways of tapping you on the shoulder so that you will take notice of what he has to say. He can also do so in less dramatic ways such as when are reading Scripture or listening to a sermon. Any of these can be prompts to listen to God. Mark it down, things do not just happen. Ours is not a random, happen by coincidence universe. There is a God arranged, God controlled plan for this world of ours. And throughout our very ordinary lives there are extraordinary moments, in which God is seeking to communicate with you.
God’s Call is A Call To Turn Aside and Listen To Him (vv. 3-4)
“Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” (4) So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
Perhaps the most important word of verse four is the first one, “when.” The Hebrew word (wayyar) means “at the same time.” This refers back to verse three were it says that Moses said, “I must turn aside.” When did God speak to Moses? At the same moment when he turned aside.
When God speaks to us it is time to for us, like Moses, to turn aside from our prejudices, complacency and memories of past failures
What is it going to take to get your attention? What will finally persuade you to stop what your doing long enough to consider what God may be trying to tell you in whatever is happening in your life? What is it going to take before you will say, “I’m going to check this out. I’m going to stop long enough to see what God might be trying to say to me.” Moses did just that and what he discovered was God’s purpose for his life.
It was not until Moses turned aside that God spoke. From the midst of bush, Moses heard his name being called. We do not know what Moses thought at that point but we do know what he said. In the original Hebrew his response is only one word (hinneni), which means “I am here,” or “It’s me.”
Through the four decades that Moses spent in the desert of Midian there no record that God ever spoke to him. In fact it has been over 400 years since we have a record of God speaking to the children of Israel.
But this is the way that God works. Without a hint of warning, He speaks to ordinary people, on ordinary days in the midst of their ordinary routine.
There are days in all our lives that come unannounced, unheralded. There are no angel voices to warn us that what is about to happen will change our lives forever. It is only in later years as we look back that we understand that it was a turning point in our lives. We never know what a day will bring some days open with a flood of sunshine and others days the sky are laden with heavy dark clouds, some days are a thrill to live and others seemingly have to be endured, some days will hold a wedding and others a funeral, but scripture reveals that nothing can part us from the companionship of the LORD except for needless worry and permitted sin.
When God spoke to Moses from the midst of the burning bush and called upon him to be Israel’s deliverer, I believe that he had to deal with old memories that that perhaps had not been dealt with in years. This experience tore open old wounds. “forgotten” fears once again gripped his heart.
In verse four it says, “When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look…” and verse five says, “Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” We must see that the “when” of verse four is connected with “then” of verse five. It is only after Moses stopped in his tracks and said, “Here I am Lord,” that God begin to give him specific instructions.
He first told Moses to remove his scandals because he was on “holy ground.” This was not some beautiful and ornate sanctuary, but a lonesome mountainside. The Hebrew word translated “holy” literally means, “separated.” God is calling Moses to separate himself. God is saying, “I want you to separate yourself from your past failures. I want you separate yourself from your present fears. I want you to separate yourself from every human thing. I want you to give me your undivided attention. I want you to listen to what I am saying.”
Then God tells Moses that he is the God of the Past, even of his past. In verse six he says, “Moreover 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 upon God.”
Sometimes we read this list and see only that it is a list of Bible superstars, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but in reality they were all men with deep flaws. It you study their lives you would discover that they were all very human.
Isn’t that great, you and I qualify for service just as we are, failures and all. Had it not been for the grace of God, not one of them would have accomplished anything of lasting worth. God is saying, “Moses I am the God of men who have failed. I’m the God of ordinary men who were used in extraordinary ways.”
God Delights In Using Ordinary Things And Ordinary People To Accomplish Extraordinary Events. (vv. 7-10)
Now God says in verse seven, “And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.”
In verse seven God reveals His heart to Moses. He says, “I have surely seen…. . I have heard their cries… . . I know their sorrows.” God is reassuring Moses that he has been watching this situation, that He is aware of what is happening. He has heard every cry and seen every act of oppression. God knows, right down to the core, exactly where you are in your life. He sees! He cares! He is aware! And best of all He is touched by it. Your enemy wants you to think differently. He wants you to think that God does not know what is happening in your life and if he does know then He does not care. But this is not true.
The voice of God speaking to Moses had said, “I know what is going on in Egypt.” And perhaps Moses was thinking, “Great, maybe the Lord will do something.” Then suddenly he hears words that must have stunned him all the way down to his sandals. In verse eight he gives Moses the rest of the story, “So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. (9) Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. (10) Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Be careful what you pray for, God may use you to provide the answer. God said, “…I have come down to deliver them….(v. 8) and I will send you to Pharaoh. (v. 10) ” Next week we will examine in detail Moses’ response to God. But for now I would like to consider…..
Application
What did the Burning Bush experience do for Moses? God wanted to move him from his comfortable existence into the work for which he was destined. Moses was never the same again. He had a new intimacy with God, he knew him as a friend. The experience provided him with new motivation; his past failures were forgotten. He received new power for his call to service.
The same can be true for us. God’s job description for you will not be the same as for Moses, but it will be real and just as challenging. God looks not for ability, he looks for availability.
