David, you used a word earlier
tonight, urgency. Urgency. This is an urgent matter. I hope
that you'll listen very carefully. I'm afraid, far too often, those
of us who have a place right near our house, we can go hear
the gospel. I'm afraid we take it for granted.
God help us, don't take it for granted. But treat this with
urgency. I don't know if the Lord's going
to be pleased to save anyone here or not. I don't know. I don't know if he'll be pleased
to bless the hearts of his people, to feed us, to comfort us. But
I do know this, if he's going to do it, he's going to do it
through the preaching of his word. That we ought to treat
it urgently. Well, I invite your attention
to Exodus chapter 3. You get that for free. I just
thought of that because you said that about urgency. Exodus chapter
3, I've titled the message, The Gospel of the Burning Bush. Now
here, this is a very, very familiar Bible story, a story we always
teach our children. But you know, this story, is
much more than a bush that didn't burn up when it was on fire. There's much greater miracle,
much greater picture, something for us to learn from this story.
The whole story of the gospel is given to us in this story
of Moses at the burning bush. I have three very simple points.
First point of the gospel that we see at the burning bush is
this, God's holy. Let's read it, Exodus chapter
three, verse one. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro,
his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock
to the backside of the desert, and he came to the mountain of
God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he
looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush
was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn
aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And
when the Lord saw that he turned his eye to see, God called unto
him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he
said, here am I. And he said, draw not nigh hither.
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God
of thy 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. Now you know Moses' story. 40 years prior to this day, Moses
had fled Egypt in shame. Moses tried by his own might
to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt. Now he did reject
being Pharaoh's son, didn't he? He rejected being identified
with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and he identified himself with
the people of God, because he esteemed the reproach of Christ,
greater riches than all the riches of Egypt. They were all his. This man was the prince of Egypt.
But he rejected all that. But he tried to deliver Israel
by his own power. And he failed miserably, didn't
he? He fled Egypt in shame. And now 40 years, 40 years later,
40 years ago, I was in junior high school.
Forty years is a long time. Forty years later, he's on the
backside of a mountain keeping sheep that didn't even belong
to him. They belonged to his father-in-law. Moses thinks he's retired. And Moses ain't even got started
yet. Moses thinks he doesn't have any talents. He doesn't
have any ability. There's nothing left for him
to give anymore. Now God's going to use him. God's not going to
use anybody while we think we've got any talents or strength or
ability left. And I'll tell you what else,
God's not going to save anybody that thinks that they've got
some strength or any ability left in themselves. Who does
God save? Beggars. Those who've got nothing. Those who have no ability, those
who've got nothing in themselves, no hope in themselves, that's
who God's going to save. God's not going to use anybody
until he whittles them down to where they're nothing. So here's
Moses, he sees this bush on fire, but it's not being consumed by
the fires. He goes to see it. And the Lord
Jesus Christ spoke to Moses from that burning bush. I know that
so because our Lord told the Pharisees that it was him who
spoke to Moses from the burning bush. He said before Abraham
was, I am. I am is the one who spoke to
Moses from the burning bush. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
speaking to Moses from the bush. Now, it's very important for
us to take note of this. We need to always remember this.
The Lord Jesus Christ is God. He's not a strange manifestation
of God. He's not someone who's like God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is God. Now, the scripture here says
that God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Well, I can
tell you why the scripture says that, because the Lord Jesus
Christ and God are one and the same. They're the same. is God, and I'll show you why
that's so important in just a few minutes. The angel of the Lord
is Christ. You know, the angel, what is
an angel? What's the purpose of an angel?
He's to be a messenger. Well, that's Christ. He's the
messenger of God. He's the messenger of the covenant.
Christ, the message, spoke to Moses from the burning bush,
and he gave Moses the gospel, the message that he is to preach.
And it's the same message he's given all of his servants to
preach. It's the same message that we are to preach today.
And I tell you where that message has got to start. It's got to
start with God, who he is. God is God. He's sovereign. You know what that means? He's
the one who's in control. Salvation is not my choice. God's not in my hands for me
to decide what to do with him. No, sir. God's God. I'm in His
hand to see what He'll do with me. God is God. And this is God's
chief attribute. God is holy. Moses starts to
come near to that bush, and God tells Moses, don't you come here
until you take off your shoes. Now this is not telling us that
we cannot draw near to God. Don't you sit there and say,
well, I'd like to be saved, but God won't have me. I can't come
to him because God won't have me. Don't you say that. No, sir.
David said, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it's good
for me to draw near to God. So you come to Christ, but you
can only come to him in a mediator. I can't come to him on my own.
I can't come before God as I am. I've got to come to him in a
mediator. God is holy. This ground is holy ground, not
because there's anything special about the ground. The ground's
holy. The dirt hadn't changed, it's still dirt. The ground's
holy because God's there and God's holy. So you come to Christ. You come to God right now. Right now, where you sit, without
moving a muscle, you come to Christ. That's the commandment
of scripture. But when you come to God in Christ,
you remember this, you're approaching the almighty. So you come to
him reverently. That's what this taking off your
shoes means. In that day, taking off your
shoes was a sign of respect or submission. We would like it
in our day taking off our hat. We take off our hat during the
national anthem. It's a sign of respect. It's
a sign of submission to the authority that that flag represents. Moses
took off his shoes as a show of reverence, as a show of submission
that he submitted himself to God who's speaking to him from
the bush. Now God's holy. Moses, this ground's holy ground,
take off your shoes. God is holy. That's God's chief
attribute. I'll tell you what that means.
Everything God does is holy. It's holy. God cannot save me. He cannot save you at the expense
of His holiness. If God shows mercy, and thank
God He does, oh, God shows mercy. But when God shows mercy, He's
gonna do it in a way that He remains holy. He's not gonna
violate His holiness. And when God condemns sin, He
does it because He's holy. It's right. It's holy. God cannot
even look upon sin. Now we need to get this notion
out of our head. That God is somehow more pleased
with us than He is with somebody else because we got the right
doctrine. We're doing all the right things. No. God does not
show favoritism. I'm going to show you that. Psalm
50. God's not like men. You and I show favoritism. God
doesn't. Because God is holy, he is inflexibly
holy. Psalm 50, verse 21. These things hast thou done,
and I kept silence. Thou thoughtest I was altogether
such a one as thyself, but I will approve thee and set them in
order before thine eyes. You thought I was altogether
just like you, But I'm not. God's not like us. He's holy. Men will show favoritism to our
loved ones, won't we? God won't, because God's holy.
Men will overlook the faults of our loved ones. If somebody
wants to talk to me about the faults of my children, I say,
what faults? I can overlook them, because I'm not holy. God won't
do that, because God's holy. Men are willing to pervert judgment
and not condemn the guilty, but God won't because God's holy. God will never accept any son
of Adam. Any one of us in this room, God
will never accept us as we are because God's holy. That brings
me to my second point, to the gospel of the burning bush. All
men are sinners. Moses could not approach God
on that holy ground without a mediator because Moses and all men are
sinners. It says here at the end of verse
six in our text, Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look
upon God. Moses couldn't look on God because
Moses is a sinner. You remember the angels that
Isaiah saw flying around the throne of God? They had six wings,
and they flew around the throne of God crying, holy, holy, holy. God's holy. Now those angels,
they flew with two of those wings. With two of those wings, they
covered their feet, and two, they covered their face. Now
those angels have never sinned, have they? If they can't look
on God, they have to cover their eyes because they can't look
upon God, they can't be in His presence and look upon Him. It's
no wonder Moses had to cover his eyes. You can just rest assured
of this, we do too, because we are sinners. Now God's going
to tell Moses later on. Moses is going to go down to
Egypt. Moses is going to bring the people out of the land of
Egypt. He's going to bring them through the desert. He's going
to bring them to the edge of the promised land, but Moses can't
bring them into the promised land because Moses represents
the law. The law is not going to bring
anybody into the presence of God. Only Christ can do it. I'm getting ahead of myself.
God's going to tell Moses later on. After he's seen all those
wonders in Egypt, you think what Moses saw in Egypt. Moses saw
the Red Sea part. And the children of Israel walked
through on dry ground. And he turned around, saw that
Red Sea collapse in and wipe out Pharaoh and his army. And
after seeing all that, Moses said, God, I sure would like
to see your glory. God said, all right, I'm going
to show you. I'll make my goodness pass before
you. I'll make my sovereign mercy pass before. I'll have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. But now Moses, you cannot see
my face and live because man is lost in sin. We would be consumed
by the holiness of God's presence. You can't see my face and live. Now that's not saying too much
about us, is it? I was talking with Bruce Crabtree
not too awful long ago. He was preaching at your place,
Mike. He listened to your radio show on a Sunday morning before
he came to service. And he got to service and he
told Mike, he said, you don't think much of us, do you? Well, there's just nothing good
to say about us, is there? I mean, this is just awful. How
did we get in this shape? How do we get to be ruined in
sin? How do we get to be dead in sin?
How is it that we got to be, we can't do anything but sin,
so we can't even look on God? Well, it all happened way back
in the garden. It didn't happen, like Brother
Henry said, first time we stole a watermelon. No, it happened
way before then. It happened way back there in the garden,
in our father Adam, in what we call the fall of Adam, the fall
of man. When Adam sinned, Adam was created
upright. But when Adam sinned, he fell
all the way from righteousness to sin. He fell all the way from
life to death. Adam became nothing but sin and
depravity and guilt and perversity and death. And what Adam did,
everyone he represented did. And that's the whole human race.
Adam represented all of us. And whatever Adam did, you and
I did. Is Adam guilty? So are we. Is Adam sin? So are we. Is Adam depravity and perversity? So are we. Is Adam dead in sin? So are we. Don't ever mistake
being alive physically for being alive spiritually. No, we're
dead in sin. And we do not have the capacity
to make ourselves better. There's nothing we can do to
make ourselves holy. Don't look to the law now. Don't
let people lie to you and tell you, well, if you keep the law,
you'll be holy. No, you won't, because you can't keep the law.
Well, you could. You would be holy if you keep
the law. The problem is we can't. We cannot keep the law. If we
try to deal with the law, you know what the law is going to
tell us? You're guilty, you're guilty, you're guilty. All the
law can do is show us how we fail. We can't make ourselves
righteous by all of our religious traditions. You know what God
said about man's religion? It's going through the motions
of man's religion. You know what God said about
it? And that's all that matters, isn't it? What did God say about
it? God says it's an abomination to me. I won't have it. You see,
we may be able to fool other sinful men. But we can't fool
God who's holy. We're lost in sin. Well, that's kind of depressing, isn't
it? Is there anything to be done about this situation? God can't
change. God's holy. You and I can't change,
can we? No, we're just try. For just
a split second, try not to sin. We can't change. God's certainly
not going to change. Then is there a way a man can
be brought back to God? Is there? Well if there is, God's
gonna have to be the one to do something for us, isn't he? We
can't do anything for ourselves. If something's gonna be done
where we can be brought back to God, God's the one who's gonna
have to do the work. And that's exactly what he's
done in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now God's not gonna fix us up
now. God's not gonna repair this old flesh and patch it up and
fix it up. Jan and I live in an old house. You just can't even find the
records to know how old this house is. And you know, in the
24 years we've lived there, you know what we've done? We've done
a lot of patching. There's a lot of patches. God's not gonna do that to you
and me. When we get to glory, there's a bunch of patches on
us. No, sir. God's gonna start over with a new man. He's gonna
start over and cause a new man to be born in the image of his
son. And that brings me to my third point. Here's the third
point of the Gospel of the burning bush. Salvation is in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Verse seven. And the Lord said,
I've surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt.
And I've heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know
their sorrows. For I am come down to deliver
them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that
land into a good land, and a large, into a land flowing with milk
and honey, under the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites,
and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites." This is all a picture of salvation
in our Lord Jesus Christ. Like I said, I don't know if
the Lord is going to be pleased to save anybody here tonight
or not. But I do know this, Christ is going to do something for
somebody. He's going to save somebody.
He's got mercy on somebody. He says here, my people. That's who He's going to save,
my people. The people that God gave Him in the covenant of grace.
God is a covenant God. God's promised He's going to
save His people. He said, I'm the God of Abraham.
the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. That's the covenant God,
the God who made this promise to Abraham. Years and years and
years ago, God made a promise to Abraham. Abraham didn't have
any children. He said, Lord, I don't have any
children. Who's gonna be my heir? And God
said, oh, you're gonna have a son. You're gonna have a son. Abraham,
you look up in the stars. Count them if you can. That's
how many of your seed's gonna be. He said, well, I don't even
have a son. How's that going to happen? God
said, I promise you, you're going to have one. Sure enough, he
did. And it wasn't Ishmael that was
produced by the flesh, was it? It was Isaac, the son of promise. And God confirmed that promise.
He said, Abraham, your seed is going to be the stars of heaven.
And this land you're on right now, you're never going to own
not a bit of it, except for a plot to bury your wife Sarah. That's
the only thing you're ever going to own, this land. You won't
own any of it. But your children are going to own every bit of
it. And God confirmed that promise. He confirmed that covenant with
Isaac and Jacob. Now you write this down about
God. He's going to keep his promise. You find out what it is He promised
in eternity to do for His people, that's exactly what He's going
to do. Before God ever created anything, God decreed, He appointed
exactly what He was going to do and how He was going to do
it. And then He created the world and put man in it. You know why?
To do everything He decreed to do before. Now what is it that
God's doing today? It's exactly what he decreed
to do before the foundation of the world. Nothing's changed
from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to today. God's saving his people. He's saving them. He's calling
them out through the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't
let the situation make you think all is lost, that God's not going
to do what he promised he'd do. More than 400 years later, Jacob's
descendants are down in Egypt, and they're in bondage. That's
a picture of God's people. They're in bondage to sin. That's
what Egypt represents, the bondage to sin. The children of Israel
are slaves, and they can't set themselves free, just like a
sinner cannot set ourselves free from sin. We don't have that
power. The children of Israel, nobody may as well come to them
and say, well, if you'll just decide to be free, you will.
No, they can't decide to be free. Somebody else has decided that
for them, haven't they? Just like you and me. We can't
decide I'm not gonna be a slave to sin anymore. Somebody else
has already decided that for us. Adam decided that for us
and gave us a nature, gave us his nature that can do nothing
but sin. Then can somebody please tell
me how can I go free? Only in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have five verbs here that
describe the work of Christ for his people and in his people.
They're seen, heard, know, come down, and bring up. The first
word is seen. The Lord said, I've seen the
affliction of my people. Well, of course he has. God sees
everything. He's seen the affliction of his
people because God's eye has never been off of his people.
He's always looked upon his people in mercy, in grace, in love. He's always looked upon his people
in his son, in covenant mercies. Before the world was even created,
God saw his people in Christ. He saw them in the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. Then God saw His elect fall in
Adam. And you know why they weren't
destroyed? You know why Adam wasn't destroyed the moment he
sinned? Because God already saw His people in His Son. He couldn't
destroy Adam. There's a people coming from
Adam's loins that God's going to save. He already determined
to have mercy on them. We can't wipe Adam out. He's
going to have mercy on those people just like He promised.
He saw His elect in Christ before He saw them fall in Adam. God
saw his elect before they were formed in the womb of their mother.
Isn't that right? That's what God told Jeremiah.
Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew you. God saw us before
we were born. He saw us after we were born,
when we were lost in sin. He saw us in our rebellion, in
our blindness. He saw us being tortured by sin. He saw us dead in sin. He saw
the law beating us like a cruel taskmaster. God saw his elect,
a sheep, going astray. And he knew exactly what to do.
He sent his son as the good shepherd to bring them home. I've seen
the affliction of my people. And the second word is heard.
God's heard the cries of his people. I'll tell you what. You cry to the Lord. Cry to him
for mercy. Cry to him for help. Cry to him
for grace. God's ear is not heavy that it
cannot hear. But this word heard here, it means more than just
to recognize there's a sound out there. It means to hear with
regard. God hears the cries of his people
in regard, in love. He hears the cries of his people
in pity. The suffering, the sin has caused
his people It causes God to hear the cries of his people in pity. That brings us to the third word
is to know. God says, I know their sorrows. Well, we think,
well, of course he does. God knows everything. Well, this
word know, it means more than just knowledge that something
exists. It means acquaintance. It means kinsmen. Now how does the holy God know
my sorrows like that? How does he have acquaintance
with the sorrows of my, how can the holy God be acquainted with
all the sorrow that sin causes me? How can God, who's holy,
he can't change, how can he have knowledge of what it's like to
be me? Like a kinsman has knowledge
what it's like to be me. The Lord Jesus Christ is acquainted
with the sorrows of his people because he became a man. God
became a man so he could be the kinsman redeemer. The fourth
word has come down. He said, I am come down to deliver
them. How can God be acquainted with
the sorrows of my sin? Just like a kinsman would. You
know, I have a, I have a younger brother. And genetics sometimes
surprise me. Sometimes it surprises me. You
do that too? He starts saying, he said, I
can't really explain this, but this is something I think or
something happened. I said, I know exactly what you're
talking about. We're kinsmen. There's a connection, a genetic
connection there that just can't be explained. How can God be
acquainted with me like a kinsman? Because the son of God came down. Oh, how he came down. I don't
know who said it first. I heard it first from Happy H.
He said, that's the longest journey that's ever been made. God came
down to be a man. He humbled himself to take on
flesh and blood, just like I have. He humbled himself to take on
him a human nature. Now, it wasn't a human nature
from Adam's seed, was it? No, it was the seed of woman.
He became a real human being, conceived in the womb of Mary,
not by a man, not by the seed of a man, but by the Holy Spirit.
The Prince of Glory, the Light of Heaven. You know, in Heaven
there's no need of a son, is there? Christ is the Son of Heaven.
The Light of Heaven, the Great I Am, became a man. And not a man to be a king, not
a man to be, you know, hailed and put on a throne by men. No,
he became a man to be a servant, a lowly, humble man, a homeless
man, so that he could deliver his people from their sin. And after he came down so far
to humble himself to look just like you and me, a man, a real
man, the Lord Jesus went to the cross And he humbled himself. He came
so far down, it just cannot be exaggerated. To say how far down
the Lord Jesus Christ came, willingly, when he was made sin for his
people. The Prince of Glory called himself David a worm. He was acquainted with the sin
of His people, wasn't He? He was made sin for them. He
became guilty of the sin of His people. He's so acquainted with
the sin of His people, He suffered and died to put it away. Is that too strong to say that
my sin became Christ's sin? Is it? Look at Psalm 40. You
know, we're preaching. It's always a good idea to just
say what the Savior said. You won't go wrong if you say
that. Psalm 40. Verse 12. For innumerable evils have compassed
me about, mine iniquities. Not the iniquities of my people,
mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able
to look up. They are more than the hairs
of my head. Therefore my heart faileth me." The Lord Jesus Christ
took the sin of his people into his own body on the tree and
he put them away. The blood of his sacrifice made
the sin of his people to not exist anymore. So now God's elect
are made righteous in Christ. Christ traded his righteousness
for the sin of his people and made them righteous. Now the
fifth word is bring up. There's a result of this sacrifice.
Christ didn't die for somebody and leave them down there in
the dust, did he? No, bring up. I will bring them up. Just like
God brought his people out of Egypt. He brought Israel out
of Egypt with a mighty hand. And he brought them into the
promised land, didn't he? Yeah, they winded around for a little
while because of their rebellion. But Joshua, the picture of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the captain of our salvation, strolled into
the promised land with all of them. And he brought them into
a large land. There was plenty of room for
them all. It was a good land. They had everything they needed
there. Everything was freely supplied for them by God's grace.
Now all that's a picture. That's not just a story with
a moral to it. This is a picture of salvation
in Christ. Christ brings all of his people
up. He brings them all the way. He
undoes everything Adam did. He brought us all the way from
sin to righteousness. He brings us from death to life
everlasting. He lifts his people up from the
dunghill and sets them among princes as the sons of God at
the table of God. He brings them into a large land.
There's plenty of room for a number no man can number. It's a good
land, a land made good, made for his people who he has made
righteous. Now that's a gospel. That's what
Christ does for his people. But you know, I don't know that
you'd get too much kickback from going out and telling somebody,
God's holy. Men are sinners. I guess if you
define these things, you'd get some kickback, but God's holy. Men are sinners. Christ is a
savior of sinners. Well, you know what else our
text shows us? How? How did Christ put away the sin
of his people? Did God just ignore the sin of
his people? Did he just brush the sin of his people under the
rug so that he can save them, he can be kind to them? No, he
did more than that. God puts away sin in justice
through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now Frank,
where do you see that in this story? I'm glad you asked. Verse two, Exodus chapter three.
And the angel of the Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ, appeared unto
him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush." That word
bush there means bramble bush. It means a thorny bush. It's
just a little old bush. You'd think, it's just like a
little, you ever watch old westerns, you see tumbleweeds, you know,
rolling across the street? It's just, there's nothing to
it. A little bit of wind just blows them across the street.
That's what this thing is. It's just a little old tumbleweed,
thorny thing. And it ought to burn up very,
very quickly. But it didn't. Want me to tell you why? Because
Christ was in that bush. This is a picture of Christ,
the root of a dry ground. You'd think he'd burn up quickly.
But he didn't, because he's God. He got in human flesh. And this
thorny bush was on fire. Now we know this from scripture,
God in his holiness is a consuming fire. Then why wasn't the bush
burned? Because Christ was in the bush.
That bush is a picture of Christ's suffering as a substitute for
his people. Christ died because the Father
made him guilty. Now it would have been unholy
for the father to put him to death if he wasn't guilty. God's
holy. Christ died because the father
made him guilty of the sin of his people. He died bearing the
curse of his people. That's what these thorns are
all about. When did thorns first appear in creation? After Adam's
sin. That was the curse of man's sin. What did Christ wear on his head
as he suffered and died? A crown of thorns. He was bearing
the curse of the sin of his people, and he put that curse away. Now
Christ was made sin, but he never sinned. Christ was made sin,
yet he remained holy. He's the sinless sacrifice. He can do that because our Savior
is God. He's holy. And I don't have to
understand how that happened. I just believe it. By God's grace,
I believe that. And the fire of God's wrath was
poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary. The Father
didn't give him one hint of mercy because he was his son. He poured
out unmitigated fury upon his son. But Christ, our sacrifice,
was not consumed. The fire of God's wrath burned
until all of the sin laid upon the Savior was purged away. You know, normally, the fire
consumed the sacrifice, didn't it? At Calvary, the sacrifice
consumed the fire. He suffered until sin was gone
and the fire quit when the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ put
away sin. His death satisfied God's justice,
and that death is not in vain. He's going to bring his people
up to glory, to be with him eternally. Now that's the gospel of the
burning bush, as plain and simple as I can make it. That's the
gospel of salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ, God's only. You and I are sinners, but there's
salvation in Christ our Savior. Now what are you going to do
with that? Huh? Run to Christ. I want this, I
wish this could be the just natural conclusion that you couldn't
come to any other conclusion after every time you hear me
preach. Run to Christ. Run to Him right now. Are you
lost in sin? I mean is it just a burden you
cannot bear? Run to Christ. Run to Him. Flee to Him right now. He's the
Savior of sinners. If Christ is your only hope,
you've got a good hope, a sure hope of salvation. Run to Him. Lord bless you.