So now let's look at Exodus chapter
2, the end of chapter 2, and we're going to read from the
beginning, I mean the end of chapter 2 and through several
verses in chapter 3. He says in verse 23, it came to
pass in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. And the
children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they
cried. And their cry came up unto God
by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning,
and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and
with Jacob. And God looked upon the children
of Israel, and God had respect unto them. And it's important that we understand
the depth of the misery that Israel was in at this point,
and it's conveyed to us in many ways there in those three verses.
It culminates a lot of what we've been covering in the last few
weeks. But here it says that they sighed,
they cried, and they groaned. And God remembered, God looked,
and God had respect to them. And continuing on in chapter
three, 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 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 aside, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush
and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he
said, God said to him, draw not nigh hither. In other words,
don't come near here. 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. And the Lord said, I have
surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt
and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know
their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver
them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that
land into a good land and a large unto a land flowing with milk
and honey unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites,
and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has
come up unto me, and I have also seen the oppression wherewith
the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will
send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people,
the children of Israel, out of Egypt." And Moses said unto God,
Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring
forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, God
did, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token
to thee that I have sent thee, when thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.
And Moses said to God, Behold, when I am come to the children
of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent
me to you, and they shall say to me, What is his name? What
shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am,
that I am. And he said, Thus shalt thou
say unto the children of Israel, I am. has sent me unto you." And God said, moreover, unto
Moses, Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, The Lord
God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you. This is my name
forever and this is my memorial unto all generations. And I'll
stop there today. The title of this message is
The Gospel of the Burning Bush. And I want you to think with
me about what we've read here. In summary, you can see that
it all goes together. the people of Israel were under
great bondage and great affliction by the Egyptians. And in their great affliction,
they had cried unto the Lord. They hadn't cried so much unto
the Lord before, but they had been crying or sighing and weary
because of their taskmasters in the previous chapters. But
in this chapter, it finally comes, in chapter 2, the end, it finally
comes to a climax. And they're so beaten down. Remember,
one pharaoh had risen up and put out a decree to kill all
the children of Egypt, the male children. And now that pharaoh
had died. Moses had come. Moses had been
rejected. And Moses had gone out. Forty
years now he had been in the wilderness, taking care of the
sheep of his father-in-law. And now Moses is out there and
is just about to be, I don't know, about 40 years old. Can't
tell exactly. But this period of time after
the other pharaoh died and now a new pharaoh has risen up, the
children of Israel are weary. 430 years they'd been in Egypt. They had been in bondage. They'd
been in slavery and afflicted. And it took them a long time
to come to this point where two things occurred. Number one,
they were absolutely without any where to turn. They had nowhere to look. They
were at their wits' end. The Egyptians completely dominated
them and had dominion over them. And Israel was, there was nothing
to do. All their children would grow up, live and die as slaves.
They themselves experienced nothing but bondage and endless misery. And that God brought out of them
during this time a cry, a sigh, and a groaning. And this cry
and this sigh and this groaning came because of their situation
and it came up unto God. Now at that time it says, that
God heard their groaning and remembered His covenant, His
covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob. And so He looked
upon the children of Israel and He had respect to them. And then
God, He shifts the location of the story from Egypt and Israel
and their afflictions and their bondage to Moses in the desert. And God says, that Moses was
keeping the flock of God at this time, and God came to him, and
God appeared to him, and the way God appeared to him was in
this bush that burned with fire. And God spoke to Moses out of
the bush and told Moses, don't come near, take your shoes off,
this is holy ground, because God was there. And then God said
to Moses, I'm going to send you to the Israelites. I'm going
to send you back to Egypt. And you're going to bring them
out of Egypt. And then God told Moses who he
was. He told him who to tell the Israelites
he was. Moses said, who shall I say sent
me to you? And God said, tell them I am,
that I am. That's who sent you. And then
later in the chapter, which we didn't read, God tells Moses
what to tell the Egyptians. So, God appears to Moses, God
makes himself known to Moses in the bush, God calls Moses,
and God tells him what to tell the people about himself. And
God even tells him what to tell the enemy, and command the enemy
to do, to let his people go. And this summarizes this chapter,
and it summarizes this in the context of the misery and the
affliction of the Israelites. Can you see it? Can you see the
context? Israel is completely and helpless
in their trouble, in their sorrow. These were people who were brought
into Egypt because of a famine. God sent the famine. God sent
the famine in order to bring them to Egypt. In Egypt, He cared
for them. Gave them the best part of the
land. But over time, they had fallen into bondage and slavery.
And in that slavery, eventually, the decline came so great in
their lives that they had nowhere to look. And they were absolutely
sorrowing, helpless, and nowhere to turn. And so they cried to
God. And what a place of blessing
that is. Anything that causes us to cry
in helplessness and in hopelessness, and yet cry to the Lord is a
blessing from God. We will never be saved until
we realize that we have nothing to save ourselves. We will never
call upon God until we realize that our sin is so great and
so powerful over us and that there's no remedy in our self-help
by the works of the flesh that we won't call upon God until
those things happen. And so God sends this. Look at
a few verses with me about this. Look at Numbers chapter 20. It
says here they sighed, they cried and they groaned. But in Numbers
chapter 20, it adds this. Because Moses is rehearsing what
happened in verse 16. He says, in verse 14, Moses sent
messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom. That was their
brother. Thus saith thy brother Israel,
now knowest all the travail that hath befallen us, how our fathers
went down to Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time, and
the Egyptians vexed us, that troubled us, and our fathers.
And when we cried unto the Lord, He heard our voice, and sent
an angel, and has brought us forth out of Egypt. And behold,
we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border." So
here you see, God had them in Egypt a long time. God had them
there, and they were troubled by the Egyptians. And when they
cried, God heard their voice, sent a messenger, one to save
them. And so, this is the way God works. Look at a few more verses on
this. Look at Job chapter 35 about crying, about calling upon
God. This is the way God works in
our lives. Trouble comes and we call. If we're the Lord's,
we call. If we're the Lord's, we call
all the time. He says in Job chapter 35, it
says, Verse 6, If thou sinnest, what
doest thou against him? Or if thy transgressions be multiplied,
what doest thou against him? If thou be righteous, what givest
thou him? Or what receivest he of thy hand? In other words,
man cannot derail God's purpose. Man doesn't detract from God's
glory. That's a common misconception,
isn't it? That man somehow can take away
from God's glory. But he says, no, if you sin,
you're not going to hurt God. If you're righteous, you're not
going to improve Him. Verse 8, Thy wickedness may hurt a man
as thou art, and thy righteousness may profit the Son of man. By
reason of the multitude of oppressions, they make the oppressed to cry.
They cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty. But none says,
Where is God, my Maker, who gives songs in the night? Naturally,
when we're oppressed, We don't cry. We cry, but we don't cry
to God. We don't say, where is God my
maker? Because God has to combine in our troubles a gift of faith
to look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, we'll cry. Get me
out of this mess. Oh God, if you'll save me now,
then I'll serve you forever. We make bargains with God, but
that's not crying. God receives a cry from His people when they
have nothing to bring. Nothing to bargain with and no
help and no hope except in God. And look just across at chapter
36 of Job, look at this. He says in verse 13, But the
hypocrites in heart heap up wrath. They cry not when he bindeth
them. You see that? Hypocrites don't
cry when God binds them. And this is an evidence of the
fact that God is the one who changes a
man from hypocrisy to the real thing. And how does He do that?
Trouble mixed with faith. God sends the trouble, but He
combines it with an open door, an open window in the top of
the ark like Noah had, where faith looks up and cries to God. There was only one window in
the ark and there's only one way out. There's only one thing
we can do in trouble is cry. Look at Second Chronicles, which
is backward. Second Chronicles, chapter 16.
And he says in verse nine, Well, this was an interesting
account, so I'll read verse 7. Asa, the king, is being corrected
here. He says, verse 7, And at that
time Hananiah the seer came to Asa, king of Judah, and said
to him, Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria and not
relied on the Lord thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria
escaped out of thy hand. Now, Syria were the enemies of
Israel. But Asa the king asked them for help and relied on Syria
to help them in the battle instead of God. And then he reminds Asa
of how God had delivered them from the Ethiopians. He said,
verse 8, Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host? There was a million men, believe
it or not, a huge host with very many chariots and horsemen. Yet
because thou didst rely on the Lord, he delivered them into
thine hand. Verse 9. For the eyes of the
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself
strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward
him. Herein thou hast done foolishly, therefore from henceforth thou
shalt have wars." What does it mean, her heart to be perfect?
What he had just said. Asa did not rely on the Lord. A perfect heart relies on the
Lord. And that's what we do. We'll
go back to Exodus now, Exodus chapter 2, and look at these
things. So they cried to the Lord. It was the Lord that caused
them to cry. Oh, maybe one more verse here.
or two on this subject because I don't want to leave. This is
important that we understand the nature. Look at Hosea chapter
6. I'll take you to a few verses in Scripture so that you can
enjoy these. He says in Hosea 6.1, now remember
Hosea, the context here was the people of Israel had done so
wickedly for so long that God compared them to a harlot, not
even able to be faithful to her faithful husband. In Hosea 6.1,
he says, Come! And let us return unto the Lord,
for He hath torn, and He will heal us. He hath smitten, and He will
bind us up." Do you see that? After two days, He will revive
us, and in the third day, He will raise us up, and we shall
live in His sight. There's no question, but that's
speaking about the resurrection. God is the one who brings trouble
in our lives. When He wants to heal, He first
tears, he smites, and then he binds up. That's the way God
works. So when trouble comes, in faith,
be glad. He says, be glad when trouble
comes because it takes our eyes off of the things we trust in
and causes us to call upon the Lord. Look at Psalm 34. They had a sermon on this a few
weeks, several weeks ago, maybe even a year ago. I don't know
how long ago it was. Psalm 34, but I frequently go
back to this in my mind. He says in verse 16, actually
verse 15, the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his
ears are open unto their cry. They're not righteous because
they do good things. They're righteous because Christ
did good things. the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, charged, imputed to their account. That's the
only way any man can be righteous before God. Anyway, his ears
are open to their cry. Even though they're righteous,
they cry because in their experience of their life in the wilderness
of this world, they experience the affliction, they experience
the bondage that comes from their sin. And they cry to the Lord
for deliverance, and that's God's will that we do that. Verse 16.
The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off
the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry,
and the Lord hears and delivers them out of their trouble. What
do the hypocrites do? They don't cry when God binds
them. What do the righteous do? They cry when God binds them.
Because that's the Lord's work. It's God who does that. Verse
18, the Lord is nigh to them that are of a broken heart and
save as such that be of a contrite spirit. That's what I was saying.
Here, Israel is back in Exodus chapter two, broken in heart,
contrite in spirit, completely without strength to save themselves.
And God comes to them and evokes from them this cry, this cry. And God is pleased with the cry.
Because he hears the helpless. He not only hears the cry of
the helpless, but he hears the cry of justice against their
enemies. And so it says in verse 24, And
God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with
Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the
children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. God heard their groaning. You
know what? When we groan in spirit, that
is the Spirit of God groaning in us. It says in Romans 8, in
chapter 8, verse 26, The Spirit also helps our infirmities, for
we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit
itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot
be uttered. And then later on it says, Who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand
of God, who also makes intercession for us. Because the Lord Jesus
Christ is the one who searches the hearts and knows the mind
of the Spirit, and He makes intercession for the saints according to the
will of God. And this groaning was God working in the hearts
of Israel, in the nation, Teaching us how God works in the hearts
of His people so that their groanings come up to God and God searches
the hearts and knows the groanings to be from Him. And so He answers
their groanings. He says God remembered His covenant.
God remembered His covenant. God remembered. It seems strange
that God would use that language, God remembered. Surely God doesn't
have to bring things forward in His mind that He'd forgotten.
Surely God isn't like us who, someone says something, oh yeah,
I remember that. Now I was going to do that until he goes off
and does it. That's not what it means when God remembers.
Remember what the thief on the cross said to Jesus? A dying
thief looks to the Lord in his suffering and he says, Lord,
everyone else saw him just as a dying criminal, but he said,
Lord, remember me. Because in those words, the Spirit
of God is teaching us through the thief that if the Lord Jesus
Christ remembers us, that's all that's needed. That He remembers
us. And so here, God says He remembered
His covenant. He remembered His covenant. His
people are always in His remembrance. And this is why God saves, because
He remembers what he purposed to do, what he promised to do,
what Christ actually did, and the memory of what all of this
is, is constantly before him. And I wanted to read a psalm
to you, a verse in Psalm 25, and then in 79, he says in Psalm
25, Remember, O Lord, verse 6, Psalm 25, 6, Remember, O Lord,
thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses For they have been
ever of old. So remember your lovingkindnesses
and your mercies. And then in the next verse he
says, Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions
according to thy mercy. Remember thou me for thy goodness
sake, O Lord. Isn't that a wonderful prayer
to God? Remember your mercies. Remember
your goodness, Lord. Save me because of who you are.
Find reason in yourself, but don't remember my sins. In Psalm
79 he says this, Oh remember not against us former iniquities,
Let Thy tender mercies speedily prevent us, or go before us,
for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of Thy name, and deliver us, and purge away our
sins for Thy name's sake. You see how the prayers of God,
they plead with God not to remember our sins, but to remember His
goodness. This was the way Moses prayed.
whenever the people of Israel had done wickedly. This is the
way God instructs His people to pray. Don't remember my sins
for Christ's sake, but do remember your mercies for Christ's sake.
And the thief on the cross, remember me. And Nehemiah said it this
way, remember me, Lord, for good. So all these things that teach
us The salvation of His people is because God remembers. God
never forgets. God remembers. It's not like
He has to recall it to mind. It means that God has it ever
present in His mind. And He calls it to our attention
that He's always aware of His covenant. It's His covenant that
He uses that drives Him to do what He does. It's His purpose
and His promise and His work in Christ. And so it says, God
looked upon the children of Israel He looked upon them and He had
respect to them. And I think of all the cases
in the scripture, in the New Testament, when the Lord Jesus
Christ, someone came to Him and He looked upon them. He looked
upon them. You think about the mercy, the
compassion, the tender care that the Lord Jesus Christ had for
those that He healed. He looked upon them. That's a guarantee that He's
going to have mercy upon us if He looks upon us. We don't see
Him. We can't see God. But He sees
us. And so we say, Lord, look upon
me in mercy. And God did look upon them. And
it says He had respect unto them. He had kind regard for them,
tender compassion and regard for the children of Israel. And
so that's what The context is, and that's why God goes from
here to Moses in the desert, keeping the flock of Jethro.
So he says in verse 1, Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his
father-in-law, the pre-Semitian, and he led the flock to the backside
of the desert, and he came to the mountain of God, even to
Horeb. Horeb is another name for Sinai. And look at verse
2 carefully now, with me. He says in Exodus 3, verse 2,
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire
out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, Moses 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 aside to see, God called to him
out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he
said, Here am I. And God said, Draw not nigh hither,
put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground. Now, again, I wanted to bring
your attention to these things. The gospel of the burning bush. What is the gospel of the burning
bush here? Moses, out in the wilderness,
comes to Mount Sinai. The mountain of God, it says.
And he sees this bush, and it's on fire. Now, and it's a strange
thing. I always wondered as a child,
or even as a young person as I got older, why would God choose
something so strange? I mean, you wouldn't expect to
see a bush burning. And why didn't God open the heavens
and speak? Or something great that would
just cause Moses to be spellbound. But no, it's this bush. It's
like the bush there. It's just a green bush. And it
wouldn't have been necessarily a dry bush. It could have been
a dry bush. It probably was green. A living
bush. And it's on fire. And He looks
at this bush and the leaves And the branches, the little twigs
on it, they're all aflame. And yet the bush itself is not
burnt up. How can that be? You know what
happens to a bush. As soon as the fire gets on it,
boom! It's gone. And just a few moments later,
it's completely consumed. We used to burn our trash when
we were kids. We lived out in the country.
And I loved throwing things on the fire and just watching them
just come up. Especially pine needles and stuff.
You throw them on there and it's boom! And they're gone. But not
this bush. The fire was burning and the
fire was a consuming fire. And yet the bush, which was wood
for fire, didn't get consumed. How can that be? And the gospel
is in this. Notice also, it says here in
verse two, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame
of fire out of the midst of the bush. Now, this is something
that always can be a stumbling block, and a lot of people will
make false doctrines out of it. But God explains what this is.
The same word there that's translated angel of the Lord, the angel,
is also used in Malachi chapter 3. If you want to turn there,
if you haven't seen this before, I'm just going to take you there
quickly. He says in Malachi 3.1, A prophecy. A prophecy of how
God would send John the Baptist before the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what the verse is speaking of here in Malachi 3.1. You know
what John the Baptist did. He was born six months earlier
than Jesus, and when he was grown up, God sent him into the wilderness,
and he preached the gospel in the wilderness, and people would
come to him, and they would be baptized. And God said that was
his messenger. He said, And this is the Lord
speaking. The Lord. Capital L, capital
O, capital R, capital D. Jehovah God is speaking here.
He says, Behold, I will send my messenger. Do you see that? It's the same word as in Exodus
3.2 where it says the angel. Angel and messenger are the same
exact word. Was John the Baptist an angel?
No. But he was a messenger. He was
sent by God. And that's why he's called this
here. And anyway, he says, I will send my messenger and he shall
prepare the way before... Who? Me. The Lord is speaking
and he says, this messenger is going to prepare the way before
me, Jehovah God. And then he says in the next
part, and the Lord. And the word Lord there is capital
L, but small o-r-d because it's a different word in the original. It means Adonai, or Master, or
Sovereign. And these things, we'll look
at a verse or two on this in a minute, but he says, the Lord
whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple. Okay, so
the Sovereign is going to come. And when He comes, He's going
to come suddenly. And where He comes is to His
temple. The temple is His. It's the Lord,
after all. But He's called the Lord as Sovereign
here, in this word Lord. He says He's going to come to
His temple, even the messenger of the covenant. The Lord here
that's coming is also called the messenger of the covenant.
And again, that word for messenger is the same word as in Exodus
3, 2, that's angel, the messenger. So God is teaching us, who was
it that came? Who came when John the Baptist
prepared the way? Well, it was the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the Lord who came, and He's the one who came to His temple
because the temple of God is the temple of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ is the Lord God. And yet it's the Lord Jehovah
who's speaking here. And he says he's going to prepare
John the Baptist the way before me. And then he says, in the
next part, not only is he a messenger, but he's the messenger of the
covenant, whom you delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith
the Lord of hosts. Now, there's several verses that
we could tie this together with in the New Testament, and in
the old. But it's undoubtedly the case
that what God is saying here is Jehovah, the Lord, the Lord
of hosts, God Almighty, is the one who is going to come in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ as the messenger of the covenant.
In these last days, God has spoken to us by His Son. That's who
He's speaking about. The Son of God would come. He's
the messenger of the covenant. And so back in Exodus chapter
three, when it says the angel of the Lord, we shouldn't be
troubled by the fact that it says angel in our Bibles because
he's speaking of It could be an angel, a created angel, or
it could be a messenger, a man, or it could be the Lord Jesus
Christ. And in this case, it says the
angel of the Lord. He's speaking about the eternal
God, the Lord Jesus Christ coming incarnate as man, coming in the
flesh of man. So now we see here that and not
only that, but look at this in verse four. He says this, when
Moses turned aside to see it in verse 4 of Exodus chapter
3, he says, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see,
God called to him out of the midst of the bush. So the angel
appeared to him in the bush, and yet God is calling to him
out of the bush, because the messenger who's speaking to him
out of the bush is the Lord God Almighty. It's the Lord Jehovah. The Lord Jesus Christ is Jehovah
God, and he's speaking to Moses. Now, why is this significant? Why did God do this? Well, I
believe The reason that he did this was to show us how he would
save his people. How would God save his people?
Several things about this. Who is it that's crying, sighing
and groaning? And who is it that said he was
going to save them? Well, Israel is crying and sighing
and groaning. God saw that he was going to save them. God determined.
He looked upon them. He remembered his covenant and
and he had respect to them. And now God appears to Moses
as the one who would save them. And the way he appears is in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, appearing to him in a
bush, burning but not consumed. Now, what is a bush? Well, a
bush is the lowest of all possible trees. Later on in the Old Testament,
One of these men who rose to power and killed 69 of his brothers
had one brother that escaped. And they went down the list of
all the trees. There was the olive tree, the fir trees in
Lebanon, and all these different things, even the grapevine. And
finally he gets to the bush, the lowest. You know, you would despise a
bush compared to the trees. And here, there's a bush. And
God is in the bush. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
came to us in the person, His person came to us in the nature
of a man, and in our nature, it's like the lowest form that
He could have come to us as God, God Himself, the eternal God,
coming to us as a helpless baby, the Lord of eternity. coming
as a babe in time, the ancient of days coming as the infant
of days, the almighty God coming in total dependence upon the
milk from his mother's breast. These things stagger our imagination
to even consider. But here, deity, dwells in human
flesh, and yet His human nature is not consumed by it. Isn't
that amazing? That the fullness of the Godhead
would dwell bodily in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet that fullness
wouldn't overcome His human nature. God dwells in His Son. Christ is God. He is the Lord, He is the Lord
of hosts, and He dwells in that. But not only does it mean that
deity dwells in humanity, but it also has to do with the purpose
for why God, why did the Lord Jesus Christ become man? He didn't
just become man as an example. He became man in order that He
might save us. And as man, he had to lower himself,
not only to be a man, but as a servant. And as a servant,
he had to obey God's law, and as a servant in obedience to
God's law, he had to suffer the wrath of God for our sins. He died the just for the unjust. And that's the reason he speaks
here of the burning bush, the bush that burned and was not
consumed. Because not only is the Lord
God Almighty in the weakness of human flesh and in the likeness
of sinful flesh, but in that nature He takes our sin and He
endures all that God as the consuming fire would have against sin,
and yet He is not consumed. Because in His body He is holy,
harmless and undefiled. God doesn't consume Christ's
body because the Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God. It's
His person. And this is a great sight. No
wonder Moses turned to look at the bush burning. And we need
to turn and look. And because God appeared to Moses
in this way, it teaches us that unless God appears to us and
makes Himself known to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was
crucified in order to save His people, then we have no hope. We can't know God. We do not
know God unless He shows Himself to us as Christ and Him crucified. That's the way Moses saw the
Lord. Do we see God in Christ? Do we see God in Christ and Him
crucified? What should we do? We should
ask. Lord, make Yourself known to me. Come to me. Appear to
me. Reveal Yourself to me in the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is both God and man, and suffered as
man in my place, that I might be saved. And that's the message,
I believe, of this bush. But notice in verse 5, he says,
And God said to Moses, our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal word
said to Moses, Draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from
off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. This is something also I've always
wondered about. I've heard your preachers refer
to this statement. It's holy ground. It's holy ground.
And still, it didn't sink in. What does he mean? I really believe
that this is what it means. And this is something we need
to understand too. Is that when God speaks of His holiness, He's
speaking of His perfections. He's speaking of that nature,
that quality of God That's unlike anything in us. It's God's absolute
perfection. There's nothing like the holiness
of God. And God is saying, His glory,
the glory of His perfection, the glory of His name, nowhere
is seen more than in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified
for His people. Nowhere else is it seen. Remember,
What was the place where they offered the blood? Where did
the priest sprinkle the blood in the Old Testament in order
to make atonement for sins? Where did he do that? Was it
in the holy place? No, it was in the holiest, the
holiest place, the holy of holies. And that's where the blood was
sprinkled. And the cherubims would look down on the mercy
seat where the blood was sprinkled. And guess what he said he would
do when the blood was sprinkled? He himself would appear there,
between the cherubims. And when they did that, it says
in the Old Testament, you can look at the end of Exodus, chapter
40, that God's glory filled the tabernacle. Because God dwells
where Christ is crucified. God takes delight in what Jesus
has done. He remembers His covenant, but
He especially remembers the fulfillment of that covenant when the Lord
Jesus Christ gave Himself for, what does it say in Hebrews chapter
13? I'll just read this to you. In
verse 20, He says, Now, the God of peace that brought
again from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ, that great shepherd
of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working
in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. God's covenant is
everlasting. It's established by the blood
of Christ. God looks upon, it was promised in the covenant
that Christ would suffer. That was what made the covenant
fulfilled. That's what fulfilled and ratified
it. It made, put it into force and brought to pass. Everything
God promised to do in the covenant was the blood of Christ. And
what God promised to do in the covenant was to save his people
from their sins. In Romans chapter 11, in verse
27, he says it this way. And this is the covenant. And
this is my covenant unto them when I shall take away their
sins. It's the blood of Jesus Christ
that takes away our sins. So, that's why God speaks of
this as the holy ground. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
in His humanity, in His deity, in His person. showing himself
to be the one who would endure the consuming fires of God's
wrath against us for our sins. And all of this is speaking of
how holy it is to be in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in his
work of our Redeemer as our atoning high priest and the Lamb of God. This is the greatest work that
God ever did. to save us from our sins by His.
And I want you to think with me, too, also. He says, 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. He always refers to himself
that way. The God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, the God of Jacob. Look over at verse 15. And God said moreover unto Moses,
Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, The God, the Lord
God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you. This is my name
forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. Why would
God do that? Why would God, God calls His
name the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.
This is my name, this is my memorial forever. Why would God do that? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
so identifies Himself with His people that He delights to name
Himself with them. His name is what? Jesus? Why? Because He shall save His people
from their sins. Did He say, and I'm the God of,
and list every name from creation up to this point? No. He didn't
say that. Because He's the God of His people.
He specifically names those over whom He's the God of in that
covenant relationship, the way that He would save them from
their sins. That's the way He's God. And the other thing it shows
us is that all that God is, all that God is, He brings to bear
on the salvation of His people. And that's phenomenal. Think
about it. All that God is, is in that bush. The fullness of
the Godhead bodily dwells in Christ. And all that God is,
is engaged, is brought to bear Not only all that He is in His
power and in His justice and in His faithfulness, His grace
and His mercy, but all that He is, He never changes. He's the
one who says, I am that I am. He's always the same. God has
always been, from eternity to eternity, engaged in this one
thing, which is to save His people for Himself from their sins to
His glory. And when God saves His people
from their sins, understand this, that every attribute of God is
magnified to the greatest extent when God saves His people by
the Lord Jesus Christ. We do things, I do things all
the time, and you do too. You set out to do something,
you make plans, you try to do the best you can. And when you
get all done with it, you go, look at all the defects in it.
I messed it all up. And you just want to just take
it apart and do it again, because it's almost like a waste of time. But God never does anything partially
or suboptimally or second best. He always does His very best.
When you think, well, I wonder why things aren't this way instead
of the way they are now. Know this, the reason it is this
way is because it's the very best that it could possibly be.
Because God never does things second rate. Especially this
is the case, and you can see this in creation. Remember God
said in Genesis 1.31, He looked at all that He created and He
said, very good, very good. But this is especially true in
our salvation. You see, when we think of God,
We think, I cannot approach Him. Why? Because those things that
are true about God, His holiness and His justice and His truth
and His righteousness, how He must punish sin, all those things,
those things should be for my destruction. Don't we think that?
And we're right. But it was in the wisdom of God.
that He took the very things that should have been for our
destruction, and He magnified them in a way that was greater
than which nothing else could have been. He could not have
made His justice more glorious. than in the way that He saved
His people from their sins. God, in His justice, He doesn't
respect persons, does He? He doesn't care what your background
is, what your position in life is, how much money you have,
or what you've done. He's going to judge you justly
according to His law. Never is that seen more. than
when He judged His own Son when sin was found on Him. And no
one would have seen the justice of God more than when God required
the death of His Son. And you can think of this all
the way through, everything that God has done. The power of God,
the love of God, the mercy of God, they're all magnified to
the highest possible extent in the salvation of His people.
And the Lord Jesus Christ appears to Moses in this way, I am the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I'm the one in the bush speaking
to you now. I am that I am. What I have been
in the past, that's what I am now. I am now what I shall be
in the future. God never changes. And His love
for His people, it didn't go through dips and valleys, oh
shoot, look at what they've done now, and it's low, and now God
finally forgets that and He comes back up. That's the way our love
is, isn't it? We respond to things in the moment.
Everything is eternally present with God. Where God is now is
the eternal now. It's present. All the things
in the past and in the future are as if they're right there
in the present reality with God. And He sees it all. And His love
and His mercy and His power, they've always been the same
towards His people. Never changing. God never changes. And God says, I am that God. I am the one. And this is why
Israel is going to be saved. This is who is going to be saved.
The promised seed. Those who are in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And He brings all that to bear
on our salvation. And Moses takes off his shoes
and he has to stand there on that holy ground where God's
glory is most gloriously seen in the salvation of His people
because of the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. God saw, God looked, and God
had respect to them because of His covenant, because of His
mercy. We are only saved because God in His goodness, God in His
power, God in His justice is glorified in our salvation. If
God wasn't glorified, He wouldn't mess around with it. He wouldn't
do it. Why would God do something that brought Him no glory? But
God's justice. And when we think about these
things, His justice, His mercy, His power, His faithfulness,
His love, we think about them kind of segmenting God. But God
is all one. The theologians say He's simple.
But He's just one God. It's His person that we love.
We love everything about God because all that God is was brought
to bear to save us from all that we were. And think about what
that says about the depth of our sin and our need and the
greatness that God would so stoop in His condescending grace. And
that's why He's here in a bush. In a bush! It seems like he would
have chose something more noble. No, a bush is appropriate because
he had the stoop to take on our nature and stoop even lower to
bear our sin and answer to God for it as our advocate, forever
taking our groanings and our needs before God. That's the
reason we're saved. The salvation of the chiefest
of sinners is entirely consistent with the greatest magnification
of God's glory. God never does anything halfway.
And when He saved a sinner, when He saved every sinner in the
Lord Jesus Christ, He maximized His glory in all ways. Let's
pray. Father, thank You that You sent
Your Son. Anything less would have fallen
short of what we needed, and anything less would have brought
you less than holy glory to your great name. We pray, Lord, that
we would so groan and cry and sigh in our trouble and you would
hear us and you would remember us because we had already been
put in your covenant in eternity and Christ had already stood
up for us and obligated Himself and you laid upon Him all of
the requirements that you demanded from us, and all that you needed
to uphold your great name, you found satisfied in the death
and the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that
even now, in this wilderness of this world, in the sense that
our sin has this great power over us, Lord, you would fulfill
your word, and remember those words, sin shall not have dominion
over you, You're not under the law, but under grace. It's your
grace that we see in our Lord Jesus Christ, and we see your
truth. And we see these both in perfect harmony, in complete
glory and manifestation in His work. We thank you for Him. Thank you for His greatness.
Thank you for His humility, for His love, for His faithfulness,
for His unchanging nature, that we can trust Him. Remember not
our sins Lord remember your greatness your loving kindness and Deal
with us on the basis of your goodness in Jesus name we pray
amen