Exodus chapter 3. We see in all Scripture. That in the volume of the book
it is written of him. It is written of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We see that the book of Exodus is no different than
that. It's the same as all the other books. The Lord Jesus can
be seen. But as I was reading, I mentioned to you Wednesday.
And I think last Sunday too that we're going to try to go through
book by book and see if the Lord will be willing to give us messages
that we can. Enter into regarding the Lord
Jesus Christ. I was reading through Exodus.
And I came across this passage and. I felt. I felt that. What the Lord is speaking of
here is just a glorious type and picture of our Lord Jesus
Christ. You're open to Exodus chapter 3 verse one. It says
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. Moses said, I will now turn aside
and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. When the
Lord saw that he turned aside 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 and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob. And Moses hit his face for he
was afraid to look upon God. This bush burned with fire, but
it was not consumed. We know that this is the Lord
Jesus Christ. We know that whenever He was
on the cross, bearing the sins of His people, He was burning
with the fire of God's wrath. The eternal judgment of hell
was upon Him, yet it did not consume Him. This is the type
and picture here. By the Lord's death, by Him enduring
the wrath of God, the fire of God's justice is extinguished,
it's put out. Think of it this way, when the
Lord, and these things are too wonderful for us to understand,
So we just declare them and pray the Lord would cause us to believe.
When the Lord was dying and the fire of God's wrath was falling
upon him, he absorbed it completely. He absorbed all of the fire of
God's wrath for his people. There's no other, there's no
more wrath to the Lord's people. Justice has been satisfied. He
physically absorbed everything poured upon him from the Father,
and he was not consumed. And then, and then he cried through
the darkness, it is finished. And he yielded up the ghost under
the Father. He said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.
When he died, we died in him. And the wrath of God has been
assuaged. The justice of God has been satisfied.
The laws demands have been satisfied in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Macca chapter 7 verse 19 says
he will turn again. He will have compassion upon
us. He will subdue our iniquities and thou will cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea. The Lord did this for his people.
He casts our sins as far as the east is from the west, never
to be remembered again. He, our substitute, bore the
wrath of God, bearing our sins in his body, put them away by
the death of himself. He was not consumed. He was not
burnt up. In the scripture, there was a
man named Nebuchadnezzar. He was king over Babylon. The
children of Israel had been taken into Babylonian captivity. And
he decided he was going to make a god. And that's what men do
by nature. They want to be worshiped. And this god, this image, was
to be worshiped by every man, every woman, every child, whenever
the sounding of music would play. They said, you are to bow down
and worship. But three men named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
did not bow and worship whenever the time came. And the king was
wroth with them and said, you will bow or you will burn. Because
the testament of the king or the law of the king stated, if
you didn't worship, you were to be thrown in the fiery furnace. Now we see the type of the Lord
Jesus Christ going to hell for his people in this, even as we
begin thinking about the fiery furnace in the bush here, and
that's what transpired. The children of Israel here,
the four Hebrew children, or the three Hebrew children, they
did not bow. They stood up against this false
god. We will not bow. And the king was wroth and he
heated the furnace seven times hotter. Well, that's the number
of perfection, isn't it? That's God that on the Sabbath
day he rested. He heated it up seven times.
What am I saying to us? I'm saying that there was a perfect
representation of what the Lord endeared on the cross for his
people. The perfect salvation that was being accomplished by
the Lord Jesus Christ going into the fiery furnace for his people.
They cast all three of these men into the furnace and the
king says unto them, The King looks and says, did we not cast
three men into the fire? And he says, yes, truth, Lord,
truth, King. And he said, well, I see four and one is likened
to the son of God. Whenever the Lord Jesus Christ
went into the fires of hell for us on the cross of Calvary, whenever
he put away our sin, he did it in our stead. He did it as our
substitute and we in him so that now that bush that was not consumed
That bush that was able to stand the fire of God's wrath is now
seated on the right hand of God and we are seated in him as made
perfectly righteous. Look in verse three. And Moses said, I will now turn
aside and see this great sight. Why the bush is not burnt. I was talking on the phone the
other day to someone and realized something in our conversation,
the Lord had given me this, but there's movies that portray Santa
Claus and different other fictional characters. And just bear with
me a moment, I have a good point to make. But men say by nature
that believing is seeing. Believing is seeing. So if you
believe in something, then you see it. That's not true when
it comes to the gospel. And that's not true when it comes
to Christ. We see through the eyes of faith, then we believe. Seeing is believing, the Lord
Jesus Christ. He said here, I'm gonna turn
aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not consumed.
When he saw it, when he saw it, he believed. That's what the
Lord's done for his people. He says to us, look, behold,
seek my face, and then we seek his face. He says, hear, and
then we have ears to hear. He saved us, and then he called
us. That's what the Lord's done for
his people. Believing is not seeing. Seeing
is believing with the eyes of faith that the Lord's given us.
What do we see? What do we see when we see we
see Jesus? We see Jesus, who was made a
little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor that he, by the grace of God, should taste
death for every man, everyone that the father had given him
in the covenant of grace. He tasted death for them and
endured the fiery wrath of God's judgment. Isaiah Chapter 40 verse one says
comfort you comfort you my people. Sayeth your God speak you comfortable
to Jerusalem and crying to her. Tell her that her warfare is
accomplished. That her iniquity is pardoned
and that she has received double of the Lord's hands for all her
sin. The Lord Jesus Christ, endearing God's wrath, absorbing the wrath
of God in his body, physically absorbing it when his soul was
made an offering for sin. put away our sins so that now
we've received double. We've received goodness and mercy.
We've received salvation of the Lord, being united one with Him.
Our iniquity has been pardoned. This is how the Lord fulfilled
the covenant of grace, by Himself, by Himself. This is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I
will put my laws in their hearts and in their minds and I will
write them. and their sins and iniquity, I will remember no
more." Now, how does the Lord not remember our sins and our
iniquity? How does the Lord not remember
them? Did He forget? Certainly not. No, He knows all
things. He is. He is the I am. He does not forget something.
He don't remember them because they're not there. They've been
put away. They're gone. Todd often says this, and I like
this statement pretty well. To be justified doesn't mean
just as if I had never sinned. To be justified means that you
never send. That's what justice. That's what
the Lord Jesus Christ did by putting the way putting away
the Senate, his people. He made us sinless before the
father. Sinless. In Christ we are perfect. We have been redeemed. Our sin
has been put away. In verse four he says, and when
the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called him to him
out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he
said, here am I. Only the Lord's people are made
to turn unto the burning bush. Only the Lord's people desire
the burning bush. Only the Lord's people have been
made to come. When he called Moses by name,
what was Moses response? Here am I. When the Lord was
on the earth and Lazarus had died, he was four days late according
to man's standard, but he was right on time according to God's
time. As he approaches, Martha tells him, Lord, if you'd have
been here, our brother would not have died. And he said, your
brother will live again. She said, I know he'll live in
the resurrection. He said, Martha, I am the resurrection and the
life. So what does the Lord do? He goes over to where Lazarus
is buried, and he doesn't just declare, come forth, because
if he'd have said, come forth in the grave, the power that
the Lord had, everybody in that grave would have came forth.
He said, Lazarus, come forth. The Lord says, Moses. Moses says,
here am I. The Lord said, Lazarus, come
forth. He calls you by your name. It's a personal salvation for
you. As his people, it's an individual
salvation. He calls you by name. He knows
your name and if you are in him, our name was written on his hands. We're going to sing that him
on the back of the bullets in here soon. It was graven on his
heart. Our names he's thanks be to God. He don't just know us by name,
but he's given us a new name so that when we stand before
him, our confession is not declaring our own name in salvation. It's
declaring his name. That's our new name. The name
the Lord Jesus Christ. He calls his people by name.
And what does he tell them when he calls them? Look in verse
five. And he said, draw not nigh hither. God is unapproachable by us. Do we understand that? I can't enter into what it means
to tell you that God is holy other than what the definition
is, it means other. It literally means the opposite
of what we are in every way. God has never had a new thought.
God has never tried to do anything. God does not have a plan. He's
purposed all things and it came to pass. But when the Lord tells
Moses here, draw not nigh thither, he's giving us some understanding
of what it is to worship God, what is required of us to worship
God. It requires a substitute. in
order to approach God. It requires the Lord Jesus Christ
being our stead in order for us to approach God. But it also
tells us that we should take worship seriously. We should
take worship very seriously when we come into this place. Now
there is nothing holy about the bricks and the mortar and there's
nothing holy about the wood, but the way that we approach
God and the seriousness that we take worship. It's not just
requested, it's demanded. It's a declaration that we are
to take it serious when we come into this house. The Lord Jesus
spoke talking. You remember whenever the men
had gathered in the temple and they had set up, they were selling
doves in the temple. The money changers were offering
up different, they were having a yard sale, if you want to put
it that way. And what'd the Lord tell them? He said, my house
shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it into
a den of thieves. Now, was he accusing them by
saying because they're being dishonest in the money changing
process that made them thieves? No, it's a spiritual application,
brethren. He called them thieves because of where they were doing
it. That's what made it wrong. We have no business having a
yard sale at the Lord's house. Why? Because it's a place of
worship. This building has been sanctified by the Lord. That
means to be set aside. This is the place that the Lord
said, I will meet with you. And we must take that worship
very seriously, very seriously indeed. Otherwise, if we have
a frivolous attitude, We have a frivolous attitude. We're robbing
God of his glory in worship. Think about that. Paul was talking to Timothy on
the subject and he told him in Timothy 1 Timothy 315. These
things right I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But
if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou altest to behave
thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living
God, the pillar in the ground of the truth. The Lord teaches
us how we are to behave in the Lord's house. If we have a frivolous
attitude, if we have a frivolous mindset when we come here to
worship, the Lord will not meet with us. We must come looking
for the Lord Jesus Christ, not looking to please our flesh,
not looking to be entertained. Not looking for anything but
the Lord Jesus Christ. That is our need as the Lord's
people. The Lord Jesus Christ. We don't
come here to get our bellies full. We come here to hear and
feast upon the blood and the wine of Jesus Christ. We feast
on his body and his blood. This is what he's teaching us. One of my daughters came up to
me and was asking regarding a basketball goal. And she said, daddy, are
we going to get a basketball goal for the church? I know that
that church down here has a basketball goal. And I said, well, this
is a good opportunity as a father to teach my daughter the reason
why I didn't just say no, I taught her. And I said, if we come to
the Lord's house with the attitude that it's a place to have fun,
we're not coming to worship the Lord. We're not coming seeking
his holiness, seeking his righteousness, seeking that thing which is needful.
Now, is there anything wrong with playing basketball? Certainly
not, but it has no business at the Lord's house, does it? It
just doesn't. We come here for one reason and
one reason only, to worship the Lord Jesus Christ in spirit and
in truth. And he tells Moses right here,
he says, take off your shoes. Well, shoes are a comfort item
to the feet, are they not? If you're gonna approach God,
you have to approach him with no comfort for your flesh. And
I know in saying that, my mind goes to, should we take the pads
out of the pews? No, certainly not. Certainly
not. That's silly. Now we can be comfortable. The
Lord's given us these commodities of air conditioning and he's
given us the heat in the wintertime and a nice place to sit and a
good place to worship. So when we come here, we can
be comfortable, but we don't come here for the consumption
of our flesh or we don't come here for the entertainment of
our flesh. We come here to worship God. And the only way we can
worship is in spirit and truth. We take our shoes off if I can
put it that way and ask and beg that the Lord would wash our
feet as he did the disciples. This is the only way we can approach
a holy God. We can't take it lightly. God
will not bless if we devalue the severity of worship, the
need of worship. He will not bless it, brethren.
We must put our shoes off and come unto him as. Beggars begging
him to have mercy. We must come naked and exposed
with no covering of our own. No thought of pleasing the flesh,
but having one need, and that is he would save us from our
sin. Scott Richardson wrote an article
and it's in our bulletin this morning and at the end of it
it says you must come as a undone sinner or not at all. That's
how the Lord will meet with us. That's how we approach him as
a undone sinner. Guilty before him. We become guilty when we see
the Lord Jesus Christ and he makes us to be sinners. But did
you know that the Lord became guilty? The Lord became guilty
so that whenever he sees us, we are not guilty in his eyes
any longer. He put away our sin. You remember
whenever Daniel he would the same Babylonian captivity I mentioned
to you a minute ago about Sadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Daniel
was praying unto the Lord and the law went forth of the king's
mouth. And of course, you know, that the princes and things of
that land were jealous of Daniel. And so they implemented this
law in order to trap Daniel because they knew we can't get him by
our law. We'll make up another one and
then we can get him that way. And that's what they did. The
king didn't have knowledge that Daniel was praying unto the Lord
three times a day, but the law went forth that nobody can pray
or to, uh, give obeisance or any kind of worship to anyone
but the king for, I believe it was 30 days. Well, that didn't
stop Daniel, did it? He continued to pray three times
a day. So they found out about it and
they went to the king and said, now your word says that he must
be thrown in the lion's den. So now the king is bound to his
law that he has made. And what a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ being faithful unto the Father and yet being made
guilty, being made guilty, bearing our sin and the law demanding
justice. King Darius throws Daniel into
the lions then, but the good news for the believer is, is
the angel of the Lord shut the mouth of the lion. The lions
couldn't touch Daniel while he was in there. Scripture says
the next morning they went, the king ran out first thing in the
morning and he says, Daniel, Is your God whom you continually
serve able to deliver you? Daniel said, O king, live forever.
The angel of the Lord has came and shut the mouths of the lions.
That's what Christ did for his people. He went down to the pit
of hell with the lions and they couldn't touch him. He was not
consumed. The fire of God's wrath did not
consume him. He endured it for his people. Romans 3.24 says, being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be the propitiation through
faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remissions
of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare,
now here's our hope. What did all that take place
for? To declare, I say at this time, His righteousness, that
He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. The just one has executed justice
unto his son and we have been given righteousness. Righteousness
has been imputed unto the elect of God because of our Lord and
what he endured for his people. For us also to whom His righteousness
shall be imputed if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus,
our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and
was raised again for our justification. We have evidence that we've been
justified because the Lord Jesus Christ was resurrected. That
is our evidence of justification. Now quickly, let's look at verse
five. He tells him where he's standing,
his holy ground, the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. On Christ, the solid rock we
stand, we stand all other ground is sinking sand. This is the
holy ground that the believer stands upon being barefoot, being
naked, being nothing outside of him. We stand upon Christ
and his righteousness alone. This is where God is pleased
to meet his people. The mercy seat, the place wherein
He said, I will meet with you. We are false and full of sin.
We are unsteady in all of our ways. We're constantly blown
about with the weight and the sin that doth so easily beset
us. But thanks be to God, He put away our unbelief. He put
away our sin. He became guilty before God and
satisfied God's justice. Verse 6, He says, Moreover, He
said, I am the God of thy fathers. understand what the Lord declares
unto His people is just what I've mentioned about Him justifying
us. He doesn't declare something
new. If it's new, it's not true. If it's true, it's not new. The
Lord implemented the truth to us by His blessed Word, but it
was forever settled in heaven. That means it's eternal. Everything
that's declared, it's not something new that we're trying to discover.
We're declaring the same thing, that Christ was made sin for
us, who knew no sin. The Lord did not know any sin,
but yet he was made sin that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. This is our only hope. This is our hope and our
salvation. This bush that was burning for
the Lord's people. For the Lord's people is the
rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley. I looked up what a rose
of Sharon was because I was curious and it's a hibiscus. I had no
idea it was a hibiscus. Then I found out all the healing
qualities the hibiscus has. I didn't have a clue that it
was primarily used for skin ointment. It's to heal wounds. It's to
cause your body to be able to, it's even cancer preventing.
I mean, it's an amazing plant. But the most beautiful part to
this is that the Lord Jesus Christ being the balm of Gilead, he
has nullified, He soothed our wounds. He's sewed them up, if
you will. He's put away our sin so that
now we're just presented as beautiful because of this. This Rose of
Sharon that was not consumed by the wrath of God. There's
our hope, brethren. Our hope is that we would see. See him
as the Rose of Sharon that we would see him as our only righteousness
that we would see that we have a place to stand in him. And
when we see that, When we see that God is holy and we see him,
we hide our face from God and we flee to the rose of Sharon,
the burning bush, we flee to Christ. That's what the gospel
does. It's a twofold part. And I've said this many times
and I don't want to continue saying it over and over again,
but it's the most simple truth in salvation is that he gives
us repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus
Christ. He changes our mind of who God is. And just as Moses
hid his face from God, We hide our face from Him and flee to
Christ. That's faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's salvation.
That's what it is. That's what it means to be saved
is you've been given repentance and faith. That's the declaration
that goes forth, brethren, today is hide your face and flee to
Christ. Now, in closing, I would like
to turn to Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. Men will not come to the Lord
Jesus Christ because He demands that they take their shoes off.
Men will not come to the Lord Jesus Christ because the only
way He receives a man is if a man is naked before Him. Men have
a righteousness of their own and they despise the Lord Jesus
Christ. But here in Isaiah 53, we see
what the Lord did for us, what He's caused us to have in the
person of Christ. Isaiah 53 verse 3 says, He is
despised and rejected of men A man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. And we hid. As it were, our faces from him. Now, maybe in religion we were
proud we were self righteous or we were embarrassed. But we
hid our face from the Lord Jesus Christ in religion. We will not
have this man to reign over us. But because he's given us a heart
to look into him, we hide our face from the father now and
we flee to Christ. We see the difference. We are
now fleeing to the Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than
just discrediting Him, rather than despising Him, we need Him
now. We've laid hold on eternal life,
which is the Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we flee to
Him for that. He was despised and we have seen
Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrow. Yet we did esteem Him, stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions
and he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. Thanks be to God
that the bush was not consumed and all those that were in him
were saved. When he had put him to death,
the Lord was satisfied by making his soul an offering and the
Lord is satisfied with the Lord Jesus Christ still. And he's
the only one he's going to be satisfied with forever. Flee
to Christ, brethren. That's the call this morning.
Flee to Christ. Thank God for the bush not being consumed. Lord, we thank you for your word.
We ask that you would bless it according as you promised. Calls
us to flee. To the Lord Jesus Christ and
hope only in his salvation. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.