Do you ever think about how we get to know God? Or whether we can know him? Well this story answers that question.
You see, some people seem to think that God is very aloof, very inaccessible. They have a religion of a god who is just so far away we can never get close to him. One of the Psalmists referred to another kind of religion, one that has idols of silver and gold. You find that in Psalm 115. It says their gods have "mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see; they have ears that cannot hear, noses but they cannot smell; hands but they cannot feel, feet but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats." (Ps.115:5—7) Well, for such folks there is never any hope of having personal contact with a God like that. It produces a very sad and lonely kind of religion.
Some other folks are skeptics of any possibility of knowing God. They may be willing to acknowledge that there may perhaps be a personal God out there somewhere, but they very much doubt whether there is any real possibility of our knowing much about him.
Still other folks believe that we can get to know God, and they believe that the way to get to know him is to go out looking for him. So they go out on a search. They are the searchers for a God who is to be found, as though he’s either concealed, or lost, or playing some perverse game of hide—and—seek with us. Religion, they think, is composed of our efforts to go out and find God.
Well, this story from the life of Moses in Exodus 3 answers a lot of those questions. It tells us that God is not aloof and distant, and it tells us that we don’t go out and find God — but he comes to reveal himself to us. Religion is not searching for God but responding well to the God who has come to us.
Watch what happens in this story. Moses is about 80 years old now. He spent the first part of his life in Egypt, raised by Pharaoh’s daughter and undoubtedly receiving the best of food, care and education that Egypt could provide. But now for some 40 years he’s been living in the land of Midian, a desert area in the far south just east of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba. He’s a shepherd there. It all seems to start as a rather normal day, taking care of his father—in—law’s sheep. And there it was — this bush that caught his attention. It was on fire. Not only was it on fire but it didn’t seem to burn up. And to make it even more strange, this bush that didn’t burn up…well, someone began talking to him out of it.
Here’s how it went. The voice said, "Moses! Moses!" Moses responded immediately, "Here I am." And then the voice gave some instructions, "Do not come any closer…take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." And then the voice went on to identify himself, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
Well, that was a rather surprising turn of events to Moses. He never expected God to show up there in the desert, and certainly not through a bush that had a voice coming out from it. But God came. He came right to Moses and he addressed him personally, by name. That’s right…the Almighty God of the whole creation initiated a conversation with Moses. Imagine that! And he had a very specific purpose for doing so. He had a plan he wanted to discuss with Moses.
You see, Moses was a Hebrew. And his people were slaves in Egypt. They had been in that slavery for over 400 years and all the generations of those Hebrews had cried to God out of their suffering and oppression, begging for deliverance and freedom. And now God explains that he has been hearing those cries; he has seen their suffering; and he has a plan to come down and rescue them; and Moses is to be part of that plan of rescue.
Well, that’s quite something to have the voice of God come out of a bush and say things like that, don’t you think? But in that very event there are some mighty big truths for us to treasure.
The first truth for us to learn is that God does come to us. He is a God who comes close. He’s not off in the distance, at the end the galaxies, or in some far—off heaven quite aloof from us. Here he is — in the desert of Midian, meeting and speaking to a shepherd who’s 80 years old. And it’s not that Moses has gone looking for God, but that God has come to find Moses. And that’s really what Advent is all about — that God comes. He breaks into our world and its events. Advent leads us to Christmas which is all about that too. Christmas means that God comes, right into this world, in the form of a child, the baby Christ Jesus. That Christ child was called Immanuel — the wonderful name "God with us". Yes, God is with us, he comes to us. He’s a God who is involved here in this world.
And other thing we are to learn is that when God comes to us he reveals himself to us — we get to know what he is like. And that’s a mighty important consideration, of course. I don’t know what kind of a picture you have of God in your mind, or whether you’ve ever thought about that very much. What does he look like to you? Studies have shown that people have widely different pictures of God. To some he is an angry deity who can’t wait to bring judgment on people who do wrong. To others he is a stone—faced aloof deity quite unmoved by our needs. Others picture him as a loving shepherd who tenderly cares for his sheep. Or a warm parent who is supportive. Or still others think of him as a big spoil—sport in heaven who likes to blow the whistle as soon as he sees people enjoying themselves. I wonder what your picture of God is like.
Let’s just stick with this story for a few minutes and look at the picture of God that is provided here. What do we learn?
We learn that he is a God of power and glory. That’s what the fire of the bush is all about. When God came to reveal himself, as often happened in the Bible, the fire represents the power and the glory of God. This is no ordinary human being; this is deity with all his power and glory.
We also learn that he is holy. You heard those words, "take your sandals off, this is holy ground." Sure, wherever we meet this God of the heavens and the earth, that’s holy territory. To be in the presence of God makes any place holy.
And we learn that he is eternal. You see, Moses’ ancestors had long since passed away. Abraham died, Isaac had died, Jacob had died. But this God claims that he is the God of each of them. This God does not die; this God has no terminal point of his existence. As a matter of fact, in just a short while he will explain that even more clearly to Moses. In verse 14 he says,
"I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’"
I cannot say that of myself. Nor can you say it of yourself. We get our life from others, and who we are and have become is a composite of multiple influences exerted on us by so many people. But that’s not true of God. He has no beginning and no end. He generates his own essence. He receives his life from himself. He just always…is! The Eternal One! And when Jesus Christ came into this world he came to reveal this God to us. He came to show us a God who is glorious, holy, and eternal. The shepherds, the angels, and the wise men caught that immediately.
So we learn that God does come to us, and we learn what he is like. But there is something else we learn. We learn that he gets involved in life here. And he gets involved because he cares. We say he is immanent. Remember that part of his conversation with Moses centered on the fact that he was well aware of the suffering of the Hebrews. He had heard their cries for help. These people, generations of them, thought they had been forgotten. And now, what a beautiful picture of the eternal and glorious God explaining that he has felt the pain of these people in slavery. And it’s such an important picture for us to hold on to. There have been times in my life when things were not going at all like I wanted. My pain and anxiety was very deep as I faced surgery and treatments for cancer. And it became so very important to me to hold on to the picture of a God who understood, who stood on my side of the line, arm around my shoulder, feeling my pain. We must hold on to the same picture today — a God who understands the pain of the victims of genocide, oppression, storms, earthquakes, starvation, abuse; a God who says, "I have seen your misery and have heard your cries." There is nothing in this world or our lives that escapes his notice and his caring heart.
But it also goes the next step. We also learn that this God has a plan for deliverance. He not only feels their pain and hears their cries; he has a plan for helping them. Action will result from this listening to their cries and feeling their pain. God says, "I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land…."
I guess when it comes down to it, it’s not so hard to say to someone that we feel their pain. But what about the next step? What about helping them? Well, God had plans to help. And it’s even more surprising that he was willing to take Moses into his confidence and explain it all to him.
Do you realize that the major message of the whole Old Testament of the Bible is that God wants to tell us about the plan he has to deliver people from sin, to bring redemption to this world? Through the law and the sacrifices, through the prophets and priests, from Genesis to Malachi, the singular message of the Bible is that we are sinful, we are without hope in and of ourselves, and God has this plan right from the very beginning to bring deliverance. Already in Genesis 3 he tells us that the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. And through all the years of Old Testament history he makes it clear that the way is being prepared for a Messiah to be born, the son of David. This Messiah will be a suffering servant so that by his stripes we can be healed. He has had a plan from the beginning. He told us about that.
But there was another dimension of learning here for Moses. And this one held a big surprise for him. He learned not only that God had a plan for deliverance, but God also had plans of who should carry out his work.
In the biggest sense, God had a plan for his Son, Jesus Christ, to carry out his work of delivering sinners. One night, just before he was arrested, put on trial, and eventually crucified, Jesus prayed with his disciples. And one of his statements in that prayer is richly insightful. He prayed in John 17 (v.4), "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." And what was his work? He, the second person of the Trinity, was assigned the task of becoming incarnate here on earth, as Jesus of Nazareth, yet the eternal son of God, to carry the sins of mankind to the cross and pay for them there. In a few short weeks we will be marking the birth of this Savior into the world to complete the saving work of God. So we must be ready to recognize him and respond to him as God’s gift to a sinful hurting world.
If we go back to that bush, we find that Moses learned that he (Moses) was to be part of that work. And that was another surprise for him! And, frankly, it was a rather frightening surprise. Here he was way off in Midian engaged in the quiet life of a shepherd, and God expects him to leave his sheep, go to Egypt, and be willing to march right into the King’s Court and request an audience with him.
Imagine that! Leaving the life of a shepherd and doing that! Imagine telling a powerful king that he better let these slaves go! No small task! Anyone would be intimidated by an assignment like that! Well, it really opened the door to some rather stern arguments between Moses and God. Moses could think of a lot of reasons why he was not the person for this task and he did not hesitate raising them with God, only to be met each time with God’s reassurance and promise that the work must be done, the people must be delivered, and God would supply what Moses needed. Back and forth the debate went. Eventually a new Moses emerged who served God’s plan.
I can think of so many other Old Testament prophets whom God has called to be part of his plan — and then have argued back. Gideon said "I’m too weak and my army is too small". David pleaded that he was just not the man God needed. Jeremiah tried to disqualify himself because he was just too young. Jonah simply didn’t want to go to Nineveh and tried to run away. And down through the ages so many of us have tried to throw so many excuses up to God’s face because we wanted him to use somebody else. But so many of us have found, as Moses did, that when you finally decide to follow God’s plan, a whole new chapter of life opens up, a chapter that has the delight and joy of knowing you have been used by God, difficult though the task might be.
Now, maybe you are in a position today of being one of those very reluctant followers of Christ. Oh, you are glad that God delivers people from sin and you are glad that he has delivered you too, but it sort of stops right there. You are glad God has a plan to help sinners, but you’d really rather not have him include you in trying to help others. Maybe you are like Moses, throwing up to God one excuse after another, and finally just blurting out, "Oh God, just go get somebody else!" If that’s so, then I ask you to think today about all those other people who have shaped you and formed you to be who you are. And I ask you to think today of where you would be if all those folks had never responded to the voice of God, if they had never brought God’s plan to you. And now think and pray about other folks near you who need you to reach to them, who are waiting for you to bring God’s good news to them. So in this coming Christmas season, when we prepare to mark the birth of our Savior, ask how you could better serve in the work of God of delivering others.
And while we’re thinking about how reluctant we can sometimes be, can I tell you what that brings to my mind? This — I am so glad that when Jesus Christ received the assignment from God the Father to come to earth, to be born in a manger, to face the devil, to carry our sins, and bring them out there to the cross and pay for them all…I am so glad that he didn’t make all the excuses that we often do! He was a willing Savior.
And so during this Advent season, will you think about how involved God is in our lives. He comes. He comes to tell us who he is, what he is like, and the plan of deliverance that he has. Be prepared to welcome a God who comes, who enters, who is involved.
Thank God he’s involved. And thank God Jesus served willingly.
Prayer
Saving God, we are on our journey through Advent today. We give you hearty thanks for your willingness to come and reveal yourself to us. We are grateful that you have sent your Son to bring salvation. And we pray that we may be ready to welcome him eagerly.
May we be able to make this journey of Advent with faith and humility. May we be able to hear your voice and listen carefully. May our hearts be prepared to welcome the entrance of your son, Jesus Christ, and may our encounter with him open up a whole new chapter in our living. May those of us who have been very reluctant followers open our hearts to you and respond with eager obedience. Deal with us as you did with Moses. Love us. Break down our resistance. Neutralize our excuses. Use us for the sake of others.
In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Howard Vanderwell
Howard Vanderwell was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1962. He received his M.Div. and Th.M. degree from Calvin Theological Seminary and his D.Min. at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. He has served as pastor to four congregations over 40 years in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. After leaving the pastorate in 2002 he began a new ministry at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. He is currently a staff member at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and Adjunct Professor of Worship at Calvin Theological Seminary. He consults with local congregations, provides worship materials, leads conferences and workshops, and teaches courses on worship at Calvin Seminary. Howard’‘s interests include planning, leading and evaluating worship, preaching, and worship renewal throughout the evangelical church. “My life-long prayer, from my days as a child, was that I might be honored to serve as a Christian Reformed pastor preaching the Word of God to encourage and challenge his people. I consider the forty years of my pastoral ministry to have been the most valuable way in which I could have invested those years! When I consult with pastors, teach and mentor students, hold conferences for worship leaders, or write worship planning materials, my aim is to equip and inspire others to serve their Lord and Savior by making a whole-hearted investment in his church and his people. Such ministry is certainly not without its stresses and discouragements, and those of us who have found such joy in a life-time of ministry are uniquely fitted to encourage others.” Howard lives in Hudsonville, MI with his wife Eleanor. They have three married sons and ten grandchildren ages 5 through 19. His hobbies are yard-gardening, walking, photography and model railroading.
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