Not Consumed

Exodus 3:1–6

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

There has been quite a transformation in Moses circumstance and character in the last 40 yrs. He has gone from prince of Egypt to a shepherd of a flock he doesn’t even own. For an Egyptian, a shepherd is the lowest and most inconceivable occupation one could take up. Moses has gone from an exalted position, to a lowly and humble position. Though he was a prince, he became a humble shepherd.

Further and more important, Moses identity with Egypt has faded away, the text communicates to us that he now identifies more as a midianite than an egyptian, more as an exile than with the Egyptian super power, more with the lowly weak, than with the the high and mighty. This is the stuff that God works with. God wasn’t going to raise up an Egyptian reformer( as Moses was attempting to do 40 years previous), but one who has shared in the experience of the humble sojourner, one who has learned patience and dependance. God sent Moses to school in the wilderness, he stripped him of Egypt, which in a sense was the only way he could confront Pharaoh.

God will not have one recommended for service. An egyptian prince, ah, look Lord, perfect for the redemptive task at hand. Think of David, he was the only one not recommended and yet that was God’s man.

And note how Moses is not looking for this experience. It is the freedom of God to choose and call Moses as redeemer. God does not say, you are the man for the job because of your qualifications( which don’t exist), he calls him and simply says, “I will be with you”. The same goes with any here who have been called into Christ by the Spirit of God. We have great tendancy to over-evaluate ourseklves. Beyonce “” Yet , He called you in rebellion and enmity. You were dead. It wasn’t that you at last got it all together and then God saw that and said at last I can use this one( though he may use your circumstances to prepare you in many ways as he did Moses), no he called you in freedom, his call and election are as free as his being is from every created thing. I will show mercy, I will be gracious ( to the one who does well with what I give him???) No to whom I will, the freedom of divine grace brothers and sisters is something that ought to thrill and confound our souls more and more as we grow as Christians. Wha t a humbling thing, you God has called and not a thousand others around you on every side.

No one who has been born again raises up there chest and says, ah yes, I knew that God what eventually see my potential and select me. Moses here labors the fact of how unqualified he is, and yet God assures his supply and presence.

Keep in mind that this is not Moses commending himself to us, but rather the Spirit of God commending him to us. Later Scripture will testify to his holy character as an example for us.

2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.

Angel of the Lord is probably best interpreted as the Angel, that is, the Lord. The discourse supports this interpretation. The Lord and God are identified as the One speaking from the bush. In the whole narrative it is clear that there is one Speaker.

It is neccessary that God communicate to us in an accomidating way, it is not the essence of God that Moses sees, for that as we know is immediate death. In the form of an angel, in the form of the bush,

Austin: “ that sovereign excellence

could not appear to the mortal eyes of man, except by some perceptibly

visible created object which could reach these visible eyes of ours.”

In other words, it was a God-appearance, a visible manifestation of the invisible God.

Whether or not Christ was in the bush, one thing is certain: Moses was in the presence of God.

~Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes

Austin clears up some tension:

And when

it says "God said through Isaiah," what was Isaiah? Wasn't he a man

wearing flesh,10 born of a father and mother just like all of us? And yet

he speaks, and what do we say when reading his speeches? "Thus says

God."" If it was Isaiah then, how can it have been God, except by its

being God through Isaiah? So here, when the angel speaks, God is said

to speak. How so, if not because it's God through the angel?”

We easily dismiss the int that says that Israel will not be consumed by affliction.

They will not be consummed by God.

John 1 John 1:5 “5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

4 So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

5 Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”

“Reads the fire as divine glory and holiness, demanding reverence (“take off your sandals”), while remaining accommodated to human weakness.”

6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.”

This is Old Covenant. We look upon the face of God in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The same awesome, majestic, resplendent glory we behold in the gospel. The glory hasn’t changed, but the fulness of redemption and reconciliation. We don’t have to hide our face from God, and one day we will have the capacity to look our risen Lord, the God-man, in the face and not be consumed, not be terrified, not only that, we will be transformed into his glorious likeness. Deification. God in us, in a capacity and way, we cannot even grasp at now. We can’t even really lisp at it. It will be unspeakable glorious and rapturous and ecstatic. The whole of creation and history was for the purpose that God would not only dwell with humanity, but in humanity.

Christ, God in man is the agent through which all things are created, He is that for and the end to which they are created.

And our text today, and all of the Scriptures either point to that, or tell of it in its several different glorious facets.