Sermon Tone Analysis

Encountering the God who sends his people!

Last Sunday I argued that our world was a dark, suffering, painful place.

Yes, at times it is beautiful… and it contains promises of glory.

A beach scene, mountain lakes and crystal clear rivers;

a young couple vowing to love, honour and obey each other as long as they both shall live, new life in spring…

but in the end, without Jesus death makes a mockery of all our momentary achievements.

In one sense Ex 2 has just confirmed our suspicions.

We had the indications that God was at work… there was a fine child was born and miraculously rescued and raised as prince in the superpower nation of the day.

But when we left him he had been 80 years on living under a death threat from the king, rejected by his people, shepherding - sheep herding! and lamenting being an alien in a foreign land.

It is dire.

YET… the narrator gives us an important glimpse in the last two verses.

Exodus 2:23–25 (NIV84)

23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died.

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.

25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about (“knew”) them.

BUT… is that any help?

Try telling a non-church person who’s just lost the person that mattered most to them in the world that God hears your cries and looks upon your suffering and knows what you’re going through.

Say it with the most love and empathy you can muster… but it’s still liable to be thrown right back in your face!

“Fat lot of good that is.

They’re still gone.

Why doesn’t God do something!”

Well today we begin a long journey where we will see God has, is and will do something.

Something unexpected; something amazing; something very good for suffering people.

as Ex 3 opens up, Moses’ day begins the same as every other.

He’s in the wilderness trying to find grass for his father-in-laws sheep.

He doesn’t know that today he will have an encounter that will change his life forever.

Nor does he know he will be back to this place in a few months with God’s newly redeemed people to receive the 10 commandments from God.

All he’s sees this time is something a bit unusual… A bush that is on fire, but not burning up.

He figures he might go and check it out.

He walks over, and God calls to him from out of the burning bush… “Moses; Moses”

“Here I am” Moses replies.

“Don’t come any closer, take off your sandals for you are standing on holy ground”

Ex 3:6 “6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”

So, at least in one sense… this is not something new… this has been going on since at least the time of Abraham.

Moses seems to know already, or sense there and then (or both) that God’s holiness is very important.

That’s a fear that many people, certainly outside the church but also sometimes within the church, unfortunately don’t share.

Many people either maximise their own holiness and think that God owes them at least a relatively pain free and comfortable life because they are good people…

Or… they they like to think that God is not really that much different to themselves.

Ah… yes your “holiness”!

What is holiness anyway?

And who cares.

God just should…

God is entirely, perfectly holy.

High, set apart; He alone is Creator, totally, permanently, fully independent within Himself, without spot or blemish.

Everyone and everything else is dependent creation.

He can know more unholy himself that we can clean up our gross unholiness by ourselves.

AW Tozer had it right, He says, “I tell you this: I want God to be what God is: the impeccably holy, unapproachable Holy Thing, the All-Holy One.

I want Him to be and remain THE HOLY.

I want His heaven to be holy and His throne to be holy.

I don’t want Him to change or modify His requirements.

Even if it shuts me out, I want something holy left in the universe.”

I want something left holy in the universe!

In a world where not just us and the people we love are suffering and dying, but the whole creation groans; the animals and trees and pot plants… even the sun and the stars have a long, but limited lifespan, comes the holy, infinite and eternal God.

Moses, Moses… Here I am… Don’t come too close Moses.

Take off your sandals Moses.

You will learn Moses how fraught it really is for human beings when pure holiness comes to live in your midst!

Well, why are you here then?

The narrator mentioned something about this in 2:24-25.

But here we have it from the mouth of God himself.

Well, this could be very good news!

God indeed sees the misery of his people, he hears their crying and (knows)/is concerned about their suffering.

What is it that makes this special for Moses?

Why will this information (eventually) make such a transformation in Moses life?

It’s because Moses is not simply gaining new information about God;

Moses is having a personal encounter with the Living God.

The self-existent, high and eternal, glorious God of the highest heaven who dwells in unimaginable holiness…

has come down to meet this hot-tempered moral failure/murderer who’s shepherding his father-in-laws sheep in the back blocks of no where!

Just sit with that for a moment.

Have you had that personal encounter… the one with God that changed your life?

What is church for you?

Information… or encounter that leads to transformation?

That’s the difference between useless theory about suffering… and truth that comforts in suffering!

So, Moses might have said, What do you intend to do about it?

Exodus 3:8–9 (NIV84)

8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.

9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

I have come down… to bring them up.

I have come down to rescue them and bring them up into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

The land God is promising for his people is a land where there is so much grass that the cows, sheep and goats give so much milk that their young can’t consume it so as they walk around their udders just ooze milk… and the bees are so prolific there is honey also freely available to anyone who wants it.

This land not only provides the basic necessities for life but it oozes with the niceties, the luxuries of life!

WOW!

What a transformation that would be.

From groaning in slavery in Egypt to so many luxuries that you can’t consume them in a good and spacious land.

These verses also ooze with gospel truth.

I’m not sure how people here read the OT… but let me just share a little of my understanding with you.

Moses lived 15C before the life, death and resurrection of Jesus… and we live 21C after.

In Jn 5 Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees about Jesus’ claim to be the resurrection and the life.

Jesus said Jn 5:39-40

The OT Scriptures teach us a lot about the nature and character of God and human beings and why the world is such a mess.

But the OT Scriptures testify about Jesus… to whom we come to have life.

How do these OT Scriptures testify about Jesus so we might come to him to have eternal life?

Well, some would have noticed that last week we read about the birth of a fine/good child that was supernaturally protected from the rampages of the anti-god who hates God’s plan and purposes and wants to stop God at any cost.

I entitled the sermon: A Saviour is Born… because in so many ways it reminded us of Herod’s murderous rampage when our Lord Jesus was young.

Ex 3, as we have already seen, has set the scene by showing us how salvation is God’s initiative.

Moses didn’t go out that day to pray and pray until God showed up.

After 40 years in the land God manifests in a burning bush and calls to Moses (who God knows by name).

We were also reminded that God is holy… and Moses wasn’t when God stopped Moses getting too close.

That may prompt us to ask, “How then will a holy God ever meet with unholy man?”

Sinful man meeting the holy God is like a fly meeting an electocuter!