The Burning Bush–The Beginning of Moses’ Journey of Faith
In our previous episode, the curtain opened on our presentation of Act 1, Scene 3 of God’s One Big Story—the scene in which we learned about Israel’s oppression and subjugation under the reigns of the Pharaohs during the first part of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. It was during this period that Israel lost her place of privilege within the country, and was reduced to a state of slavery and abject poverty.
After being made aware of the Israelites desperate plight, we were then introduced to God’s Chosen Deliverer, Moses—who…
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- As a child, was supposed to have been drowned in the Nile but was spared through the miraculous intervention of God; becoming the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter instead of living life as a slave;
- As a grown man, in an ill-timed and misguided attempt to rescue his fellow Hebrews, murdered an Egyptian and was forced to flee the country to avoid Pharaoh’s wrath.
Since God’s One Big Story has been formatted according to the Ancient Jewish Wedding Tradition, for us to understand what’s really going on here, we will need to remember that in this scene…
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- Moses will be acting as a stand-in for God, the Divine Bridegroom, who will be coming to secure the release of God’s Bride, Israel, in order to whisk her away to their Wedding Venue at Mt. Sinai;
- This deliverance of Israel will mark the end of their Betrothal Period and the beginning of their Married life together.
With that in mind, in this episode taken from Exodus 3-4, we will watch as Moses meets with God at the Burning Bush—the place where he finally discovers what his real purpose in life is, and where he reluctantly agrees to commit to it .
Script #2 for Act 1, Scene 3 of God’s One Big Story
Cast: Narrator Moses God Jethro Zipporah
Setting the stage: When this episode opens, another forty years has passed and we find Moses right where we left him—shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep in the wilderness of Midian…
Narrator: 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. 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. Then Moses said…
Moses: I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.
Narrator: So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said…
God: Moses, Moses!
Moses: Here I am.
God: Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground…I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
Narrator: And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
God: I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to 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 to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.
Moses: Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?
God: I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.
Moses: Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?
God: I AM WHO I AM…Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ Thus you shall say to 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 to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’
Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say to them, ‘The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared to me, saying, ‘I have surely visited you and seen what is done to you in Egypt; and I have said I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.’
Then they will heed your voice; and you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt; and you shall say to him, ‘The LORD God of the Hebrews has met with us; and now, please, let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.’ But I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not even by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out My hand and strike Egypt with all My wonders which I will do in its midst; and after that he will let you go.
And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall be, when you go, that you shall not go empty-handed. But every woman shall ask of her neighbor, namely, of her who dwells near her house, articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing; and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.
Moses: But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’
God: What is that in your hand?
Moses: A rod.
God: Cast it on the ground.
Narrator: So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it. Then the LORD said to Moses…
God: Reach out your hand and take it by the tail…
Narrator: …and he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand…
God: …that they may believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you. Now put your hand in your bosom.
Narrator: And he put his hand in his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous, like snow. And He said…
God: Put your hand in your bosom again.
Narrator: So he put his hand in his bosom again, and drew it out of his bosom, and behold, it was restored like his other flesh.
God: Then it will be, if they do not believe you, nor heed the message of the first sign, that they may believe the message of the latter sign. And it shall be, if they do not believe even these two signs, or listen to your voice, that you shall take water from the river and pour it on the dry land. The water which you take from the river will become blood on the dry land.
Moses: O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
God: Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.
Moses: O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send.
Narrator: So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses, and He said…
God: Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look, he is also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. Now you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do. So he shall be your spokesman to the people. And he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God. And you shall take this rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs.
Narrator: So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him…
Moses: Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive.
Jethro: Go in peace.
God: Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead.
Narrator: Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the LORD said to Moses…
God: When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.’
Narrator: And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the LORD met him and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it as Moses’ feet and said…
Zipporah: Surely you are a husband of blood to me!
Narrator: So He let him go. Then she said, ‘You are a husband of blood!’—because of the circumcision. And the LORD said to Aaron…
God: Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.
Narrator: So he went and met him on the mountain of God, and kissed him. So Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words which the LORD had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. So the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.
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Time for a Closer Look
Our Review
In looking back over the first two episodes in this scene, I find it interesting that in each one, there is a forty-year period in which Moses’ life is completely hidden from view. As a result, we know virtually nothing about his early years as a prince, or his middle years as a shepherd. What we do see is that the brash, impulsive, and self-sufficient prince that he once was has now been humbled to the point where he can finally be used by God. He was, in fact, well on his way to becoming the man who would later be described in the following way…
Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. (Numbers 23:3)
A Map of Ancient Egypt in the Time of Moses
The Most Important Points in this Episode—
— Moses was tending his flock—going about his usual routine. Having spent 40 years in the courts of Egypt, shepherding sheep must have been a big adjustment—but it was all part of the training that he would need to shepherd the people of Israel.
— Horeb, the mountain of God—Horeb was the mountain range in which Mt. Sinai was located. [See Map]
— The Angel of the Lord—a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.
— A Flame of Fire/a bush—in scripture, fire is a symbol of divine judgment, or God’s holiness in active opposition to evil. There is only one other use of the word bush in scripture—in Deuteronomy 33:16, where Moses is giving his final blessing to the twelve tribes. When blessing Joseph’s descendants, he blesses them with “…the precious things of the earth and its fullness, and the favor of Him who dwelt in the bush.”
— God called to him/here I am—this is reminiscent of Isaiah’s call and response in Isaiah 6:8…
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
— Take your sandals off—in the Near East, taking off one’s shoes was a sign of respect and removing one’s head covering was a mark of equality. Here, Moses was told to take off his shoes but no mention was made of his head covering.
— I am the God of your fathers—God repeatedly referred to the Hebrews as His people and identified Himself as the Covenant Partner of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—a marriage covenant in which Abraham betrothed his future descendants, Israel, to God. In effect, God was presenting Himself as the espoused Husband of Israel who was returning for His Bride.
— I have seen—God not only revealed Himself as the Covenant-Keeping God but also as the One who…
Had seen them in their bondage;
Had heard their prayers;
Had compassion on them; and,
Had come down to deliver them.
This revelation provides us with a picture of what God has done for us through the Incarnation of Christ.
— I will send you to Pharaoh—God was sending him back to place where he started, the last place Moses wanted to go.
— Who am I—This was the first of Moses’s excuses as to why he couldn’t go. Here, he pleaded his inadequacy. This was a big undertaking and he was not up to the challenge. He had tried once before and failed, so why go back and try again? The last time, however, he had attempted to deliver the people through his own strength—this time, God said he would be going with him.
— This shall be a sign to you—this sign would not be made evident to him until AFTER he has completed his mission. In other words, Moses wouldn’t know for sure that had done the will of God until after he had done it. He would have to step out in faith, much like the men who encountered Jesus in this story…
Now it happened as He[Jesus] went to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then as He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
So when He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.
And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. (Luke 17:12-14)
— When they say to me—Who am I to tell them You are? On whose authority should they be listening to and believing in me? Moses’ questions seems to indicated that either he or the Israelites had become so “backslidden” that they no longer knew who their God was. So God identifies Himself in three ways…
To Moses, He identifies Himself as I AM WHO I AM—this contains each tense of the very to be—I was, I am, and I will continue to be—and it speaks of the self-existence, eternality, and immutability of God.
To the Israelites, He identifies Himself as the Lord (Yahweh), the name that He is to be known by the descendants of Abraham forever.
To Pharaoh, He identifies Himself as the God of the Hebrews. Since there was no concept of a universal God for all humanity at this time but only tribal gods, this was something that Pharaoh could identify with.
— Gather the elders together/they will heed your voice—tell them that the time has come to fulfill the terms of my covenant with Abraham and they will believe you. In other words, the time has come for my marriage to Israel to take place.
— Three days journey—other slave groups had been given permission to do this so it was a reasonable request on their parts. It would take three days to go and three to come back, with one day in the middle for worship. Because the Egyptians considered many of the animals that the Hebrews would be sacrificing to be gods, they couldn’t have stayed any closer to carry out their worship without offending the Egyptians.
— The king of Egypt will not let you go—God told Moses in advance that Pharaoh would not let them go. He told him exactly what was going to happen—that the outcome was predetermined so there would no need for a Plan B.
— You shall plunder the Egyptians—in plundering the Egyptians, God would be collecting the back wages owed to His People which would eventually be used for the construction of His Tabernacle, the place where He would live among them.
— Suppose they will not believe me—this was a sign of blatant unbelief in that God had already told Moses that they would believe him.
— Three signs—Moses was given these three signs to demonstrate that the authority of God was behind him…
The rod/staff that became a serpent, and then became a rod again…
This was Moses’ shepherd’s staff that would remain with him for the rest of his life, as he shepherded the Israelites from slavery to freedom, and on to the Promised Land. Since the proper way to grab a snake was by the neck, in telling Moses to pick it up by the tail, God was testing Moses’ faith.
The hand that became leprous and then was healed—this sign was intended to be a warning of divine judgment.
The water from the Nile that became blood when it was poured out on the ground—this sign could not be performed there in the wilderness but would have to wait until Moses was by the river itself.
— I am not eloquent—as part of his earlier education, Moses had been trained in literature, scribal arts, warfare, foreign languages, and in rhetoric—or, eloquence in speech and argumentation—so this argument was baseless. However, God hadn’t chosen Moses because of his eloquence but because of his character.
— Send someone else—at this point, after God had countered all of Moses’s previous arguments against going, Moses finally gets down to the nitty-gritty—he didn’t want to go, so send anyone other than him. To this, God told him that He would be sending his brother, Aaron, along with him.
— Moses went to Jethro—all arguments having been exhausted, Moses gave up and went to Jethro to receive his blessing. However, he didn’t tell his father-in-law the real reason for the trip.
— Israel is my firstborn—as the first nation to come to faith in Him, God considered Israel to be His Firstborn; so, if Pharaoh would not let God’s Firstborn go free, then God would take Pharaoh’s firstborn.
— Moses took his wife and sons—if Moses had had to wait until Zipporah reached the age of maturity before he could marry her—seven years maybe—and if their sons were born a few years after their marriage, given that Moses had been in Midian for forty years, then Gershom and Eliezer would not have been young children at this time. Moses himself would have been circumcised when he was eight days old and from what transpired here, it seems that one son had already been circumcised. Either Moses had neglected to have the other son circumcised, or Zipporah had refused to have it done. Either way, Moses, as the head of the household, was responsible for seeing that this sign of the covenant was carried out. He could not go to the people of God, serving as God’s covenantal representative, until this had been done.
— So the people believed—contrary to Moses’s fears, the people believed—and then they worshipped.
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In Summary
As with Moses, when God has an assignment for us, He typically calls us to it when we are just going about our regular routines in life. And like Moses, we tend to respond to His call with some very similar sounding excuses…
The Excuses Haven’t Changed Much Over Time
The reality is that none of us are qualified or capable of doing what God has called us to do on our own. Like Moses’ assignment, those that we are called to must be done by faith and carried out through the power of God’s Spirit. For we are told in Hebrews 11:6 that…
…without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him…
…and in Zechariah 4:6 that they will be accomplished…
…‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.
In spite of getting off to such a shaky start with God at the burning bush, we learn later in Hebrews 11 about the great man of faith that Moses became. There, in the Hall of Fame of the Faithful, it was said of him that…
By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians, attempting to do so, were drowned. (Hebrews 11:24-29)
We will learn more about Moses’ road to faith in our next episode, when he heads back to Egypt for a confrontation with Pharaoh which will become what we are calling the Giant Smackdown!
Original Featured Image courtesy of Pixabay.