Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And 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 at God. (Exodus 3:1-6)
The Mountain of God
So Moses takes his flock to the west and he comes to Horeb, which is called the Mountain of God. Horeb is another name for Mt. Sinai, or some say that Horeb was the region that Sinai was in. Either way, this is Mt. Sinai, which of course Moses and Israel will return to later on that has great significance.
Not only would Moses go up this mountain and meet with God later, but this is also the same mountain where Elijah, in 1 Kings 19, met with the Angel of the LORD and was commissioned as well, when he was ready to die. Both Moses and Elijah met with the angel of the LORD at Horeb, the Mountain of God.
Here’s something to think about: in the gospel’s when Jesus goes up on the Mountain with a few of His disciples and He is transfigured before them, who do the disciples see with Jesus there? Moses and Elijah. There is certainly more to be said there which we’ll have to save for another time.
Burning Bush
So Moses is here at the Mountain of God “and the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.” So Moses turns aside to go see how this thing can be, and God calls out to Moses from the bush. So the first thing to note here is that God appears to or reveals Himself to Moses in fire. Now God is spirit. He is the invisible God. So when God reveals Himself to men at times, He makes Himself visible in some fashion, obviously not the totality of his being or essence. And so throughout the Bible God reveals Himself or appears to men in a flame of fire. This is the fire of God. When God made covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, God represents Himself in a pot of fire. In the wilderness God lead Israel as a pillar of fire. At Sinai He descended in fire. Psalm 50:3 says, “Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest.” In Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of the LORD, he sees great fire. Ezekiel 1:4, “As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.” The prophet Daniel saw fire as well around the throne of God: “his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came out from before him…” In Revelation John describes the living Christ as one whose eyes were like flames of fire. At Pentecost, the Spirit comes down in flames of fire. And Hebrews 12:29 says that our God is a consuming fire. And on the other side we know that throughout history and eternity God’s judgments often come in fire.
Our God is a consuming fire, either in judgment, or as a refining fire. And He has chosen to reveal Himself in fire on many occasions. We see His blazing hot holiness and purity and inapproachableness – His total otherness. His fire is awe-filled and it is fear-filling.
How can God, who is a consuming fire, not devour and consume all that is not holy as He? Even in our small little minds, if we meditate on these scriptures of the fire of God, and then consider our sin, it is so disgusting and does not belong anywhere near this God. How does God not devour and consume all that is not holy as He is? Christ. God is patient and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in love, and the Living Christ with eyes like flames of fire is proof to us of that. Christ propitiates the wrath of God for sin, He diverts God’s wrath from sinners onto Himself, that we might not be consumed.
The Angel of the LORD
Why is the bush not consumed? The bush is not a sinner who Christ forgives of his sin. We know how fire and dry kindling works. How is this bush not immediately consumed and disintegrated by the fire of God? Well I would propose to you that it is because Christ is in the bush. When Exodus 3:2 says that “the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” I believe this is the pre-incarnate Christ. We could point to other Old Testament passages where the term “the angel of LORD” is used in ways that we could argue for it being Christ. But we can look here just at this passage and see it.
The Angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. But then what do we read in verse 4? “When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush…” Then in verse 6 God identifies Himself, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” I thought it was an angel? But obviously it is God. You see, the term “angel” does not have to do with ontology here. It is not referring to a created being. An angel can simply mean a sent one. Christ is The sent of God. And so the bush is not consumed.
The bush is burning, yet it is not consumed. Christ is in the bush. Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were thrown into the fiery furnace, yet they were not consumed, for there appeared a fourth one there in the fire with them. Who do you think the fourth one was? In the Scripture Nebuchadnezzer says the fourth appeared like a son of the gods.
The burning bush is the perfect representation of the atoning work of Christ. Christ takes on all the sins of His people, to bear their punishment under the wrath of God, and all of the fire of God toward our sin roars down upon Him, and yet He is not consumed. He is alive today.
What’s fascinating is that the Hebrew word used here for “bush” literally means and implies a “thorny” bush. What’s the point of that? Thorns are from the curse when Adam sinned. In Genesis 3 God said, “cursed is the ground because of you…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…” This was a thorny bush and Christ was in the bush. Christ wore a crown of thorns on the cross because Christ became a curse for us. Christ bore the curse on His body. The crown of thorns is the kindling wrapped around His head. And yet, Christ was not consumed. The flames of holiness and wrath did not destroy Him. He bore the curse and became a curse for us, to redeem us, to reverse the curse, to redeem the world.
The burning bush also represents Israel who was suffering in the furnace of Egypt, but had not been consumed. As it says in Deuteronomy 4:20, “But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.” Why was Israel not consumed by the iron furnace in Egypt? God Himself was in the burning bush. God Himself was with them. God was afflicted with them, as Isaiah 63:9 says, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” They were miraculously preserved by God Himself. This is the lesson: how do you go into the fire and not be consumed? God has to be with you. Christ has to be with you.
Now boys and girls, I’m not talking about a literal ordinary fire, so please don’t go home and think you can stick your hand in a fire and not get burned. But boys and girls, what I am saying is that when we go through hard things in life, sometimes they hurt us, like a fire would hurt us if we were to touch it. But the way that we can make it through the hard times is with Jesus. If we trust in Christ and believe His promises, He works all of those hard things for good.
Holy Ground
God sees that Moses turned aside to look at this bush on fire and then God calls out to Moses: “Moses, Moses!” So imagine you are Moses. You see a bush on fire, but not burning up, and you walk closer to it, and all of a sudden a voice from out of the bush calls out your name. That seems pretty wild to the modern man. But what is Moses’ response? He says, “Here I am.” Sounds just like when God calls out to Samuel, doesn’t it? See, Moses was well-educated, experienced, and a man of faith who lived in the Old World before the incarnation of Christ, where the presence of spiritual beings and happenings was much more prevalent. Moses did not have his brainwashed by rationalistic materialism.
God calls out, “Moses, Moses!” I love what one commentary says, “In ancient Semitic culture, addressing someone by saying his or her name twice was a way of expressing endearment, that is, affection and friendship.” This is so fascinating to me because we see here the love and affection that God had for Moses. Because later on in Exodus it says that God spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Moses was God’s friend.
Moses says “Here I am” and God tells him not to come near, to take his sandals off, for the place on which he was standing was holy ground. Now there is nothing intrinsic in the dirt itself that makes it holy, but Moses had come to the place where God had chosen to make His mountain in those times. Thus, the place was holy ground because God was there. God made it holy. Now certainly God is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere. There is nowhere you can go in all of existence where God is not. There is nowhere you can go to hide from God or escape from Him. God is everywhere always. But God had chosen to specially reveal Himself there at Horeb. It was about God revealing Himself there. So God was present there not just in His omniscience, but in specially revealing Himself there.
God tells Moses to take his sandals off. Now, why take the sandals off? Yes, it is holy ground, but why does that mean you have to take your sandals off? This happens to Joshua as well when an angel meets with him. Well, what did we read about the ground a minute ago in Genesis 3? “Cursed is the ground because of you.” Because of man’s sin, rebellion, and fall, the ground was cursed. And in the Old Testament, if you’re wearing sandals you’re carrying around all that curse on your feet. You can’t bring that into the presence of God, you can’t bring it onto His land or in His house, you gotta take your shoes off. We don’t all do it in our culture, but some people, if you go into their house, you gotta take your shoes off, they don’t want you tracking all the dirt on your shoes around the house.
You can’t bring dirt into the presence of God. You can’t come into God’s presence with dirt on you – wearing dirt. We can see this with the priests in the tabernacle and temple. The priests had this whole uniform of priestly garments that was very fine, that they were required to wear when going into the tabernacle or temple. But what is one piece of clothing that the priests did not have and did not wear? Shoes. The priests did not wear shoes in the tabernacle or temple. And they had all sorts of washing rituals and foot washings that they were required to do. They had to take their shoes off and wash their feet. Now this is not just about not getting the temple dirty. It was mainly symbolic, as was everything in the temple. It was symbolic about the reality of the curse and bringing dirt on you in the presence of God. In other words, your sin. You can’t just waltz into the presence of God covered in your sin. You need to be washed. You need to be cleansed. And there is not enough water in all the world to wash away our sin. But it is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin. The New Testament talks about Jesus cleansing us from all unrighteousness and washing us in the water with the Word. Since we have Christ, we can wear our shoes into church now, and please do.
Another way to think about this is to also think about what might happen in the Old Testament if you went into the presence of God with dirt on you. The dirt itself condemns you. In Genesis 4 the ground itself cried out against Cain for spilling Abel’s blood. In Leviticus 18 the ground itself spews the people out. If you were to go into God’s presence with the ground on you, it might cry out to God to condemn you and to cast you out, because you’re a sinner, and the ground knows that you are a sinner, and so the dirt itself condemns us before God. So we need someone who cries out more loudly and finally than the dirt. That’s what Jesus does. In the New Covenant we have an advocate with the Father for us when we sin, Jesus Christ the righteous. And in the atoning death of Christ, He not only sheds His blood for our sins, but He redeems the cosmos and purifies the ground, freeing it from the bondage of the curse that man brought upon it.
So next time you are walking outside barefoot, thank Jesus for purifying the ground, reversing the curse, for saving the cosmos, and for His blood that speaks a better word.
God of the Living
God tells Moses who He is. “And 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 at God.”
Imagine the weight and awe of this experience for Moses, the God of his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob calls out to Him, and speaks to him from a burning bush.
This is when the weight of the moment hits Moses. This is when the fear of God sets upon Him. This is when Moses must hide his face and look away – When God reveals Himself and announces that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I love what Matthew Henry says here, “Moses was not afraid of a burning bush till he perceived that God was in it.” You see Moses had come into the presence of the Almighty Living God. Not a dead God. The Living and True God. The God who chose and called out Abraham from the land of Ur. The God who brought about Isaac from a dead womb. The God who preserved and delivered Jacob from practical slavery and made him into a great nation. And Moses may have been trembling by recognizing that not only was this the Living God, but also, his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were also still living. What am I talking about? In the gospels Jesus is having a conversation with the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees said that there was no resurrection. And Jesus proves them wrong by quoting from this passage in Exodus. Mark 12:26-27, “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” So Jesus is saying that the resurrection of the dead is proven in the fact that God said He “is” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not that He “was” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have died, they yet live. And God is presently their God.
I believe that this is not some obscure thing that Jesus just pulls out and uses like only He could do. But in Luke’s account, Jesus says that Moses is showing us this – meaning Moses understood this and conveys this in Exodus. Which again proves Jesus’ point in John 5 when He said that Moses wrote about Me. And Jesus said, “have you not read?” Implying if they read it, and really understood it, they would understand this implies the resurrection of the dead. Luke 20:37-38, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”
I believe that this is a key to the burning bush symbolism. Of course God raises the dead because He sets bushes on fire and they are not consumed. God is not the God of the dead – dead bushes, but of the living. And even though the bush is on fire, it is not dead or consumed. Even though the patriarch died, they are yet alive. And if Moses realizes that God is the God of the living and raises the dead, then certainly he can believe that God can deliver Israel from the bondage of Egypt. If God raises the dead, what is it for Him to free people from slavery? If God can set a bush on fire and keep it alive and well, then He can raise the dead and set His people free. If God is the God of the living and not the dead, then He will not leave the sons of Israel to die and be blotted out in Egypt. He will raise them from death.
God can have His own Son put to death on a cross and bear the curse of sin, and yet live. The Son of the Living God can die on a cross, because God raises the dead, and so raised Him from the dead. Christ was enveloped in the flames of God’s wrath toward our sin that He bore, yet was not consumed. He yet lived to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from our sins, wash the dirt off of us, and to cloth us in His righteous robes of white.
If we are in Jesus Christ, though we die, we are not consumed by death, we live on. And if that is obvious from reading Scripture, as Jesus believes it is, then how much more easily can God redeem us from whatever earthly situation of life that seem like death? I’ll be honest, I thought that the Supreme Court would never ever reverse it’s iniquitous decision on Roe. It seemed impossible. I thought Roe’s end would have to come through other means. And yet here we are today. What else is it? A severed relationship in your life that is dead? God sets bushes on fire and keeps them from burning, He can bring reconciliation to your relationship. Is it a besetting sin that you just can’t seem to shake? God overcame death, He can overcome your sin, and you can in Him.
Friends, the burning bush is so postmill. On fire, yet unburned. Dead by lives on. There is nothing that God cannot do. It doesn’t matter how dead someone is in their sin, God raises the dead. It doesn’t matter how blazing on fire the world may seem, God can keep fire from destroying. How long something has seemed impossible is not a category for God. He is the eternal God. He is still today the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He is our God – the God who chose us and called us out of sin by His free grace and abounding love; the God who raised us from the dead and made us new creatures in Christ; and the God who is patient and longsuffering with us in our weakness, and is faithful to deliver us and give us victory over all our enemies. May God be praised. Amen.
Leave a Reply