Deo Gloria
Sermon for March 20, 2022
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Exodus 3:1-8,10-15
Theme: Take Comfort in the LORD’s Loving Concern for You!
- He knows what’s happening in your life.
- He promises to help and deliver you.
There are many things you and I are concerned about. Will we have enough money to pay all our bills? Will our children do well in school? Will they find a job when they get out of college? Will they get a good start in a good career? Will they find a loving, Christian spouse? Do I have enough money saved up for retirement? Will that old car I’m driving keep running another year? What about my job and the company I work for—is that safe? Is that secure? According to a poll conducted back in January 55% of Americans are extremely worried about our country, 39% are worried or extremely worried about COVID, 37% are worried or extremely worried about the economy, and 72% are worried or extremely worried about politics.
So what about God? What is God concerned about? What is on his mind? Is he concerned about the weather or about global warming? Is he concerned about terrorist attacks or the war in Ukraine? Is he concerned about the stock market or the economy or the price of gas? Is he concerned about drug use and crime? Actually, the thing that God is most concerned about, the thing that is on his mind more than anything else is you. That’s the message that comes across loud and clear in the verses of our text: God is concerned about his people. He is concerned about you, and he is concerned about me. Take comfort in the LORD’s loving concern for you! He knows what’s happening in your life, and he promises to help and deliver you.
As our story opens, we find Moses tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro. Moses, of course, was not in Egypt at this point. 40 years before this he had fled from Egypt after killing one of the Egyptian task-masters, a man who was beating one of his fellow Israelites. For safety’s sake Moses had fled to the land of Midian, a land to the east of Egypt. There he ended up in the house of Jethro. There he ended up marrying Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters. And there he worked and provided for his family by tending the flocks of his father-in-law.
One time as he was searching for adequate grazing land and water, Moses took his flock to the far side of the desert and came to a mountain range called Horeb. It was there that Moses witnessed a very unusual sight: a burning bush, a bush that was burning with fire but didn’t burn up. I’m sure Moses had seen a lot of unusual things in his 40 years of tending sheep, but he had never seen anything like this. So he went over to take a closer look. And then the bush starting speaking. Can you imagine something like that? Imagine it’s spring time and you’re out in the yard doing a little yard work–raking leaves, pulling weeds, trimming some of the bushes–and all at once one of the bushes starts talking to you: “Hey, it’s about time you do some cleaning up around here. Just don’t get carried away with that shovel, OK? I don’t want you digging into any of my roots. And it’s about time you get rid of a few of those weeds. To be honest they were getting a little annoying. Hey, and while you’re doing that trimming stuff, could you take a little more off the top. And clean up the back as well. It’s looking pretty shaggy back there.” Obviously, you and I would shocked if a bush started talking to us. Imagine how shocked Moses must have been when the burning bush started talking to him, when the bush even knew his name! Of course it wasn’t actually the bush that was talking, was it? It was the angel of the LORD who was talking to him, who appeared to him in this burning bush.
The angel of the LORD is not just any angel. Notice how this “angel” later identifies himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” And still later, when Moses inquired about his name, the angel replied, “I am who I am.” No created angel can claim that title. That’s God’s name. This is God who was speaking to Moses. In fact, that phrase, “the angel of the LORD,” is a phrase that is used throughout the Old Testament for the second person of the Trinity before he took on human flesh. In other words, this is Jesus who was speaking to Moses.
What was the first thing Jesus said? “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground”(v. 5). Back in Moses’ day it was common for people to take off their sandals before entering a temple. That way they wouldn’t drag the dirt and grime and other yucky stuff on their sandals into the temple and defile it. It reminds us of something too, doesn’t it? When we come to God’s house, there’s something we need to take off and leave at the door: not our dirty shoes or our muddy boots; our sins, our dirty thoughts, our filthy words, our grimy actions. They don’t belong in God’s house, do they? Sometimes people wonder why we have a confession of sins near the beginning of our service. This is why: so we can confess our sins and get rid of them and then worship God with a clean heart and a clean conscience.
Next Jesus says to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”(v. 6). The same God who appeared to Abraham some 400 years before, the same God who told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, the same God who promised Abraham that the Savior would one day come from his descendants—this is the God who was now speaking to Moses. And notice what was on his mind. The LORD said to Moses: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering”(v. 7). Here is the reason behind this special manifestation of God. Here is the reason the LORD appeared to Moses in the first place: because he was concerned about his people. The people of Israel were suffering in Egypt, suffering as the slaves of Pharaoh, forced to work for him, beaten and whipped by slave drivers if they didn’t work hard enough or fast enough. In their misery they cried out to God. And God heard their prayers.
Sometimes people get the impression that God is up in heaven somewhere, floating around on the clouds, totally oblivious to what’s going on in our lives. The way they see it he’s kind of like the captain of the Exxon Valdez, that huge oil tanker that spilled all that oil into the ocean off the coast of Alaska a number of years ago. The captain was asleep when it happened. He didn’t know his oil tanker was drifting off course. He didn’t realize the danger they were in until the tanker ran aground and began leaking oil into the ocean. Many people look at God the same way, when nothing could be farther from the truth. God is very aware of what is going on in our lives. Notice, first of all, that he knew Moses by name. When he began speaking to him from the burning bush, he didn’t say, “Hey you, whatever your name is, come over here. I need to talk to you.” No, he said, “Moses, Moses.” The same is true of us. You and I are not just numbers to God, mere statistics on some giant spread sheet. God knows each and every one of us by name. “I have called you by name;” he says through the prophet Isaiah, “you are mine”(43:1).
And just as he knew what was going on in the lives of the Israelites, so he knows what’s going on in our lives too. He knows about the suffering in your life. He knows about the illness you’ve been struggling with and the pain you’ve had to deal with. He knows about your grief and sadness at the loss of a loved one. He cries with you. He knows about the challenges you face, about the problems that make your life difficult and frustrating. And he cares. In fact, he invites us to bring all these things to him. He invites us to pour out our hearts to him, to cry out to him about what’s going on at work, about what’s going on at school, about what’s going on in your own home, about things that trouble you, things that disturb you. And just as he heard the cries of the people of Israel, so he promises to hear your prayers as well. Don’t ever fall for Satan’s lie: that God doesn’t know, that God doesn’t care about what’s going on in your life. He does know and he does care. That’s the first comforting truth we learn from this story.
The second is that he is willing to do something about it. Not only does God know what’s going on in our lives, he promises to help and deliver us. Take another look at v. 8. There, after telling Moses that he knows about the suffering of his people and is concerned about their suffering, the LORD says, “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…”(v. 8). Then a couple verses later the Lord becomes even more specific about his plans to rescue his people, indicating that he is going to send Moses to rescue them and deliver them from slavery in Egypt. And that’s when Moses starts getting a little nervous, a little reluctant, a little afraid. “Who am I,” he says, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”(v. 11)
So God reassures him: “Don’t worry, Moses” he says, “I’ll be with you. In fact, I’ll even give you a sign. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship me on this very mountain.”
But then Moses has another objection: “But Lord, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I tell them?”
And this was God’s now famous answer: “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’”(vv. 13+14). Now obviously there’s a lot in these verses, enough for another whole sermon, but we’ll have to save that for another day. For now I simply want to point out that those words tell us something about God. Among other things they tell us that he is a God who never changes, a God who is always the same. He always is I AM. And because he never changes, his word never changes either. He always keeps his promises.
Centuries before this God had promised Abraham that he would give the land of Canaan to his descendents. Now he was about to keep that promise. He was going to bring the Israelites up out of Egypt and give them the land of Canaan. Likewise, in these verses God said that he was going to rescue his people from their suffering in Egypt and that he would use Moses to make that happen. And God kept that promise too. He did deliver his people from slavery and Moses is the one who led them out of Egypt.
God has done the same for you and me, people who were also living in slavery, people who were suffering under the cruel slave drivers of sin, death and hell. He promised that he would send someone to rescue us, someone to deliver us from slavery and lead us to the promised land of heaven. And he did. God sent his own Son to deliver us, someone far superior to Moses, someone who was never reluctant or hesitant to do what needed to be done to rescue God’s people. Jesus gladly and willingly did everything that needed to be done, including laying down his own life on the cross, so that he might rescue us, that he might deliver us from the power of sin and death, and that we might live with him forever in the promised land of heaven.
If God was willing to do that for us, if he was willing to send his own Son to rescue us from the misery of slavery in hell, will he not help us with the other trials and sorrows and difficulties in our lives? Of course he will! He will be with you and help you as you struggle with that painful illness. He will be with you and help you as you mourn the loss of that family member or friend. He will be with you and help you with the challenges you face at work or at school. He will be with you and help you as you prepare to move away to college or as you prepare to move into a nursing home. God will be with you and help you at every stage of life because he is a God who cares for his people.
What an amazing truth we find recorded for us here in Exodus ch. 3! With everything that’s going on in this world of ours, would we naturally think that God would be concerned about us? No. But that’s what we learn from this story. Here we learn that God is concerned about his people, that he knows what going on in their lives and that he promises to help and deliver them. So take comfort. Take comfort in the LORD’s loving concern for you! Amen.