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Exodus 3:4-6: ‘Here am I, send someone else!’

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 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.

Sometimes we may say certain things to God and not know what we are saying. Not fully. We unintentionally promise more than we can deliver. When Moses said, “Here I am” he was certainly there geographically. But as we read through the rest of chapter 3, and on into chapter 4, we can see that he wasn’t really ‘here’ spiritually. He had  lots of reasons (excuses?) why God should send someone else. (I remember a book entitled, ‘Here am I Lord, send Aaron’!) However the reality of God’s presence, fully recognised, is more than enough to blast away our fears and sense of inadequacy. His ‘I Am” is the solution to everything I am not.

‘God is faithful. He called Abraham, cared for Isaac, guided and protected Jacob, and He would be with Moses. He is the God of the individual as well as the nation, and He does not change from generation to generation.’ Warren Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.49.

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

“The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry;” Psalm 34:15.

God looks with love upon His own, and he is looking for our response to His overtures. Where are you aware of God calling to you at the moment and what is your response? I wonder, what would have happened if Moses had walked on by? If he had not changed direction and gone over to take a look? What might he (indeed what might the world) have missed if he had not gone across?

I think it was Dallas Willard who counselled a pastor, ‘You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.’ I often think about his wise words, while being acutely aware that it’s a hard thing to do. But I wonder how much I miss by being hurried and distracted? How about you?

Someone said God moves at walking pace!

PRAYER: Lord, help me to walk through life at your pace. May I not fail to see what you are doing or heed what you are saying because I am too much in a hurry.

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

This story unfolds in a ‘backwater’ if ever there was one. To Moses, it must have felt like a place of obscurity and anonymity after the hustle and bustle of Egypt, and the power, the prestige, the colour of life in the palace. But God knew where he was and how to make contact with him. He was working out a great purpose in that barren, remote place. Who could have imagined?

It was another routine working day for Moses I assume. He was faithfully and diligently doing his job. But as he went about his business on this particular day he had a surprise encounter with the Lord. This may happen to any one of us, whether we are working inside the home or without. It may not necessarily be a spectacular meeting. Probably, more often than not, it won’t be. But we can regularly find God in small, ordinary things, if we have the eyes to see and hearts to respond.

There was no doubt nothing unusual about seeing a bush on fire in the desert. But what was extraordinary was the fact that it burned but did not burn up. That made it a ‘wonder.’ Even so, Moses had to respond, and he clearly did (3).

God has His own ways and means of getting our attention.

‘You never know what a day may bring, so keep your eyes and ears open to the leading of the Lord. Childlike curiosity completely changed Moses’ life.’ Warren W, Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.49

“So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” (See also 3:7)

The longer people suffer while they (and we) pray for relief, the more it may appear that God is indifferent. ‘Doesn’t He care?’ Well, the Bible describes life as it is, and what this passage assures us is that God is concerned, even when it may appear that He isn’t. But He moves according to His own time-table and not ours.

As we conclude chapter 2, I think you will find this a helpful quote from Tom Hale:

‘God hadn’t forgotten His promise – as we humans often do. When God “remembers,” it means He has decided that it is time to act (Genesis 8:1).
As God looked down on the Israelites and was concerned about them (verse 25), He was responding (as Moses had done) to people in distress. But He was also responding to His own word, His own promises. He had told Abraham that after his descendants had suffered (in Egypt) for four hundred years, He would punish the nation they serve as slaves, and that afterward they would come out with great possessions (Genesis 15:13-14). Now the time had come for the deliverance of the descendants of Abraham.’ ‘The Applied OT Commentary,’ p.209.

PRAYER: Lord please give me the faith that trusts your Word, and the patient that trusts your timing.

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 them.

First of all, we are again reminded that Moses’ exile (and leadership training) lasted a “long” time (23). Someone observed about God: ‘He is not slow; He is not in a hurry; He is always on time.’

But we can also sense that Israel’s praying for deliverance was not a one-off thing, but it was protracted praying that went the distance. Some prayers are answered quickly, while others (and it may be some of our most gut-wrenching ones) take time. Praying people need to remember the big picture and be able to take the long view. But where our prayers and God’s promises are in unison, something is going to happen, even though the answer may be a long time coming (3:7).

PRAYER: Lord God, as I pray please grant me steadfast faith in your Word, and unfailing patience that stays the course.

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

Eugene Peterson wrote about travelling through ‘the Badlands’ each summer, when he and his wife and children returned from Maryland to stay at their family home in Montana. The description refers to a barren region of Dakota. But he also used this term for a period he went through early on in his ministry. He was about three years into the founding of a church, and found himself running out of steam. It was a difficult time, but he and his wife eventually came through it, and they learned some lessons and established certain patterns that would help to sustain them over a long ministry in the suburbs of Baltimore.

God does some of His finest work in deserts. Read your Bible! Many a leader has spent time in ‘the university of the wilderness.’ Also, note that God is not in a hurry in preparing His leaders. Ask Moses. Whenever we have to spend time in the ‘desert’, we will no doubt find, as he did, that God has gone before us and made abundant provision.

In his ‘Badlands’ Moses found:

• Refreshing: there was ‘a well’ (15). He had a supply of water and food (20);
• A place of hospitality (20). What it must have meant to him to be the stranger invited in;
• A sphere of service (17-19). (It’s interesting how the leader in Moses keeps coming out. Leaders can’t help themselves. They have to do something about intolerable situations. Although Moses got things badly wrong when he killed the Egyptian, I see the leader in him in that story;
• A home (21);
• A marriage, and a baby.

The wilderness was a place of ‘divine appointment’ for Moses, and an arena of long, patient training.

Writing of his own experience, Eugene Peterson said:

“But without those years in the badlands, I would never have become a pastor, at least not the pastor I’d earlier had a vision of being, a John of Patmos pastor, the pastor I had hoped I might be. Looking back now, I see myself in those prebadlands years as a Labrador puppy, full-grown but uncoordinated, romping and playful but not yet “under authority,” oblivious to its master’s command: “Sit.” The only verbal signal that the puppy was capable of responding to was “Fetch,” which sent him galloping across a field, catching a Frisbee in full flight, and returning it with wagging tail, ready for more. In the badlands I learned to sit.”

23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defence and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realise that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’
27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

This is an extract from Stephen’s speech in the book of Acts 7:

‘Moses thought that his own people would realise that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not’ (25).

It is important to think, and what we think is not necessarily wrong. God has given us the gift of the mind and we are to gratefully use it. But sometimes (often, even?) our thinking is far from correct. Logic takes us in the wrong direction. We find repeatedly that God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways and thoughts are higher than ours. This is why, as followers of Christ, we should live prayerfully, always seeking the mind of Christ.

‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.’ Proverbs 3:5,6.

‘Prayer is both the simplest and most difficult of spiritual practices. We need it, we desire it, it is not actually hard to do—and yet even deeply committed believers can struggle at times with prayerlessness. The reasons we give for this neglect take many forms, but they often boil down to some version of “I’m too busy.” Underneath these rationalizations lies a deeper reason: Our pride continually pulls us toward self-reliance, so we avoid the God-reliance that’s at the very heart of prayer.’ (From an article entitled: ‘The sweet relief of utter dependence’ by Kelli B. Trujillo).

PRAYER: God be in my head and in my understanding.

13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”

In the last chapter of Eugene Peterson’s wonderful book, ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places’, he writes about how he and his wife went to hear the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Paul Tournier, give a lecture at the ‘John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He says it was life-changing, and describes how, as Tournier spoke, he got a sense from him of what he could only describe as ‘congruence’: he felt the genuineness of the man -that his life and words were completely at one; that he lived what he said. (He says he also got the same feeling from reading his books). The man was authentic. He had obvious integrity.

It is a problem for leaders when people perceive there to be a ‘credibility gap’ between their talk and their walk. ‘How can you tell me to do such and such, when you don’t do it? How can you expect me to live one way when you live another?’ They no doubt think it if they don’t actually say it.

This was the problem Moses ran into early on when he first tried to step up to a leadership role. It was a painful lesson to learn. He was going to have to learn to lead by example, and not just by words.

PRAYER: Lord, we know we cannot expect perfection of any human leader. We are all sinners living in a fallen world. But we do pray for leadership integrity in every area of life.

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

The reference to “his own people” comes twice, so it is important. As is often said, ‘blood is thicker than water.’

Well, I seem to remember from Sunday School days the simple point being made about Moses, ‘But he didn’t look up!’

Leaders can be in the habit of looking “this way and that” but failing to truly look up. Like Moses, they maybe have a sense of destiny. They feel the call to lead, to do something. So they end up acting impulsively, on a whim, and in self-reliance. They try to do God’s work, but in their own way. They fight with worldly weapons (2 Cor.10). Prayer is an almost perfunctory item on a packed business agenda – perhaps the merest glance heavenward. They just hope God is okay with what they’re doing because they are going to do it anyway.

‘Truth will out.’ It did in Moses’ case. We may try to bury our sins, but ghost-like they emerge from the grave to haunt us. The only way we can give our misdemeanours a decent burial is through confession and repentance before God, and trusting in Jesus’ blood for forgiveness. Then we can have peaceful consciences. But even so, we can’t always evade the consequences – even of forgiven sin.

‘Moses had a splendid education (Acts 7:22), but he was lacking in faith. He fought the wrong enemy at the wrong time with the wrong weapon. When you start to look around and ask yourself “Is it safe?”…not “Is it right?” You have stopped living by faith. Sometimes God has to “set us aside” to teach us what we need to know – and to help us forget the way the world does things. Moses’ impulsive deed sent him to the back of the desert for forty years, just as his impulsive words would keep him out of the Promised Land (Num.20:9-13). An impatient spirit is a dangerous thing. Warren Wiersbe: With the Word’, p.49.

PRAYER: Lord God, as I consider the outlook, may I never lose sight of the up-look.