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 The Call of Moses

 Exodus 3

Introduction.  There are moments in the life of God’s people when the ordinary is interrupted by the extraordinary, when the quiet routines of daily faithfulness are suddenly filled with the sound of heaven’s summons.  The series we walking through together is called “The Urgent Call,” and it rests on a simple conviction:  The living God still speaks, still summons, and still sends.  He doesn’t always speak in the same way, nor does He call every person to the same task, but when God’s call comes, it carries the weight of eternity.  And you’d best be listening.

Today I want to look at one of the most familiar yet most searching of these summons – the call of Moses at the burning bush.  Here is a man who had spent four decades in the desert wilderness of Midian, tending someone else’s sheep, living with the quiet knowledge that his earlier attempt to deliver Israel by his own strength had ended in utter failure and a flight for his life.  He’s not looking for a new job.  He’s not climbing a mountain in some kind of vision quest.  He is simply doing the next faithful thing when the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob steps into the frame and issues an urgent call.

What unfolds in Exodus 3 is not merely a private religious experience.  It is the beginning of Israel’s redemption and a pattern for every believer who has ever felt the weight of divine interruption.  My prayer today is that the Spirit who spoke from the flames may speak again to us today.

An incredible meeting.

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.”   (Exodus 3:1 – 3 | TNIV)

Our scene opens with quiet simplicity.  Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.  He leads the sheep to the far side of the wilderness and comes Horeb, the mountain of God.  There is nothing dramatic about the setting at first glance – only a shepherd, a flock, and the long, ordinary days of exile.  Then the text records the interruption:  The angel of the Lord appears to him in flames of fire from within a burning bush.  Moses sees that though the bush is on fire, it doesn’t burn up.  So he thinks, “I’ll go over and see this strange sight – why the bush doesn’t burn up.”

I want you to notice something.  This time when God spoke, there was no earthquake, no trumpet blast, no sudden voice booming from the sky.  There is just a bush on fire that doesn’t burn up.  The miracle is quiet enough that Moses must decide to go over to it and investigate.  The urgency of the call begins not with overwhelming spectacle but with a curiosity that draws a man nearer.

How often does the Lord still work this way, I wonder?  He places something a little unusual in the path of an ordinary day – a conversation that will not leave us alone, a burden for a people or a place that keeps coming back to us, a restlessness in the soul that refuses to settle.  The bush is still burning for some of us.  The question is whether we are curious enough to investigate it or not.

Well, Moses does investigate, and in that decision this ordinary shepherd steps onto holy ground.  The God who is about to commission him first captures his attention.  The urgent call is rarely shouted at those who are running the other way; but it is often whispered to those who are willing to stop and look more closely at the strange sight God has set before them.

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.”  (Exodus 3:4, 5 | TNIV)

When the Lord sees that Moses has gone over to look, He initiates a conversation with the one-time shepherd.  God addresses him as “Moses, Moses.”  There is something very personal in the double naming.  The God of the universe addresses that particular man by name, twice, as if to make certain there can be no mistake about the identity of the one being summoned.  Moses’ response, “Here I am,” shows us that availability precedes understanding.  Obedience begins with presence.

Then comes the first command of the encounter:  “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”  The fire that doesn’t consume the bush now declares the holiness of the One who speaks.  Proximity to God is never casual.  The same God who draws near also requires reverence.  Sandals come off because the very ground itself has been claimed by the presence of the Holy One.

Here is a truth or generation must recover.  We live an age that prizes casual and informal familiarity with the divine.  Yet the God who called Moses thousands of years ago is the same God who will later say that no one may see His face and live.  The urgent call always includes the call to holy fear.  We can’t hear the voice of the Lord rightly if we refuse to remove the shoes of self-sufficiency and presumption.  The ground is holy because He is there.  The call is urgent because the One who issues it is not to be trifled with.

Divine awareness.

The conversation now moves from the wonder of the meeting to the content of the message.  God does not simply announce His presence; He reveals His character, His knowledge, and His intention.

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.  (Exodus 3:6 | TNIV)

The self-identification is covenantal.  The God speaking from the bush isn’t a new deity or a tribal spirit of the mountain.  He is the God who bound Himself by promise to the patriarchs.  He is the God who swore to give them a land and to make of them a great nation.  Forty years of silence in Midian have not canceled the covenant.  The long years of Israel’s bondage in Egypt have not erased the oath.   God is still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This is the foundation of every call.  The One who summons us is the faithful God of the covenant.  He doesn’t begin with our resume or our readiness.  He begins with His own unchanging character.  When Moses hid his face, he responded rightly to the weight of that revelation.  The God who calls is the God who has already committed Himself to His people.  Our confidence in answering the call rests not in our own strength but in the reliability of the One who speaks.

The Lord said, “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.”  (Exodus 3:7 | TNIV)

Three verbs stand out in this verse:  Seen, heard, concerned.  The God of the covenant is not distant or indifferent.  He has observed the affliction of His people.  He has registered every cry.  He feels the weight of their suffering.  The Hebrew carries the sense of intimate knowledge – God knows their pain from the inside.

This is one of the most precious truths in the Bible for those who suffer.  The call of God is never issued in ignorance of human pain.  The same God who will soon command Moses to go also first declares that He has seen, heard, and known.  Before there is a mission there is compassion.  Before there is a commission there is the assurance that heaven is not silent about earth’s misery.

For every one of you who has ever wondered whether God notices the private sorrow, the unanswered prayer, the long night of waiting, this verse stands as an immovable rock.  He has seen.  He has heard.  He is concerned.  The call flows out of divine awareness, not divine absence.

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. [10] So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”  (Exodus 3:8 – 10 | TNIV)

Here the awareness becomes intention, and the intention becomes assignment.  God has come down.  The language is deliberate.  The transcendent God enters the historical situation of His people in order to act.  He will rescue.  He will bring them out.  He will bring them in.  And the instrument of that deliverance will be the very shepherd standing barefoot before the bush.

Notice the sequence here.  God doesn’t first ask Moses whether he qualified.  He doesn’t take a vote among the elders of Israel.  He declares what He intends to do and then places the responsibility of human agency squarely on Moses’ shoulders:  “So go now.  I am sending you.”

This is the heart of the call.  God is never just observing.  He is always moving toward the fulfillment of His redemptive purpose.  And in that movement He regularly chooses unlikely instruments.  The same pattern runs though the whole of Scripture.  The God who sees the misery of people also raises up deliverers, prophets, apostles, and ordinary saints who will become the means by which His intention becomes history.

For us the application is searching.  The call is not primarily about our preferences or our sense of timing.  It is about the God who has already decided to act and who now invites us into the action.  The question is not whether God is going to rescue His people.  The question is whether we will be found available when He says to us, “So now, go.”

Supernatural provision.

The final movement in our text is the most human and therefore the most instructive.  Moses responds to the call with honest reluctance, and God answers with supernatural reassurance.

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  (Exodus 3:11 | TNIV)

The question is, I think, understandable.  Moses had already tried once, in his own strength, and the result was murder, rejection, and 40 years of obscurity.  He knows the power of Egypt well.  He knows the stubbornness of Pharaoh.  He knows his own limitations.  “Who am I?” is not false humility; it is the sober assessment of a man who has measured himself against the size of the task and found himself wanting.

Every true call of God will eventually bring this question to the surface.  The size of the assignment will expose the smallness of the instrument.  The urgency of the mission will highlight the inadequacy of the messenger.  If we have never felt the force of “Who am I?” we may not yet have heard the full weight of the call.

Yet the text doesn’t leave us there.  God doesn’t rebuke Moses for the question.  He doesn’t say, “Stop doubting and just go already.”  Instead, He meets the reluctance with a promise that changes everything.

And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. ”  (Exodus 3:12 | TNIV)

The answer is breathtaking in its simplicity and sufficiency.  God does not give Moses a detailed strategy, a list of credentials, or a guarantee of immediate success.  He gives him the one thing that makes every other thing possible:  His own presence.  “I will be with you.”

This is the supernatural provision that undergirds every call.  The God who sends is the God who accompanies.  The same presence that made the bush holy is the presence that will go with Moses into the court of Pharaoh.  The same God who heard the cries of Israel will be the God who stands beside the stammering delivers.

And there is a sign.  Not a sign that precedes the obedience, but a sign that follows it.  When the work is done, Moses and the people will worship on this very mountain.  The place of the call will become the place of thanksgiving.  The mountain of encounter will become the mountain of praise.

Here is the pattern for every believer who feels the weight of God’s urgent assignment.  The provision is not primarily more strength within ourselves.  The provision is the abiding presence of the One who calls.  “I will be with you” is the promise that turns reluctance into obedience and fear into faith.

It’s the same promise that echoes through the rest of Scripture.  It is the word spoken to Joshua as he prepares to lead the people into the land.  It is the word spoken by the risen Christ to the disciples as He sends them into all the world.  It is the word that still sustains the church in every generation:  The God who calls is the God who goes with those He sends.

Conclusion.  The urgent call of Moses is not a museum piece.  It is a living pattern.  The same God who met a reluctant shepherd on the far side of the wilderness still meets His people today.  He still interrupts ordinary days with holy fire.  He still declares His covenant faithfulness.  He still sees the misery of His people and intends their deliverance.  He still answers our “Who am I?” with the unanswerable promise, “I will be with you.”

The question that remains is the same question Moses faced:  Will we turn aside to look?  Will we remove our sandals?  Will we say, “Here I am”? and go?

The series title is not accidental.  The call is urgent because the need is great, the time is short, and the God who speaks is the God who acts.   He has seen.  He has heard.  He has come down.  And now He says to ordinary men and women in ordinary places, “So now, go.”

May the God of the burning bush grant us grace to hear, courage to answer, and the faith to trust the presence that goes with us.  And when the work is done, may we find ourselves, like Moses, back on the mountain – worshipping the One who called us, sustained us, and brought us through.