Exodus 3


1One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he went deep into the wilderness near Sinai, the mountain of God. 2Suddenly, the angel of the LORD appeared to him as a blazing fire in a bush. Moses was amazed because the bush was engulfed in flames, but it didn't burn up. 3"Amazing!" Moses said to himself. "Why isn't that bush burning up? I must go over to see this."
 4When the LORD saw that he had caught Moses' attention, God called to him from the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
 "Here I am!" Moses replied.
 5"Do not come any closer," God told him. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground." 6Then he said, "I am the God of your ancestors--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God.
 7Then the LORD told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey--the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. 9The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."
 11"But who am I to appear before Pharaoh?" Moses asked God. "How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"
 12Then God told him, "I will be with you. And this will serve as proof that I have sent you: When you have brought the Israelites out of Egypt, you will return here to worship God at this very mountain."
 13But Moses protested, "If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, `The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' they won't believe me. They will ask, `Which god are you talking about? What is his name?' Then what should I tell them?"
 14God replied, "I AM THE ONE WHO ALWAYS IS, Just tell them, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" 15God also said, "Tell them, `The LORD, the God of your ancestors--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob--has sent me to you.' This will be my name forever; it has always been my name, and it will be used throughout all generations.
 16"Now go and call together all the leaders of Israel. Tell them, `The LORD, the God of your ancestors--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--appeared to me in a burning bush. He said, "You can be sure that I am watching over you and have seen what is happening to you in Egypt. 17I promise to rescue you from the oppression of the Egyptians. I will lead you to the land now occupied by the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites--a land flowing with milk and honey." '
 18"The leaders of the people of Israel will accept your message. Then all of you must go straight to the king of Egypt and tell him, `The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us go on a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.'
 19"But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go except under heavy pressure. 20So I will reach out and strike at the heart of Egypt with all kinds of miracles. Then at last he will let you go. 21And I will see to it that the Egyptians treat you well. They will load you down with gifts so you will not leave empty-handed. 22The Israelite women will ask for silver and gold jewelry and fine clothing from their Egyptian neighbors and their neighbors' guests. With this clothing, you will dress your sons and daughters. In this way, you will plunder the Egyptians!"

Points of Interest:
• ‘was tending the flock’—Moses has taken over the shepherding duties from his wife and sisters-in-law.

• ‘his father-in-law, Jethro’—in the previous passage, his father-in-law’s name is Reuel. It could be that Moses’ father-in-law simply has two names that he goes by. There could also be a translation difficulty. The word translated here as ‘father-in-law’ can be used for any male authority figure related to your wife (Bible Background Commentary 79). Perhaps ‘elder-in-law’ would be a more accurate translation, but it would sound a little strange in English; so the translators go with the more conventional ‘father-in-law.’ So, perhaps Jethro is Zipporah’s grandfather, and Reuel is her father, or vice versa.

• ‘Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt’—This looks much like something called the hero’s journey—the idea that many of the world’s great stories, across time and across cultures, describe a very similar path for their hero. We find this pattern in folk tales, in the great epics, in most novels, in many of Hollywood’s most famous movies, and anywhere else you find a good story. It’s thought that audiences find themselves attracted to this hero’s journey again and again because it describes something fundamentally true about life, both what it’s like and what it’s meant to be.
In this passage, we find the classic beginning to the hero’s journey. The hero is going about everyday life when he or she receives a call to adventure. Moses is going about his normal business of tending the flock, which we discover later that he has been doing for 40 years now, when something extraordinary—in this case, a burning bush—pulls him out of his normal path. God calls him to leave his ordinary world and to go on amazing adventure. Interestingly, the adventure to which God calls Moses (rescuing the Israelites from Egyptian oppression) was, at least at one point, a desire of Moses’ own heart.

• ‘But who am I to appear before Pharaoh?’—Moses was probably never important enough to treat directly with Pharaoh, any influence he ever had is long since gone, and, at best, he’s an anonymous shepherd from the desert. If anyone does remember him, it is as a murderer and a fugitive from justice.

• ‘And this will serve as proof that I have sent you: When you have brought the Israelites out of Egypt, you will return here to worship God at this very mountain’—interestingly, God’s proof to Moses that he is sending him is a future event, predicated on Moses actually following God’s instruction. God seems to like it when we step out in faith to prove his words. You almost get the sense here that God is anxious with anticipation of how awesome it will feel to Moses when he actually does return to this mountain with all of the people of Israel in tow.

• ‘They will ask, `Which god are you talking about?’—this probably does not mean that Moses thinks they will have no idea who he is talking about. Moses is essentially saying, ‘If I tell people that God told me to lead them out of Egypt, won’t they ask for some sort of identification?’

• ‘The LORD’—actually, in Hebrew, what is translated ‘the LORD’ here is the same as what is translated ‘I AM’ earlier. It’s a longstanding publishing tradition in the English language to render ‘I AM’ as ‘the LORD’ in all capital letters. Whenever all capital letters are not used, it is a translation of adonnai, the Hebrew word for ‘lord.’

• ‘I will lead you to the land now occupied by the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites’—you might wonder how the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites feel about this plan. We don’t hear too much about it in the Bible, but apparently God has been in conversation with the people of Canaan for a long time, asking them to stop their wicked behavior and warning them that he’ll give their land to someone else if they don’t. In fact, God tells Abraham ahead of time that his descendants will spend 400 years in Egypt, to give the Canaanites enough of a chance to listen to God and change (see Genesis 15: 13-16).

• ‘They will load you down with gifts’—they’ve been loaded down with heavy labor, but that’s going to change. When they leave, they’ll be loaded down with treasure. It’s like their being awarded back pay, or like they’re suing for damages for unjust treatment and they just won their case.

Taking it home:
• For you: Over the years, Moses settled into a very comfortable pattern. There were probably things that he liked about his life and things he didn’t, but overall he most likely just accepted it as the life he was living and was likely to continue to live. What is your ordinary world—the things you just accept as normal life? What are the familiar patterns of your day and week? What would it feel like to be called out of that life? What would be exciting? What would be frightening?

• For your six: Moses is walking along his normal path when something startling and inexplicable captures his attention. Ask God to give your six burning bushes that jog them out of the normal way of looking at things. Pray that they will be curious enough to take a closer look, and that God will introduce himself to them when they do.

• For our church: God is surprisingly committed to working through people. In this passage, it’s God’s plan to rescue the Israelites from Egypt. But rather than do it himself, he is sending Moses to do it. What are the implications of the fact that if God has plans for New Haven, he’s probably (hopefully) planning on accomplishing them through us? Pray that we as a church would have the ability to say, ‘Here we are,’ when God calls, and that we would have the honesty to ask the questions we have about that call.