God cares about His relationship with His creation. This can be clearly seen throughout the Bible. From the beginning in creation all the way through to Jesus’ death and resurrection and beyond we find a God who is concerned about His creation. In Genesis we see God nurturing a relationship with Adam and Eve. He walks about the Garden of Eden with them. He gives them authority over part of His creation. Later on we see God who, although offended by humanity’s endless sinning, finds a way to save His creation. In the end we see a God who is willing to give His only Son so that the relationship could be saved. So, relationship with God is something that is basic to all human beings. From the very start we were meant to know and worship God.

In the passage we read, we find God wanting to develop His relationship with Israel. He chooses to do this through a spokesman who we know to be Moses. We will look today at three questions. Firstly, we will ask “why Moses”? In other words, we will try to find out why God used Moses instead of someone more able and gifted. The second question will be “why is God acting now”? We will investigate why God has decided to come down to help His people. The last question we will ask will be “what does this mean for me”? We will finish our journey by asking how what we have heard can and does affect our lives today.

Why Moses?
So, the first question we will ask is why Moses? God must have carefully considered all the people of Israel and for some reason He chose to use Moses as His spokesman. We will never be able to find out fully why God chose Moses. The Bible tells us that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts; so to pretend to be able to know what God is thinking is foolish.
But we can begin to see why God chose Moses through the events we have recorded for us in Exodus 3. I have found four reasons but I am sure there are more.

Firstly, Moses was an inquisitive man. In verse three, Moses is confronted with a bush that seems to be on fire but is not being consumed by the fire. This makes him curious – he says, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight.” It would go against his nature not to be curious about this sight and who can blame him! If I saw a bush that was on fire but was not being consumed I’d want to investigate how it’s possible! Moses knew that there was something special about this bush and not only that it was doing what seemed to be impossible. His suspicions were correct – this was no ordinary event he was witnessing. On the contrary, it is probably one of the most significant events in the history of his people. This questioning nature in Moses would be the opening that God would use to reveal more about Himself, as we will see later. So, because God knew how Moses would react He chose him to be His spokesman to Israel.

The second reason God chose Moses is that he was an imperfect person. I suppose this is an obvious thing to say – everyone is imperfect in one way or another. But it is an important part of the account and tells us something else about the way that God works. In Chapter 4 Moses tells us his weakness – he has problems speaking sometimes. For a spokesman this imperfection would be a problem! How was he going to be the mediator between God and his people if he couldn’t be relied upon to talk properly? But this was exactly why God chose Moses. The fact that God can use someone like Moses to accomplish His plans showed the people that it was not Moses who was doing the great things but rather it was God. On his own, Moses had trouble even talking in front of crowds let alone persuading them to do things that they were not entirely comfortable doing in the first place! God would be the one doing the work itself, all Moses needed to do was be available to be used. This teaches us a lot. If we are just willing to let God lead us we can be used in a great way like Moses, because it is God who does the work, we are simply His ambassadors. So, because Moses, like all of us, was imperfect he was the perfect man for God to use.

The third reason God chose Moses was because he had natural leadership qualities. The first evidence of this is found in verse one. We are told that Moses is leading his fathers flock to find a place to graze. Although in this context he is only leading animals it doesn’t take away from his natural ability to control and lead a group. Being in charge of a flock was a great responsibility at this time. A family’s wealth was measured by how much cattle they owned. So it shows that Moses was trusted to lead the flock. This quality would come to be very useful in his future role as the leader of his people.
The second, and more convincing, evidence of Moses’ leadership qualities is found when he is in discussion with God. I don’t know about you but if I were confronted by a physical appearance of God I would probably be stuck to the spot! As for being able to speak to God in this situation I don’t know if I could. You can imagine how difficult it would have been, then, for Moses to not only speak to God but to question God! God tells Moses to go to his people with a message, but Moses knows that without proof his people won’t listen to him. So he plucks up his courage and quizzes God for some answers for his people. This is a brave thing to have done. In other places in the Bible when God appears to people, they quite often fear for their lives. In their mind, seeing God means that you are about to die. But Moses trusts this God and so feels safe enough to question Him. This is proof of a good leader. In the presence of Almighty God Moses thinks of his people and bravely questions God for some answers. This is another reason why God chose Moses.

The fourth reason I found for why God chose Moses is that Moses had a previous connection with God. In verse 6, God introduces Himself not in the traditional way but says, “I am the God of your father…” Normally God refers to being the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but in this situation he makes it specific to Moses’ own father. God is telling Moses that the One who Moses is speaking to is the same God as his father worshipped. This existing connection was important for different reasons. For Moses it meant that he knew about this God and that he could trust this God. Later on for the benefit of the people of Israel God identifies Himself as “…the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
God was giving them His credentials. He was the God who had made the promise to Abraham many years earlier. He was the God who they knew kept His promises and so He was the God who will deliver them from slavery. And because Moses’ father believed all of this, Moses has an established relationship with God, meaning that Moses could trust God to lead his people out of slavery.

So for these reasons and others, God chose this humble shepherd with a speech impediment to be His spokesman to His people. We might have made a different decision. There were probably much better people for the job in Israel. Men who were strong, well educated, quick thinking, good at public speaking and so on. But it is because of who Moses was that God used him in an awesome way.

Why Is God Acting Now?
The second question to ask, then, is why is God acting now? The question is in one sense a wrong question.
To ask, “why is God acting now?” might suggest that He stopped acting at some point in the past. We know that this is never the case. Because God cares about His people He does not rest until they are in the intended relationship with Him that He wants them to be. But leaving this point aside, we need to ask, “What situation caused God to act in this specific way?”

Firstly, as I said earlier, God wanted to deepen His relationship with Israel. This can been seen throughout the Old Testament. Even when His people actively choose to disobey Him and worship false gods, God continues to love His people and longs for them to come back to Him. God in one sense needs His creation to be in relationship with Him. At the time these things were taking place, Israel was being held captive in Egypt. We heard last week about some of the things the Egyptians were doing to the Israelites. They had put them into slavery and forced labour, and they were killing the firstborn son of every Israelite family. It was from this situation that Moses was saved. The suffering of the Israelite people was almost more than they could cope with. It was this situation that made the people of Israel cry out to God begging Him to free them from this situation of despair. And we hear what God has to say about this in verse 7. He says that He has heard the people’s cries and has seen the suffering they have to endure. It is because of this that God is now acting in this way; He has come to release His people from slavery and suffering and to take them to a better place. God has come to release His people because He made promises to their forefathers. He is a God who does what He says He will do.

Another reason for God acting now is that He wanted His people to know something more about Himself. Some theologians argue that this event is the most significant event in the whole of the Old Testament. The fact that God should want to share something of Himself with His creation is an important thing to grasp. So what it is that brings the two sides closer together? It is the same thing that today brings people closer together. God has asked Moses to go to Pharaoh and then to His people to give them a message. But Moses knows that if he simply says “the God of our fathers has sent me” the people will not accept it – he needs to tell them the name of this God. Knowing someone’s name means that you have an important relationship with that person. In Judaism, the name of God is so special that they don’t like to write it down in its full form, and if they do write it down they have to keep the paper it is written on until the ink fades away. This shows how important it is to know the name of God for the Israelite people.
If Moses could give his people the name of this God it will encourage the people of Israel to believe him. So God gives Moses a name to give to the people. They way He does it, though, is interesting. God does not give Moses what we would call a name but rather He tell Moses something more about Himself which will influence the whole of Israelite history. God says, “I AM WHO I AM.” In other words, God is saying that He is the One Who Always Is. In Hebrew the words used show that this is a continuing truth. God does not end and is not caught up in past actions; rather God is continually present and is working now. God is not a God who lives in the heavens and is unreachable by His people; rather He is a God who is always present. There are not many things that are more important than this in the Old Testament! The knowledge that God is always with us is key to many doctrines we get from the Old Testament.

So, we have seen that God was acting because His peoples suffering moved him. This also gave Him the opportunity to let them know something about Himself that will form their whole future faith in Him.

So what does this mean to me?
All of this is interesting and helps us to understand what was going on in this passage. However, the question to ask next is “what does this mean to me?” Sometimes it is wrong to ask this question of Scripture. We try to apply events that happened thousands of years ago to our present day situation and quite often they don’t fit. However in this situation we can apply something of the message to our individual lives. There is a fundamental truth explained in the events that Moses went through. When God revealed that vital information to Moses about Himself it set off a chain of events that leads through to us. God, with the help of Moses, led the people out of captivity, as He promised. They reach the Promised Land and start a new life. But God doesn’t leave it there! When His people turn their backs on Him, He sends them prophets to warn them. But they continue to forget about Him and disobey His Law. So, out of love, He sends Jesus to die for them, ending the war with sin and death. The church today is the result of God’s continuing and restless work in history. Each person who claims Christ as his or her saviour is the most recent link in a chain that goes back thousands of years. So what does this mean to me? It means that we have a God who does not cease to work for the good of those who love Him. A God who always was, always is and always will be; a God who promises to be with us always; a God who gave His only Son to die for us. It means that if we trust in this God like Moses and the Israelite people did, we too will be led safely to our promised land.

Some might question the relevance of these events to us today. But they are not just story’s about things that happened so long ago we can hardly imagine it. They show us what God is like. He is the One Who Always Is. He hears His peoples’ cries for help and answers them. He leads us to good places in safety. He uses us to do His work for the good of humanity. What else could be more relevant to us today?
 

Amen.

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