All right, lesson three is entitled God calls Moses, and we're just going to be focusing on chapters three and four. Trust me, there's a lot to talk about, which is two chapters. But before we do, before we go into verse one of chapter three, I want to build a bridge for you again back to Genesis. We talked a lot about this in the last lesson, how Exodus is a continuation of the story of Genesis, and for so many different reasons.
Well, I want to give to you now a stronger bridge. I think this is a beautiful thing. I really love this connection between Exodus and Genesis. So if you go back to Genesis, if you studied with me and Scripture.com here, my Genesis course or pick this up elsewhere, you're going to know that Genesis went into the story of creation.
They have different words for God being used. In chapter one, the word for God is Elohim. Elohim is the generic word for God. It kind of displays and demonstrates his power.
He's omnipotent, he's transcendental, he's majestic, right? He is the God who creates by his effortless word. He speaks and things come into being, right? He is God, all powerful, right?
That's chapter one. Then in chapter two of Genesis, the word for God is YAHweh, Elohim, the Lord God. This word YAHweh is the covenantal name for God. He's personal, he's intimate, he's imminent, he's right there with Adam and Eve.
He takes care of him. He puts them in the garden and all this stuff. And so it's this transition, transition, and really it's a great balance of God. It's all powerful, but God is fatherly as well.
So chapters one and chapter two, people will say, oh, there's two different creation accounts. Well, as I talked about in that Genesis Bible study, it's one creation account, but there's an emphasis going on here balancing out who God is. That's the first creation in Genesis. Well, something similar is happening here with Exodus, because the main takeaway here is that God is bringing about a new creation, not of the world, but a new creation of his people.
And that's what he's been building ever since he called Abraham, right? So in chapters one and two of Exodus, God's name is Elohim, right? He has power governs and guides history, right? He is in control of all things.
But then in chapter three, now as we're going to see, he reveals himself now as Yahweh. There's that same transition from the all-powerful God to the personal God. This is the Yahweh who reveals himself to Moses and all the people there at Mount Sinai later on in the story. And it's teaching us exactly what I said.
God now is bringing about a new creation for his people, and you're going to see the same balance of his majesty and his power, but also his closeness and his intimacy. Right? So I just think that that's a really wonderful bridge, another bridge really back to Genesis with creation imagery here. Now creation of his people.
Alrighty, so I hope you got that now with this kind of in mind. Let's read chapters three verses one through six. Yeah, we'll check three verses one through six, and then we'll unpack it here. Okay, so verse one.
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priests of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to the horror of the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked and behold, the bush was burning. Yeah, it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this great sight.
Why the bush is not burnt? When the Lord saw that he turned aside to sea, God called him out of the bush, Moses, Moses, and he said, here am I. And he said, do not come near, put off your shoes from your feet for the place in which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses hid his face, where he was afraid to look at God.
Alright, we'll stop right there here and unpack this. So God reveals himself. This is called the Theophany. It's a revelation, a manifestation, an appearance of God.
And there are different Theophany's of God in scripture. But this is by far the greatest one, at least in the Old Testament. Obviously, Jesus is the perfect revelation, manifestation of God in the New Testament. But in the Old, this is the most significant.
And now, I'm sorry, excuse me, Moses is 80 years old when God calls him. He spent 40 years in exile. Remember that Moses, his life is divided into three sections of 40 years, 40 years in Egypt growing up, 40 years in exile, and he's going to have 40 years guiding his people. So he's 80 years old when God comes to him.
By the way, remember, Abraham was 75. So don't get comfortable. No matter how old you are, don't get comfortable because God might call you to do something smaller, large. It doesn't matter how old you are.
God can use you as an instrument. So he's 80 years old now. And God appears to him. And he's shepherding his father-in-law's flock as we saw at the end of the last lesson.
To be a shepherd is a good thing. It's a really good imagery in the Bible. It's very humbling. Moses grew up as a prince of the land growing up in Pharaoh's household.
Now he's very humbled. It's a difficult job to do. You're exposed to the elements. As a shepherd, you're supposed to fight off predators protecting your flock.
And so for that reason, shepherds are beloved by God. David was a shepherd. Jesus is, I am the true shepherd. He got various prophets who are shepherds.
It's a good thing because you're supposed to be a leader. You're supposed to protect your dear, sweet, innocent, stupid little land. And so, by the way, bishops are also called shepherds. They're supposed to shepherd their flock and woe to them if they do not shepherd their flock.
That's a very bad. It's a huge name and scripture. I want to get on a tangent here. But God likes shepherds.
He calls shepherds. And Moses now is learning a lot in the wilderness. And by the way, to be in the wilderness is a good thing. To be in the wilderness is a place of encounter with God.
God calls Moses to the wilderness. He calls his people into the wilderness. The wilderness name happens a lot in the Old Testament leading up to Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days. The wilderness is a place of encounter with God because in the desert you're stripped of everything.
You're exposed to the elements. You're hungry, you're thirsty. You don't have the distractions of the city or a family or whatever it might be tearing at you. It really is a place where you can get back into yourself and hopefully encounter God.
That's really what Lent is by the way. Lent is supposed to be like Jesus, 40 days in the wilderness where we encounter God. One more little positive thing going on here. It says that Moses went to the west side of the wilderness here in verse 1.
He is on the west side of the wilderness. That is a good geographically. Over and over again, in Genesis I showed in that Bible study how to go east is to go away from God. This happens after the fall of Adam and Eve.
They go east of Eden. The cane goes east. Over and over again there's these examples. God called Abraham to come west because he's coming back to the land.
He's coming back to relationship with God. Here to Moses goes west of the wilderness and this is where God meets him. What's happening here? What about this mountain?
Mount Horob? It is also known as Mount Sinai. It has two different names going on here. There's a couple of reasons why that might be.
Number one, maybe the name Horob is the Midianite name for the mountain. Remember, he is hanging out with the Midianites these past 40 years. Maybe he's calling it Horob. Later on the Israelites call it Sinai.
That may be true that you do find that in some commentators and different books there. But I think what I really like is the fact that the Hebrew word for bush is Sene. It could be bush. It could be a small tree of sorts.
We don't exactly know how there's debate. But Sene sounds incredibly similar and is incredibly similar to the word Sinai. So you can only hear it when I say the words. You can hear it.
Sene, Sinai, Sinai. That's interesting here. And I think that's what's going on because God calls Moses from this bush. It's burned, but it's not consumed.
God is revealing himself to Moses here in the sacred space of this bush. And it's burning. It's not being consumed in the same way God is going to call Israel to come to the same location here. And he's going to reveal himself a Theophany on Mount Sinai in this burning mountain.
The Mount Sinai is where he's going to see later on. He's on fire, there's fire and earthquakes and it's just this crazy manifestation of God. So I think what's going on here is that Sene, the bush or the tree is a representation of the revelation that's going to happen on the whole mountain Sinai. So the mountain and the bush are both things that burn and they're both places of encounter with God.
I think that's what's going on here because God reveals himself to Moses in order to reveal himself to the people. Alrighty. So that's why I think the two different names here. Oh, and by the way, once they arrive at Mount Sinai, it's no longer called Mount Horeb to the best of my knowledge there.
So Mount Horeb, then it becomes Sinai when the people arrive echoing the burning Sene, the burning bush. I think you got the point. So when God reveals himself with this fire here, fire is often a manifestation of God in the scriptures. You got the pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke that we're going to read about here really, really soon in the number of lectures.
You've got the tongues of fire in Pentecost. You've got other scenarios to where God reveals himself to Abraham in the smoking fire pot in Genesis chapter 15. So fire is often this manifestation of God because fire is incredible. It's like water, right?
Water can kill and give life. Fire too can kill, but it can give life and heat and warmth and light. Fire is very purifying as well. There's an image in the New Testament over and over again how our trials and our sufferings purify our faith, like fire purifies precious stones and gold and metals.
So fire is a very powerful thing and fire can consume. It's a very scary fire and water and these things are scary. So God reveals himself as fire here on Mount Sene or Mount Horeb and it's a very holy place. In fact, as we just read, God says, remove your sandals for this as holy ground.
Now, this is the first time the word holy is, then Hebrews could caddosh. It's in your notes here. Caddosh. The word holy is used since the Sabbath day.
Since the Sabbath day, the word caddosh holy has never been used. And that is another powerful echo to Genesis here because the Sabbath day, the seventh day is meant to be this holy sacred rest, this worship that mankind has of God, to be in God's presence and to be God's children and to serve him. And remember, Adam must avod God. That's a big deal.
We're going to see that word avod come up over and over again. Adam must avod God on the Sabbath day and serve God, worship God, be with God. Well, now here, the word holy is used again with this burning bush. But also that echoes the burning mountain here because the whole point is that God calls Moses, why in order for the people to have this communion with God again.
And we'll see later on how the Sabbath day, the observance of the Sabbath day is part and partial to this relationship that God establishes with his people here. The whole goal is for humanity, and in this case right here, the Israelites first, to be reconciled with God, to be able to spend that sacred time with him. Okay, so it's holy. It's a holy, you can say the Sabbath day is holy time.
And then this mountain here is holy space. Okay, so really this, there's a lot to say. Okay, first we'll say that it's a holy ground. And therefore that's why Moses had to take off his sandals.
Okay, now a lot of people say, well, why do you have to take off his sandals? Is it just respect like you don't go into someone's house with dirty shoes, you take them off? Yes, but not really. Okay, I think it has to do with the fact that sandals were made from den animals, right?
Their leather, that leather came from slaughtered animal. And the point here is that death has no presence. It has no place. It has no, it can't be in God's presence in any way, shape or form, because God is life.
God is life and therefore death cannot be in God's presence. We'll talk a lot about this when we go on to discuss the, the Bible said in the book of Leviticus here. It's a huge, huge theme. God is life, God is holiness, God is goodness, therefore sin and death have no place in God's presence.
And that's why he must remove his sandals. Okay, not just because they're dirty, but because God is holy and God is life. All right, so this whole mountain is holy, this place is holy. That's really, really important to keep in mind that because Mount Sinai therefore is kind of a new Sabbath.
As we just discussed here, right, it is a new Sabbath. It's a new opportunity and occasion for God to be with his people, but it is also a new temple. Or rather it should say it is a temple foreshadowing the tabernacle and the temple that is going to be built. All right, because again, it's a place of communion with God.
That's what the tabernacle is going to be built for as I'm going to teach you later on. The tabernacle and later on the temple of Solomon, it's built because it is a place of encounter with God. And that's exactly what's happening with Moses. And that's exactly what's going to happen with the people of Israel.
It's a place of encounter. So Mount Sinai here is a gigantic temple, right? It's a whole temple where people can encounter God. What that means therefore is that there's a little parallel.
Mount Sinai is to the wilderness what Jerusalem is to the promised land. All right, Jerusalem in the temple of Jerusalem is the center of the whole land. Sacred space, the temple is the center of it. It's in the same way.
Sinai is the center of all the wilderness dwellings. A wilderness wandering I should say. All right, it's a very significant place. And there's some typology to this as well because we said, you know, the sandals are made from dead animals.
Therefore they have no place in the presence of God. Death has no place in the presence of God. Neither does sin. And so your commentary says Christian writers, and the English Catholic Society Bible says, that Christian writers have seen this gesture of taking off the sandals as being an act of humility and detachment in the face of God.
And there's a quote here from Church Fathers, No one can gain access to God or see him unless first he has shed every earthly attachment. End quote. That's a beautiful application here, a moral application. In order for us to be in the presence of God, we must take off that which is sinful and that which is related to death in our lives.
Get away from the verch of the devices. No, excuse me. You want the virtue. You don't want the devices.
Right? Get rid of the sin, rid of death. And then you can be in the presence of God. Just really beautiful symbolism going on here.
What happens and how it applies to our lives and how we approach God. Because again, even though we're in the new covenantal period here with Jesus Christ and the church, the same is true God is holy, holy, holy, God is life. And so the lessons that we learn from the law of Moses teach us deeper spiritual truths. We can't be in God's presence if we're sinful.
Okay?