Exodus 3:1–3

Here we see an amazing change of circumstances. In Genesis 46:31 we read that "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians." Yet God takes Moses, who had learned all the wisdom of the Egyptians, from the Egyptian court to the back of a mountain, to mind a flock of sheep and to be trained for God's service… To find such a man, with such gifts, called away from such a position to mind sheep at the back of a mountain, is far beyond what human thought or feeling can reach.

Forty is the number of testing. You see it in Israel's forty years in the wilderness, and in the forty days of our blessed Lord's temptation. So this was a time of testing. It tested what Moses was, and it gave him time to prove what God was. We must always learn both before we are fit for service. So God always sends His servants into the wilderness before He uses them… There, alone with Him, we discover how empty our own resources are, and how completely we depend on Him.

If any educated man in his natural state could expect success in God's service, Moses could have counted on it. He was grown up, he was learned, he was mighty in word and deed. Yet at the back of the desert he had to learn something Egypt's schools could never have taught him. Paul learned more in Arabia than he ever learned at the feet of his teacher Gamaliel. No one can teach like God, and everyone who will learn from Him must be alone with Him.

Moses had become a shepherd, the job the Egyptians despised (Gen. 46:34). It was part of God's training, and through it he became "very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3). As a shepherd he is a picture of Christ.

At the end of the 40 years in Midian, Moses had led Jethro's flock close to Horeb. Horeb seems to be the wider name for a group of mountains, and Sinai was its chief peak. God appeared to him at that spot. So he received his commission at the very place where he would bring the people after he led them out of Egypt, and where God would give the law that is for ever linked with his name.

The scene is at Horeb, called the mountain of God here, a name given ahead of time.

In the ordinary run of his work, he leads the flock to the far side of the desert and comes to Horeb, the mountain of God. No doubt he had no idea that his years of exile were about to end… Then something catches Moses' attention. His everyday duties did not stop him recognising the Lord when He showed Himself. They never need to… One of the greatest proofs that a man is subject to God is this: he does his daily work with care and patience, and still keeps his eye ready to watch the ways of God.

Horeb is the starting post for everyone God sends out to act for Him… Forty years earlier he had gone to work, but he moved too soon… Here was real authority. There is a huge difference between God sending a man and a man running unsent.

We are never to suppose that the manner of the revelation of God is an unimportant consideration. He is sovereign, no doubt. But for that very reason His sovereignty is wise. He always shows Himself in the way that best fits the purpose in hand. So it was in no casual way, or merely to catch attention by wonders, that Jehovah here appears in the burning bush. The bush is weak and ready to vanish away, yet it remains. Where God reveals Himself in pity as well as in power, He sustains the one He is dealing with. Whatever the siftings and judgments, whatever the trials, He uses them for nothing but good. It is for His own glory, and so for the very best interests of those who are His.

There are three parts to the vision granted here — the Lord, the flame of fire, and the bush. Notice first that it says the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses (v. 2). Then the Lord saw that he turned aside, and God called to him from inside the bush... So the angel of the Lord is identified with Jehovah, yes, with God Himself. In all these appearances of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, we see, pictured in advance, the coming of the Son of God in human flesh. In each case it is God the Son... The flame of fire is a symbol of the holiness of God... The bush was meant to be a figure of Israel. Nothing is more easily consumed by fire than a bush, and it was chosen for this very reason to represent the nation.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the word used means a bush of thorns, or bramble bush. It is a bush of little worth, and fire would soon burn it up. But God was in the bush, and therefore it was not consumed.

You remember that thorns were the sign of the curse at the beginning. Botanists tell us that thorns (at least the kind we are dealing with here) are really stunted leaves. They are parts of a plant that cannot do what they were first meant to do. Sinners are in this symbol naturally connected with the curse upon sin. And we can view the thorn-bush itself, without forcing the picture, as the type of sinful flesh. This is what the people are, and so the fire comes. But the bush is not consumed, because the Angel of Jehovah, their covenant God, is in that fire.

The fire is the symbol of their suffering and tribulation... Later God called Egypt the "iron furnace" (Deut. 4:20). The thornbush, however, is not consumed. All the fires of persecution and tribulation could not consume Israel.

But the Son of God was in the bush. That was the secret. He was with Israel in Egypt, just as He was later in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The bush burned, and the furnace was heated seven times hotter than usual. Yet the smell of fire did not settle on them.

What a fitting, solemn, and beautiful picture of Jehovah living among His chosen and redeemed people! "Our God is a consuming fire" — not to consume us, but to consume everything in us and around us that is against His holiness. Such things destroy our true and lasting happiness.

The Baby in Bethlehem's manger was the great fulfilment of the burning bush. "God was manifest in the flesh and seen of angels." God was in the midst of men and they were not consumed.

Here was a sight that directly contradicted everything natural, and Moses was drawn to it. He had to learn that although "our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29), He could live among a people who in themselves were thorny and fit fuel for the flames, and yet not consume them. It was indeed a "great sight." For forty years in the wilderness the LORD dwelt as a pillar of fire among rebellious Israel. In those years Moses must have thought back on the way God had revealed Himself to him at the start, in His great kindness.

The burning bush is a picture of the suffering people, the wretched slaves in Egypt. It was a thornbush. Thorns are the result of sin, so the bush pictures the sinfulness and worthlessness of the people. The fire is the symbol of their suffering and tribulation… The thornbush, however, is not consumed. All the fires of persecution and tribulation could not consume Israel. In the flame of the fire in the midst of the burning bush the angel of the LORD appeared. This was the secret of the bush's preservation; God was there and kept them.

Let us repeat this expression of wonder — "Why is the bush not burned!" Put it another way. God is a "consuming fire," burning up all that is contrary to His Holy Being. How then can He reveal Himself without consuming? Here was the great question. Can He "who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity" deal with man in any way except by judgment in righteousness? Yes; most surely He can, and He has done so. He has revealed Himself in Christ! And grace now reigns, through righteousness, to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord! That is the gospel.

Moses turns aside to see why the bush is not consumed. "And when the LORD saw that he turned aside," God called him, to reveal Himself as the God of holiness, who was like a consuming fire. Yet in grace He could take up such a people as Israel — a frail, useless bush of the desert. He would not destroy them, but purify them and glorify them with His own presence. This is the whole central plan and idea of redemption. What shows Moses to be a seer is that he turns aside to study it, instead of passing by in indifference. "When the LORD saw that," He called him to the prophetic office.

It was a great and mysterious sight that Moses turned aside to look at; yet barefoot he could still look and listen. Had he not done so, he would have gone away unblessed. But he listened, until he discovered that the "I AM" was in the bush; and further, that "the God of Abraham" was there too. A strange place for such glory to house itself! But so it was. In a burning bramble bush, the Lord God Almighty was found.

He was about to give Moses his commission to lead His people out of Egypt. They were to be His assembly — His dwelling-place, in the wilderness and in the land of Canaan. And the place from which He speaks is a burning bush. What a fitting, solemn and beautiful symbol of the LORD dwelling among His chosen and redeemed people! "Our God is a consuming fire," not to consume us, but to consume everything in us and around us that is contrary to His holiness.