After an extended pause, we’re finally returning to the series we started a few weeks ago … but, as you may have seen in our recent updates, we got a little side-tracked with an opportunity to experience some incredibly inspiring Bible teaching in conjunction with some equally inspiring travel. We were blessed to experience and gain a much richer cultural and contextual understanding of God’s hand on the early Church, along with the activity of the Holy Spirit on them as we moved through a “Book of Acts” journey and sat under deeply researched teaching and visited some of the key sites encountered by Paul and other early Christian leaders as they carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem to the heart of the Roman Empire.
As for the series that we started earlier, we’d like to head back to that now and continue exploring a few of the incidents that took place in a setting in the Bible generally referred to as “the wilderness”. If you missed our first post in the series, you might want to go back and check it out. In any case, we’re picking it up with this second wilderness episode that’s familiar to virtually everyone because it serves as an introduction to Israel’s deliverance from their bondage in Egypt. So, let’s begin by looking at how this major milestone in God’s redemptive plan began . . .
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” (Exodus 3:1–3 NKJV)
Not His Dream Job ~
You might also want to have a look at the first two chapters of Exodus, which narrate Moses’ remarkable backstory and provide the contextual framework for the incident recorded above. Suffice it to say that when Moses was growing up in the lap of Egyptian luxury and privilege, leading a bunch of sheep around in some arid desert wilderness did not constitute his lifelong dream. Nonetheless, as our story unfolds, that’s exactly where we find him.
Moses may have had an extraordinary life in Egypt, but in Sinai, he was just another shepherd. The sheep were not impressed with his former status in Egypt and his academic
credentials offered no practical advantages in his father-in-law’s business. When Moses encountered that burning bush, his purpose in life was simple . . . find enough sparse clumps of grass and shallow pools of water to keep the sheep alive. Moses’ life when God dropped in on him was about as ordinary and redundant as the monotonous, forbidding terrain that confronted him every day. But all that, and the future of God’s people, were about to change forever.
A Provocative Question ~
The trigger that started the process in motion was Moses spotting something going on between two familiar items that didn’t make sense. Moses dealt with fire and with desert bushes in some way or another every day, and he knew what was supposed to happen when the two happened to come together. But on that particular day, something was going on that defied everything he knew about nature. The fire seemed to be doing its part, but the bush wasn’t cooperating, and it prompted the response that God intended. Moses wanted to know “why”. Why didn’t the bush burn up? Why was this impossible thing happening, and what should he, or could he, do about it?
The obvious first step in seeking the answer to those and many other questions, was to move in closer to get a better look. That’s when the really amazing things began to happen. 
Moses discovered that the flame in that bush was no ordinary fire. It was the Angel of the Lord manifesting Himself in that medium and the Living God Himself was about to get personally involved in Moses’ life. There was a mission of deliverance and redemption that God wanted to accomplish for His people – and ultimately the world – and Moses was the human partner God had chosen to work with to get it done.
Searching for Personal Application ~
The story of Israel’s redemption is also the story of God’s grand redemption plan for all of us, and for that reason, it has resonated not only throughout all history, Jewish and otherwise. But beyond its historic theological and cultural significance, we might reasonably ask what it has to do with us personally. Is there anything about this ancient wilderness encounter that would be relevant to life as we live it in our world here and now? That question brings us to our purpose for exploring it with you.
And the answer to that question is a resounding ‘YES!’ God preserved this story for precisely that reason. There are principles to be applied and lessons to be learned that are relevant to followers of Jesus in every generation and every culture. So, at this point, we’ll leave Moses and the Sinai desert and leap ahead a few thousand years into our own world — here and now.
Have you noticed that there are people in our own day as well who are hopelessly enslaved, and that God is actively recruiting people He can work with to accomplish their
deliverance? In light of that, there are some principles worth considering to be gleaned from Moses’ encounter, because God gave us this story, which like the burning bush itself, is designed to draw us in closer, so we might discover what God has to say to us personally. Here are a few things we might learn:
-
- The story might remind us who is really looking for whom. It wasn’t Moses out in the desert looking for God. It was God out in the desert looking for Moses. God was out there long before Moses ever showed up, and the same is true for us. God is much more concerned about developing a deeper, more intimate connection with us than we are with Him.
- We might remember that dealing with God involves taking our protective shoes off and getting directly in touch with holy ground. There’s no place for pride, arrogance, or entitlement in God’s presence. Working with Him begins on our knees, and not just physically. Moses had some impressive things on his resume’, but he also had “murderer” and fugitive from justice on there as well. He had been reduced from an Egyptian “somebody” to a Sinai “nobody” when God chose him. God’s not roaming our spiritual and moral wastelands looking for AI generated digital icons and puffed up internet influencers to represent Him. He wants some nobodies who think He ought to choose somebody else.
- We should remember that in our mental, moral, and spiritual wasteland, there are glimpses of things that don’t seem natural. Sometimes cancers just disappear because somebody prayed. Addictions seem to lose their power because somebody believed. Blind, hateful rage gets overwhelmed by someone’s kindness and morphs into sacrificial love and generosity. A demonstration that fire and dry brush can work together brought Moses into a partnership that was even more incredible. God’s still doing that with ordinary people like you and like me.
- Coming closer to God might involve some radical changes. Moses ended up with a new identity, a new purpose, and faced new challenges he never imagined. Being in His presence might highlight our fears and sense of inadequacy as well, but as it was with Moses, it’s always His adequacy that gets the job done.
- Finally, we might discover as we read this story that when God drops in on us, it’s never just about us. God came looking for Moses because somebody else needed him.
Obviously, Moses was the recipient of some amazing things, but God wanted more than that. He wanted deliverance for people Moses had never met, but who would be freed because of God’s work in and through him. That process still happens on a smaller scale every day.
So as we go through our ordinary days, let’s be careful not to ignore things we see and testimonies we hear that challenge our definition of normal. Moving in for a closer look, as Moses did, might just lead to a deeper, more personal partnership with God than we ever imagined. And someone we’ve never met is out there waiting for his or her own “exodus” story – one in which God may decide that He wants to use us to help fulfill that need . . .
We hope you’ll join us again next week for another ‘wilderness’ adventure with one of God’s most powerful prophets.
“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below. Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .
-
-
- Remember that dealing with God involves taking our protective shoes off and getting directly in touch with holy ground. There’s no place for pride, arrogance, or entitlement in God’s presence. Working with Him begins on our knees, and not just physically. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- Moses had some impressive things on his resume’, but he also had “murderer” and fugitive from justice on there as well. He had been reduced from an Egyptian “somebody” to a Sinai “nobody” when God chose him. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- Being in His presence might highlight our fears and sense of inadequacy, but as it was with Moses, it’s always His adequacy that gets the job done. When God drops in on us, it’s never just about us … Somebody else needed him. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- Obviously, Moses was the recipient of some amazing things, but God wanted more than that. He wanted deliverance for people Moses had never met, but who would be freed because of God’s work in and through him. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
-
To Follow this blog for more “Right Side Up Thinking ~ In an Upside Down World” …
Sign Up just below the Search box in the upper right sidebar for regular email notifications on new posts.
And to Share Your Thoughts, continue to scroll ahead …
Check out Ron’s book, “Right Side Up Thinking in an Upside Down World ~ Looking at the World through the Lens of Biblical Truth” 
