Passage: Exodus 3:4-15

The Big Idea

At the bush, God introduces Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: the God who chooses, the God who gives life, and the God who patiently completes His work. It’s all God. Then He reveals His heart. He has seen, heard and known His people’s suffering, and He has come down to deliver them. His compassion is a gut-level love. When Moses protests, “Who am I?”, God doesn’t build up Moses’ confidence. He promises His presence and His victory.

“I Am the God of Your Father” (Exodus 3:4-6)

From the middle of the bush, God called, “Moses, Moses!” and told him to take off his sandals, for he stood on holy ground. Then God said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

What do these three names teach us about God?

The God of Abraham: He is the Chooser.

He chooses us, not because of anything we are, did or could do.
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). It’s an act of foreknowledge and love.

The God of Isaac: He is the Giver of life.

He doesn’t take life away. He gives it.
Isaac was the child of promise, born by a miracle, and later spared on the mountain when God provided a substitute (Genesis 22).
Yes, we surrender our own hopes, dreams and life, but in exchange God gives us the life of Jesus: holy, righteous, deep and satisfying, full of purpose and meaning.
In His power, God makes us new creations. That’s justification.

The God of Jacob: He is patient.

He’s willing to wrestle with us.
He patiently causes us to grow.
He will complete the work He started in us (Philippians 1:6). That’s sanctification.

God’s choosing. God’s making alive. God’s making complete. It’s all God.

He gets the glory.
He supplies everything and guarantees everything.
He’s a covenant God, a God who loves to make promises and always keeps them.
He takes responsibility for every part of our life with Him: our election, our beginning, and our continuing.

Hiding His Face

What did this new knowledge of God produce in Moses? Humility. He hid his face.

Knowing God more will produce humility and faith in you too. But it can also bring shame and fear. Moses was face to face with a holy God, and I’m sure he remembered his guilt. He’d killed a man. Sin can’t be erased… can it?

God’s Compassion

Then God revealed His heart.

The most common New Testament word for God’s compassion is splanchnizomai.

It appears a dozen times in the Gospels. Once it describes the Good Samaritan seeing the wounded man. Twice it appears in parables about God forgiving and saving sinners (the father of the prodigal son, the master who forgave the huge debt). Most of the rest describe Jesus’ compassion in His miracles.
The word comes from the inner organs: heart, liver, intestines. It’s a graphic word. It’s most like our word guts.
We use “guts” to talk about courage. The New Testament writers used it to talk about love.
God loves you with all His guts. He feels His love for you deep inside.

Because of the Lord’s mercies we aren’t consumed, because His compassions never fail (Lamentations 3:22).

For someone to doubt God’s love for people is foolish. Ask Jonah. Jonah hated the Ninevites, but God loved them, and even cared about their animals (Jonah 4:10-11).

Seen, Heard, Known (Exodus 3:7-10)

The Lord said, “I have surely seen the misery of My people in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their slave drivers. I know their sufferings. So I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land flowing with milk and honey.” He named the peoples who lived there, and said, “The cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So now go. I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people out of Egypt.”

“Where was God when ______ happened? Why doesn’t God do anything?”

Look at what He says:

He sees all your troubles.
He hears all your cries.
He knows how deeply you hurt.
So He comes down to deliver,
and brings you up.

There are no “maybes” in God’s plan. He won’t fail. His compassion won’t fail.

The hymn writer Thomas Chisholm prayed:

O to be like Thee, full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wandering sinner to find!

And here’s another picture of Jesus: He saw and heard the terrible condition of sinners, so He came down to deliver us and bring us up. Jesus is everywhere in Scripture if you look.

Why Use Moses?

“I am sending you to Pharaoh.”

God partnered with Moses. Why? He could have sent angels. He could have shown up Himself. He could have sent bears, dragons, or robot dragon bears with lasers on their heads. But He chose a man.

Angels must obey. Animals have no choice.
Human beings have free will, the most dangerous and rebellious part of creation.
When a person freely chooses not to rebel, but to submit to God’s will, it brings God great glory.
God loves us, chooses us, puts His Spirit in us, and somehow brings our wills into line with His holy will. It’s a miracle.

It’s another picture of Jesus too. For mankind to be saved, a man had to do the saving. That’s why the Son of God became a man.

“Who Am I?” (Exodus 3:11)

Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Moses thought there must be some mistake. “I tried that once and failed. I’m old. I’m weak. I haven’t seen my people in forty years.”

Here’s a principle of serving God: you’ll feel the challenges more when you’re truly called by God.

Jesus taught the same thing. When someone said, “I’ll follow You anywhere,” Jesus answered that foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Others wanted to follow Him after taking care of other things first, and He told them that no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:57-62).

When Moses acted in his flesh, he was confident and self-sufficient, ready to take on all of Egypt. Now he’d been stripped of confidence in his own abilities, and that’s exactly where God wanted him. Now God could direct his heart to a new source of sufficiency, a new well to drink from, a new way to have victory.

“I Will Be with You” (Exodus 3:12)

God said, “I will certainly be with you. And this will be the sign that I’ve sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

God gave him two things:

A promise of His presence.
A promise of His victory.

You have the same promises from Jesus. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him, He sends us to make disciples of all nations, and “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

Living by God’s promises is a different way to live. You stop putting confidence in yourself and put it all on God.

“What Is His Name?” (Exodus 3:13-15)

Moses said, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me,’ and they ask, ‘What is His name?’ What do I tell them?”

It’s a good question. The people weren’t expecting rescue. Many of them worshiped Egypt’s gods. Many were bitter after centuries of slavery.
They’d want to know: Why should we trust this God? What is His character? Why should we put our confidence in Him?
It’s a question we need to answer too. If we’re going to the lost and hurting people of our world, we need to know the One who sends us.

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. Tell the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” And God added, “Tell them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, the name by which I’m to be remembered from generation to generation.”

We’ll dig into that name next time. For homework, look up all the times Jesus said “I am” in the Gospel of John.

Grace Takeaway

The God who met Moses at the bush is the God who chooses, gives life and patiently finishes what He starts. It’s all Him. He sees your misery, hears your cry, knows your pain and has come down to bring you up, because He loves you with all His guts. When you feel like Moses, “Who am I?”, that’s not the end. That’s the start. God’s answer has never been “You’re enough.” It’s “I will be with you.”

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The Guts of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob