Exod 3:1–4:17 · Read 10 min · think and write 15 min
Moses stands at the start of the Exodus and wilderness years on the line of God’s story.
Joseph, the figure before him, brought Jacob’s family down to Egypt. But later “there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph” (Exod 1:8), and the Israelites became slaves. Moses was born in those days and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter: “She named him Moses, and said, ‘Because I drew him out of the water’” (Exod 2:10). As a grown man he killed an Egyptian, and “Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and lived in the land of Midian” (Exod 2:15).
Then the passage says: “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exod 2:24).
In this lesson, God finds this man in the wilderness — a fugitive, tending his father-in-law’s sheep.
1Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb.
2The LORD’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4When the LORD saw that he came over to see, God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.”
5He said, “Don’t come close. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.”
6Moreover he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
7The LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.
8I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
9Now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. Moreover I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.
10Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
11Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
12He said, “Certainly I will be with you. This will be the token to you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
13Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?”
14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
15God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.
God also told Moses to gather the elders of Israel and go with them to the king of Egypt. God knew Pharaoh would not let them go easily, and he would stretch out his hand and do wonders. (vv. 16–22)
To read the whole passage: Exodus 3:1–4:17. Moses objects three more times in chapter 4.
The bush was not consumed. Moses was tending sheep — his everyday work. He saw that “the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed” (v. 2), and said, “I will go now, and see this great sight” (v. 3). God waited until he came over, and then called his name (v. 4). On an ordinary working day, out in the wilderness, God found him.
Take off your sandals. God’s first words tell him to stop: “Don’t come close. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground” (v. 5). And “Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God” (v. 6). The God of this lesson is near, and he is holy.
God has seen, heard, and known. “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry … for I know their sorrows” (v. 7). Through all the years of slavery in Egypt, the passage records no word from God. Now God says he has been seeing and hearing all along. “I have come down to deliver them” (v. 8).
Who am I? Moses’ first objection is, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh” (v. 11). God does not answer ‘who you are.’ He only says, “Certainly I will be with you” (v. 12). Moses asks whether he is enough; God answers with who will go with him.
What is his name? The second objection: if the people ask, “What is his name?” what will he say to them (v. 13)? God says, “I AM WHO I AM” (v. 14), and “This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations” (v. 15). God tells his name to a man who had run away.
Three more. Moses goes on: “they will not believe me, nor listen to my voice” (Exod 4:1); “I am not eloquent, neither before now” (Exod 4:10); and finally, “Oh, Lord, please send someone else” (Exod 4:13). God answers every time — with signs, with the question “Who made man’s mouth?” (Exod 4:11), and by sending his brother Aaron along (Exod 4:14–16). But at the fifth objection the passage also records: “The LORD’s anger burned against Moses” (Exod 4:14). God is patient, but this is not a conversation that can be put off forever.
The rod in his hand. God asks Moses, “What is that in your hand?” (Exod 4:2). It was a shepherd’s rod. At the end God says, “You shall take this rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs” (Exod 4:17). God uses what was already in Moses’ hand.
The Israelites suffered in Egypt, and “their cry came up to God because of the bondage” (Exod 2:23). What God remembered was “his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exod 2:24).
At the bush, the very first way God introduces himself is: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (v. 6). From Abraham to Joseph to Moses, it is the same God, remembering the same promise.
You may have spent many years in the wilderness, doing ordinary work, perhaps carrying a past you would rather not talk about. That is where God found Moses.
You may have a long list of reasons: I’m not good enough, I can’t speak, no one will believe me. Moses had even more reasons than you. God’s answer did not change: “Certainly I will be with you” (v. 12).
This week: Write down one thing you keep putting off. Next to it, write verse 12: ‘Certainly I will be with you.’ Then take the first small step.
When Jesus talked with the Sadducees about the resurrection, he quoted this very passage: “haven’t you read in the book of Moses about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?” (Mark 12:26). Then he said, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27).
Stephen also spoke of it in his sermon: “This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush” (Acts 7:35).
Readers can set these two passages side by side and see for themselves: the one who spoke from the bush is, Jesus says, the God of the living; and the man the people refused is the one God sent to deliver them.
Scripture: World English Bible.