I Have Come to Deliver

 Exodus 3: 1-15

Charles J. Tomlin, May 2^nd, 2021

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Series: The Way of God’s Justice 4/20

 

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

 ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.

 ³ Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up."

 ⁴ When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."

 ⁵ Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

 ⁶ He said further, "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, for he was afraid to look at God.

 ⁷ Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,

 ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

 ⁹ The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.

 ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

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

 12 He said, "I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain."

 13 But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"

 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM."1 He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

 15 God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'The LORD,1 the God of your ancestors, 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 my title for all generations.  (Exod. 3:1-15 NRS)

 

Dear People of God, today’s text from Exodus is the most foundational story of God’s desire for justice in its most original form: freedom.    This most important ‘holy’ moment wasn’t just the sight of the bush that didn’t burn up, but it’s also the sound of the voice that spoke and still speaks, just like the ‘eternal’ flame in this bush. 

According to Jewish teachings, a Midrash records how ‘a heathen asked an ancient Rabbi, Joshua ben Korchah, ‘Why did the Holy One see fit to speak to Moses out of a mere thorn bush and not out of another kind of tree?  The rabbi wisely answered, if God had spoken out of some greater tree, you’d still ask this question.  But since you need an answer here it is:   God spoke out of this thorn bush stuck out in the middle of nowhere to teach you that there is no place on earth, not even in a thorn bush, that is devoid of God’s presence.”  The Victorian writer Elizabeth Browning put it this is more recent words,  “Earth crammed with heaven, and ever common bush afire with God!  But only the one who sees, takes off their shoes.”

Without a doubt this is a ‘transformational moment’ for Moses, especially in verse 7 of this story.  Here, God speaks with 4 specific Hebrew verbs, all in perfect, completed action, showing what God will through Moses because of what God has already done.  Do you see it?  First, hear it with the original Hebrew verbs:

‘Rayet, I have seen. 

Shama, I have heard. 

Yada, I know. 

Waered.  I am come down...”  

 Now, also hear how it flows in the beautiful King James version:  “And the LORD said, I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them  (Exod. 3:7-8a, KJV).   You don’t have to know biblical Hebrew to understand what is happening here, is very powerful and hopeful.

This story is hopeful because we see how the need and cry of every human is being seen, heard, known, and responded to by God.   Our great human longing to be released, rescued from unjust oppression and suffering is unforgettably signified with the promise of moving into a good and better place, labeled here as a ‘land flowing with milk and honey’.

While this story may say very little to person or to the people who have been or still are the oppressors, it’s an spiritual encounter that can mean everything to the person or people who are still oppressed or have been oppressed.    Whether it registers with us, touches us and resonates deep within, depends on current status in life or our understanding of life.   People who have known slavery, cruelty, and injustice or feel the unfairness that comes to all of us will appreciate the spiritual and emotional implications found in this mysterious event.   

 

GOD CALLED TO HIM (v 4a)

This moment focuses, not on the sight of the bush, but with God’s voice, speaking like a heart burning for freedom and justice that will not be snuffed out.   A couple of years ago, I watch the story of Harriet Tubman.  As one of nine children, born into slavery in Maryland, Tubman escaped to the North in 1849 to claim her freedom and became one of the most famous "conductors" on the Underground Railroad.  She gained the nicknamed ‘the woman Moses’ because she returned again and again into the south, to find and free fellow slaves, becoming a leading abolitionist long before the American Civil War.   One of the beast lines in the movie was when Harriet herself said, “God don’t mean for people to own people!” 

Indeed, this is the inward ‘burning, longing for ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’.  It’s the divine warmth that cares about us sometimes even more than we may care about ourselves.   This mysterious, unquenchable burning Moses encountered in middle of nowhere set ablaze the central ‘flame’ that burns throughout the Bible, and still burns in our world, when in the human desire for freedom. 

I realize that the eternal flame of God’s heart doesn’t always burn in people who think they already have everything they need.    The success and freedom we enjoy can can work for against us too, when we become too relaxed, too self-centered, and too obsessed with being our own person and doing our own thing.   

But just let evil raise up its ugly head, like it did in Nazi Germany, or like it did in Communistic Russia, or like it has recently in Iran, North Korea, or Hong Kong, or like it did here in America, after the unjust death of George Floyd, and the fires against oppression and injustice are aflame again.  Oppressive and destructive powers often have no clue just how bright or ‘hot’ this flame can be rekindled, since it’s central to everything life means, as the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians: “It’s for freedom that Christ has set you free!” 

How dangerous the voice of divinely inspired freedom can be in a world where freedom is still forbidden, still illegal, or is forgotten and not taken seriously.  For example, right now, in China hundreds of churches are being forced to take down their crosses and images of Jesus from public view or they will face certain government retaliations.  This is being demanded by the strong arm of China’s communist party President, Xi Jinping.   Like Pharaoh of old, who increased the burden on the Israelites, Jinping thinks he breaking the religious spirit, will give him tighter control over his country.   Doesn’t he realize he is fanning the flames of freedom?

Even in free country like ours too, some people still don’t realize just how this inner flame of yearning continues to glow within human hearts who yearn for greater freedom against injustice, and dream of a better life.   I heard a Political Science expert say that she was writing about how little difference protest movements make, then suddenly the fires started to burn in the hearts of people across America in this past year.  She was both amazed and surprised, as indeed we all are, that there is still much that needs to be said and much that needs to be done.

           Do we realize that ‘freedom’ we have in this country is not a ‘given’ but it is still a ‘gift’?  This gift goes all the way back to a Jewish Moses who began God’s work that was refocused for the whole world through the a Jewish Jesus.   As a recent Christian scholar wrote.  When he answers, ‘who is God’, his most sophisticated answer is simply this:  God is the one who freed Israel from their oppression in Egypt and God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead.   Freedom from oppression in this life and freedom from the bondage of suffering and death is who God is and what God does.   This is still the freedom God gives, but it’s also a gift we must continue to choose, cherish, and pass along or it’s freedom we can lose.    

Every time we sing that wonderful, patriotic song by Lee Greenwood, which goes,  “The flag still stands for freedom, and they can’t take that away...”   I say to my self, O yes ‘they’ can take that away.  If we ever forget where the ultimate holy ground that this dream of freedom rests upon, or if we forget what freedom means, not only for ourselves, but for others too; who knows just how much longer this flag that stands for freedom will wave. 

When you read the rest of this story, which really began right here at the burning bush, you’ll read how Moses goes before Pharaoh, not once, but several times with one of the most dramatic, unforgettable lines in all the Bible.  In seven specific moments, he makes God’s demands known to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”   

As you know ‘Let my people go!’ became a very special refrain the African-American slave spiritual, “God down Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell O, Pharaoh.  Let my people go!”   It was also a popular slogan during the 1960’s civil rights era in the U.S., as well as, in the Jewish struggle for civil rights for Russian Jews, which demanded that Moscow allow Soviet Jews to emigrate.  Using that slogan, communist leaders were compared to Pharaoh, but the rationale for the political demand wasn’t simply for freedom for the sake of freedom, but the biblical word has a fourth word, which says, in Hebrew, ve-ye-av-duni;  ‘that they may serve (or worship) me’ (Ex. 7:16;  8;1; 20; 9: 1; 9:13;  10: 4).   Moses goal wasn’t simply liberation to be free from everything for anything.  God’s way of freedom, always means serving and worshiping the one who is true and gives true freedom.   This is the true, lasting freedom that can only be discovered in the flame burning in God’s heart.

 

MOSES, MOSES!  (4b)

           What is most mysterious about this saving, freeing, eternal fire, is not that God needed a ‘bush’ to speak from, but that was calling forth a human person he could work through.    For it’s one thing to acknowledge where true saving, freeing, and redeeming justice comes from, but it’s another thing to have that ‘fire’ become more than a dream, but a reality in our lives and in our world.   It is a desire that must somehow be transferred from God’s heart to the human heart, and this is what we see happening for right here, when God called out: Moses, Moses, and he answered: “Here, I am!”   

           You simply can’t understate the importance of Moses not only in Israel’s story, but also in the world human story too.   I would dare guess that most every where in this world where the story of Moses and the story of Jesus are both frequently and freely told together, that people or country are much more likely to frequent freedom and justice in that society.   Without Moses, the man and the message of Jesus would not have been possible, nor understandable.  You simply can’t underestimate the importance of God’s call to Moses, and Moses’   humbled response: “Here, am I.”

           When our country was getting started, Benjamin Franklin suggested that the seal of these United States included an image of Moses leading his people to freedom and liberation.   The very ‘religious’ nature of that image did not get into the more secular images of freedom our country projects today, but the message and image of Moses leading people to freedom still belongs to both the American revolution and to the American religious heart.  

           What is most important for us, in thinking about how God used Moses, is how God must still work through the human person or through a people to bring about freedom and justice for into the world.   America has been a unique ‘beacon’ of light for democratic freedom in this world, but for that light to continue to shine , it must continue to burn within our hearts too.  We don’t have to be a Moses or an Aaron, or any particular prophet, but we must still hear God’s call, answer God’s voice, and feel the burning in our hearts that is capable of receiving the ‘’burning’ that comes from God’s own heart.    This fire that is eternal will always burn, but it may not burn as bright, nor is it ever guaranteed to burn freely FOR US, unless it continues to burn IN US.

           When you look closely at why God choose Moses to be the ‘torch bearer ‘ of freedom and faith for his people, you only have to look deeper into the story the most important human quality God saw in Moses; empathy.   In the flow of the biblical story, leading up to this moment, it’s clear Moses was a person of action because he felt the suffering and hurt of his people.   Even though Moses grew up in the King’s palace, he had not forgotten who he was.  When he saw an Egyptian beating one of his enslaved brothers, Moses empathized and looked around and since there was no one else to help,  Moses reacted, killing the Egyptian and hid him in the sand (2: 12). 

           Here, we must be careful how we read this passage, because it wasn’t the act of violence that drew God to him, but it was the pain and suffering of the people that overtook his emotions in that moment.   In fact,  deeds of violence was the last thing God wanted, not only because Moses had to spend years escaping his crime, but also because we see in the Exodus story how it took God 40 years of negotiation to finally convince Pharaoh to ‘release’ and ‘let the people go’.  It appears, at least in the biblical story, that God took every way possible in trying to avoid a plague that would demand the loss of human life.

           Still, the most important thing to see in God choice of Moses is that God still needs someone to see and feel the suffering of others and to mediate his gift of deliverance and freedom.   Let me underscore this: Just as God did not free the slaves without an Abraham Lincoln, God did not free the Israelites without a Moses.  In the same way, God does even bring salvation, justice or freedom of Jesus Christ into this world, without someone who hears, looks, feels and ‘goes down’ like Moses did, to express God’s heart of compassion in ways that demand what is just and right. 

          

MOSES SAID TO GOD... (11)

           Since God needs someone, what becomes most memorable in this story is how reluctant Moses was to answer God’s call to lead God’s people.   The good part of his reluctance springs from his own humility, saying ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh...’ (3:11).  God doesn’t answer who Moses is or isn’t, because it doesn’t matter.  It only matters who God is, that God has sent him, and that God will be with him (v12)  This call isn’t connected to a mere human desire or limited by human weakness, but the eternal God is the source of both the flame and the call.  

       The other part of Moses reluctance came in how he was to explain God to Pharaoh or to anyone else, for that matter.  What if they ask me, Moses says to the LORD,  ‘What is his name?  What shall I say to them?  (3:13).   To this God answers, Ehyeh-asher-Ehyeh, “I shall be what I shall be (I am, that I am), meaning, I am what I do.   So, tell them, “Ehyeh” sent you.   Interestingly, this divine name never appears in the Hebrew Old Testament again until it is used by Jesus saying seven specific times,  “I AM...  I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Light of the World.  I am the Door.  I am the Good Shepherd.  I am the way, the truth, and the life.  I am the true vine, and  I am the Resurrection and the Life...   But of course, that’s for another sermon, let’s get back to Moses for now.

         In this dialogue, which continues into chapter 4, Moses reluctance ends with him saying finally, that he is ‘not eloquent of speech’ (4:10).  In response God says, he will send his brother Aaron to speak for him.   Moses is so hesitant and reluctant to go,  giving God excuse after excuse as to why this won’t work, one wonders why in the world did God choose Moses in the first place.   But such ‘humility’ is the reason, God choose Moses.  It’s not unlike what the apostle Paul later told the Corinthians,  “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us (2 Cor. 4:7 NRS).   What was about to happen through Moses wasn’t something Moses ‘cooked’ up nor could Moses have ever done this himself.  This is what Moses knows, and its among the top reasons God chose him. 

        It’s not reluctance that is the most pressing question for us, but it’s Moses other question, is ‘what is his name?’   Do we still believe there is a voice that fuels our greatest good, sense of justice, and the call of freedom?   Can we still see the ‘flame’ or know the place where the ground is ‘holy’?   

        The late retired professor Fred Craddock once asked his preaching students: “Why is it that when the Lord calls one into ministry he never speaks loudly enough for anyone to hear?” His answer was most revealing: “The validation of God’s voice must come from within.”  To hear God’s voice, which still burns with God’s desire for freedom and justice, we must first say yes in our hearts as proof that the ‘flame’ of God’s eternal truth is also burning within us.   What happened to Moses, still happens to us, but fortunately today, often in the wilderness of human experience, without the need of a bush, but still with the need of a person who has a heart that burns with God’s desire for freedom and justice.   Amen.