MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH

Last Wednesday, Pastor Robin spoke about the Bible account of Moses in Exodus, chapter 3. Moses was grazing the sheep of his father-in-law and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There he saw a bush on fire, but noticed that the fire was not destroying it. Curiosity led him to take a closer look. As he drew near, the voice of God called out to him from the midst of the bush saying, “Moses! Moses! Do not draw near this place. Take the sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.”
Pastor Robin made two observations concerning our own lives, based on the fire not destroying the bush. When the Holy Spirit’s fire burns within us, nothing can destroy us because The Creator of Heaven & Earth is with us. The second observation was that when the Lord’s hand is on us, Satan’s fire could never burn or destroy us.
Why did God tell Moses to remove his sandals? Removing one’s footwear is a symbolic gesture of entering into God’s presence without the inner dirt and grime of the world. We cannot come before an all Holy God with the impurities and sinfulness that we accumulate during our walk through this life. Yet, experience shows us that it is impossible for us to remove the root of sin from our lives that keeps on shooting up no matter how hard we try to control it. Sin is like an unbreakable glass wall that stands between God and us. So we can see what we are missing, but cannot reach it. Isaiah 59:1&2 says,” “Behold the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor His ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from you God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”
How can we get rid of the sin with us? There is only one solution. When we accept Jesus as our only savior, the blood He shed for us 2008 years ago, washes away every sin that we repent for, demolishes the wall of separation and brings us onto the holy ground of God’s presence. Only in this position will God hear us and answer our prayers. Pastor Robin made another observation. When we are free from sin, God is present to us, not in any particular place, but wherever we are. So even if we change the place where we worship God, our position before Him never changes and so anywhere we are is holy ground.
God called and appointed Moses to deliver His people, the Israelites, from Egyptian slavery and oppression. He told Moses, an ordinary herdsman, to go to the Pharaoh of Egypt and ask him to allow the Israelites to leave the country, promising to be with him and to direct him through the entire operation. In verse 13 we read how Moses felt that the Israelite slaves in Egypt might ask the name of the God who had sent him. God answered Moses saying, “I AM WHO I AM” and revealed His name as I AM. Pastor Robin shared an insight into this name and said that after the words, “I AM” we can use a method of “fill in the blanks”: I AM _________, meaning that we can tell God what we want Him to be to us. For example, we can fill in the blank with savior, provider, peace, shepherd /guide, healer, victory, sanctifier, etc. In John 6:35, Jesus says, “I AM the bread of life. In John 8:12 He says, “I AM the light of the world.” In John 10:9 He says, “I AM the door.” In John 11:25 He says, “I AM the resurrection and the life.” In John 15:5, He says, “I AM the vine…” In John 14:6 He says, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” In Revelations 1:8 He says, “I AM the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
In the Old Testament, God revealed His name as I AM. In the New Testament, we see how Jesus refers to Himself as I AM, filling in the blanks with various descriptions of who He is to us. From this we can easily conclude that Jesus and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Israelites are one and the same God, with whom the Bible begins in Genesis and concludes in the Book of Revelations.