But I Will Be With You
October 3, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 3:1-4:31
3:1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And he 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, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I 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 broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers 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.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘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 thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ 18 And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lordour God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go.21 And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, 22 but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
4:1 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” 2 The Lordsaid to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”
10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” 11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” 13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15 You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. 16 He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. 17 And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”
18 Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” 19 And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”
24 At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.
27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. 29 Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. 30 Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. 31 And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.
Almost fifty years ago a theologian wrote a book called Knowing God. Many Christians, including me, still find it helpful. In the book’s introduction the author describes the predicament of modern Christians in this way: we’re looking at God as through a telescope—but through the wrong end of the telescope, and thus God seems small. And so, this theologian said, we then become small Christians (quoted in Tim Chester, Exodus for You, 27). In the book of Exodus, it’s as though God takes the telescope from our hands, turns it around the right way, and then—to our surprise—he climbs down among us. And it’s both terrifying and wonderful. Let’s pray, and we’ll see the way this happens in Exodus 3–4. “Dear heavenly Father . . .”
Introduction
This summer an organization reached out to me to ask if I’d appear as a guest on their podcast. That happens every now and then, but this one was different than the others. A man had launched an organization to help men quit using pornography, and I think they stumbled on the book I wrote on that topic and wanted to talk. But it was different because the organization is different: it’s not a Christian organization. It actually has no connection to any faith at all; it’s what we might call secular, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. I was utterly intrigued by the whole thing, so I was glad to spend an hour talking with the founder of the organization. At one point I asked him his background and if he had any experience with the Christian church. He did, though he wasn’t interested in it now. And as told his story and the similarities and differences between his message and the message of the church, at least as he understood it, he said a line that’s haunted me for the last four months. He said that, in his experience, guys in the church didn’t do much better in this area than anyone else, but church guys feel far more guilty about it.
Now, you pretend to be me. How would you respond? I’m not the quickest thinker on the spot, but I believe in that moment the Lord helped me to affirm aspects of his observation—I bet they do feel guilty—but also to add this: that’s why it’s so important to know the difference between “almost Christianity” and “real Christianity.”
What I said on that podcast has everything to do with Moses and Exodus and the deliverance of God’s people some 3,500 years ago. And it has everything to do with you. In “almost Christianity,” we see enough of God and ourselves to know that pride is wrong. We know enough not to boast about us. In “almost Christianity,” we know plenty of our weakness, our woundedness, and our waywardness. We feel guilty. God is holy, and sandals or no sandals, we are not holy. But in almost Christianity, that’s all we see. And the difference between almost Christianity and real Christianity might be the difference between heaven and hell.
What I’m trying to say is that if you’ve been around the church enough, you know pride is wrong. Pride looks in the mirror and says, “Based only on my own resources, I’ve got this.” Related to pride, is false humility. False humility masquerades as true humility. Whereas pride thinks too much of self in the sense of our own ability; false humility simply thinks too much and too often of self and one’s own inability.
Pride and false humility have this in common: both look too much at self. They can’t get their eyes off of themselves. Pride and false humility take the telescope that should be pointed at God and chuck it away to avoid looking at him. Pride and false humility simply decide either “I got this” or “I don’t got this.” But neither are thinking enough of God.
It’s my suspicion as a pastor of this church that in our version of “almost Christianity” too many of us limp along in false humility. We can’t do x, y, or z that God calls us to do because we’re not good enough. We can’t forgive, we can’t tell someone about Jesus, we can’t give of our tithes and offerings to God, we can’t take a sabbath and rest, we can’t have joy in the midst of a difficult season in life. Why? Because in our version of almost Christianity everything hangs on us, and we know that ain’t gonna work. Our church, like many churches, is infected with the constant inward look to solve our problems.
If you only knew Moses from the movies, you might suspect that of course Pharoah would let God’s people go because Moses is, well, the man. He’s so confident in the movies. In the movies, Moses rolls into town and makes demands because he’s Moses and Pharoah will let Moses’s people go.[1] But the real Moses, the Moses of the book of Exodus, the only true Moses, has the problem of false humility, a looking too much at himself. And that’s often our problem too. And when we see how God treats Moses, how God lifts Moses eyes away from Moses and toward God, we realize how much better the book of Exodus is than any Exodus movie.
Looking Inward
The passage begins on an ordinary day in the dessert tending sheep. You don’t tend sheep, most of you. So picture an ordinary day at the office as you’ve just opened your email or just climbed into your work truck or just ran an errand at a store or walked into the gym when all of a sudden, God shows up in a ball of fire calling you by your first name twice.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And he 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, for he was afraid to look at God. (3:2–6)
You get the sense that Moses didn’t expect God to show up. From other passages we know it had been forty years since Moses left Egypt (Acts 7:23, 30). “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” God says (v. 6). God repeats that statement four times across these two chapters (3:6, 15, 16; 4:5), as if to underscore that Moses might have forgotten who God is, as though Moses might have had his telescope turned around backward—or perhaps as though had put the telescope away in a closet, and it was buried under a bunch of junk, and he just sort of stopped looking at God at all.
Many of you should be able to relate to this. You’re wayward, wayward in the wilderness of college rebellion or the wilderness of mid-life or the wilderness of passively fading into the background during retirement. For many of you, God is not in the picture. I’ve been praying that this church would be God’s burning bush to you, that it would be holy ground. Our God is the sort of God who does these things, who delights to show up to nobodies who haven’t been thinking about him in years. It can be terrifying to come back to God after you’ve been away from him, but it’s also wonderful. Look at the promise God makes.
Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I 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 broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey . . . And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. (3:7–9)
Note that phrase in v. 8: I have come down. This is an Old Testament incarnation of sorts, a visitation by God himself, as it’s called in the last verse of chapter four. Last week we read about how God sees and hears and remembers and knows. The groanings of mothers who’ve lost sons, the groanings of fathers with welts beaten across their backs, the groanings of people oppressed have wafted up to the Lord (cf. 2:23–24). And when the groanings of his people go up, God comes down. You would think the response of Moses would be, “Yes! Halleluiah!” That’s not what he says. Look at vv. 10–11.
“Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
It sounds so humble, right? It’s not classic pride, is it? “I will send you,” God says. And Moses responds, “Who am I? I can’t do this.” Where is his focus? It’s not on God. Does God answer his question directly? No.
To appreciate how God does respond to him, you have to see how God does not respond to him. I think some might expect God to say to Moses the sort of things that Mr. Miyagi says in the movie The Karate Kid. No, no, no, Daniel, son, you’ve been training to fight this whole time that you have been washing my car and painting my fence. Wax on, wax off. Sand the floor, sand the floor. You can do this, Daniel, son. Moses, you’ve been training to lead my people, my sheep as you’ve been tending to sheep for forty years, not to mention the way I raised you in Pharoah’s house. All that then was for all this now. You got this, Moses.
Is this what God tells Moses when he asks, “Who am I?” I don’t doubt kernel of the truth in this way of thinking. God is always training his people to do something. And Moses had been, albeit unknowing, training for future service. This, however, is not what God gives Moses. God gives Moses himself. Look at v. 12. “Who am I?” Moses asks. God responds, “But I will be with you.” Stop looking at yourself. Look up, Moses.
That exchange was objection number one and response number one. There are five objections and responses in total across these two chapters. Who am I? Moses asks first. Then he asks, What is the name I should tell people of who sent me? (3:13). That’s when God says his name is YHWH, the one who is who he is.
Then Moses says, But they won’t listen to me (4:1). That’s an interesting one. God had just said, I will make them listen to your voice (3:18). Still, God gives him signs to do so they will listen. A staff becomes a deadly snake and then a staff again. A hand becomes infected with a deadly skin disease and then healed again. Water will become deadly water and then drinkable again. I’ll keep summarizing this section.
Moses’s fourth objection says he can’t speak well. He can’t speak well. Again, Moses is preoccupied with Moses. God responds, Who made man’s mouth? I did. Again, God lifts Moses’s eyes back up to God and how big God is, not small.
Finally, Moses doesn’t really make an objection but more a statement. Look at v. 13.
But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. (4:13–15)
Moses says, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (4:13). Apparently, Moses doesn’t want to go. The Lord gets angry at Moses, but he is slow to anger. And the response of anger seems mainly to underscore the point that Moses should wake up to who God is. And notice how kind God is even in his anger: God sends Moses his bother Aaron along to help Moses speak. Look how kindly the real God treats his poor, frightened servant. God will treat you with this same kindness when you look to him.
Looking Up
And when we look up God, what do we see? As much as Exodus 3 and 4 are about Moses, they are really about God. Moses needs his attention riveted on God. We need our attention riveted not on us but on God. So far in the sermon I’ve already been hinting at who the real God is. But let’s just spend a few minutes here. When we look up, we see a God who is many things at once.
God is holy. The word holy in the Bible means set apart and different. It means to be “other.” Theologians will use the word transcendent, meaning above us. You don’t come to God as you hang out with your buddies.
But God is also near. As I said before, when the groanings go up, God comes down. Theologians call this immanence. And he’s so near, so immanent, we can even know his name. He is YHWH, which—as best as we can tell from the Hebrew—means something like I AM. That’s some kind of name, isn’t it? God is able to do whatever he wills because he is. Everything else in all of creation, by virtue of being creation, is derivative, that is, made or secondary. But God is who he is because he is who he is.
Look at it like this. With all that stuff about the snake and the staff and the leprous hand and the water and the blood, you get the impression that God is saying, “This isn’t even hard for me.” It’s like a toddler who comes swinging his fists at an adult while the adult kneels down, holds out his arm, and holds the Pharoah’s head while Pharoah’s arms flay about, and with the other hand, God scrolls through his phone. It’s that easy.
And what if we come to this God, the real God, with our objections and doubts? With the real God, with real Christianity—not almost Christianity—we see a God who is not brittle. He won’t crumble when you raise sincere objections and doubts. But what about this, God? And what about that, God? I don’t understand. Can you help me, God? I think the slowness of God’s anger could go on for as long as our objections are sincere. Now, at the point your real objection is just that you don’t want to obey God, then God might take a different approach. But the real God is slow to anger.
Don’t miss this either when you look up at the real God. God identifies with the lowly, with the needy, with the enslaved. God could have come to Moses and said, “You know what, forget the slaves. I want winners. Egyptians are winners, so I’m now with them.” But that’s not what God does. It’s not who he is. This picture of God shows up all over the Bible, most especially in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the incarnation of God, meaning that Jesus is God in the flesh, a God who identifies with our weakness by himself becoming weak, a God who identifies with our woundedness by dying on the cross when he had done no wrong, and a God who identifies with our waywardness, not by acting wayward, but by being punished as though he had been.
As I said at the start, there’s a huge difference between almost Christianity and real Christianity. And when we lift our eyes to see real God in real Christianity, or better, when he climbs down among us, then we see the God who is who he is, or as God tells us later in Exodus, the God “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (34:6–7).
And when this God, the Lord the Lord, calls you to something, he also promises he will be with you. What might God be calling you to do for him in this season that feels utterly impossible to you? It probably is impossible apart from him, so stop looking at yourself. Maybe God is calling you to believe that he is a good God when your life doesn’t feel like he is. Maybe God is calling you to invest in the local church when you’ve only been hurt by the local church before. Maybe you’re called to begin a new job or some other drastic life change. I don’t know. But, as I said before, I hope this church and our singing and our preaching and our gathering together would be for you as unexpected as a holy burning bush was to Moses, a bush from which God calls you to look away from yourself and to his all-sufficiency.
I’ll close by reading the last few verses of chapter 4.
Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped. (4:30–31)
Not only did they look up to God, but God came and visited them. And they worshiped. Let’s pray . . .
[1] I was helped by Mark Dever’s sermon on this point. “Burning Bush,” Capitol Hill Baptist Church, May 20, 2012.
Family Discussion Questions
Moses gives God many objections for not following him. What objections have you given to God for not following him?
God identifies with those people who are enslaved, the people of Israel. How does Jesus identify with oppressed people in the gospel?
We clearly see in Exodus that the enslaved people are freed. But we often fail to notice that the enslaved people are freed to serve God. How is serving the Lord (i.e., being enslaved to the Lord) different than serving our sinful idols?
In this season of your life, what challenging acts of obedience might God be calling you to do?
