Missions Paul

There are questions we carry and indeed ask of God which reveal the position of our thinking more than perhaps we realise. 

Moses wanted to know what kind of God would show up for him. 

Perhaps today this is true for you also. You need to know in this present circumstance what God has in mind for you. 

In today’s reading God doesn’t promise what He might be.

His promise is in a name He gives for himself.

I am.

“Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ””

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭3‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭

When Moses asked for God’s name, he wasn’t asking to broaden his knowledge of Him, but rather he was asking who God would be for himself and the people. 

“Who are You for us, really?” 

God’s answer pointed to His self-existence. 

“I Am has sent me to you.” 

You may be facing huge mountain- size tasks and you wonder how you will get through. 

God does not become what we need; He already is. Our lack meets His fullness. Our questions meet the One who simply, faithfully, eternally is.

Many of us have asked this question at some point in response to the divine call.

“But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.””

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭3‬:‭11‬-‭12‬ ‭

God lays out the plan and Moses’ first words back is “who am I?” (v.11). 

God knows exactly who he is: a fugitive, a failure, a man who fled the very people he’s now being asked to lead.

God doesn’t answer the question.

He doesn’t list Moses’ strengths or remind him of his palace education. The call was never about his cv. He simply says, “I will be with you.” (v.12). 

The question isn’t who am I? The question is who goes with me?

It’s the most human response to a divine call.

Moses walks away from the burning bush not because he suddenly felt qualified. He walks away because Someone qualified went with him.

You may be facing something big today so ask the right question.

Not who am I? — but who goes with me?

There are moments in life when we feel invisible. Our prayers can seem to bounce back from the ceiling. 

For four hundred years of slavery the Israelites knew that feeling.

And then God spoke. 

“The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus‬ ‭3‬:‭7‬-‭10‬ ‭

God had been paying attention. 

“I have seen the misery of my people… I have heard them crying out… and I have come down to rescue them.” 

This is not a God who observes from a distance and offers sympathy. This is a God who acts and who expects His people that He calls to act also. 

God’s compassion becomes a mission on earth which requires a person to be His hands and feet.

God sees the pain of people today just as clearly as he saw Egypt. He hears every cry that seems to go unanswered. He still works the same way, through the sent ones who say yes at a burning bush.

The question Exodus 3 leaves us with isn’t really about Moses. It’s about us. When God says “I have seen, I have heard, I have come” — are we willing to be the answer He sends? Where you go today and the people you will meet, you are His representative and He will use you. 

Will you align with what He has seen and what He has heard and will you be sent?

At a burning bush in the wilderness, God introduced himself with a family tree. It would be the moment that we understand that we have a father.

“Then he said, “I am the God of your father,the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3 v 6)

When God spoke from the burning bush, he didn’t open with a title or a theological declaration. He opened with a relationship. “I am the God of your father.”

He could have introduced Himself as the Creator or the Eternal One. Instead, God chose the familial name which we all know.

Whether or not you have had a great experience with your earthly father, or not, and he may not have even known God, take this verse into your heart and soul today.

Moses obviously didn’t know these patriarchs who came before the other fathers of Levi (Jacob’s son), Kohath (Levi’s son), Amram (Kohath’s son), before himself, the son of Amram. But these other three walked with God as much as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had. Though all six were flawed in many different ways.

Moses had grown up in Pharaoh’s palace, far from the stories of his people. He knew his heritage but had perhaps wondered whether the God of those stories was his God too. And here, at the burning bush, God answered that unspoken question before Moses even asked it.

Your father knew me. And I know you.

Faith passed down through a family is one of the most powerful gifts a father can give. The knowledge that the God who walked with me will walk with you.

Whether your father walked with God or not, the invitation is here for you today.

God knows your history more than you do and reaches out to you today, inviting you to be the one who walks with Him in this generation.

When you understand this, you know it is a holy-ground moment.

God is here.

Moses was going about his day. It was just another day in the desert with the same animals. Little did he know that things were about to change.

“Take off your sandals,” God said, “for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5)

This wasn’t a special place or sacred building. What made it special wasn’t that bush, which wasn’t burning up. It was the presence of God.

Holiness isn’t in the place. It’s in the One who shows up.

We spend so much time looking for the right moment to encounter God. But Moses was at work, and God met him there.

Are you paying attention today? That is the key question. For this may be ordinary ground, but you may be closer to God than you know. This may require you to take off your sandals.

Holiness is closer than you think.

Some of the most important moments in a life don’t announce themselves. Sometimes they are simply a strange sight on an ordinary day, and a simple decision to take a closer look.

“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3 v 1-4)

Moses wasn’t looking for God that day. He was doing what he did every day. He was tending flocks, covering ground, keeping an eye on the sheep. Just another ordinary morning in the wilderness of Midian.

But something caught his eye.

A bush was burning. That wasn’t unusual in the dry heat of the desert. What was unusual was that it kept burning.

He had no idea where he was standing. Horeb was just a mountain to him. He didn’t know it would one day shake with the voice of God. He didn’t know he would return here, leading a nation, to receive the commandments that would shape human history. All of that was still to come. He was simply a shepherd on an unremarkable morning, noticing something he couldn’t explain.

He doesn’t rationalise. He goes over to look. When he did, God spoke to him.

You may be in a season that feels entirely ordinary. But learn not to pass by the burning bushes. Learn to notice what doesn’t make sense. God has a habit of showing up in strange sights and unexpected places and then waiting to see if we will turn aside.

Moses turned aside. God called his name. That’s how it began for him. It still is.

Midian wasn’t on Moses’ map. Egypt was.

For Moses, we are going to read how, in a foreign place, he married, had a son, and became a shepherd. Yet God was watching all along. Nothing gets slipped past Him. He knows it all.

“Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. ²² Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.” ²³ During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. ²⁵ So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” (Exodus 2:21-25)

Midian was not where Moses had planned to end up. He was a foreigner in a foreign land. This was a huge detour for him, but God was still there.

The chapters of our lives can be so very different from one another, and yet God manages to be present with us in each one. He doesn’t get lost in the detours of our paths.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, there was a sound of people who at the end of themselves and are groaning.

And God heard it. He saw Moses, and He heard His people.

God heard, God remembered, God looked, God was concerned.

God had been watching all along.

If you are waiting today for something, waiting for change perhaps, then this is your encouragement. God heard before Moses arrived.

Moses had nowhere else to go. A fugitive on the run, sitting by a well in a foreign place he did not know. He had stopped writing the story of his life. He could not predict at all what would happen next. But what did happen was part of God’s plan. It reminds us that the doors God opens for us are often unlocked by the smallest acts of kindness.

“Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. ¹⁷ Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. ¹⁸ When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?” ¹⁹ They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.” ²⁰ “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.” (Exodus 2 v16-20)

Moses sat down by a well. A fugitive in the desert. He wasn’t doing anything particular. Maybe he was wondering what he would do to rebuild his life after escaping the Pharaoh. Then the incident happened. It had nothing to do with him. There were seven women being chased away from the well by shepherds.

But this was Moses. The Moses who just couldn’t watch an Egyptian beat a Hebrew slave. He got up, intervened and drew the water for the daughters. Thankfully, he still hadn’t learned to look the other way.

This simple act of kindness was the segue into being in the exact place God wanted him to be. Moses must have thought he was hiding from everything and everyone he knew. But by that well that day, he was not hiding from God.

A new chapter was about to begin for Moses and God was there watching his every move.

This section is not the story of a bad man but a good man moving too soon. A lesson for us all not to move in our own strength.

“One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. ¹² Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. ¹³ The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”  ¹⁴ The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” ¹⁵ When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.” (Exodus 2 v 11-15)

Are you a person who stands with the oppressed, who cannot ignore suffering and who cannot simply turn a blind eye? Moses was that person. God would use all of that pent-up emotion one day. But for now, his timing and method were wrong.

He tried to cover up what he had done. He had to. He had hoped no one would have known, after all, there wasn’t anyone who had seen him killing the Egyptian. Well, no one except the Israelite whom he had saved.

The man he defended became his accuser. Ever known that?

So he ran, and God let him. God let him run to the desert, where the next part of his life will commence. This is a relocation for Moses, not a disqualification. He begins a refining process in the desert. One impulsive moment in Egypt needed forty years in the wilderness to teach that God’s work has to be done God’s way.

What feels like exile is often just formation. God had Moses where he wanted him, in the desert. He would emerge from there, but not for now.

He didn’t choose his name, nor the river, nor indeed the princess who found him. However, every detail had been arranged for his survival.

¹⁰ When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses,saying, “I drew him out of the water.” (Exodus 2 v 10)

The adult Moses would one day stand at another body of water (the Red Sea) and watch as God drew an entire nation out of their slavery in Egypt.

But for now, without him knowing, he is drawn out of the water by a princess who, in trying to explain what happened at the river, names him Moses. None of us has any say in where we are born or what we are called; our choices come later. Yet there will be times throughout life, as it was for Moses, that it feels like you are back in that basket, helpless and carried by currents you never chose. But you worship God, who is a miraculous arranger. He will draw you out, hold on.

He ordered the steps of a princess’s walk along the Nile that day, and He can order yours too.