Bible Reading: Exodus 3

Stephen continues his speech by turning to the events recorded for us in Exodus 3.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed? Perhaps you’re the only Christian at work, school, college or in your family and it seems an impossible task. Or maybe you hear statistics about the church in the UK and you think it has no future. Or perhaps you are just struggling to hold life together, it’s one thing after another; pressure from work, family, friends, your marriage is not what you dreamed it would be. Everywhere you look you feel overwhelmed. Or maybe it’s the future; as you look at it with all its swirling uncertainty you think I’m not sure I can take it.

Exodus says to us ‘You are not alone!’, God’s people in Egypt feel like that; hard pressed, in slavery, victims of ethnic infanticide. Moses feels like that he’s gone from Egyptian Prince to wanted fugitive to shepherd – about as low as you can get from an Egyptian viewpoint. He’s tried to rescue Israel, tried to stand up for his oppressed people and what has it got him, rejection, exile, and a warrant for his arrest.

But Exodus is not a pity party, the consolation isn’t that there are others worse off than us – let’s be honest that isn’t really any help, it just adds another layer of guilt. The hope in Exodus is not in knowing Israel, not in knowing Moses but in knowing God. Exodus isn’t primarily about Israel it’s about God. These chapters aren’t primarily about Moses but about God. God’s name, God’s character and God’s plan, God’s rescue of his people according to his promise.

This is what we need, to have our eyes lifted to see God, his grace, his power and the privilege it is and the security it brings to belongs to his people.  That is what Stephen is trying to show the Sanhedrin.  How they have shrunk God, he isn't confined to the temple, he isn't limited by their thoughts on the law.  His plans and purposes are bigger, brighter, better.

God determinedly and deliberately reveals himself to Moses, God gets Moses attention, and tells him his plan to rescue his people and his purpose so that they will worship him. And the bombshell is in the final sentence “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

How does Moses respond? “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt.” Moses has a history with Pharaoh, has been rejected by Israel, and is top of the Egyptian FBI’s most wanted list. But it isn’t pragmatism that leads Moses to say this; he doesn’t feel he can do it.

I think we need to be careful not to condemn Moses, and it’s easy to do isn’t it God speaks to him out of a burning bush, God has saved him for just this purpose and now God says ‘Go!’ and Moses says ‘I think you have the wrong man’. But we need to slow down on the itchy trigger finger, in case in condemning Moses we condemn ourselves. How often has God said to us go and we have responded ‘Who am I that I should...’ share the gospel with my work mates or family, go on a short term mission, encourage so and so, speak to...

And what does God do here? How does he answer Moses? God doesn’t condemn Moses; he doesn’t remind him of the ark, or his rescue, or his privileged education. In fact God says to Moses who you are doesn’t matter who I am matters. Do you see that? (12) "And God said, ‘I will be with you...I have sent you... you will worship God on this mountain." Moses you are right you can’t do it, but I can.  How often do we need to learn just that lesson, it is who God is that matters.

And God reveals who he is to Moses(13-22). Moses basically asks who are you? God tells Moses his name (14) “I AM WHO I AM.” Names matter in Exodus, Moses means drawn out, Gershom means foreigner, in a sense the name reveals the person and their history. Here God is saying “I AM WHO I AM”, there is nothing you can compare me to, there is nothing I am like, I AM God, incomparable to anything else I have made.

I AM is Yahweh, it is God’s name, the great creator and sustainer of the universe reveals his name to Moses, it is translated LORD in the rest of the book. Moses you don’t need to know you, you need to know me!

But who is Yahweh? (15f)He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He’s the God of the covenant, the one who called and gave promises of a people, place, plan and protection. He is the God who has kept his promises, who has proven that there is no one like him and that he is worth trusting.

He is the God who knows and acts; three times in ch3 God reveals his plan to Moses to keep his promises(v8, 17, 22)to free Israel from slavery, to bring them out of Egypt and into the promised land. And it is God who will do it “I have seen... I have promised... I know... I will...”(16-22).

Moses doesn’t need to know who he is he needs to understand who God is, because God is going to save his people.

Know God, this same God who reveals himself to Moses and says know me trust me, is the God who we call Father. Who goes even further so that we know him through Jesus Christ, and then dwells in us through his Holy Spirit. When we feel overwhelmed or fearful or weary we need to know God, who has rescued us and made us his children and who promises security is in knowing him not in circumstance.