An encounter with God
This article is based on a talk first given by David Couchman at Above Bar Church, Southampton on Sunday 20th February 2005. It may be used in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below. It is based on Exodus chapter 3 verses 1-10.
I wonder if you have seen the film 'Panic Room,' starring Jodie Foster?
If you have not seen it, this film tells the story of a woman who buys an up-market apartment in New York. And the apartment contains the panic room of the title.This is basically a very large safe - a fortified inner room. If you are attacked by burglars or whoever, you can go into the panic room, close the door, and be safe while you wait for the police to come and rescue you.
In the film, sure enough, burglars do come, and the woman and her daughter shut themselves in the panic room to hide. The problem is that what the burglars want is in the panic room with them, so they are trapped there. And the rest of the film follows the events that develop from this scenario. It's all about their being trapped.
If I asked you 'what do you feel trapped by?' what would you say?
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped by our jobs - they do not give us meaningful work, and they do not seem to be going anywhere
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped in some way by a relationship. Others would love to be in a relationship but we feel trapped in our singleness
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped by things that we do. We find ourselves acting and reacting in the same old way again and again. We desperately want to change, but it seems that we cannot
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped by our bodies. They are the wrong shape, or they are wearing out
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped by fears - fear of other people, fear about the future.
- Perhaps some of us feel trapped by memories that will not go away - things that we have done, that we wish we had not done; or things that have happened to us that have devastated our lives
Probably all of us, in different ways, feel trapped either by our selves or by our circumstances.
You know that when you go to a doctor, you tell her your symptoms, and then she tells you what the underlying illness is that is making you feel unwell. In the same way, the things that we feel trapped by are often the outward signs of a much deeper kind of trapped-ness. The Bible says that we're trapped at a very deep level:
- we are trapped by guilt, and by the patterns of behaviour that the Bible calls sin - all the rebellion against God, all the self-centredness and smallness of our lives
- we are trapped by dark spiritual forces of great power, whose reality we have only the faintest glimpse of
- we are trapped by the certainty of death and by what lies beyond. I think it was Woody Allen who said, 'It isn't that I'm afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens.'
As we look at these verses from Exodus chapter 3, we are going to unpack something of what this trappedness means, and how God responds to it.
The back story to this passage is that the Israelites are trapped in Egypt. They are slaves, and they are prisoners of a ruler who hates them.
For forty years, Moses was brought up as a prince of Egypt. He grew up believing that God had put him there to rescue the Israelites from their slavery - as indeed he had.
At age 40, Moses takes matters into his own hands, and kills one of the Egyptian slave-masters. The Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh, sets out to kill Moses, and Moses flees into the desert.
He is there for the next forty years, looking after a flock of sheep in the back end of nowhere in particular. During this time, it seems that all his ambitions to be a rescuer have been burned out of him.
This is where we pick up the story at the beginning of Exodus chapter 3:
Moses is just minding his own business, looking after his father-in-law's sheep. It is just an ordinary day - he has had thousands of days like it. He brings the flock to Horeb, which the Bible calls 'the mountain of God.' It is a hint of what is about to happen. Moses is in for the biggest shock of his life. He has never had a day like it. The stage is set for one of the most momentous encounters of history - a personal encounter with God that is going to change the destiny of whole nations.
When we read a story like this in the Old Testament we can easily react to it with a resounding 'So what?' What does something that happened more than three thousand years ago have to say to me today?
Even if I believe that the Bible is God-given, and that God really appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and that he really delivered the Israelites out of Egypt - so what? What difference does it make to my life?
Part of our problem is that we may think that God had two different plans: In the Old Testament, he was interested in the Israelites, and they were supposed to be put right with him by keeping his laws.
But this did not work out because they could not keep his laws. So God went over to plan B, which is the New Testament, where he is interested in everyone, not just the Jews, and where we are put right with him by trusting Jesus.
This is a bit of a parody, but we can easily fall into thinking like this. But this is not right. God never had two plans. Jesus never was 'Plan B.' He always was plan A.
God has not changed. He has always been a God who gets trapped people out of trouble. This is true in the Old Testament, and in the New, and it is still true today.
The big story of the Old Testament is how God rescues his people from being trapped in slavery in Egypt.
The big story in the New Testament is how God rescues his people from being trapped by sin, guilt, dark spiritual powers, death and all that lies beyond - the things we were talking about earlier.
In the Old Testament, God sends Moses to rescue his people.
In the New Testament, He sends Jesus.
In both, God's rescue involves a sacrifice.
In the Old Testament, when God rescues his people from slavery, the sacrifice is an animal - they have to kill and eat a lamb. This is what the Jews came to know as the Passover.
In the New Testament, God rescues his people through the death of Jesus.
So when we read something like this bit of Exodus, and we wonder how it can say anything to us, we need to see that what happens in the Old Testament is a picture that points forward to Jesus, and helps us to understand what he did.
- The Israelites' slavery in Egypt is a picture of the deep down things that trap us
- The Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh, is a picture of the dark spiritual powers that bind people today
- Moses himself is a picture of Jesus
- The Passover sacrifice was a picture of the death of Jesus
So Paul says
Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
Jesus was put to death at the time of the Jewish festival of Passover. This is not a coincidence. When he and his followers had their last meal together, his Last Supper, this was a Passover meal. So when Jesus takes the bread and the wine, he is taking a meal that they had eaten dozens of times before, where they all remembered God getting his people out of Egypt.
And Jesus says, 'this bread is my body. This wine is my blood.' He is not talking about any bread and any wine. He is talking about the bread and wine of the Passover meal. He is saying, in the clearest possible way, 'I am the reality that the Passover sacrifice points to.'
So what is happening here in Exodus is a story that points forward to Jesus.
We need to be a bit careful: calling it a story does not mean it is 'just a story,' in the sense that it is not true. These things really happened - they are real events in history - but they have a deeper meaning that points beyond themselves.
This account in Exodus of God rescuing his trapped people from Egypt is a picture of how God rescues trapped people today. This helps us to see how it relates to us.
Our title for this article is 'An Encounter with God.' What would you say if someone offered you the chance to meet God? Perhaps many of us would jump at the chance. But perhaps we have our own ideas of what God would be like. Perhaps we would like to choose how we would meet him.
Here in Exodus 3, Moses has an encounter with God that changes his life. He has to learn who God is. He is about to discover that when the real God steps in, we meet him on his terms, not ours. So what kind of God is he?
Moses encounters a God who is separate, verses 2-5
Verse 2:
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. So Moses thought 'I will go over and see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up.
At this point, Moses has been in the desert forty years. He is an expert on deserts! Deserts figure prominently on his CV. He has seen it all. But he has never seen anything like this.
What God is about to do through Moses is the most important thing in the Old Testament, and he confirms it with this supernatural sign of the bush that is not burned up. When miracles happen in the Bible, they are not just strange and spooky events, like something in the X-files. They are there to confirm God's word to his messengers.
So in verse 4, Moses goes over to have a look, and God calls to him out of the bush. God says to Moses, in verse 5:
Don't come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
'Holy' means that it's a special place. It is special because it is the place where God's presence touches the Earth. And because of this, God says to Moses, 'don't trample all over it with the ordinary dust and dirt from the desert. Take your sandals off.'
A while back I was in Istanbul, and I visited the Blue Mosque. I had to take my shoes off and leave them at the entrance, because the people there thought the ground inside the Mosque was special, and they did not want anyone treading ordinary street-dirt on it. It is the same idea here.
We may think that the symbolism of taking off your shoes is a bit quaint, a bit peculiar. What is important is that Moses needed to know that he could not just barge in on God as if he was visiting an old mate from school. Moses was given a sense of how great God is, and how separate God is from everything that's dirty or polluted.
We need to get this sense back today. So often, we can be casual about the way we approach God, as if God just wants to be our best friend.
Do not get me wrong: God loves us more than we can imagine. But he is not our best friend. God is powerful - he is the one who created the Universe and rules the Universe. He is infinitely wise and infinitely good. He is the only one who is morally perfect and pure. He is completely separate from everything that pollutes us. Moses needed to learn that. And so do we. .
Then in verse 6, God says:
I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Up till now, although Moses was curious, he didn't really know who he was encountering. But now he finds out that he is talking to the God who had appeared to his ancestor Abraham, more than four hundred years ago.
Moses was not ignorant. All the Israelites would have known the stories about God appearing to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But as he has this personal encounter with God here in the desert, he is about to find out much more about what this God is like. In fact, Moses is going to end up knowing more about God than Abraham ever did.
In Genesis chapter 12 verses 1-3, there is the account of God's call to Abraham:
The Lord had said to Abram,
'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.'
You see, God had promised to give Abraham descendants - lots of descendants. He had promised to make him into a great nation. He had promised to bless the whole earth through him and his descendants.
And when we get to Exodus, this is exactly what Pharaoh is threatening, as he tries to have the Israelite babies killed off (see chapters 1 and 2). He is attacking God's plan and God's promises.
And this is exactly what God responds to, in chapter 2 verse 24. It says that God heard the Israelites groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Moses needed to know that God keeps his promises.
Verse 6 says that when Moses heard who God is, he hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. He was beginning to understand more about God - a God who keeps his promises, a God who is separate from everything that pollutes us.
Moses encounters a God who sees, verses 7-8
The heart of this account is what God says to Moses in verse 7:
I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.
In other words, I know what is going on. I know all about them being trapped by Pharaoh. And in the same way God knows all about what's going on in our lives - the things that trap us today
I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers.
I know all about their grief. God knows all about the things that give you grief
I am concerned about their suffering.
God cared what happens to his people. He cares about everything that happens to us today. The New Testament says:
Cast all your cares on him, because it matters to him what happens to you. (1 Peter chapter 5 verse 7)
Then he says:
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.
In other words, I am going to do something about it. And in the same way, he has done something about the things that trap us at the deepest level
When Moses had his encounter with God, he got to know God as someone who is separate from everything that pollutes us, and who sees everything that traps us; who is concerned about it, and who is going to do something about it.
Moses encounters a God who sends, verses 9-10
Now you may have been sitting here thinking, 'yes, I know all this. I have been a Christian for years.' If so, please notice the last thing God says to Moses. In verse 9, he recaps:
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 out of Egypt.
God says, 'I'm going to do something about it - oh, and by the way, I'm sending you.' If we are followers of Christ, God calls us to line ourselves up with his purpose to get trapped people out of trouble.
Now obviously, Moses was a very special leader in God's purposes, and he had a very special kind of call. Most of us will not encounter God in a burning bush! But God does call all his people to be involved in his purposes. His plan for your life was never to rescue you just so you could have a good time and go to heaven. If you are in his family, he calls you to get involved in the family business. And the family business is rescuing people.
How did Moses respond? Well, as they say, that is a story for another time.
Conclusion
Moses had an encounter with God which changed his life, and which changed the future of nations. He got to know a God who is separate from everything that pollutes us, a God who sees everything that traps us, and a God who sends - who calls us to join him on his rescue mission.
But probably the most important thing for us to take away from this part of the Bible is that God is a God who gets trapped people out of trouble.
This does not mean that he will always sort out the surface problems: if we are trapped in a dead end job or a loveless relationship, God's word to us may be 'tough it out.' If we feel trapped by our bodies, he may want us to learn to love ourselves as we are. He does not promise to sort out all the stuff and all the problems in our lives - sometimes those problems are there for a reason. But God has dealt with the underlying things that trap us - the guilt, the dark powers, the fear of death and what lies beyond.
God had a plan to free the Israelites - a plan that centred on Moses, and his call to Moses. So he also has a plan to set us free - a plan that is centred on Jesus Christ. In Jesus, in his life, his death, and his rising from the dead, God has done everything that needs to be done to set us free. God offers to deliver you from the things that trap you, at the deepest level of your life, through Jesus. But you have to do something.You have to respond. You have to accept his offer. The Bible describes this response in two key ways:
- One is that you have to change your mind - you have to change how you think about God. You were living your own life independently of him. You thought you were free, but it turned out that that life was slavery and a trap. God calls you to turn from that independence, and make him the centre of your life.
- The other key way the Bible describes this response is that you have to trust Christ; you have to rely on him to rescue you, and commit yourself to him.
There is no true freedom apart from what he offers. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
In the 1860s, the Americans fought their Civil War over the issue of slavery. When the war ended, in 1865, they passed the 13th amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery. The slaves were all now officially, legally free. People had fought and died to set them free, just as someone died to set us free.
And the saddest thing of all is that some of the slaves did not know what to do with their freedom, and they ended up staying in slavery, or going back to slavery, even though they could have been free.
There is nothing sadder than someone who is offered their freedom but who does not take it.
God says 'I have seen what's trapping you. I have heard... I am concerned.... and I have come down to rescue you.'
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