Jesse Tree Day #10

Have you ever been spoken to by a bush? I know I sure haven't, but Moses had. And not just was he spoken to by a bush, but he was spoken to by GOD in a bush. That has definitely never happened to me before!

Symbol: Burning Bush

Scripture: Exodus 1:1-14; 3:1-12 (The Message)

Topic: Moses and the Burning Bush

^1-5 These are the names of the Israelites who went to Egypt with Jacob, each bringing his family members: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,

Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,

Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

Seventy persons in all generated by Jacob's seed. Joseph was already in Egypt.

^6-7 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers—that whole generation. But the children of Israel kept on reproducing. They were very prolific—a population explosion in their own right—and the land was filled with them.

"A New King . . . Who Didn't Know Joseph"

^8-10 A new king came to power in Egypt who didn't know Joseph. He spoke to his people in alarm, "There are way too many of these Israelites for us to handle. We've got to do something: Let's devise a plan to contain them, lest if there's a war they should join our enemies, or just walk off and leave us."

^11-14 So they organized them into work-gangs and put them to hard labor under gang-foremen. They built the storage cities Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. But the harder the Egyptians worked them the more children the Israelites had—children everywhere! The Egyptians got so they couldn't stand the Israelites and treated them worse than ever, crushing them with slave labor. They made them miserable with hard labor—making bricks and mortar and back-breaking work in the fields. They piled on the work, crushing them under the cruel workload.

Exodus 3

^1-2 Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb. The angel of Godappeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of a bush. He looked. The bush was blazing away but it didn't burn up.

³ Moses said, "What's going on here? I can't believe this! Amazing! Why doesn't the bush burn up?"

⁴ God saw that he had stopped to look. God called to him from out of the bush, "Moses! Moses!"

He said, "Yes? I'm right here!"

⁵ God said, "Don't come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet. You're standing on holy ground."

⁶ Then he said, "I am the God of your father: The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob."

Moses hid his face, afraid to look at God.

^7-8 God said, "I've taken a good, long look at the affliction of my people in Egypt. I've heard their cries for deliverance from their slave masters; I know all about their pain. And now I have come down to help them, pry them loose from the grip of Egypt, get them out of that country and bring them to a good land with wide-open spaces, a land lush with milk and honey, the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

^9-10 "The Israelite cry for help has come to me, and I've seen for myself how cruelly they're being treated by the Egyptians. It's time for you to go back: I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the People of Israel, out of Egypt."

¹¹ Moses answered God, "But why me? What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?"

¹² "I'll be with you," God said. "And this will be the proof that I am the one who sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will worship God right here at this very mountain."

Boy oh boy! If God even chooses to approach me this way I can only imagine how I will react. A lot of stammering, a lot of stuttering, and a lot of "huh?" Moses reacted in much the same way. He hid his face, afraid and ashamed that God had chosen to speak to him in such a bold manner. And then, once he knew what God wanted him to do, he was incredulous! What!? Me?! I can't even talk plain, how am I supposed to be able to talk to these people! There's no way! I think this is the same way we usually react when God tells us to do something. ME? Are you SERIOUS!? But here's the thing, God is always serious. He is never going to ask us to do something that he doesn't fully intend on us actually doing. Pray that God will give us obedience to do what he asks and the ability to say yes instead of standing there stuttering and acting like a goof ball. God has big plans for us, and HUGE things to tell us! Are we going to be willing to listen?