Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Burning Bush
Commentary
for the July 12, 2025, Sabbath School Lesson
"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."
Exodus 3:2, NIV
Eighty
years before, Moses had been cast adrift on the Nile River by his mother for
fear of his execution by the Egyptians. Pharaoh had decreed the destruction of
all Israelite male babies, and her desperate action saved the child's life for
Pharaoh's daughter found him and after the child was weaned, brought him to
grow up in the royal palace, educated along with the children of Egyptian nobles.
Moses was aware of the plight of the Israelites. His mother would have taught
him their story in his infancy, he nonetheless felt the weight of his people's
bondage and saw his position of privilege as an opportunity to better their lot,
even killing an Egyptian taskmaster he found abusing an Israelite. However, he found
that the Israelites did not appreciate his efforts and rejected his leadership
in the struggle for freedom. (Exodus
2:13-14) Even worse, an Israelite must have informed Pharaoh about what Moses
had done for the only witnesses to his action were Moses, the dead Egyptian,
and the Israelite Moses had rescued. Pharaoh sought to kill Moses in
retribution.
Betrayed
by his own people and sought for execution, forty-year-old Moses fled to Midian
where he was sheltered by a Midianite priest, Jethro,
and eventually married into his host's family. For forty more years, he tended
sheep and learned at the feet of that priest. What he learned reawakened the
memories of the lessons taught him in infancy and opened his heart that God
might speak into his life. One day, eighty years after that voyage on the Nile
River in a basket, God did just that. His appearance through the burning bush
that did not burn up was an incontrovertible miracle, something Moses had never
personally experienced. God has spoken into people's lives more often than many
are willing to acknowledge. They either doubt the veracity of the accounts or
reject them as natural phenomena that science has yet to explain, assuming that
once science advances to that point we will discover that it was not a miracle
after all.
This
is illustrated in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy." In that movie, a bushman
in Africa discovers a soda bottle tossed from a plane and assumes it is a sign
from God since he is unable to explain how it appeared in the bush. But the assumption
in this satire is that all miracles are scientifically explainable. This fails
to acknowledge that there will always be areas that will never be explained, especially if we consider that we have no
ability to visualize infinity, either in our minds or modeled in real life.
Despite that ever-present limitation, we still assert that there is nothing
beyond the reach of science and therefore no truly unexplainable miracles.
Nonetheless, there is value to what science has brought us, even though too
often it has been made to subdue and control others. The
horrific examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will remain as a black stain on
humanity for centuries if not millennia. To its credit, science has nearly
eradicated some diseases from the planet and has connected humanity globally in
real time. This ministry, reaching digitally into a hundred and thirty
countries around the world, would not exist without those advances.
One might
ask what made the difference that God finally spoke to Moses concerning the
Israelites in Egypt? It is because Moses was no longer the same man who had
taken the liberation of his people into his own hands. In fact, he was so far
from that person that he did all he could to not be a liberator, begging God to
send someone else. The sting of the memory of his betrayal by his own people
had never fully left, and he questioned whether they would ever accept him as
liberator, even if he told them God had chosen him. To bolster his confidence,
God gifted him with miracles and knowledge of God as the foundation of all existence
through knowing his name. I understand his reluctance because while I was in
the Army in Alaska, attempts were made to take my life for faithfully
witnessing for God. It is not an experience one easily forgets.
Eventually,
Moses runs out of arguments. The patience of God reveals his understanding of
the wounds we all suffer and the compassion he has for us in our brokenness. That
patience is revealed in his eighty-year wait for Moses to come to the point
where he could become the liberator of the Israelites. Lest we think he was
only waiting on Moses, forty years before those Israelites were more willing to
betray a liberator than to follow one. Much of that viciousness grew out of
their oppression and the fear it engendered. They had been taught by their
oppressors to obey whoever could instill the most fear in their lives. This may
explain the harshness of some of their encounters with God. They had been
trained to the whip and the lash and understood only pain as a means of
control. I have never forgotten an experience along those lines that I witnessed
while in college. A dog had been hit by a car while trying to cross the street.
Its yelps were heart rending. The closest person, a young woman, compassionately
tried to help the dog, but it was in too much pain to understand, and it bit
her repeatedly. Eventually, the dog was rescued and helped, but instead of
comforting the dog as the young lady tried to do, it had to be bundled up in
blankets, even though the pressure of the blankets caused more pain, so that it
could be helped. No one wanted to cause more pain to the animal, but it was the
only hope to save its life. In the case of the Israelites, I would hate to be
charged with deciding to inflict pain on the few that the many might be saved
as happened several times in the wilderness. It would take tremendous patience.
Even Moses' patience became exhausted toward the end of the wilderness
wanderings. Maybe he remembered his betrayal from the past and felt he saw it
happening again. God intended he should be relieved of that fear and let God
carry the burden of that past. When Moses failed to do that, it cost him entry
into the Promised Land. We should all remember that lesson lest past betrayals
keep us from entering that promised rest.
One
of the blessings in life for a man is to have partnered with a godly wife.
Moses had that with Zipporah, and I have it with my wife, Karin. I value
greatly being able to discuss with her some of the insights for these
commentaries. One of the discussions we had was regarding the circumcision
event that occurred on the road back to Egypt. Moses had circumcised his oldest
son, Gershom, but had not done the same for his younger son, Eliezer. The text
says that God sought to kill him for avoiding this. That may have been an overly
dramatic depiction of the Lord withstanding him and requiring that circumcision
before he could continue. In any event, Zipporah performed the ritual that
Moses failed to do, and the family continued to Egypt. In our discussion, we realized
that failure to do this could have sabotaged the whole mission. Circumcision
was an identifier of who was an Israelite and who was not. Had Moses claimed to
be sent by God while his own son did not bear the marks of an Israelite male,
the people would have rejected him as liberator. The Apostle Paul understood
this principle when he wrote, "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I
have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save
some." (1 Corinthians 9:22) Through the two thousand intervening years we have
forgotten this for now we emphasize how we are not like those other miscreants
and withdraw into our enclaves of solitude where even those who come knocking
are rigorously tested to see if they might be allowed in. Few question what sacrifices
they would be willing to endure that others might find entry and fellowship
with God.
We live
in a divided time. Society is splintered into factions. It is no surprise that a
chasm exists between science and faith with those on each side of the divide
insisting that it is impossible to meld the two. In the past, someone like
Isaac Newton could be both a cleric and a scientist and both disciplines bore
fruit as a result. In any event, those who say God does not exist or who have
doubts may never find confirmation of his existence "because anyone who comes
to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him." (Hebrews 11:6b) Just as mathematics is an essential for scientific
inquiry, faith is essential for spiritual discovery. Paul wrote, "The person
without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God
but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are
discerned only through the Spirit." (1 Corinthians 2:14) It follows then that
without faith in that Spirit, its voice, if heard at all will be only
gibberish. We cannot stick our fingers in our ears and then claim God does not
exist because we hear nothing.