The Gospel Story of the Burning Bush

The Gospel Story of the Burning Bush.

“Now one day when Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, he guided the flock far away from the usual pastures to the other side of the desert. Moses came to a place known as Horeb, or Sinai, where the Mountain of God stood. And there, the Angel of Yahweh appeared to Moses in a fiery blaze from within the bush. Moses looked again at the bush as it blazed. To his amazement, the bush did not burn up in the flames. moses wondered at the sight, and asked himself, ‘Why is this bush not burning up? I will turn aside and move a little closer to get a better look at this amazing sight.’ When God saw Moses turning aside to approach the burning bush so he could observe it more closely, He called out to Moses from within the bush… ‘Moses! Moses!’ And Moses responded, ‘Here I am!’  God then said to Moses, ‘Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals and stand barefoot on the ground in My Presence, for this is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob!’ A feeling of dread and awe rushed over Moses, and he hid his face. He was afraid he might catch a glimpse of the True God.” (Exodus 3:1-6).

The Angel of Yahweh. Jesus has been the face of God from eternity, even from before His incarnation. There were many times in Hebrew Scriptures when God appeared in bodily form as a man. Early Church theologians, and most Biblical scholars since, have believed that when God is in visible form, the truth is that Christ has made an earthly appearance. Every physical appearance of God in the First Testament is a revelation of Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form. There is a heavenly Character who flits in and out of the Hebrew Bible… the Angel of Yahweh, also known as the Angel of God, the Angel of the LORD, the Messenger of Yahweh, the Messenger of the Covenant, or the Angel of His Presence. It is widely accepted in Biblical scholarship that this mysterious Angel is none other than the bodily appearance of Jesus Christ. When Biblical characters in the Hebrew Bible reported that they had seen God, they had been right… They had seen the face of God in Christ. The Deity of Jesus is clearly portrayed in His role of Angelic Messenger, God’s special representative that speaks God’s mind and performs His will. “The Angel of the Lord is the visible Lord God of the Old Testament, as Jesus Christ was of the New Testament.” (Amplified Bible notes). These exciting appearances of Jesus in the Hebrew Bible, or “Christophanies” as they are called, include:

1. With Hagar, in Genesis 16, as she was abandoned and on the run from an obstinate Sarai;
2. With Abraham, in Genesis 18, when the Lord appeared in bodily form to him by the Oaks of Mamre;
3. With Isaac, in Genesis 22, when he was tied to the altar and about to be sacrificed by Abraham;
4. With Jacob, in Genesis 32, when wrestling with the Angel and he saw the face of God;
5. With Moses, on a number of occasions: in Exodus 3 when he talked with Him at the burning bush; in Exodus 14 when the Israelites were saved at the Red Sea; in Exodus 23 at Mount Sinai;
6. With Balaam, in Numbers 22, when his donkey started engaging in conversation with Him;
7. With Joshua, in Joshua 5, when he was confronted by the Captain on holy ground;
8. With Gideon, in Judges 6, when he was given his special calling and assignment;
9. With Samson’s parents, in Judges 13, when they received a heavenly birth announcement;
10. With Elijah, in 1 Kings 19, when he was fed and rested on the run from Jezebel in the wilderness;
11. With Isaiah, in Isaiah 63:9, when he referred to someone known to him, “the Angel of His Presence.”
12. With Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in Daniel 3, as they were surviving in the fiery furnace;
13. With Daniel, in Daniel 10, when he was visited by God after fasting for three weeks;
14. With David, in Psalm 34, when he referred to “the Angel of Yahweh encamping all around those who fear Him” (Ps. 34:7); and also in 1 Chronicles 21:16, when on the threshing floor after David sinfully took a census.

Curiosity Leads to Discovery. Moses had the spirit of the adventurer. He was guiding his flock to a place far away from where he usually shepherded them. And then, He noticed. He had his eyes wide open to see something different from the norm. So he became curious about this new thing he saw. He bothered to turn aside, to look in a different direction, to take a second look. It was only after Moses turned aside for a second look that God spoke to him. Often this is what it takes to see something new about the Lord, or to experience Him a different way. If we want to “sing a new song,” sometimes we need to turn aside.

Here I Am! When God appealed personally to Moses by name and got his attention, Moses responded just as personally with “hineni.” “Hineni” is an important Hebrew word combining “hineh” (Behold) and “ani” (Here I). So the literal translation of hineni is “Behold, I am.” It is generally translated in the Hebrew Bible as “Here I am.” Hineni is the declaration of one’s presence and willingness to act. In Scripture it is a response of someone to someone else asking for attention. It could be a response to God, to an angel, a response of a child to a parent, or a servant to a master. Sometimes it is even a loving response of a parent to a child. The Biblical Here I am means, You have my full attention; I am at your service; I am completely available to you; Whatever you want, I am all in; I am in total readiness to hear and obey you; I have no hesitation in responding to you. Most of the time in Scripture the person saying ‘Here I am’ doesn’t yet know what the caller wants from him. So hineni can essentially be a statement of faith and absolute trust. The willingness of biblical characters to say henini can be seen throughout the Hebrew Bible: Isaiah said it in his famous calling; little boy Samuel said it in the Temple; Moses said it at the burning bush; Jacob said it during one of his night-time visions; and father Abraham responded to God with a hearty hineni three separate times!  Generally, hineni is often stated in a pivotal moment of that person’s life. ‘Here I am’ can just be a casual response to a caller, but it most often is an important moment in the life of the person responding. As followers of Jesus, what He yearns for us to say is “hineni!”

A Southern Gospel Revival: Courtney Patton – Take Your Shoes Off Moses

Take Off Your Shoes, Moses! Of course, this ground on which Moses was standing wasn’t any different from any other plot of ground thereabouts. This was holy ground because of the Personal Presence of God Himself, and because God set this physical space aside specially for this divine encounter with His servant Moses. St. Ambrose maintains that shoes are made of dead materials unworthy of this particular moment, that “Nothing dead is to stand between God and Moses, for He is the God of the living.” Others have made the shrewd insight that God also wanted Moses shoeless because it would make him less likely to take off running! Yahweh wanted a captive audience in Moses, He wanted Moses to stay put to hear everything He wanted to say, and both of them knew Moses wasn’t going anywhere in that rugged area of the world without some protection on his feet.

Jessy Dixon – Moses, Take Your Shoes Off (Lyric Video)

Names of God. Isn’t it fascinating that God first introduced Himself to Moses by His name Elohim, a rather distant historical name used by Moses’ ancestors. And then a little later at the burning bush God reveals His most personal name, Yahweh. God morphs from the straightforward God his ancestors worshipped, to the mysterious and elusive God whom Moses will worship personally.

1. Elohim. Since the Name referring to Creator God throughout the creation story in Genesis 1 is Elohim, in fact every creative verb in that story specifically trumpets the Name of Elohim, then all through Biblical history the name of Elohim has been especially associated with God’s creative powers. Elohim is a plural term of the singular Supreme Being of God, because only a plural word is sufficient to emphasize God’s exalted greatness and unsurpassed creative powers. It wasn’t unusual to heighten someone’s super-powers by using a plural name, particularly the universal God with transcendent skill and glory and majesty. Elohim was used as the collective term referring to all of God’s divine characteristics, a Name that sums up God’s divine attributes. All the virtues of pure goodness, and wisdom, and power, all the attributes of set-apart holiness, are wrapped up in the single Source of life… Elohim. Elohim is a collective word referring to all these divine characteristics of spiritual and material reality, personal and impersonal. In our current vocabulary, the plural nature of Elohim is a way to emphasize complete greatness and fullness. It would be like saying “SuperGod.” He is the Elohim above all other elohim. The God of gods. The more than super-powerful God of Israel. The Super-existent One. The One whose fullness overflows eternally.
2. Yahweh. “The whole content of biblical history is a commentary on the meaning of this Name,” the rabbinic scholars maintain. When God created that sacred space on Mt. Horeb and presented Himself to Moses at the burning bush, Moses didn’t exactly know how to respond. Moses wanted to know God’s name for one thing, so that he would know how to properly address Him, and call out to Him, and refer to Him. God seemed reluctant to share His most personal eternal Name, so He gave Moses a name that wasn’t even a word. Was this purposely mysterious, or even evasive? It’s clear that the precise pronunciation and spelling have been lost through time. Scholars have been lining up to solve this puzzle of a name for centuries, and have been unsuccessful. It is obviously an archaic use of letters, because Yahweh is the “to be” verb in the future tense. There is no “am” in the Hebrew language, which leads many to claim that Yahweh means, “I will be what I will be.” But many others say that God was using that non-word in the poetic sense with “I AM,” because He is trying to communicate that He is outside of time, so must always speak int the present tense. So now we can try to read Yahweh as, “I AM He who is,” “I AM the One who exists,” or “I AM the Existing One.” Martin Buber thinks the verb could also partly mean “to be actively present.” So Buber, and many other Jewish scholars, think the Name could mean something like, “I will be there as I will be there,” or “I will be what I will be.” Rabbi Jonathon Sacks believes that early Christian translations omitted that future tense altogether. He says that in this Name, the LORD claims to be “the God of the future tense.” In this important future tense, Sacks believes that He is a God of surprises, that we will have to learn to trust Him, and that we will only know Him through His moral commitments and His acts, not just His abstract essence. Dr. David Stern states his view that the root idea of Yahweh is “to breathe,” in other words, “I live!” YHWH, or Yahweh, so basic, so mysterious, so elusive. A personal Name, yet somehow impersonal. It is God’s self-revealed Name, alluding to His uncreated existence, His eternal Personhood, His quality of Being, His basic self-sufficiency and self-existence. It is perhaps somehow a spiritual version of an “act of being” verb. Yahweh, intimately relational, a keeper of covenants, unchangeably complete, infinite and everlasting. God is the LORD, He will not give His glory to another. Yahweh, set apart from everything else in His holiness. “What is the Name’s mystery? First, it has no vowels. Without vowels it is impossible to pronounce a word. But YHWH also has no real consonants! Y, H and W really are blowing sounds, rushings of air through the mouth. The point is one of elusiveness or abstraction. The Name of God is so subtle it could slip away from you. YHWH is not a God you can grab hold of and be sure you’ve got it in your mental grasp.” (Rabbi Arthur Green, These Are the Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life).

Shekinah Glory. Could it be that this unusual fire in the burning bush was the shekinah glory from the Angel’s presence? Could it be that Jesus had brought this unique fire from gloryland? Or could it be that Jesus was wrapped in the fire of the Holy Spirit? Shekinah is a word not found in the Hebrew Bible, but was used by the Jewish authorities between the Testaments and in the Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible to be equivalent to the Hebrew word “Kavod,” which means “glory.”

1. Shekinah is a word that combines “shakan” (Dwells) and “mishkan” (tabernacle), and so literally means “the One who dwells, settles in, resides, makes Himself at home.”
2. Shekinah is defined as the Divine Presence, the glory of God that dwells on earth, and implies God’s nearness, closeness, God’s with-ness to us.
3. Shekinah was often used as a word that represents God’s holy name Yahweh, which was not to be pronounced.
4. Shekinah is understood in Judaism, and then adopted by Christianity, to be the “uncreated light, fire and luminous cloud” that became visible when God made an appearance on the earth. God’s Shekinah glory announced His presence.
5. Shekinah glory is not the full inner essence of God’s Being, since God is an invisible Spirit who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16).  But instead, God’s Shekinah is the “out-raying” of that source of Light, like the sunbeams coming directly from the sun. We can’t even look directly at the sun, but we can see and feel and get the benefits of the sun though its rays. The Shekinah is the sunbeam from the “Father of Lights.” Isn’t it wonderful that the palmist exclaims that “Yahweh God is the sun!” (Ps. 84:11).
6. Shekinah has been described as when the Omnipresent One becomes localized, when the Invisible One becomes visible. Shekinah is God’s visible glory pulsating outwards from the spiritual energy of God’s Being, the flowing out of light from the “consuming fire” of God’s essence . (Ex. 24;17).
7. Shekinah is also equivalent to the Biblical terms “My Glory,”  “The Cloud,” “The Pillar of Cloud,” “My Presence,” and “the Cloud of Yahweh” in the eyes of rabbinic authorities.
8. By the time of Jesus, Shekinah was understood to be the Divine Presence made visible on earth, and so whenever we read of God’s glory in the Hebrew Bible, we can understand God’s glory to be another way of reading about Shekinah glory.

On the Burning Bush as a Symbol Based on Reality. This seemingly random scene out in the middle of nowhere, was actually in the very center of a Divine somewhere. The dramatic Burning Bush was a singular, world-changing event, and lends itself to being viewed as a symbol of many things down through Judeo-Christian history:

1. A Symbol of Israel. The nation of God’s chosen people contains the very presence of God Himself, just like the burning bush, and yet He will not allow it to be consumed or reduced to nothing but ashes. Just like that insignificant thornbush was burning in a fiery blaze without being burned up, Israel will experience fiery trials in its holy calling in the world. The flames will be purifying and redemptive, not destructive, because of God’s very presence in those flames.
2. A Symbol of Scripture. As the Christian poet Judith Kunst says in her book, The Burning Word, “The more closely we examine that burning bush, the Bible, the more steps we take onto the holy ground where a powerful God waits to speak with us. Biblical language, like the burning bush, can hold the very presence of God and not be consumed. We can’t look the Creator of the universe in the face or we will die, but we can look at holy language, not die, and see something of God. Our purpose in reading Holy Scripture is to meet God, meet ourselves, and learn how to live. The Word is burning and is far too hot to handle on our own. Studying the Bible is a distinctly communal activity.“
3. A Symbol of the Virgin Mary. From the first centuries of the Christian Church, the burning bush has been a powerful way to picture the mother of Jesus. Dr. Ellen Davis once noted, “Mary, who carried God in her belly and later in her arms, yet did not dissolve to ash… she is herself the bush that burns perpetually yet is not consumed.” Early Church leaders pictured Mary as holding Christ in her most intimate place, her womb, as did the unburnt bush holding the flames of Jesus in its very center. Divinity dwelled in her, a divinity that was called a consuming fire in His Word, a holy Fire, but Jesus did not consume or destroy her in any way. St. Gregory once said, “The Logos appeared to Moses from the unburnt bush… not as He would later in the flesh, but in the form that could be understood.” An Orthodox hymn joyfully exults in these words… “The bush that burned yet was not consumed prefigured your pure womb, O God-bearer!“

 Let’s get to the Point! After all those introductions were out of the way, Moses and the Angel of Yahweh then engaged in an extended conversation, in which Moses received the Hebrew Bible’s version of the Great Commission. Moses was asked by the Lord to go to Egypt, liberate His chosen people from their slavery, and lead them to the Promised Land. Speaking the mind of God, Jesus informed Moses of the whole scenario with Pharaoh, including the signs and wonders he will demonstrate to the Egyptians. To convince Moses that He could indeed perform these miracles, Jesus demonstrated a couple of on-site wonders. Moses’ staff turned into a snake and then back again to a staff. And then Moses contracted leprosy and was immediately healed of that leprosy. If anything would encourage Moses to embark on this adventure, the Lord is thinking, this should be sufficient. But Moses remained unconvinced, mainly because Moses felt he wasn’t equipped to be an effective spokesman for the Lord. Moses said he was slow of tongue, that he couldn’t speak well enough to represent the Lord in Egypt. So Moses stubbornly responded to God with… thanks but no thanks, please pick someone else. God became angry at this point, and He accommodated Moses somewhat by picking his brother Aaron, a well-spoken man evidently, to be at his side throughout the interaction with Pharaoh. Yahweh then told Moses in no uncertain terms… I will be with you and teach you what to say, so let this be the end to your resistance! Jesus the Heavenly Messenger sent from the Father, from the midst of the burning bush, sent Moses on his way back to Egypt, the land of his birth. And the rest is history. One wonders if any of this miraculous conversation had happened if Moses hadn’t first declared, “Here I am!”