I Have Come Down | Exodus 3:1-15

Where is God? This is one of human beings' most frequently-asked and incorrectly-answered questions. We are tempted to believe that evidence of God's presence is found in outward circumstances. We equate good fortune with God's favor and bad fortune with his judgment. So, as long as nothing terrible is happening, God must not be
too angry with us, right? We are free to go on sinning. Such foolish assumptions must be crushed. Therefore, God must constantly remind us where he intends to be found—in the gospel. He makes himself present in Word and sacraments. Because he is always present, we realize the urgent need to turn away from the sin he despises. Because
his presence is graciously hidden, we are drawn to him for forgiveness rather than driven away from him in fear.

Transcript

Don’t get nervous, but I have a mini pop quiz for you this morning. I’m going to list off two phrases and I want you to decide whether they come from the Bible or not. Here we go: “Good things come to those who wait.” “God helps those who help themselves.” Have your answers in mind? Trick question! Even if you search every single page and paragraph of the Scriptures, you will not find either of those two phrases. Yet, it’s interesting that many of us have either said these things or thought them. Now, if we were talking about the philosophy of karma, these two statements fit right in. Our culture is very experiential. We base much of our life perspective on our outward circumstances. If something goes our way, it’s easy to see God’s loving presence. Yet, there are times when things don’t go how we hoped, and we mistakenly miss God’s presence amidst it all. As you process all your life experiences on a second by second basis, where will you see God’s presence? In subjectivity or objectivity? To discover this life-changing truth of presence, God needed to come down. 

When we filter God’s presence through experience and emotion, he can be hard to detect. For Moses after his 80th birthday, he thought he knew where God’s presence was. The past four decades of his life had dramatically altered who he thought he was. There was a time when he fantasized about rescuing his people. Even though he never experienced slavery, being a helpless onlooker to it had its own set of struggles. Many of you know when he hit his breaking point. Murdering a slave driver, running for his life, but that was then. This was now. He was happily married. He was a dad. He had security in Midian. But then, God needed to come down to give him an entirely different kind of security.

I think we can relate. The whole concept of security can easily take a subjective turn. We heard that turn happen in the gospel today when Jesus talked about the tower falling in Siloam. We picked up on it in our second reading when Paul talked about complacency in our spiritual life. We have a tendency as sinners to look at life through a semi-karma-like prism. When life is going well, I must be doing something right. When life starts to take a dive, it must be a consequence of something I messed up. We perceive our life security based on our life circumstances. When the circumstances we deem to be the standard by which we are secure fall-through, a nosedive can quickly set in as the gravity of life weighs on us. Moses would come to discover this too.

Moses is doing his 9-5 of shepherding when he sees this bush. It’s not too uncommon to see a bush being scorched in the wilderness, but it is uncommon when that bush burns minute after minute with no ash being found on the ground. Moses, filtering through experience, approaches the phenomenon and he couldn’t have expected what happened next. He hears a voice calling his name, “Moses, Moses!” The first layer of security, the law of nature, is broken through. Bushes don’t speak. Voices don’t make a sound out of thin air. But God wasn’t done breaking through so-called “securities.” As Moses responds to God’s call, the Lord breaks another security barrier, he says to Moses, “Do not come any closer, take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Moses first witnessed something that went far beyond physical security; now he sees his spiritual security altered as well. Simply by the glow of God’s presence that dry dust became the most valuable piece of property in the world. That word “holy” jumped out at Moses. It jumps out at us too and for good reason!

God’s holiness reminds us of our incapability of achieving spiritual security on our own. Holiness is not simply his righteousness (although that is part of it), but also his otherness. It is the distinction between the Creator and the creature, the infinite distance between God’s deity and our humanity. Like Moses, we have to stop dead in our tracks when we approach God. We can’t subject him to our scrutiny. He is far above us, which is why he needed to come down. He needed to give us a new sense of security. However, when we first encounter that security, it seems more like imminent danger.

As the Lord describes the deep pain he has seen coming from his enslaved people, he reveals his saving heart in a jaw-dropping phrase, “I have come down to rescue them.” God lays out not only how he is saving them “from something” but also saving them “to somewhere.” It’s not enough just to free them from slavery. The Lord will take them to the beautiful Promised Land. Can you picture Moses nodding his head, huge smile, excited to see God work, but then the sentence comes that vanishes that smile, “So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Moses is stunned and he asks the question you and I and society so easily gravitate towards. The question that drives our search for security, “Who am I?” 

Have you ever considered how this question affects every action and thought you have? When we feel sure of ourselves, confidence naturally follows. When we feel happy, life takes on a different hue. When we feel confused, our actions can be misplaced and misdirected. When we think like victims, victims are who we remain. The question, “Who am I” can lead to seismic life changes, but it isn’t the most important question we can ask. Your identity as a human being matters, but the only way you can answer that question, “Who am I?” is by having a secure answer to the bigger question, “Who is God?”

Our God does not remain aloof to that question, expecting us to figure it out independently. Instead, he has come down through human language, and look at his words to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” It sounds rather impressive to hear God described as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” until one discovers that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were deeply flawed individuals. They were liars and tricksters, schemers and dreamers. Nevertheless, by his grace, God entered into a personal relationship with them—a relationship of covenant love. God gave them unbreakable promises of eternal blessing. He is not ashamed because he is the God of covenant love. When people are brought to him through faith, he is pleased to be known as their God forever. This is the security we so desperately seek!

We no longer try to figure ourselves out and outfit ourselves to be holy like God. Instead, he came down to us. He identified with us. Each of those believers God mentioned was a sinner like you and me, and yet when our identity is reborn in baptism and faith, we stand on holy ground with God. His holiness isn’t our undoing, it’s our saving grace. Yet, you know as well as I do that people, sometimes even you and me, struggle to see the grace of God’s holiness. But this holiness is our greatest security and here’s why: We want something holy in his unholy universe. We want a God who is perfect and who makes things new. 

We want security in knowing who our God is and always will be. That’s the beauty of when God gives Moses the name he is to be called, “I am who I am,” a name that keeps hidden as much as it reveals. The LORD is a God who is never absent but always hidden. Because of that hiddenness, sinners like you and me can boldly stand in his presence. His hiddenness draws us to the fire that warms and illumines but does not consume. His hiddenness is found at the cross where Jesus consumed all the hellish flames we should have endured and instead he offers to us his Rock of security, that Rock of the gospel that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 10 that gives life. When you and I see that only Jesus gives the security we so long for and crave, it’s there that the question “Who am I?” is put in its proper place. It’s not answered by experience or emotion, but by the mighty words of God.

The Lord hasn’t called you to lead Israel out of Egypt, but he has called you to be a wife, husband, father, mom, worker, church member, student, and sibling. When we size up ourselves and our God-given callings, it can be daunting. Yet, just like with Moses, God doesn’t come down to us and tell us why we are qualified for such vocations. Instead, he keeps on repeating the most secure and empowering truth, “I will be with you.” The real question is not who we are, but who God is. His call to service always comes with the promise of his presence. How can this not give us extreme confidence! Not in our innate abilities, but in the changeless, personal, powerful presence of our Lord! 

So, we approach him in reverence and confidence. We reject the world’s notions of what security is all about and we live that invigorating life of repentance. We see the holes in our souls and we run to the Holy One who makes us whole. The greatest blessing of all is that we don’t need to run far. Jesus has come down to us. He bridged that spiritual gap we could’ve never jumped across. His cross became our bridge to the most secure place of all. When the question “Who am I” comes barreling down your life experiences, redirect it with the most secure fact of all, “The Lord has come down. He is with me.” It’s on that foundation that you will have the surest footing and security never to be broken through. Amen.