EXODUS 3
“The mountain of God”, to which Moses came after being forty years in the land of Midian, was that divine elevation from which God made Himself known in delivering grace and power, and in faithfulness to His promises and covenant. Moriah, Horeb, and Zion are each spoken of as the mountain of God or Jehovah, and it is interesting to note the connection between them. MORIAH (Jah provides) was the place where the burnt-offering would be divinely provided (Genesis 22: 14). This is the basis of all God’s [p. 14] ways in grace and blessing. HOREB was where God made Himself known in grace and faithfulness as the One who would deliver His people from bondage, and bring them into the promised inheritance. ZION will be the seat of the kingdom — Jehovah’s holy mountain — in that future day of which the prophets so largely speak, when all that God proposed to do at Horeb will be accomplished, and it will all rest upon, and be secured by, the value and sweet savour of Christ as the burnt-offering, the provision of which is connected with Moriah. So that we get the basis of God’s ways in grace at Moriah, the character of those ways at Horeb, and their fruition in Zion.
The “great sight” which Moses turned aside to see in the mountain of God was a thorn-bush burning with fire and yet not being consumed. It was a striking figure of the fact that Jehovah was about to appear in good will towards His people. We read of “the good will of him that dwelt in the bush” (Deuteronomy 33: 16). A thorn-bush — or bramble — was an appropriate symbol of what the people were; as unsuited naturally to the presence of God as a bramble would be to abide uninjured in a flame of fire. But it was in the heart of God to dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and to bring about in His own “good will” conditions which would render this possible. Indeed, it was His thought to become their glory, and to put His beauty upon them. Psalm 90, which is “A prayer of Moses, the man of God”, was the fruit of what he saw at Horeb. The frailty of the people — their bramble character — is plainly seen there, and the necessity that they should be disciplined and humbled by the recognition of it; but the blessedness of the last two verses is what God had before Him.
“[p. 15] Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy majesty unto their sons. And let the beauty of Jehovah our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, the work of our hands, establish thou it”. Jehovah’s work and majesty would appear in the way He would deliver and bless such a people; then He would clothe them with His own beauty or graciousness — He would become their glory (Psalm 106: 20); and, finally, it would be the work of their hands to make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them. He would establish it all Himself. These two verses give us an epitome of the book of Exodus.
It was not the flame of fire that arrested Moses’ attention, but the fact that “the thorn-bush was not being consumed”. Moses had learned something of the thorn-bush character of the people. He had looked on their state in Egypt, and he had also learned experimentally that they were not even ready to avail themselves of a divine deliverance when it was brought near to them. He had been pondering this for forty years when he saw the bush. He had long before viewed them as the people of God, and had cast in his lot with them as being such. He had viewed them as in relation to God, and had sought to act for them, but all had failed; their burdens remained unlightened, and he was an exile in Midian. Now he had to begin at the other end, and to see God in relation to the people. If God made Himself known in view of the establishment of covenant relations with His people, that necessitated their deliverance and preservation, and was the pledge of their being brought into suitability to Him for His pleasure and [p. 16] glory. Who but God could have brought this about for such a thorn-bush as Israel?
The thorn-bush contemplates man as he is here, but as made the subject of marvellous divine good will, through the activity of which he is brought into accord with the grace that has reached him. It suggests unlikely material to be in contact with flame, but the fact that it was not consumed showed the presence and result of marvellous divine acting. The fallen creature is, as we should say, very unlikely material for God to connect His glory with, but that creature becomes, through infinite grace, the vessel of God’s praise. Such is the line of thought suggested here, and I have no doubt “this great sight” was the answer to long years of exercise in the heart of Moses, and that it laid the foundation in his soul of his subsequent thoughts of the people.
God had set His heart, if we may so say, on dwelling in that thorn-bush, and He would work in grace, and also in holy discipline, in order that all might become suitable to His dwelling there. God would effect what was for His own pleasure from His own side. He would make Himself known in grace, and bring the heart of man under the effective influence of that revelation, and thus secure a response to Himself. He would by His grace engage the hearts of His people with Himself, and close them to every rival.
At the mountain of God we learn divine thoughts in all their blessedness. We see, in figure, that what God proposes is to dwell in grace and holiness in the midst of His people, and that in order to bring this about He will act in grace and delivering power so as to win their hearts and subdue them to Himself in conscience and affections. We have to “turn aside” from conditions here — from everything human and natural — to see this great sight. Moses had to loose his sandals from off his feet. It is very holy ground to see God in relation to His people, and His people brought as the subjects of grace into accord with Him. The thoughts of grace are holy thoughts; they do not give an atom of place to man in the flesh; indeed, they are outside the range of the flesh altogether. We shall never put our shoes on as sons in the house (Luke 15), if we have not known what it is to take them off at the mountain of God in the presence of God’s grace and holiness. The holiness of grace necessitates an entirely new order of things. Hence Jehovah reveals Himself as “the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”.
As the God of Abraham He calls sovereignly; His call indicates His desire and sovereign purpose to have man for Himself. Then as the God of Isaac He is known as acting in the power of resurrection to secure the accomplishment of His desire and purpose. He has brought in Christ, and raised Him from the dead to be the One by whom He gives effect to all the thoughts of His grace. And as the God of Jacob He is seen as the One who displaces practically from His people by discipline all that is of the flesh so that we may come into correspondence with His thoughts for us. God deals with us so that we may be in keeping with what He has purposed in grace. That He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is His Name for ever, His memorial unto all generations.
It is most important to view the people of God in relation to God’s purpose and grace — in relation to [p. 18] Christ and the Spirit. This gives us an entirely new standpoint from which to regard them. And it is very holy ground; there is no toleration of what is unsuited to God; He is known as a flame of fire. He will consume in holy discipline what is not pleasing to Himself, but He will work in grace to bring about what is in accord with Himself. He will have His people to be partakers of His holiness so that He may be able to be very near to them — even to dwell in their midst.
God comes out to effect what will be for His pleasure — to bring the hearts of His people under the influence of grace so that they may be formed in thoughts and affections which are responsive to grace — and to give effect to all the purposes of His love. “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good and spacious land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey”. At the mountain of God we learn what God has in His heart, and the direction in which His grace will move effectively, and that puts us on the same line in mind and affection. Otherwise we may get the people of God before us as identified with the flesh; there is no elevating power then. Here it is what God proposes; Balaam’s vision from the top of the rocks is prophetic of the effectuation of it; he saw the people as they will be when the work of God has become effective in them; hence he says, “It shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!” It is not there what God has thought, but what He has wrought in His people. Balaam saw them, in prophetic vision, as in accord with God’s mind in the wilderness; through His own blessed work in them. But here it is the grace in [p. 19] which God makes Himself known, and in which He proposes to deliver His people, and to bring them into the land of His purpose.
There is also a blessed hint of how His grace would triumph in bringing about a true response to Himself even in the wilderness. “I will be with thee; and this shall be the sign to thee that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain”. Sometimes Christians see the utter ruin of man in the flesh on the one hand, and the purpose of God in Christ completely outside responsibility on the other, without giving sufficient place to the present work of God — the teaching of grace made effective in the souls of His people by the Holy Ghost so that everything unsuited to Him may be set aside morally in them even while in the sphere of responsibility, and elements brought in that are in accord with God and responsive to Him. “This mountain” was where God was declaring what His grace would do for His people, but it was also to be the spot where there would be secured response to that grace from His people. We shall see as we read this book that it is divided into two great parts. As far as the end of chapter 18 it is, in the main, the unfolding of what God was in grace for His people. From chapter 19 to the end of the book it is the development of what His people were to be for Him. We have first to learn what God is in grace for man, then we are prepared to consider what man is to be in holy service for God. His proposal was to deliver His people so that He might be served by a people in liberty, and brought into responsive accord with His holy thoughts.
[p. 20] In verses 11 and 13 we see workings which were not those of faith even in Moses. The unshod feet and the hidden face of verses 5 and 6 might well have taught him that he need not ask, “Who am I?” Nor did the blessed declarations of verses 6 to 12 leave much room for an inquiry as to “What is his name?” For His Name could only express what He was in compassion, faithfulness, and grace, and this had been wondrously told by His own lips from the thorn-bush. But God had come down in GRACE, and in grace He met the “Who am I?” of Moses by saying, “I will be with thee”, and in answer to the question, “What is his name?” He said, “I AM THAT I AM”. What He had declared as to His compassion, grace, and faithfulness to His promises and covenant was the outcome of what He was. He was the eternally unchanging, the self-existing One; He was “I AM”. That God should come before the souls of His people in that character really puts every other consideration into insignificance, and it connects faith with all the stability and blessedness of what He is. Man, the fallen creature, is a negation; concerning all that is good he can only say, “I am not”. But God is “I AM”. It was no question of what the people were from their side, but of the absolute and unchanging character of the self-existent and eternal One, and of what He would effect by His own gracious power.
The full meaning of the name Jehovah was now to come out. It implied that God would make Himself known in the deliverance of His people, and in His fidelity to the covenant, and that He would so set them in the blessedness of being brought to Him that they would in perfect freedom enter into the covenant [p. 21] relationship which He purposed to establish, so as to serve Him “in this mountain”. He would effect all from His own side.
To serve God “in this mountain” suggests that the service would be rendered in the liberty of all those thoughts of grace and good will which were cherished in the heart of God, and which had found expression from the thorn-bush. Jehovah claimed His people for His service. They were to say to the king of Egypt, “Let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God”. The proposal was, that removed typically, by the distance of death and resurrection from Egypt and its bondage, they would minister to the pleasure of God by bringing Christ, in figure, before Him.
And the close of the chapter suggests that God would see to it that His people should not only be liberated from every element of bondage, but that they should be enriched. The moral and religious world has appropriated many conceptions which were originally of God, and therefore have divine value. The world would be poor indeed if it had no conceptions of moral excellence. It has had moralists who have shown “the work of the law written in their hearts”, and who have to some extent practised “by nature the things of the law”, and who have formulated rules by which men should discipline themselves, and regulate their conduct. It has taken up the law of God, where the light of it has come providentially, and even the teaching and example of Christ and His apostles. And it prides itself on all these things as a kind of moral wealth. But, in truth every conception that is morally excellent — wherever found — really condemns man, for he does not practise the code [p. 22] which he professes to admire, he does not keep the law, nor obey Christ. Good and divine conceptions are there, but they are all taken up in reference to the wrong man — a man who never answered to them, nor ever will. They only condemn the man who — strangely enough — makes his boast in them.
Hence these conceptions of good which men entertain only bring upright souls and tender consciences into bondage. They are convicted of not being what they feel they ought to be. And the more earnestly they endeavour to be what they realize they ought to be, the deeper is the sense of failure and of bitter disappointment. This is really one great element of Egyptian bondage; it is indeed trying to make bricks without straw!
But in the blessed light of divine grace as it is disclosed at the mountain of God we learn that God would take every conception that men have ever entertained that has in itself moral excellence and value — for I think the gold and silver of Egypt may be taken as representing this — and would give it to His people as made good in Christ. The world has no moral right to enrich and accredit itself with conceptions to which it does not, and cannot, answer. But God has brought in a Man after His own heart, One in whom there has been a perfect answer to all His pleasure. Every moral excellence has been found in full perfection in Him, and it is given to the people of God in Him — in a living Person who attracts and satisfies and forms their affections by the blessedness that is in Himself. Their hearts can rest in a Person in whom they are enriched with every kind of moral wealth.
The silver and the gold no doubt became material [p. 23] for the tabernacle. When every conception of moral excellence is seen to be substantiated in Christ, and becomes bound up with Him in the faith and affections of the people of God, they are enriched in Him, and furnished with material for the tabernacle. The world has no title to anything that has true moral value. It belongs by the gift of divine grace to the people of God as made good in Christ.
A delivered and enriched people could minister to the pleasure of God, and make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them. It was a wonderful time when they made the tabernacle. They served Jehovah, as He had said, “in this mountain”. A liberated and enriched people — made willing-hearted under the influence of the grace in which Jehovah had brought them to Himself, and wise-hearted as having, in type, His Spirit — prepared Him a habitation. The thought of sonship underlies it all, for Jehovah said, “Israel is my son, my firstborn. And I say to thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me” (Exodus 4: 22, 23). Sonship supposes mutuality of delight — God delighting in His people, and His people delighting in Him. Caleb said, “If Jehovah delight in us, he will bring us into this land and give it us”. I think he had, typically, the spirit of sonship.