The great I AM has come to save you.

 

Sermon for Pentecost 2, June 11, 1984

Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you in Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen.

Exodus 3:1-15  Now Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, a priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  ²The Angel of the Lord appeared to him in blazing fire from within a bush.  Moses saw that the bush was on fire, but the bush was not burning up.  ³So he said, “I will go over and look at this amazing sight―to find out why the bush is not burning up.”  ⁴When the Lord saw that Moses had gone over to take a look, God called to him from the middle of the bush and said, “Moses!  Moses!”  Moses said, “I am here.”  ⁵The Lord said, “Do not come any closer.  Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”  ⁶He then said, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.  ⁷The Lord said, “I have certainly seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry for help because of their slave drivers.  Yes, I am aware of their suffering.  ⁸So I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.  ⁹Now indeed, the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me.  Yes, I have seen how the Egyptians are oppressing them.  ¹⁰Come now, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”  ¹¹But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  ¹²So God said, “I will certainly be with you.  This will be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.”  ¹³But Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I say to them?”  ¹⁴So God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  He also said, “You will say this to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”  ¹⁵God also told Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers―the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob―has sent me to you.  This is my name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered from generation to generation.’” (EHV)

The great I AM has come to save you.

Dear elect of the Living God,

            It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  In the history of the Children of Israel, God gave the world a living picture of His love and mercy.  At the same time in that historical diorama, we are shown the horrible end that comes to those who reject the God who created the world and everything in it.  God graciously chose to bless Israel so that all people yet to come could experience His great mercy to those who believe in His promises, and conversely, that they see His judgment upon all those who oppose His gracious will.  The message of our text for us is that The great I AM has come to save you.

When the time came for God to carry out His plan to rescue Abraham’s descendants from slavery in Egypt, He chose a shepherd to carry out that rescue.  Now, in this foreshadowing of what the Savior would do for all people, Moses appeared as an ordinary man appointed to an extraordinary task.  The details are different, yet the events of Moses’ life foreshadow much of what Jesus would live as a Man, and the experience of Israel in Egypt foreshadows that of all God’s people. 

While Moses was adopted into the Egyptian Pharoah’s family, Jesus was born into the line of King David through the virgin Mary.  As an infant, Moses had to be rescued from the deluded jealousy of a Pharoah, just as by an escape to Egypt, Joseph would protect Jesus from King Herod’s jealous rampage.  Just as Moses had to flee from the land of his birth to Midian to avoid the wrath of a ruler, so Joseph and Mary raised Jesus in the hinterlands of Galilee to avoid Herod’s son’s jurisdiction.  Just as Moses made his living as a shepherd during his time in exile, so in His sojourn on earth, Jesus was the Good Shepherd who laid down His life to save His sheep of all times and all places.

The descendants of Abraham had now been dwelling in Egypt for about four hundred years, just as God had told Abraham they would.  The great blessing that Joseph had been to the Egyptian nation was no longer remembered by the Pharaohs, and they enslaved the Israelites under heavy bondage.  However, no one should imagine that God had forgotten His people or His promises.  The Israelites, on the other hand, appear to have forgotten God’s promise to Abraham.  Moses, likewise, does not recognize the Lord when He calls.  Like all of us at birth, Moses and his people had much to learn.  Notice, though, God’s ongoing, gracious concern: The Lord said, “I have certainly seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry for help because of their slave drivers.  Yes, I am aware of their suffering.” 

In our day and age, many have forgotten God.  Likewise, there are many times that we are tempted to wonder whether God remembers to keep His eyes on us.  Does He see the troubles we all have to face in these tumultuous times?  Does he recognize the dangers that oppose us in our day-to-day lives?  At the same time, we might fearfully ask, does God see our rebellious ways?  Does He see our sins, our weaknesses, our disobedience, our disdain? 

Our text shows us, graphically, that God doesn’t miss any of that.  He sees it all.  He sees our faults, and He sees everything the world and the devil do to mislead and abuse us.  Therefore, we must remember that our God is the Great I AM, the God of mercy and lovingkindness, the same God who promised His people, “I will forgive their guilt, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)

Because it is not God’s desire to condemn sinners as we deserve, but rather, that “God our Savior, … wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” (1 Timothy 2:3-4) He spoke to Moses, telling His chosen prophet and rescuer exactly what the Lord would do for Israel, which would foreshadow what the Christ would do for all sinners trapped in the slavery of sin.  The preincarnate Lord declared, “So I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”  What does this mean for you and me?  As we read Israel’s history, we learn of how God carried out the rescue of His chosen people.  Through it all, the people did nothing to save themselves.  Rather, God the Lord, alone, delivered them from slavery and led them to their promised home. 

To do what the people were powerless to do, God came down to earth to lead His chosen people out of cruel slavery, through a wilderness life, to a good land promised to their forefather for eternity.  It is an illustrative picture of how God’s Son, Jesus, came down from heaven to take on human flesh in order to deliver us, and all who believe, from the bondage of our sinful flesh and the devil’s power over us. 

More direct correlations could be drawn from throughout Israel’s rescue pointing us to Jesus and to how we are saved.  Therefore, we too can look forward to being delivered to the Promised Land of heaven—not by our own efforts but through the life and sacrifice of the Angel of the Lord, His own dear Son, Jesus, who came into this world on a mission to save the lost and enslaved souls of mankind.

When Moses trembled in worry, God promised, “I will certainly be with you.  This will be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.”  Again, from the history recorded in the Bible, we know that God did indeed bring His people out of Egypt with a powerful demonstration of His authority over all things, and because God carried out this promise just as He had said, we can know that His promises to us are also true. 

Now, some might question the corollary, but from beginning to end of the Bible, what God promises happens.  What God records as history is backed up by evidence in the fossil record, in archeological studies, and even in much recorded secular history.  Sure, the sceptics argue against God’s Word, yet God’s Word still stands triumphant. 

Therefore, when the Holy Spirit causes Paul to write, “‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’ of whom I am the worst.  But I was shown mercy for this reason: that in me, the worst sinner, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his unlimited patience as an example for those who are going to believe in him, resulting in eternal life,” (1 Timothy 1:15-16) we can trust that our sins, no matter how grievous, are also forgiven for the sake of God’s Son who gave His life to pay for the guilt of us all.  Just as God was patient with Israel, and likewise with Paul, so He has been patient with us, not wanting to condemn us but to work faith in our hearts through Word and Sacrament, so that we too will believe in Jesus unto life everlasting.  For this purpose, The great I AM has come to save you.

In our text, God, the Angel of the Lord, and the Great I AM are one and the same God.  Whether two or three persons of the Trinity are speaking to Moses may be argued, but God always works as One, whether the action be by the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit.  In answer to Moses’ question as to who he should say has sent him, God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  He also said, “You will say this to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”  

From everlasting to everlasting, our God lives and reigns over all things.  Likewise, because of His great love and mercy, the I AM came into this world in the Man, Christ Jesus.  He came to deliver us from death, the devil, and eternal condemnation.  By making Himself God’s holy sacrificial Lamb, Jesus took away the sins of the world and ripped us from the control of the prince of this world to bring us to the safety and peace of heaven.  At the same time, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God sends all who reject the Triune God to eternal torment. 

Today, again, Jesus gives us His body and blood in His holy Supper, to mark the doorposts of our hearts with the blood He shed on our behalf, and to give us to eat of His body that was nailed to a tree in our place, to remind us of His great mercy and grace, to restore in us the forgiveness Jesus won on the cross, and to strengthen our faith in Him as the everlasting Savior and Redeemer, who will lead us through the wilderness of this world to our true home in the glorious, everlasting Promised Land of heaven.  By His life, death, and resurrection from the grave, The great I AM has come to save you.  Amen.

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and establish you in every good work and word.  Amen.