Word of Salvation – Vol.32 No.47 – December 1987
Stooping Majesty Or Santa Mentality
Sermon by Rev. John Goris on Exodus 3:2
Reading: John 8:12-30; Exodus 3:1-14
Singing: Ps.H.48; 55:1,3; 335; 378; 125:4
Does Christmas need an introduction?
More than ever!
The church has always felt the need for preparing for the right celebration of Christ’s first coming. ‘Advent’ is the name we have given to that preparation time.
But the church in these days is competing with the world in preparing for Christmas. Advent time is widely advertised as so many “shopping days till Christmas”. The accent is on ‘giving’, that is, ‘spending’! Huge images of Santa, the patron-saint of shopkeepers, are plastered all over shopping plazas.
You see, there is a Santa-mentality about that governs much of our thinking about God, especially at Christmas-time.
– God is so gracious and so kind, He won’t send anyone to hell! I can just do my own thing, and when I smile at Him, He smiles back!
– Jesus is fine as a child in the manger. Someone about whom we can get awfully sentimental at Christmas, but whom we can safely ignore the rest of the year!
That kind of thinking is affecting the church too: possibly not in theory, more likely in practical ways.
For that reason we want to turn to Exodus 3 today.
God is essentially the Same. He is still a ‘consuming tire’, but for the sake of His great mercy, the fire is not always consuming’ as Moses already discovered. He is MAJESTIC, and He graciously STOOPS to His people’s need.
The writer to the Hebrews had to remind the early church of this (13:8; 12:29), for it seemed that they were no longer feeling that IMPACT of their great salvation, as Hebrews chapter 2 verse 3 shows.
So let’s try to get things into the right perspective again:
STOOPING MAJESTY or SANTA-MENTALITY?
We shall first discover – a Telling Truth (1).
and then – a Timeless Truth (2).
- A Telling Truth
The change-over was quite remarkable! Moses, the prince of Egypt, had becomes Moses, shepherd in the Sinai desert. Palace life with people all around him to do his bidding, had become the solitary life, with only sheep, in the hot burning sun.
It had been 40 years since he left his life of prominence and luxury behind him. A complete generation ago!
Desert-life doesn’t offer much variety… or does it? Say, that is strange!! ..a burning bush, that doesn’t burn up! Must have a closer look. What a sight! How unusual! Did he hear a voice? Yes, there it was again. God’s voice? “MOSES! MOSES! Yes, eh, here I am. Don’t come any closer, Moses; take off your sandals. The place where you are standing is HOLY ground!”
There in that burning fire God was making a special appearance. “The Angel of the Lord” He is called (in vs.2). He can’t be just an angel. The Old Testament often speaks of God coming to man as an Angel. But there is absolutely no doubt as to His identity: listen, He is announcing Himself: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Here is God in Person speaking to Moses, and Moses is scared, he hides his face, he dares not look.
This particular coming of God is very telling: Notice, that it reminds Moses of God’s holiness: Keep your distance! Remove your sandals! God is so different from us. We must never forget that He is so majestic. He is the Maker of the universe. He is the only living Being who is not a creature. He is so altogether HOLY that we (with our sinful, imperfect minds) cannot even imagine how PURE He is, and how exalted. Even as New Testament Christians we may never lose sight of this. We must remember that when we pray to Him, when we speak of Him.
In this age of equality in so many areas of life, we may NEVER apply that equality to God, and even when we think of Jesus, “becoming like us his brothers”, we must think with holy AWE.
Remember what the apostle says?
“…the Word became flesh (i.e. human being)… and we beheld His glory, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…!” (John 1:14)
Notice also, that this burning fire reminds us of God’s purifying power: God is so holy that anything UN-holy cannot stand before Him. God is making sinful man aware of this: He merits nothing but death! Fire is a symbol of God’s judgment. And our lives can’t stand the test of that fire. What did Malachi say again, in speaking of Messiah’s coming?
“…but who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire…!” (3:2)
You probably remember that God had predicted to Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved and pass through the furnace of affliction in a strange land (Gen.15:13).
There is a need for that refining fire in our lives! God is busy with you and me. He won’t leave us alone. It will hurt. It will be unpleasant. It will, sometimes, make us angry, furious. But it is necessary. For it drives us to Him, crying, despairing. (Didn’t it happen to you?) When your child died? When your marriage partner left? When your business collapsed?
The Bible says it is necessary for us, SO that we may share “His holiness” (Heb.12:10). That’s why!
But, you know, God knows exactly how far He can go. That is also what we are shown here.
For notice, thirdly, this appearance in the burning bush, reminds us of God’s great grace: the bush did not burn up!!
Now it was THAT above all that caught Moses’ eye! Here is this great God, the Almighty, coming to His people, and they are NOT burned up.
Amazing!
They were tested in Egypt: were they ever! …but, you see, they MULTIPLY. God has His hand on them.
What does God say to Moses?
“I have indeed SEEN the misery of my people…” (vs.7)
and
“So I have COME down to rescue them…!” (vs.8)
Ah, do you see the picture? God’s heart is moved with loving compassion, the Almighty stoops down to deliver. And what is more! He is with them in their sorrows: in Christ! “Out of Egypt I have called My Son!” (Hos.11:1)
Isaiah says (63:9), “in all their affliction He was afflicted…!”
Do you know of that presence in affliction? Do you know that when you went through the depths, He was graciously with you? Jeremiah knew it,
“…because of the Lord’s great mercies we are not consumed, because Your compassions fail not; they are new every morning: Great is Thy faithfulness…’ (Lam.3:22, 23).
Isn’t all that a telling truth about God? Your God? A holy, majestic God, “a consuming tire” … and YET we are NOT CONSUMED!
- A Timeless Truth
This revelation of God in the burning bush is also timeless. The fact is that God Himself is the Timeless One. God says to Moses, “Tell Israel, I AM has sent me to you” (3:14).
I AM! As He was to Abraham, so He was to Jacob, so He is to Moses. He is likewise the same to us.
That truth lies behind His coming down at Christmas time, that first Christmas: He’s come to the RESCUE, and look HOW He comes: He comes as a Child! A Child in a manger… nevertheless God. Oh the wonder of it all!
The Almighty comes down, in all His glory, holiness, brightness – brightness greater than in an atomic explosion – BUT He covered it up, covered up in human flesh, covered up in swaddling bands, and we were not consumed by the glory of His majesty.
So close He came, so marvellous, that we could TOUCH Him, touch His tiny hands, the hands that ‘made’ the world, this vast universe.
Moses the shepherd couldn’t touch, but Bethlehem’s shepherds could.
So God came, the HOLY One, the FIERY One, the POWERFUL One, the Light of the World, and they thought they could do ANYTHING with Him… But He was God! The soldiers of the Temple corps could not lay hands on Him, “No one ever spoke like this Man…!”
Away with that SANTA-mentality that creeps into our thinking; we tend to see Him as “a Man at his best”, a superstar. And so we think we can do with God what we like; we can come to him when it suits US, (when we have first lived it up, had our fling, and all the rest – so we think!)
But, don’t be mistaken! We cannot push Him away until it suits us, we cannot push His laws away and call them ‘old hat’.
The church throughout the centuries has known this HOLY God, whose purifying fire still burns; that church of which God says “I know your affliction and your poverty but you are rich! – and I have STOOPED down!
The early church knew it, the church in China knows it. Does the church in New Zealand / Australia) know it?
Do you and I know this wondrous God, who is touching our lives in the TRIALS of His grace, to bring about the TRIUMPHS of His grace?
Somebody once put it like this:
The God who allows you to suffer, is the God who loves you!
The God who took away, is the God who gives you all you need.
The God who tests you, is the God who keeps you standing.
The God who has a holy anger against sin,
and whom NONE can approach,
is the God who justifies sinners
and who opens for them the way into His holy presence.
That God we meet in Jesus Christ,
in whom the suffering,
deprivation, temptation
and the consuming power have become a reality.
And HE SAVES… the SINNER!
Have you had a glimpse of that God touching your life, somehow, somewhere?
Have you been frustrated and stood in holy AWE and WONDER?
Not grasping His greatness, but grasping something of His grace?
The bruised reed He will not break,
the smoking flax He will not quench.
We might THINK it, but we are NOT consumed.
COME, let us CELEBRATE the marvel of His coming!
AMEN.