THE BURNING BUSH
"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."Ex. 3: 2.
NOW this evening I feel sure it will help you just to glance at what we have already talked over together. First, we had the Land of Loneliness, where our souls dwell by nature, and how we came to be there, and how the idol Self is the center of our worship there; and how our souls are morally dead,—that is, apart from God,—and how the great sea of Death is ever rising round us, each one of us. Then the next evening we saw the Flaming Sword that stood betwixt Adam and Eve and the tree of life on earth. We saw there was no way back to life and to a holy God because of the Fire. That because He is righteous His judgment must ever lie betwixt Himself and sin. Then last evening we saw a wonderful sight; for we saw that in eternity God had purposed a way by which His Light and His Fire should get into the Land of Loneliness—where man was shut up under His righteous doom—to save, and not to destroy. We saw how the great enemy who lay between us and life and liberty, and used God's very righteousness to seal the doom of the feeble creatures he had ruined, was defeated, struck from beneath by One who went down under the waters of Death and through the Fire of judgment to do it, and who rose triumphant and came away with the keys of death and of hell. We saw how that One left the way open for God's Light and Fire to pass into the Land of Loneliness, to lead us out of it unto Himself. Yes; all God's side is settled— settled forever: but now to-night we must see how it all affects us individually, and we must talk about the Call of God.
Long ago there was a guilty man who lay down to sleep under all the midnight glory of the eastern heavens. He had just sacrificed his elder brother to Self on the altar in the Land of Loneliness, and as he lay and slept, with his head upon a stone, a vision rose upon the sight of his soul in its inner Land of Loneliness, and he saw that the angels of God were about him, that God's providential care was over him; and a Voice reached his inner ear, a Voice full of grace and love, assuring him of blessing because of the promise given to his forefather Abraham. Was he delighted? No; he was terrified, and awoke saying, "Surely God was in this place, and I knew it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
Would you be glad to find yourself at "the gate of heaven"? Not with your sins upon you; and when the Call of God reaches the soul in the Land of Loneliness with its sins upon it, it wakes up and cries, "How dreadful is this place!" A sense that the darkness cannot hide from God is upon it. Is this your feeling, your cry, just now? I went once to visit a dying man, who told me that lie had always done what was right, and his hope of mercy lay in the thought that he had never, as he thought, sinned badly. I read him Psa. 139, and, as he pondered those solemn words, God let in the Light upon his soul, He saw that his ways, his words, his thoughts, were all known to God: "Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. There is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether." He started to find himself in "the condemned cell," with the tide of Death even then sweeping in upon him. He cried like Jacob, "How dreadful is this place!" The Voice of God reached his soul, and well was it for him that the Light and the Fire were there to show him God's way of escape. To him, indeed, it was "the gate of heaven."
Have you ever been suddenly called by name when you thought you were quite alone and that no one could see you? I remember once, when I was quite a child, how startled I was at being called by name in that way. I was running about in the garden near my home looking at the currant bushes, which were then laden with their ruby clusters. I had been strictly forbidden to touch the fruit, and I was not thinking of doing so, but suddenly a voice called my name. I started; who could be near me there? I looked as far as I could over the garden; over the currant bushes, through the espalier trees, under the old mulberry tree, and all round the quaint, ivy-grown sundial, but no one could I see. While I still paused wondering, the voice called again, and again it was my name. I knew it well, it was the voice of a stern yet loving father. Then my eyes turned in the direction from which the sound came, and I saw him standing behind the parapet on the roof of our house, his eye watching his little daughter anxiously from above in her place of temptation. I had not touched the fruit, I had not sinned, and with a fearless smile I could answer to my name; but the soul in the Land of Loneliness, when the Call of God reaches it, is only too conscious that it has sinned, and that God's eye has seen it sin.
Do you remember in what misery the children of Israel were in Egypt? Pharaoh was working their lives out of them; yet all the time the promise of God was standing sure to Abraham, and to Isaac and Jacob, that they should have a glorious earthly inheritance. They saw no way of escape, yet God saw it. I will tell you what they did; they called out in their misery, and their cry reached the ear of the great God who dwelt behind the Fire, but who had given His promise to Abraham that His Fire and His Light should come in to deliver them.
It is well when the soul, feeling its sin and its danger, cries out as they did. Such a cry is always heard. Have you cried out to God, "My sins are on me. They are chains which I cannot break. Satan drives me on in bondage. My doom hangs over me. Help! help!"?
While the Israelites were calling out in their misery there was a shepherd feeding his flock in a quiet wilderness, with the grand and lonely mountain heights all about him. And so it was that one day his eye suddenly caught sight of a mountain bush wrapped in flame. Perhaps you have never seen the gorse and bushes of a common on fire, and you do not know how sad a sight it is to see them swept off the scene, and the greedy flames springing in sudden snatches from bough to bough, blackening the bushes that but a few hours before were covered with pink-tinted wild-roses, or festooned with the sweet-scented honeysuckle and the clinging clematis? But in other countries it is not only a sad sight, but it is a fearful sight. "While I am writing to you," wrote a young farmer in America to his friends in England, "there is a fearful glow on the horizon; it is drawing nearer every moment: the prairie is on fire. I have been out all night with other fellows trying to beat down the flames, but they are spreading fast, and if the wind does not change, or rain come, all that we have must perish." And no doubt it was with an anxious eye that this shepherd, long ago, saw the mountain bush on fire, and he thought of the danger to his helpless flock. But how strange! Could it be true The leaping flames played harmlessly in the fragile bush, and its leaves and its twigs were uninjured, though it glowed with fire. That shepherd was skilled in all the wisdom of the wisest nation then upon the earth; but how could all the wisdom of Egypt account for this great wonder? Who, amidst its lordly princes, or its learned magicians, had ever seen such a sight as this?
"I will now turn aside," said the shepherd, "and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." And so he did; but, as he approached it, a Voice suddenly called to him out of the bush, from behind those leaping flames, and it called him by name. "Moses! Moses!" it cried. It was the Voice of One who knew him; and the soul of Moses in its inner Land of Loneliness had ears to hear, and he answered back to his name, "Here am I." "Draw not nigh hither," it cried; "put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Then the Speaker declared His Name: "I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob"; and the shepherd hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
Moses was a man of faith; he had chosen to be an exile there in the wilderness rather than to be a prince in the land of Egypt. He had believed that the great God of his fathers meant to rescue his countrymen from their miserable bondage, but he had never before heard the Voice of God calling him by name, he had never before stood face to face with the Fire. It is no wonder that he was afraid, and that he hid his face while he listened to what God had to say to him. "And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and heard their cry;... for I know their sorrows, and 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 land and a large" (Ex. 3:7, 87And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8And 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 land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:7‑8)).
The Voice called Moses to be their leader; it called to him out of the Fire, yet it said to him, "Draw not nigh hither." But why, if "our God is a consuming fire"—why was not the fragile bush burnt? Could all the wisdom of Egypt explain it? No. Can you? Moses was face to face with the Fire that Adam and Eve had seen, like a flaming sword, guarding the way to the Tree of Life; with the Fire that Abraham had seen in vision sweeping into the Land of Loneliness through the ghastly avenue of Death. It was because of the way by which it came in that the bush was not burnt; God's eye from His lofty eternity was full upon Calvary's Cross, and His Fire and His Light had come down to fulfill His promises, and to lead His people from Egypt to Canaan. He, the holy God, could be amongst them in figure, and yet not consume them, stiff-necked and guilty though they were. The Fire that Moses saw had come to be the Guide, the Guard, the Comfort of oppressed Israel. It meant that a righteous God had come down in grace. Do you ask why Moses was warned not to "draw nigh"? I believe because he had not yet kept the Passover by faith. Though a man of faith, Self was still there: he pleaded hard that he might not have to obey the call of God. A holy God was there, and Moses, honored servant though he became, was but a sinful, mortal man. What we are by nature cannot stand the Fire, and to approach God as a natural man, even though He bad come down in grace, would have been to have perished. This is what I want you to see. God and sin cannot meet.
Yet, He had "heard their cry, seen their sorrows." Is He changed, think you? Has your cry been unheard? Have your sorrows not moved His heart? Impossible! To you the word is not "draw not nigh hither." To you it is, "Come unto Me." To you, lonely, desolate soul, in your far-off land, with Satan's cruel bondage over you, with the idol that he has set up in your heart still demanding your worship, to you a Deliverer has come through the waters of Death, through the Fire of judgment; He has reached you where you are, and His call rings in your ears. It is, "Come." Alone? No; His Light and His Fire will be your Guide, your Guard, your Comfort, and your Strength, upon the way. Have you answered to the summons, "Here am I"? You may well tremble, you may well wonder, you may well stand hiding your face like Moses, for the holy God, who is "a consuming fire," is very near you; but, nevertheless, He calls you by "Arise, He calleth thee!" said the multitude to a poor blind beggar long ago, as he wailed through his gloom for light and comfort; and "Arise, He calleth thee!" cry I to you this night, who, feeling your bondage and your sin in the far-off land, raise the cry through the gloom, "Oh, for Light and for Love!" But let me warn you ere we part for to-night that not all who hear the call of God's servants are saved. The Lord Jesus said, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Felix heard and trembled, but he never answered to the call. I ask you again, Have you answered, "Here am I"? The Call of God comes quietly, sharply, like an arrow. It comes in some word of Scripture that goes in beyond the mind and reaches the heart. And the soul that has been born again answers to the call like Moses; it says, "Here am I."
Now the Call of God is not always to the same kind of blessings. He called Abraham to leave his country and his family, and to wander as a stranger through the land that was to be his, to walk by faith in the promises. He called Moses To be the leader of His people Israel, to be a type, of the Lord Jesus Christ, to a place of great honor as a servant. He calls our souls to come out of the Land of Loneliness into the joys of Relationship to Himself. And when your soul answers to the summons, it begins to stir; and when it has learned what the Light has to reveal to it, and what the Fire has done for it, and can do for it, it will reach the end of its journey, and will be able to look up with a smile into the Father's face, and to cry with reverent awe, "Abba, Father."
We will close to-night with the Call that comes to the soul from behind the Flaming Sword, that reaches it in its distance and its loneliness and guilt, and reveals to it the fact that there is a Person in another sphere who knows where it is, who has heard its cry, who has seen its sorrows, and has been down to seek it, and to deliver it. "Whom He did predestinate, them He also called" (Rom. 8:3030Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. (Romans 8:30)).