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- [00:04]
Tim Keller
Welcome to Gospel and Life. How comfortable are you when it comes to being open about your faith? This month on the podcast, Tim Keller looks at what the Bible says about having a public faith. He shows us what it looks like to be open about our faith in a pluralistic society in a way that creates civility and peace and meaningful dialogue with our neighbors.
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Scripture Reader
Tonight's scripture reading comes from Exodus 3:1 14. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father in law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire and it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight why the bush does not burn up. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer. God said, take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? And God said, I will be with you, and this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Moses said to God, suppose 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? Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
- [02:50]
Discussion Host
Now, each week we're looking at the subject of how we can talk about our deepest faith beliefs in public. How can we share who we are, our deep faith beliefs, but in such a way that's respectful, it promotes peace. And I have observed over the years that one of the best ways of having a discussion about faith publicly is to not simply talk about what you believe, but also how you came to believe it. Not just do the content, but the process or the journey that you went on. It's not just here's what I believe, but how did you come to believe what you believe? How did you come to have faith in the God you have faith in? It's a journey account, or some people would call it a personal testimony. And I think it lowers the temperature. Because when you're not just saying, here's what I believe. No, here's what I believe, you're talking about the process and the experience by which you came to your faith. I think it commands a certain respect. You know, you listen to a person's account of their experience. I think it also very often is helpful because everybody's on a process and to hear how you went through your process is helpful. And so in order to help us think about how we can think about this is we're looking at this passage which is very famous. Moses and the burning bush. There's an awful. Leo and I were up here just talking about. Maybe some of you aren't for the generation, but it's hard for me not to think of Charlton Heston and Cecil B. DeMille's voice or whoever's voice coming from the burning bush. I mean, it's a very famous. That was the movie Ten Commandments. Some of you movies, you used to go and watch them on big screens and things like that. I know it's. Sorry, it's kind of ancient history, but it's actually this account is here, and we're looking at it tonight because it's Moses conversion experience. This is Moses conversion experience. This is how he didn't just come to believe in God, he already believed in God. In fact, when God speaks to him, he says, look, I'm the God of your father and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When he says that, he's saying, I'm the God you believe in. Actually, I'm the God of your father, the God of your father. He knows that he, Moses, believes in this God, but he's never encountered him. He's never had A face to face experience with him. He hasn't met him. And therefore it can be said that this is Moses conversion experience. And so if we see how he didn't come just to believe in God, but actually meet God, we're going to see four things that brought him to that. And I think they're the same four things that the Bible says you have to have usually happen in your life if you're going to meet him as well. So if Moses met him this way, we need these four things usually in order to actually experience and meet God. What are those four things? They are a disrupting site, an expanding concept, a personal problem, and a surprising grace. Okay, so first, a disrupting sight. The first thing that brings Moses to actually meet God is the bush itself. Verse 2 and 3. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight. Why the bush is not consumed, does not burn up. Now, Moses probably originally saw a brush fire over here, some distance, but that wasn't all that unusual. There's a lot of reasons why you can have brush fires in the desert. But what caught his attention was this fire didn't go out. And as you can imagine, brush fires are fast. Why? Because there's no fuel out there. A bush or some brush isn't much in the way of fuel. So fires that do happen out there because of lightning or for other whatever reason, or maybe some other shepherd who went by and left a campfire going, if you are going to have a. A brush fire, it goes out quickly. But evidently this bush kept burning and burning and burning and burning. And we're told that Moses decided, I better go see what this is. Why? Because that doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit. That's impossible. A bush has to burn out. I mean, the fire, you know, consumes the bush and then it goes out. Why does the bush continue to burn? Why does the fire continue to burn? And we're told he. He went over. See, twice it uses this word, I will go over and see this strange sight. Verse 4. It says, the Lord saw he had gone over. That is a Hebrew word that means to detour. He let himself be interrupted. His normal path was interrupted. Okay, what's the first principle? Here's the first principle. Ordinarily you don't meet God unless something comes into your life that you can't account for and disrupts your life or disrupts your thinking. Very often, something seriously disrupts and interrupts you. What Moses saw The burning bush didn't fit his understanding of what could happen because it didn't fit. He went over to see it and figure it out and consider it and so forth. And we usually do not come to faith in God just simply by thinking about it. We usually have to have something that comes into our life that disrupts us, that we can't account for and that makes us think in ways we didn't before. Thomas Kuhn wrote a book in the mid 20th century called the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Who explains this? It's an academic book that you probably have not heard of and yet you have, probably because it was very famous, at least maybe not by name. Kuhn was writing about how science works, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn tried. He was a philosopher of science, historian of science, and he said, actually, science does not move forward the way you tend to say. Scientists like to say I am objective and when I get a new bit of data, I look at it and if it, I follow the evidence wherever it leads. And so I'm gradually making small changes. I'm getting more evidence, I'm getting clear view and I'm changing my views in accord with the evidence. And Kuhn says, no, that's not how it works. Kuhn says we are very close minded, all of us. We are not open to new evidence. And he says all of us tend to have interpretive grids by which we interpret reality. Now a grid is what he called a paradigm. So yes, actually he, I think popularized the term paradigm. A paradigm is a way of looking at reality. And Kuhn says we really have those views, these interpretive grids, these ways of looking at reality. And when new evidence comes along, we do everything we can to use that evidence to confirm what we already believe. We do everything we can to work it in. Now, Bob, I'll tell you one of the perfect, to me examples of that was 9, 11. Here we all are all looking at the same horrible thing that happened. We're looking right at it. There it is. But there were some people who had an interpretive grid that said America is the bad guys in the world. America is. We're the bad guys. We're a force for materialism and, you know, abuse of power, whatever. We're the bad guys in the world. And there was another other people who said, America is the good guy. We're the force of good on the side of good against evil. So, you know, one says America's a good guy, one says America's a bad guy. It's amazing. I Read the essays of people after 9, 11. We were looking at the very same thing and everybody used it to say, see, this is what I always said, this is what I always believed. See 9, 11. That proves that we're the bad guy. The world hates us. C9, 11. Other people said that proves that we're the good people and we have evil against us. Here we had two different groups of people with two different paradigms. They were totally opposite to each other, looking at the same bit of data and using it to support the paradigm. This is exactly what Thomas Kuhn says. We're not open minded people. We have our set of beliefs and when a piece of data comes, we use it to confirm what we already believe. Except Kuhn says sometimes stuff comes into our lives that disrupts. Sometimes stuff comes into our, into our lives that we can't really account for in the grid, doesn't really fit. It's difficult to work it. In Kuhn's example, of course, the classic example was our Western understanding of the solar system. Kuhn says for years people believed that the Earth was fixed and the Earth was in the center and there were all these other bodies orbiting around it. And of course that seemed to explain. You looked up in the sky and you could see, you could see other bodies moving. And we said, of course they're all orbiting around us. And so every time you got a new bit of data, we found a new planet, we found another, you know, the astronomers found another heavenly body. They said, of course that fits into the grid. And then Kuhn says, what began to happen was some of the bodies that we saw in space didn't seem to fit their movements didn't seem to work into this idea that everything was orbiting around Earth. Some of them kind of moved, evidently, like zigzags in the sky. And that didn't seem to really work. And Kuhn says what happens eventually is enough data comes in you can't account for, or something comes in you can't account for and it leads you to question the grid itself. And you sit there and say, well, maybe I got it all wrong. And you try on, it's like trying on a dress, you try on a new paradigm, you try something else on and you say, well, maybe the Earth is orbiting too. And when you try that paradigm on, suddenly it makes sense of all the data and you have what he calls a paradigm shift. It's like a conversion. Suddenly you realize if I change the grid, then suddenly I can explain everything else and you have this enormous shift. So he says, basically, because we're so close minded, we do not move our. We don't change our beliefs little by little. Instead we try to work everything in to confirm our existing paradigms until something comes in, a burning bush, something that doesn't fit, something you can't account for. You try on a new way of thinking and it creates a shift, basically a kind of conversion. Now that's how it is with God. Usually. Usually something comes into your life, it's a burning bush and you can't account for it. You got a set of beliefs. Either you don't believe in God or you believe. Well, there probably is a God, but nobody knows. You either have an inconsequential God or you have no God or something like that. A God that you don't need to know in order to live life. And then something comes into your life and you can't account for. Could be a train of thought. We've talked about this for the last couple of weeks. You know, W.H. auden, who lived here in the Upper east side In World War II, great British poet, didn't believe in God. But World War II came, we talked about this at length, last couple weeks, World War II comes along. W.H. auden sees the Nazis, what they're doing, and he says, wait a minute, if there's no God, what right do I have to say that my values are right and there's a wrong. If there's no God, what warrant do I have for saying I'm right and they're wrong? And so he's thought like this. If there's no God, all morality is relative. But no, morality is not relative. What they're doing is wrong, and therefore there must be a God. See, a train of thought came along that didn't fit in to his grid. And he had a paradigm shift. He had to change it. He questioned the grid itself. So it can be kind of an intellectual burning bush, a train of thought. But very often it's something else. Years ago, when Redeemer got started and we had a few hundred people, you know, actually in the early days, I mean, the first couple years, this body was about the size of Redeemer, the whole of Redeemer. And we were, this is the late 80s, early 90s, and we were just normal New Yorkers. We were people who worked on Wall street, worked in the arts, you know, worked in fashion, just normal New Yorkers. But I used to find that if you brought a person in the average Manhattanite, 99.9% of the average Manhattanites didn't believe in historic Christianity, you know, or anything like that. But if they came in and they just sat down and they realized we all believed in historic Christianity, they were here for about 10 or 15 minutes, they started having paradigm shifts. Redeemer itself was a burning bush. You know why? Because in their grid, people like them, people who'd gone to the same schools, people who did the same jobs, people like them didn't believe in Christianity. See, it was just not done. Nobody did it, except here's a few hundred people that were doing it. And so what are we going to do about that? And suddenly Redeemer itself sometimes was a burning bush. You could just see little paradigm meltdowns, you know, was coming out of their ears and say, the paradigm, the old paradigm, there was a shift going on. They couldn't quite account for people that were, you know, we weren't brilliant, we're just normal. And normal people don't have these beliefs. How could you believe that? Or sometimes a Christian comes into your life and maybe you're not a believer and the Christian is just so much more wise or so much more poised or so much more intelligent and so much more thoughtful than you thought Christians could be. And they, and the Christian itself is like a burning bush or very often one more thing before going on, very often disillusioning and difficult experiences. Very often they're the burning bush. They come into your life and you're saying, look, I'm. I don't know if there's a God. There might be, there might not. I don't need to know God. That's your grid, which means your assumption is I can handle life. I can handle life. You know, I'm smart, I'm savvy. You know, I've got, I got a therapist, you know, I got friends, you know, I'm not stupid, you know, I know life isn't easy, but I can handle life. David Martyn Lloyd Jones was a physician, a young physician in Britain in the 1920s. He became a Christian. He got converted and went into the ministry after that. But he tells about his conversion and a big part of it was this. He believed. Well, a big part of it was this a man that he admired, an older man who was a physician in everything he wanted to be. See, in that day and time, the best physicians in Britain, they were heroes, they were emulated, they were, you know, they were saving lives, they were respected, they were brilliant, they were, they were well paid, they had enormous status. And it was one of those men that Lloyd Jones looked up to and wanted to be like. And he was dating a woman and she died. Great tragedy. He came by to see Lloyd Jones and he says, hey, it'd be okay if I stayed here for a little bit. And Lloyd Jones says, oh, jerk. Set up to the fire. And the man, Lloyd Jones says, a man pulled up a chair to the fire and sat down and stared into the fire for two hours. Didn't say a word, Almost didn't act as if Lloyd Jones was there. Now, Lloyd Jones did not have his feelings hurt and he didn't feel in any way that that was inappropriate. It was perfectly appropriate. But when he saw one of the men that he. A world beater, a person that he thought that he wanted to be like, and he realized this man was absolutely out of resources. He had nothing left. He had nothing with which to actually face the normal realities of life. And Lloyd Jones says he looked at him staring at the fire and this is what he said. He says, I suddenly saw the vanity of all human greatness. I suddenly saw the vanity of all human greatness. What was going on there in that young man's mind? It was a burning bush. It was something that didn't. He says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. If a guy like this can't handle life, how in the world do I think I can handle life without God? So, but here's the point. When these things come into your life and they start to challenge you and they start to make you question the grid, are you willing to go over like Moses? You know, if Moses hadn't gone over, if he actually said, I don't want to be bothered, he would have never heard of Moses. See, once you get bothered, you have to be willing to think it out. You have to have the guts to think it out and be willing to think it out.
- [20:08]
Tim Keller
We always say the gospel changes everything, and we believe it really does. That's why here at Gospel and Life, August is Go and Share Month. Throughout August, we're inviting thousands of our listeners to take a small step in sharing the gospel with someone God has placed in your life. For those of you who make a gift to Gospel and Life this month we'll send you two copies of Making Sense of God by Tim Keller. It's a powerful resource that explores how Christianity makes emotional, cultural and rational sense in today's world. It's our thanks for your gift and provides a way you can do a small act to share the gospel by reading the book with a friend, giving one to a co worker, or passing on both Copies to people who are exploring the Christian faith. It's a simple, simple way to start a gospel conversation or continue it. To request your two copies of Making Sense of God, simply go to gospelandlife.com give again. That's gospelinlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
- [21:09]
Discussion Host
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her famous sermon on the burning bush, says, imagine if this. Imagine if Moses had just hunched down over his shoulders and kept his head down and just stayed busy. What if Moses had said burning bush? I didn't really see it. I don't know what that is. Burning bush. Well, probably there's some rational explanation anyway. Burning bush. Look, I've been paid to watch sheep, not turn aside and look at bushes. Burning bush. Would somebody please put that out? If he'd done that, you never would have heard of him. He would never met God. God would never have spoken to him. And the same thing will happen to you. You got to turn aside. Okay, so a disrupting sight. Second and third, they kind of go together. Second and third. If you're really going to meet God, secondly, you have to have an expanding concept of God. Now what do I mean by expanding concept? Well, let's look at this idea of God revealing himself as fire. Why does God reveal himself as fire? One of the reasons is he's getting across one of the most mind numbing, amazing things that the Bible says about God. See, the reason Moses went to see the bush was bushes are usually dependent on the. I mean, pardon me, fire is usually dependent on the bush. It's dependent on the bush for fuel. And therefore fires don't stay going forever because they have to have fuel. And after they consume the fuel, they're gone. Why? They're dependent on the fuel. But this fire wasn't dependent on the bush. It wasn't dependent on anything. It had its own power of being within it, which of course was a miracle. But what does that symbolize? Well, it symbolizes what, what God says about himself. At the very end when Moses says, well, who should I say has sent me to Israel? And who. What's your name, in other words? And you know what God says, I'll tell you what my name is. He says, I am who I am. Tell them, I am has sent you. Now, it's actually really hard to translate this. What God really gives Moses, actually, as his name is just the Hebrew verb to be. It's like he's almost saying, tell them. Being itself sent you. I am what I am. I am who I am but basically being itself. And here's what he's saying. I depend on nothing. Everything depends on me. I am self sufficient. I have the power of all being in myself. I am the ground of all being. You know, when the Bible says God has no ending, we can kind of, kind of imagine that, I guess. But when the Bible says God has no beginning, that's where, that's where my brain starts to melt. But it has to be why? Because if something has a beginning, it's because something begins it. And if God had a beginning, then something would have begun. God. And whatever that something was, God would have been depended on. But God is saying I am dependent on nothing. All existence has its existence only in me. I'm at the heart of every molecule. I'm holding everything together. Hebrews 1:1 talks about that in him all things consist. And so what God is trying to say here is that I am existence itself. I am being itself. I am the ground of all being. I'm not just a being. I am being. I'm not just a being. I am being. I am that. I am Jesus put it in slightly more personal terms. Without him, you can do nothing. Now here's what I'm trying to say. At this point, we could talk a lot about this. And this is the name that God reveals here. But what I'm trying to show you is this. Moses is having an expanding understanding of God. He had a view of God. But what is this in general? When people talk to me about not being able to believe in God in general, I can ask them, well, tell me what you don't believe in and tell me why it's hard to believe in God. And they always describe, well, I can't believe in a God who does this. I can't believe. And it's, I'd say four times out of five after they tell me what they don't like about God and why they can't believe in God, four times out of five I can say, oh, this is great. I don't believe in that God either. The God you're talking about is not the God I believe in. They say what almost always the God that people disbelieve in is a flat God, a reductionistic God, a reduced God, nothing like the multidimensional, rich God of the Bible. The Bible's talking about God as this, but he's also this. He's this, but he's also this. And paradoxically, he's this. And he's also this. And the simpler your understanding of God is the more rejectable it is. And I will go so far as to say, the richer and more nuanced your understanding of God, the harder it is to reject him and the easier it is to believe in him. Certainly the harder it is to just reject him out of hand. And what Moses was getting is an expanding understanding of God. And you will, if you're expanding in your understanding of God and getting a richer understanding of God, you're moving in the right direction. So he had a disrupting sight, he had an expanding concept. Thirdly, there was a personal problem. Now what do I mean by personal problem? Let's go back to the fire. There was a number of things that God was getting across with fire. And here's one of them. Fire is so beautiful and so scary at once. It is so brilliant and so attractive and so dangerous and so frightening at once. Look. And Moses said, here I am, verse 5, do not come any closer. God said, take off your sandals for the place where you were standing is holy ground. At this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. Now Alec Mateer, great Old Testament Bible scholar, says about this verse that the holiness of God is that part of God's nature that is dangerous for sinners like you and me. The holiness of God is that part of God's nature that is dangerous to sinners like you and me. And when we hear that, we New Yorkers say, oh, I want a loving God. What do you mean dangerous? That's dangerous. He's like fire, he's beautiful, but he's dangerous. I don't think I like that. But actually, please think with me a little bit. Why is God dangerous? Why is the holiness of God his terrifying danger? Well, first two reasons. The holiness of God first of all means he exposes us through his perfection. Come on, you know how this works. Whenever you're in the presence of absolute incredible talent or beauty or brilliance, when you're in the presence of a human being with excellence, it's just like fire. Why? It's wonderful and it's horrible. Look, you may think of yourself as not too bad looking person. Then there's some people, you don't want to stand near them because you don't want people looking from you to him or to her. You don't want that. See, you know, you feel like I'm not so bad looking. Then you get near somebody who makes you ten times better looking and then you feel homely, ugly. You may think of yourself as talented, have a lot. This is, you know, this is One of the true story, of course, is that it happens very often. You may be the best violinist in Hot Coffee, Texas, little town, you know, and you get off the train in New York City and there's somebody begging, you know, at Grand Central Station, you know, with a, with the violin case open and people throwing money in. They're playing and they're waiting better than you. And you go, oh no. And what's that, what's, what's happening? It's beautiful. I mean, the violinist is beautiful. You say, well that's beautiful, the technique. But you're scared to death whenever you get into the presence of something way better than you. It's horrible and wonderful. Well, how wouldn't that be true of God? Of course it is. And this is one of the ways, you know, you're drawing near to the real God. When Isaiah went in to see the Holy One high and lifted up. Holy, holy, holy. He heard the angel saying, he went into the temple and he saw the holiness of God. And you gotta figure Isaiah, he's a prophet Isaiah. Compared to most of the population, he would have to be more virtuous, more spiritual, more moral. A better person than most. But what does he say about himself? Unclean, he calls himself. Everything that Isaiah was proud of looked like trash. Because in the presence of power, you feel your weakness. In the presence of beauty, you feel your ugliness. In the presence of light, you feel your darkness. And therefore God's dangerous because he is so holy and so perfect and so beautiful that he's horrible. Because when you get near him, you have a self quake. Your self image falls apart. All the things you tell yourself, I'm not that bad a person. It's, it's not true. It's just not true. And you realize it's not true. All your self justifications, all your little self deceptions, the blindness we all have, you know, everybody knows that. We, we always, we always, we always sort of, we just, you know, that person is awful. That person is awful. That person. But me, well, you know, you have to understand, you're always making excuses for yourself. But in the presence of God, it's incredibly traumatic. It's psychologically absolutely devastating. It's incredibly dangerous because God is so beautiful. He is dangerous. He shows you who you are, so his perfection exposes you. But also, he is a God of active goodness. You know the difference between active and passive goodness. There's been a lot of studies that during the Holocaust in Germany, most Germans felt bad about the fact that the Jews were disappearing. They Justified it. They told themselves, well, they're just going to detention camps. I mean, in other words, they lied to themselves. So they didn't want to admit. But basically, most Germans saw the Jews just disappearing. They saw the Jewish neighbors just disappearing. And they felt bad about it. Why? Because they were good people. But they were passively good. They didn't say anything. They didn't make waves. They were afraid to. And as we all know, passive goodness isn't as good as active goodness. And God is actively good. God is not just good in general. He doesn't tolerate evil, he doesn't tolerate sin. He doesn't tolerate evil and sin in you. And as a result, there's a danger. Now here's the third point, very important. If you're going to have an experience of God, encounter God, it really ought to be a real God. We are so affected by consumer capitalism. And in consumer capitalism we choose everything. We get what we want. Everything's customized to us. And so don't you see what we tend to do? I do it. Don't you do it. You get the God you want. You say, I don't like to believe in God like this. I like to believe in God like this. I hear people say this. I like to think of God like this. I like to think of God like this. Look, if you are creating your own God, it's just an extension of you. How's that God going to be of any help to you? How's that God going to give you any power? It's just you. How's that God going to be any resource? It's just you. If you're actually just creating God you like, so how are you going to be sure that you're drawing near to a real God, a real spiritual reality, a true God, a living God, how are you going to know that? And Jonathan Edwards, the great 18th century theologian philosopher, says that most of the attributes of God are attributes that we would choose if we were creating a God. You know, it'd be nice to have a powerful God, because then if he's your God, then he can help you. It'd be nice to have a merciful God. Then if you're guilty, he can forgive you. Almost all the attributes are attributes that we would choose. But there's one attribute we would never choose. Edward says it's the holiness of God, because it's just a problem. The holiness is nothing but a problem, a big problem for us. And if you are starting to sense that this God that you're trying to come to grace with is holy, and that you're not just a good person who needs a spiritual boost from him. And you're not just even a needy person who needs fulfillment, but that you're a sinner and you need forgiveness and pardon. When you begin to actually sense that there's a problem, and you've got a problem coming into his presence. Now you have some confidence that you're not making this God up. Now you've got some confidence that you're on your way toward the real God, because you sense that you've got a personal problem. He's not just an abstraction. You're just trying to believe in him, but you've got a problem in relating to Him. And that brings us. Naturally, then the last thing you need would be. You need some kind of grace. You need something that'll enable you to stand in God's presence. See, Paul, Moses is wondering about that down here in verse 11 and 12, Moses says, but who am I that you would send me to Pharaoh? And then God says, I will be with you. But if you go on in the text, you'll see Moses is not mollified here. Moses says, wait a minute, you're holy. He's starting to get. He's starting to see who he is, what he's like. And he begins to say, how in the world am I? Well, put it like this. The bush is not consumed. But why isn't Moses. In Exodus 33, Moses actually asked God, can I see you face to face? And God says, no, you can't. It'll kill you. Well, then why is it not consumed right here? The bush isn't consumed. Okay, it was a miracle. But why isn't Moses consumed? And the secret and the answer, it's in the text. But you probably went right by it. I do. Look all through here. It says, God spoke to Moses out of the bush. God spoke to Moses out of the bush. God spoke to Moses out of the bush. But who's actually in the bush? Tells you in verse two, the angel of the Lord. Wait a minute. You say, that's weird. It says the angel was in the bush. But then all the way through the rest of the text, it talks as if God's in the bush. Yes. That's the way it works in the Old Testament. There's this figure, this enigmatic figure named the angel of the Lord. Not an angel of the Lord like Gabriel or somebody like that. The angel of the Lord. And when the angel of the Lord shows up, it's weird because on the one hand, this angel of the Lord seems to be a distinct person from God. On the other hand, the angel of the Lord seems to be God. Like, it'll say, the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham, or the angel of the Lord spoke to Moses. But then the very next verse, it'll say, and God said to Moses, and God said to Abraham. It's almost as if this person is both God and not God. But here's what's also interesting. Alec Mateer says, if you look carefully, the angel of the Lord shows up when God wants to draw near to someone without destroying them. One of the most interesting spots is later on in the book of Exodus, Matir says, there's this argument going back and forth between Moses and God. And Moses says, lord, you must. Your presence must go with us. As the children of Israel leave Egypt and go toward the promised land, your presence must go with us. And God says, no, my presence cannot go with you, because you are rebellious people and my presence will destroy you. And then Moses pushes back and says, no, no, I'm not going to go unless you go with us. And then finally God says. Matir points this out in his commentary on Exodus. He finally says, wait, okay, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'll send my angel with you. And here's what Matir says about that. Moses says, I want your presence. God says, no, it'll destroy you. Moses says, I want your presence. Okay, I'll send you my angel. And here's what Matir says in his commentary. He says, the angel of the Lord is revealed as the merciful accommodation of God whereby the Lord can be present among a sinful people. When were he to go with them himself, God's presence would consume them. So the angel is that mode of deity whereby the holy God can keep company with sinners without destroying them. And then Matir goes on and says, who would that be? He says, there is only one other in the Bible who is both identical with and yet distinct from the Lord. One who, while affirming the wrath of God, is yet a supreme display of his mercy. The angel of the Lord can only be understood as a pre incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. And you remember in Jesus, In John chapter 8, Jesus says to his listeners, before Abraham was, I am. He doesn't say, before Abraham was I was. That would have been weird enough. But he says, before Abraham was I am. And what is he saying? He's saying, I'm the one who spoke to Moses from the bush. And now here's the secret. Here's the answer to all the riddles. You say, well, how is Jesus Christ, the angel of the Lord? How is Jesus Christ the way that we can be in the presence of God without being consumed. Oh, my goodness, here it is. Here's how you can finally see the fire of God. Fire is terrible and beautiful. And on the cross you see how terribly holy God is. He is so terribly holy that Jesus Christ had to die. God is actively good. God has to mete out punishment on sin. Sin just can't be shrugged at. He is so terribly holy, Jesus had to die. But he is so beautifully loving, so beautifully loving that in Jesus Christ he was willing to come and be glad to die. Willing to die, make his own atonement. And there it is. We have hymns about this. One hymn goes, before the throne. Absolved we stand. Thy love has met thy law's demand. Terrible, horrible. Beautiful. Gorgeous. And if you want to know the ravishing beauty of this fiery God, a God who so holy that you got a problem with him, and yet so loving that he solved the problem at his own expense. If you say, I want to know that God, you will come to know that God. Why? Because that's the God who reveals himself to Moses in the bush. And that's the God who reveals himself to people. And guess what will happen if you do that? If you believe in Jesus Christ, you'll become a burning bush. Moses did. Moses went out and changed the world. Why? Because the glory and the beauty of God came into his life. In fact, at one point, he had to put a veil over his face and it didn't consume him. Why? Well, he wasn't really sure. He just knew that somehow atonement had been made. But you and I know. Second Peter 1, verse 3 says that Christians have been made partakers of the divine nature. Ephesians 2 says, we're temples of the Holy Spirit. The light and the uncommon light and the beauty and the glory of God can come into your life and yet you not be consumed because of the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. And then you become a little burning bush. And you become someone who can. Who people go over to see, to figure out. Because you're inexplicable. And you become someone who can touch others or have God touch others through you, and you can change the world. Do you believe in the God who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush? Let us pray. Father, we thank you for giving us this pathway to experience of you. And we ask that you would help us now, even as we participate in the Lord's Supper to know you not as an abstract God, but as a fiery, loving God. We pray that you would help every Christian here experience your reality and everyone here who does not yet know you also come to experience that reality. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
- [41:49]
Tim Keller
Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encourages you to share the gospel with someone you know. This August is Go and Share Month at Gospel and Life, and we've curated a wide range of free resources to help you take simple steps to share the gospel. You can Access them at gospelandlife.com Share we believe God uses small acts to do great things, and we're inviting you to do simple small acts to go and share the gospel this month because the Gospel changes everything. Today's sermon was recorded in 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church SA.