An Exposition of Exodus 3

Here we go with an exposition of Exodus 3, the encounter between Moses and ‘I Am’ at the Burning Bush. The purpose of this study is to confirm that what Jesus said in John 8 was true—that it was him with Moses at the Burning Bush. Remember what our Lord Jesus said?

‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him (John 8:58-59).

Jesus affirms he is the ‘I Am.’ We affirm the same. It was not the Father speaking at the Burning Bush. It could not have been the Father, the One God. We’re going to break the passage down into 8 parts. Each part proves that this was not the Father, but Jesus at the Burning Bush. Read on.

1. Jesus appeared as the Angel of the LORD. Moses looked at him.

The encounter starts with an appearance—a visible manifestation of the Angel of Yahweh (a.k.a. the Angel of the LORD). This Angel of the LORD is never the Father in the Scriptures. Of course, God is not the Messenger he sends. Look closely when this Angel of the LORD presents himself in the Old Testament and you’ll normally find that it is the pre-incarnate Christ.

And Moses was a shepherd with the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west of the desert, and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. And the Angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked, and there was the bush burning with fire, but the bush was not being consumed (Exodus 3:1-2; LEB).

The Angel appeared to Moses. To appear means that this Angel was visible. Moses could see him. It says that Moses looked at the Angel of Yahweh, but since no man can see God, we know this was not the One God.

2. Moses turned to see the one who consecrated Sinai.

The One God shares his names with Jesus. Exodus 23:21 says ‘My name is in him.’ This Burning Bush passage uses the names Yahweh and God for Jesus, just like the passage where the Angel of the LORD visits Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, and when he wrestles with Jacob. In all three passages, because the Angel of the LORD is also called Yahweh and God—so we know that the passages are identifying someone with whom God shares his name—the pre-incarnate Christ.

And Moses said, ‘Let me turn aside and see this great sight. Why does the bush not burn up?’ And Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush, and he said, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ And he said, ‘You must not come near to here. Take off your sandals from on your feet, because the place on which you are standing, it is holy ground’ (Exodus 3:3-5; LEB).

Again, the passage states that Moses turned to see, which means that he looked at the one in the bush. He did not see the One God, but Jesus. And Jesus consecrated the ground upon which Moses was standing. Why? Because the One God would descend upon it at a later date. It was Mount Sinai, the place where God would descend in fire and would deliver the Ten Commandments to Moses, establishing a covenant with the Israelites.

3. Moses was mistaken about to whom he was speaking.

We know that Jesus had encounters with Abraham. We know that Jesus met Jacob face-to-face too. When Jesus met Amram, Moses’ father, we do not know. Maybe he never met with Amram or with Isaac, but he was their God. They believed in him, the pre-incarnate Christ, their God.

And he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face because he was afraid of looking at God (Exodus 3:6; LEB).

Moses was confused like many people are when they read this passage. He presumed that he was speaking with the One God and that he would die if he saw him, so he hid his face. But he was not speaking with the One God. Moses survived this encounter precisely because it was not with the One God.

4. Jesus was prepared to deliver and lead God’s people.

With a divine nature, Jesus in Heaven was able to both see and hear what was happening on Earth. He descended from Heaven to respond to the things he saw and heard: the oppression of the Jews by the Egyptians.

And Yahweh said, ‘Surely I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry of distress because of their oppressors, for I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from this land to a good and wide land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites (Exodus 3:7-8; LEB).

Jesus was going to deliver the Jews from slavery and would bring them into the Promised Land. Later in the story, we know that the Angel of the LORD guided the Jews by going before them through the desert. That Angel was Jesus!

5. Jesus called Moses close to him to send Moses off.

When Jesus said now come, he meant that Moses should draw near to him. If I tell you “Now come and I will send you to a store,” then we presume you’re going to get close to me to take the money in my hand. In the same way, Jesus was about to commission Moses and send him. Jesus sent the Twelve Apostles and another 70 disciples later on. He is an expert at sending people to fulfill God’s missions.

And now, look, the cry of distress of the Israelites has come to me, and also I see the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. And now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, and you must bring my people, the Israelites, out from Egypt’ (Exodus 3:9-10; LEB).

6. Jesus spoke about God as another being.

In the next verses of the Burning Bush story the difference between the Angel of the LORD and the One God becomes abundantly clear. Jesus told Moses that Moses would serve God. He did not say “you will serve me.” If God, the One God, were speaking, he would have said “you will serve me on this mountain” for the One God descended on Mount Sinai when Moses returned there. The Invisible God, the One God spoke to the people from Mount Sinai (Mount Horeb). Moses told the people:

Yahweh spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice… You saw no form of any kind the day Yahweh spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully Deuteronomy 4:12, 15).

Now that we’ve established that Moses served the One God on Mount Sinai, let’s return to the Burning Bush dialogue between Moses and Jesus.

But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out from Egypt?’ And he said, ‘Because I am with you, and this will be the sign for you that I myself have sent you: When you bring the people out from Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain’ (Exodus 3:11-12; LEB).

7. Jesus called himself ‘I Am that I Am.’

We have come to the crowning statement of Exodus 3, ‘I Am.’ To understand what it means, we let Scripture interpret Scripture. The best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament, and the best commentator on the Old Testament is Jesus.

John 8 is the foundation of Exodus 3. Our Jesus in the Old Testament concealed is the same Jesus in the New Testament revealed. Jesus is the ‘I Am.’

But Moses said to God, “Look, if I go to the Israelites and I say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is his name?’ then what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, ‘I Am that I Am.’ And he said, “So you must say to the Israelites, ‘I Am sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:13-14; LEB).

Exodus 3 is foundational for understanding Jesus. Exodus teaches us that there is someone called ‘I Am Who I Am’ who spoke with Moses. When we get to the Gospel of John, we get clarity about what that means. Jesus’ seven ‘I Am’ statements in expand upon what it means to be ‘I Am.’ Jesus stated ‘I am…’

1.   the Bread of Life (John 6:35)

2.   the Light of the World (8:12)

3.   the Gate (10:7)

4.   the Good Shepherd (10:11, 14)

5.   the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)

6.   the Way and the Truth and the Life (14:6)

7.   the True Vine (15:1)

And he is much much more! He is the Son of God. He is the Messiah. He is the King, the Son of David. He is the one who would crush the head of the Serpent.

8. Moses was to say that Yahweh appeared to him.

Jesus said that he would have the name Yahweh forever, so we can call Jesus by that name even today. The Jehovah’s Witnesses think that that name is only for God—but they’re wrong. We can use it for Jesus.

And God said again to Moses, “So you must say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, 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 my remembrance from generation to generation.’ Go and gather the elders of Israel and say to them, “Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, appeared to me, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘I have carefully attended to you and what has been done to you in Egypt’” (Exodus 3:15-16; LEB).

Jesus commanded Moses to say that he [under the name Yahweh] had appeared to him. Why? Because that’s what happened! The pre-incarnate Jesus appeared to Moses, and he identified himself as Yahweh. Moses saw this Yahweh with his own eyes.

In this same book only 30 chapters later, the One God tells Moses:

You cannot see my face; for no man shall see me and live (Exodus 33:20; NKJV).

We know that no man can see God, but Moses saw someone in the Burning Bush. Moses did not see the One God because the One God lives in unapproachable light. Moses did not see the One ‘whom no one has seen or can see.’ Rather, Moses saw the one who the One God sends in his stead—our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now to the King eternal, immortal , invisible, the Only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever... who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16).

He Told This to His Enemies

Don’t forget: Jesus brought up this topic of his identity as the I Am with his enemies. If he wasn’t afraid to say it to them, should we be afraid to talk about it among ourselves today? If we as Christians affirm that ‘In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the One God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1-2), then why would we not be able to expound the Burning Bush passage with supreme confidence?

Jesus has revealed his identity to all people—believers and unbelievers. He is the I Am to whom God has given glory and honor. He is the I Am to whom God gave equality with him. How do we know that Jesus is the I Am? Simply because he said it. Jesus is true.

Jesus never lies—but beyond that, what he said in John 8 makes perfect sense. It’s logical. There’s no better explanation for the Burning Bush passage than to say that it was Jesus. It was not the One God, his Father.

I Am is Jesus’ name, and that’s something Jesus is even willing for his enemies to know. He gave this revelation to them and they rejected it. Will you do the same? Will you reject Jesus as the I Am? If you’re still covering your eyes like Moses did, it’s time to take your hands from your face and embrace him. It’s time to embrace Jesus as the I Am.

New Testament Congruence

What else does the New Testament say about Jesus? Does it say the same things we have just read in the Old Testament? Does it say that he is God, that he is Lord, and that he is the Great One we read about in Exodus 3—the one Moses met at the Burning Bush? Yes, it does!

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Hebrews 1:3).

Yes, the New Testament agrees with the Old! But what does God Himself say about Jesus? Does God call Jesus God and Lord? Indeed, he does—yes, even in the New Testament we see these truths.

… about the Son he [God] says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God [the Father], has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.’

He [God] also says, ‘In the Beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the Earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands (Hebrews 1:8-10).

Never an Angel

The Jesus we honor is the one who laid the foundations of the Earth in the Beginning. He was with the One God and he was God—Jesus was a divine being who had equality with God. That same Jesus loved righteousness and hated wickedness when he came in the flesh—and that’s why God resurrected him and anointed him once more. We serve this Jesus and his God, our Father.

… to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your Father’?... To which of the angels did God ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’? (Hebrews 1:5, 13)

God never said these things to an angel—so we deduce that Jesus was never an angel. He was called the Angel of the LORD because he was God’s messenger, and what a message he gave to Moses! Angel means messenger in Hebrew, but it does not of necessity mean someone with an angelic nature. Jesus, who was the Angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament, did not have the angelic nature. He had the divine nature.

Lower Than Angels

But he gave up that divine nature. Certainly when Jesus came to us through Mary and was born in Bethlehem, he had taken upon him the human nature of sin. He emptied himself and became just like us. Jesus became lower than the angels. But precisely because he humbled himself, God exalted him.

… we see Jesus, for a short time made lower than the angels, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor (Hebrews 2:9; LEB).

Will you follow that example? Will you follow in Jesus’ footsteps and humble yourself? Those who today bear their cross will someday exchange it for a crown.