The Deliverer, Part 3. On the bush that was not consumed.
And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.— Exodus 3:2
Moses was tending his father-in-law’s flock when he saw the bush. He had lived in Midian for forty years. The days were probably much like one another: leading the sheep, finding pasture, and making his way across the wilderness.
Then he saw a fire that did not consume what it burned.
Why did God appear in a bush? Why not a cedar, one of the great trees of Lebanon? A cedar would have been a fitting sight for a king. The bush was hardly worth a second look. Yet this was where God met Moses.
Isaiah wrote of the coming servant of the Lord:
He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
— Isa. 53:2
Jesus did not come in the way people expected a king to come. He was born in humble circumstances, grew up in Nazareth, and was eventually rejected and crucified. Many saw nothing in Him worth following. They could not see who He was. What they could not see was what He lived on: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). His Father’s will was His sustenance, and He burned to see it finished. A life the world overlooked became the very place where God made Himself known to the world.
Paul, too, was judged by outward appearances. Some in Corinth considered his physical presence weak and his speech unimpressive (2 Cor. 10:10). Paul knew he could not make the gospel powerful through his own eloquence, and he had no interest in trying. He wanted their faith resting “in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:5). What burned in him was the gospel of Christ, and no amount of contempt put it out. Through his witness, people saw Jesus.
Moses stopped not because the bush was impressive, but because something was burning inside it that ought not to have survived. The encounter began with something he could not explain. The bush had no glory of its own. Yet God chose that place to speak, and the shepherd who had spent years in obscurity was given a calling that would change the course of Israel’s history.
Jeremiah once resolved to stop speaking in God’s name. He was weary of the ridicule and wanted to be done with it. But the word would not leave him alone. “There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer. 20:9). He tried to hold it in, but he could not. The fire of God’s word was stronger than his desire to remain silent.
That is the fire worth wanting. Not a platform, not a presence that impresses anyone, but God’s own word alive in us and refusing to go out. Where that is burning, the size of the bush stops mattering.
We may never know why God chooses one person or one place over another. But Moses’ story reminds us how little we can judge by appearances. A life may seem small to the world and still become the place where God does His work.
However little there is to see in us, if His word is burning inside and will not go out, He will show Himself through us, in the place we are standing.
Perhaps the question is not whether we are cedars or thornbushes. It is whether God’s Word burns within us so that others may see Him through our lives.
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