Lesson 2: “The Burning Bush”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Central Problem with this Lesson: This lesson sees the story of Moses from a human-centered viewpoint and makes these accounts moral lessons instead of revelations of God’s purposes.
This week’s studies address God’s call to Moses to return to Egypt and to lead Israel out of bondage. The author makes assumptions about details that are anchored in Ellen White’s writings, and he uses the accounts to draw moral lessons from them. He misses the opportunity to show God’s eternal purpose in choosing to be intimately connected to Israel. Also, the author misses the significance of God’s revelation of His personal name and the progressive intimacy that He has with his people in each covenant.
Details From Ellen White
Sunday’s lesson describes the author’s perception of Moses’ life in Midian. He says he had a “relatively easy life” there, that he married, had two sons, and lived a relaxing 40 years as a shepherd Strikingly, he says this:
He spent 40 relaxed years being a shepherd, like David (2 Sam. 7:8), enjoying God’s presence, especially as revealed in nature. Yet, this time was not simply for Moses to smell the flowers (or perhaps, in this case, the desert cactus?). These years of walking with the Lord changed him and prepared him for a leadership role. God also used Moses in this quiet wilderness to write, under divine inspiration, two of the oldest biblical books: Job and Genesis (see Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 251; Francis D. Nichol, et al., eds., The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 3, p. 1140). Moses also received from God crucial insights about the great controversy, the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, the patriarchs, and, most important, the plan of salvation.
This introduction to Moses’ life in Midian is entirely speculative and derived from Ellen White, not from the biblical account. First, there are no details in Scripture to suggest Moses enjoyed a relaxing, easy life being a shepherd. That he was a shepherd is stated in Exodus, but there is nothing to suggest he was “enjoying God’s presence, especially as revealed in nature.”
This idea is embedded in Ellen White and Adventism. She taught that nature is “God’s second book”, and Adventists all know that “nature walks” and outings on the Sabbath are acceptable Sabbath activities because they can call it “learning about God in nature”. For example, she wrote:
Children should be encouraged to search out in nature the objects that illustrate Bible teachings, and to trace in the Bible the similitudes drawn from nature. They should search out, both in nature and in Holy Writ, every object representing Christ, and those also that He employed in illustrating truth.…They may learn to hear His voice in the song of birds, in the sighing of the trees, in the rolling thunder, and in the music of the sea. And every object in nature will repeat to them His precious lessons.—Education, p. 120
As Ellen White’s party left Norway they witnessed one of nature’s grandest spectacles—a northern sunset. Mrs. White loved the beauty of the natural world. To her, nature was God’s second book. She was awed by the grandeur:—D.A. Delafield, Ellen G. White In Europe: 1885–1887, 1975.
This romanticized telling of Moses’ life in Midian is not in the biblical account. Further, on the authority of Ellen White and Francis Nichol in The SDA Bible Commentary, the author states that Moses wrote Job and Genesis while in Midian.
First, scholars agree that the author of Job is unknown. While there is a Jewish tradition that says Moses wrote Job, most scholars agree that the identity of the author is simply not known. They do agree that the book is perhaps the oldest book in the Bible, that Job himself lived, perhaps, in Mesopotamia roughly around the time of Abraham, but the authorship of the book cannot be determined.
Second, while conservative Christian scholars agree that Moses wrote the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible, often called The Books of Moses—they do not believe he wrote it during his years in Midian. Consider this quotation from GotQuestions.org:
The best evidence indicates that Moses wrote Genesis between 1440 and 1400 BC, during the 40-year period after Israel’s exodus from Egypt and before the nation entered the Promised Land.
Identifying the author of Genesis is key to determining when the book was written, as it narrows the period of time to the writer’s lifespan. Thus, although Genesis is technically anonymous, as the writer doesn’t identify himself in the text, the Bible assigns authorship of Genesis to Moses (e.g., Malachi 4:4; Matthew 8:4). Moreover, when citing events in Genesis, Jesus refers to Moses as the book’s author (Matthew 19:4–6; Mark 12:26; Luke 16:29; John 7:22), as does the apostle Paul (Romans 10:19; 1 Corinthians 9:9).…
However, when Moses wrote Genesis can be further pinpointed because the Bible says that he started to record Israel’s history during the last 40 years of his life. God first instructed Moses to write after Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt and fled into the Sinai Peninsula through the parted Red Sea (Exodus 17:14; cf. Numbers 33:2). The exodus occurred around 1440 BC; then Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years before finally entering the Promised Land about 1400 BC. Moses died just before Israel entered the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1–7).
All to say, Adventism depends upon Ellen White to describe their view of Scripture. Interestingly, although Exodus and Numbers both state that God directed Moses to write the accounts of Israel in a memorial book, for some reason they still place the writing of Genesis during the years before He met the Lord at the burning bush.
There is no indication at all that Moses was “enjoying God’s presence” in the Midian desert nor that he was communing with God. Yet Ellen made sure that the biblical heroes, including Abraham, were described as godly men BEFORE God called them. Scripture, however, paints a different picture. Just as Abraham worshiped pagan gods before God called him out of Ur (Joshua 24:2), Moses may not have been communing with God in Midian. That burning bush marked a change in him, and the biblical account gives us the picture of a man who learned to trust God AFTER he was called to lead Israel.
God Reveals His Name
Tuesday’s lesson discusses God’s conversation with Moses when He revealed His personal name to him. In Exodus 3:13, 14, we read this:
Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am about to come to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ And they will say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”—Exodus 3:13, 14 LSB
In Exodus 6:3 we read further:
God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but [by] My name, Yahweh, I was not known to them.—Exodus 6:2, 3 LSB
The lesson points out that God presented His personal name to Moses with a depth He hadn’t revealed to anyone previously. Yet the lesson simply explains that “Yahweh” points to God’s being personal, a covenant God, and an intimate God who intervenes in human affairs.
The real significance of God’s revealing His personal name to Moses is much more significant than the Adventist lessons say. While the name Yahweh might have been known or heard by the patriarchs, in general they knew Him by the name “Elohim”, or God.
The personal name of God, Yahweh, was a name that included the meaning that He would redeem His people. Only the Israelites, including Moses, could know the meaning of God’s personal name because only they would experience His personally leading them out of Egypt and opening a way of escape for them. In Exodus 6:3 above, God told Moses that although He appeared to the patriarch, “[by] my name, Yahweh, I was not known to them.”
The verb “to know”, or “know” is a verb intentionally carrying an experiential sense. It is the verb used when the Bible refers to Adam “knowing” Eve, his wife. In fact, God used the verb “to know” throughout His account of His deliverance of Israel.
God revealed Himself PERSONALLY and intimately to Israel through Moses because Israel was His personal nation, chosen, formed, and redeemed personally by His own intervention for His own purposes.
When God explains that He is revealing His personal name, Yahweh, to Israel, He is declaring His personal, eternal commitment to them. They are His, and He wanted them to know Him. He was not hiding.
The Sabbath School lessons repeat the idea that God is a God of “relationships”, that He wanted to have a “relationship” with His people. But this language misses what God was actually saying and doing. He isn’t a nice-guy god who is trying to convince Israel to like Him. Rather He is the sovereign of the universe who has chosen Israel, and He wants them to trust Him and know Him as their provider and protector and identity. He is claiming them, and He is a jealous God who will demand their allegiance and worship. Only Yahweh can choose and create a nation, and only Yahweh can deliver them and give them a land they have not seen.
There is one more aspect to God’s self-revelation that the lesson doesn’t mention but which we must: God has progressively revealed His name and His person to His people. To the patriarchs He revealed Himself as God. To Israel He revealed His personal name, His intimate name: Yahweh. Then, fast forward to the New Testament, and when God sent His Son into the world to be a propitiation for our sins, He revealed Himself even more intimately to His people.
The Lord Jesus gave us the name of God by which we, as born again believers, are to address Him: Father! Israel knew Him as their personal God who worked for them and protected them. We, however, know Him even more intimately: we are born of God when we believe. We receive the life of God making us spiritually alive. The blood of Jesus opened a new and living way for us to approach God directly, and He has adopted us and placed us IN CHRIST. In fact, we who are born again are “hidden with Christ IN GOD”! (Colossians 3:3).
God Himself literally indwells us by His Spirit when we trust the Son. And as Jesus Himself said,
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.—John 14:23 LSB
Our triune God indwells us and never leaves us when we believe the Son and are born again. That is an intimacy that Israel never had—it is a new covenant reality that makes us completely new creations!
The lesson, however, utterly misses the significance of God’s giving Israel His personal name. The implications of being given the intimate name of God are huge, but Adventism cannot even see the significance because it doesn’t believe or teach the literal, spiritual new birth that God does in us when we believe. Our literal spirits pass from death to life, and we are eternally the Lord’s!
Circumcision Fail
Finally, Thursday’s lesson addresses Moses’ failure to circumcise one of his sons. The account is in Exodus 4:24–26:
Now it happened at the lodging place on the way that Yahweh encountered him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched his feet with it, and she said, “You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me!” So He let him alone. At that time she said, “[You are] a bridegroom of blood” with reference to the circumcision.—Exodus 4:24–26 LSB
It helps to understand the context of this story by realizing that the Midianites were descended from Midian, one of the sons of Abraham and Ketura, his wife after Sarah died. Genesis says very little about these sons except to say that Abraham gave them gifts and sent them away from the territory that God had promised in His covenant to give to the sons of Jacob: the nation of Israel.
We see, then, that Moses’ wife Zipporah was a descendant of Abraham, although not from the son of promise, Isaac. This helps us understand how it might have been that a knowledge of God was still alive in Midian and perhaps explains how Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, was “a priest of Midian”.
In this account of the circumcision of their son, Zipporah seemed to understand the concept of circumcision. As a descendants of Abraham, even the Midianites may have continued the practice of circumcision which God gave to Abraham in Genesis 17. (After all, Moses had even circumcised Ishmael.) God had told Abraham that as a sign that he was accepting his role as the recipient of God’s covenant, he was to circumcise his male offspring. Midian may well have been circumcised.
Whatever the case, Moses was setting out to do God’s bidding and to take leadership of the nation of Israel, acting as God’s mouth and mediator—but he had not performed the covenant rite on one of his sons. He couldn’t lead the covenant people who bore the marks of their circumcision if he hadn’t been obedient to circumcise his own son. Even worse, by not circumcising him, that son was not a part of the covenant community and would not be able to participate as part of the nation of Israel, including its rituals of worship.
The lesson deferred to Ellen White in Patriarchs and Prophets and made this account of Moses’ circumcision “fail” a moral lesson. She said,
In his mission to Pharaoh, Moses was to be placed in a position of great peril; his life could be preserved only through the protection of holy angels. But while living in neglect of a known duty, he would not be secure; for he could not be shielded by the angels of God.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 256.
Ellen made this a matter of cause and effect: if Moses didn’t do the right thing, God wouldn’t protect him. It reminds me of the Adventist practice that many learned, that one’s guardian angels (a concept which is not in the Bible, by the way) would stand outside the door of a movie theater if one went inside to indulge. If a fire broke out or some other temptation or disaster happened, there would be no protection for the one inside that theater!
The lesson completely misses the point—as does Ellen. Moses’ failure to circumcise was not a disobedience that determined God’s care for Moses. God was going to do what God was going to do!
Moses had failed to worship and trust God by circumcising his son—and apparently only one son had not been circumcised! In other words, Moses had essentially disrespected the covenant. He had not acknowledged God’s holiness and sovereignty and had kept his own son outside the protection and identity of the covenant people. He was hurting his son by not honoring God—and that inner disregard of God’s central sign of covenant blessing was a danger to his leadership. He was vulnerable to disregard God in other ways if he did not face what it meant that he had not circumcised his son.
Adventism makes this a moral lesson reminding people that they’re guilty if they’re not doing what they know they should do. Inside the context of Adventism, this warning could include anything from smoking to eating meat to not sleeping enough to breaking the Sabbath! Yet the concern with circumcision was that it was God’s appointed sign for those in His covenant.
In fact, circumcision was the physical shadow that was fulfilled in the new covenant by the circumcision of the heart—the “circumcision made without hands” (Colossians 2:11)—the new birth! Circumcision was a sign for Israel that would be realized in the church, God’s new covenant people, when He made them alive in Christ and took away their spiritual death, indwelling them eternally!
This was no mere moral lesson. Moses had to perform the covenant sign on his son in order to lead the covenant people. In fact, Moses was to be the mediator between God and Israel; he was a type of Christ who is the one Mediator between God and man! This was no mere misbehavior. Moses’ failure to circumcise was, in the big picture, the mediator failing to provide the blessings of God to his own son and, in fact, Exodus 4:24 says that God “sought to kill” Moses, apparently for this very failure.
Once again the Sabbath School lessons have missed the heart of the matter. Moses is not an example for us, a picture of a godly man who lived a nice life and had to learn to obey the law.
No. Moses was the mediator of the old covenant to Israel. He stood in the place of God to them as He brought them God’s words and directions. He is the one who told Israel, in Deuteronomy 18:15:
“Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers; you shall listen to him.”—Deuteronomy 18:15 LSB
Moses was a type of Christ who led God’s firstborn, Israel, out of slavery. His role points us forward to the mediation of the Lord Jesus who also in successful because He was obedient to the Father to the point of death on the cross.
God’s promises to Israel are eternal and faithful, just as His promises to new covenant believers are. He will yet bring a remnant of Israel to faith, and Moses will always be remembered as leading Israel and shaping them into a nation from which the Lord Jesus would come.
If you haven’t seen who Jesus is—if you haven’t seen that you are by nature dead in sin and need a Savior, a Mediator who has taken your sin, offered Himself, and opened a new and living way to the Father, reconciling you to God—consider your condition now.
Ask God to show you what you need to know, and cast yourself on His mercy. See Him taking your sin into Himself and enduring the Father’s wrath for your sin, dying your death, and satisfying the Father with His blood. See Him breaking your curse of death as He rose from the tomb on the third day—and believe. Trust Jesus—and you will pass from death to life! †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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