John Piper preached a famous sermon at Passion one year titled “Don’t Waste Your Life”. In it he spoke about aspects of the American Dream that run counter to the gospel and living a life of purpose and meaning. When Moses gets to Midian, he kind of enters into the BC version of that lifestyle. He’s doing the 9 to 5 thing so to speak, herding sheep, raising his family, possibly looking forward to the BC version of retirement – who knows. But God has other plans for Him, as we will see in today’s blog.
“Now Moses was pasturing the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not being consumed. So Moses said, “I must turn aside and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burning up!” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”“
As Moses is living his normal life God calls to him by doing something unusual. God gets Moses’ attention with a burning bush that had an unusual feature. And when Moses “turns aside” to look more closely at the burning bush, God notices and calls him. Because of this moment in Moses’ life and how he handled it, we have all heard of Moses. The rest of his story is legendary, and Moses’ legendary adventure begins right here, when he “turns aside”, when he noticed something unusual that God had placed in his path and went to investigate further. He did not know God was behind this unusual thing when he turned aside – this information came later. He was simply willing to deviate from his normal routines, to take a detour, and go look at this strange thing.
Like a fisherman with a hook and a bobber in the water, God calls to all of us constantly using “burning bushes”, and takes notice whether we “turn aside” or not. A burning bush is anything unusual, something that perhaps cannot be explained, or something out of the ordinary. He notices when we deviate from our normal trajectory, our daily routines, our typical ways, our usual path, our usual understanding, in order to investigate the “burning bush” He has gotten our attention with. These “burning bushes” are opportunities that God is placing in our lives where we can connect with Him, and they are so numerous that it is impossible to number them. It turns out, almost anything can be a burning bush.
One of the greatest “burning bushes” that most of us have pondered at one time or another is life itself. By this I mean the life force that differentiates between something that is alive and something that is dead. Life is something we have been fascinated by for millennia. In the Frankenstein story we see doctor Frankenstein trying to give life to his creation using lightning. Scientists for hundreds of years have tried to create life in an effort to prove that evolution could occur without a creator, but the failures have been so consistent, that it is my understanding that scientists have completely given up on this and they no longer even try to do it. It is one of the great “unspoken of” evidences that the theory of a creator-less evolutionary origin of life is simply not true. John Chapter one clearly explains where the life force comes from when it reads “in Him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men,” if only we would turn aside, look, listen, and think.
There are countless other “burning bushes” in the world, screaming for our attention, beckoning us to “turn aside” from our busy lives, from our normal patterns of behavior, from our traditional understandings, etc. And God is watching to see if we will turn aside or not. Some of the more obvious things include all of the creation, all of science, mathematics, art, beauty, love, joy, self-sacrifice, birth, death…..basically all that is…everything that exists. Just looking at the patterns in a gray tabby cat’s fur or a wood duck’s feathers is enough to do it. The question is whether or not we will turn aside and really look and think about what we are seeing. Turning aside often means we must step out of our scripted way of seeing and understanding the world and look upon it with new eyes, in a new way, without bias or prejudice. It requires us to think for ourselves, to reason, to question pat answers to tough questions.
I know when I first heard about the gospel, I thought to myself, “I don’t really know anything at all about the bible. I only know what I have been told by others, what I have been taught. I have never read it for myself. I think one day I will read it for myself and see what all of the fuss is about.” I decided to “turn aside” that day, eventually reading several books of the bible to see this “burning bush” for myself. The rest of my story has been legendary ever since. But I had to choose to turn aside first. I had to take a detour, I had to deviate. I had to approach the burning bush of the bible with an open mind and think for myself, reason for myself rather than just falling back on what I had been taught and had heard from others about it.
“Turning aside” involves a genuine stepping out of our locked-in ways, it requires an authentic openness to look and listen, as well as a commitment to think for ourselves rather than just falling back on how we have been taught or trained to think and respond. It requires us to be open to think, to reason, to explore, to question. The movie ‘The Matrix’ is all about this, and the “burning bush” moment can be seen in it’s blue and red pill scene. Turning aside is a picture of us getting to the chair where we have a choice regarding which pill to take. Until we turn aside, we are stuck in the matrix with no hope of ever getting out. We are not even sitting in the chair across from Morpheus. Turning aside gets us to a place where we can hear directly from God, sometimes for the first time in our lives.
What are some of the burning bushes that you have experienced in your life? Did you turn aside, or did you write it off and fall back into life as normal? How did the burning bush challenge you to think or act differently? What things that you had been taught or told were challenged by it? How hard was it for you to turn aside? Why was it hard to turn aside? What were the things that keep you (or tried to keep you) from turning aside?
Is there a “burning bush” in your life now? What would it mean for you to “turn aside” to see this “burning bush”? What detour is required for you to go see this burning bush? How is this bush interrupting your life.….challenging your understanding of the world…..going against what you have been taught? How is this burning bush challenging you to think for yourself? What do you have to lose by turning aside to see this bush?
The gospel is a classic “burning bush” – it simply does not make sense when we first lay eyes on it, when we first hear about it. We either “turn aside” to investigate further, or we go back to our lives and what we have been taught, refusing to think about it openly for ourselves. God is watching to see what we do, how we respond to the “burning bush” of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How will you respond to it? Have you turned aside, or are you still watching your father-in-law’s sheep on the side of some hill? Has your life become “legendary”, or are you headed for the ‘obscurity folder’ of history.
I urge you to turn aside today. You will not regret it. If you will genuinely turn aside, I can promise you that God will notice, and you will soon encounter Him just as Moses did. Like the story in the Matrix, are you willing to turn aside and let Trinity take you to Morpheus where you will have the opportunity to choose one of the pills, or will you choose to walk away and just stay in the matrix? The choice of whether or not to turn aside is ours to make. The decision we make determines the destiny of our lives. I urge you to turn aside, if you have not done so already.
Lord God Almighty, I come before you in Jesus name, and confess that I often walk right by Your burning bushes in my life without even considering going over to see what it is all about. I get busy with life, get focused on work, get distracted by sports and other things, and often don’t even notice them anymore. Forgive me for this. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear so that I will start seeing your burning bushes that are in the world around me. Help me to see them, and give me the courage to turn aside and go check them out for myself. I pray that You would give me curiosity, give me an open mind, give me the desire to think and reason for myself rather than just going along with the “matrix” that I was born into. I pray these things in Jesus name, amen.
Tim Keller Sermon with more on this verse can be found by clicking here.
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