Sabbath: The Burning Bush
Daily Lesson for Sabbath 5th of July 2025
Image © Pacific Press
Read for This Week’s Study: Exodus 18:3-4; Exodus 3:1-22; Genesis 22:11,15-18; Exodus 6:3; Joel 2:32; Exodus 4:1-31; Genesis 17:10-11.
Memory Text:
“And the Lord said: ‘I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey’ ” (Exodus 3:7-8, NKJV).
God’s call to us will often change the direction of our lives. However, if we follow that call, then we discover that God’s path is always the best route for us. However, sometimes—at first—it isn’t easy to accept God’s call.
Such is the case for Moses and his call by God, which specifically began at the encounter with the Lord at the burning bush. Although Moses may or may not have known about the laws of combustion, he knew that what he was seeing was a miracle, and it certainly caught his attention. No question, the Lord was calling him to a specific task. The issue was: Would he answer the call, regardless of the radical new change in his life that this call would bring? At first, he was not very receptive to it.
You may recall instances when you had specific goals, but God redirected those plans. It is true that we can be useful to God in many ways, but following God’s call in our lives, and doing what He leads us to do, is surely the path to the most satisfying existence. It might not always be easy, and it wasn’t easy for Moses, but how foolish to go our own way when God is calling us in another direction.
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, July 12.
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During my years of teaching at Avondale, I had several students who thought God had called them to do some special ministry. Typically, they were arrogant "gits" who had a bee in their bonnet that the church was wrong and needed their special skills to set us right. I remember in particular one ministerial student who did one of my computer programming courses as an elective. He turned out to be a "whizz-bang" programmer in class. We had a lot of discussions about ministry and how he felt called to be a great preacher. But he had the personality of a cactus and I knew that he would go down like a lead balloon in a church. I said to him one day, "If God has called you to be a computer programmer, heaven forbid that you should stoop to being a minister!" Ultimately, he took my advice and did become a programmer for many years, and somewhere along the line, he also lost the cactus part of his personality.
I mention this because sometimes we are inclined to think that God's calling has to be somewhat supernatural and a call to do big things. In fact, most of us are called by very natural means, a friend's advice, reading a book, seeing the example of someone else, to do rather small tasks. Let us not forget that while Moses became a national leader and captured the press, many were called to keep the goats and pitch the tents. And, in God's big plan they played their part in nation building.
Don't wait for a burning bush experience! God has called most of us to be humble servants - a small cog in the gearbox of Christianity.
The Bible has got several incidents where God comes down to investigate human affairs. It is absolutely mind-blowing how the Creator of the heavens and the earth and who is omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipresent (everywhere at once), decides to come down to see human affairs by Himself. The memory text for this week is worthwhile to explore a bit.
"And the LORD said: ‘I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey’" (Exodus 3:7-8, NKJV).
What is fascinating to me is that God decides to come down, “So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians”. Is this figurative (metaphorical) or literal? This verse is not exceptional where God comes down to see things by Himself. Let us see a few incidents where God comes down to witness things by Himself.
1. Genesis 3:8 -13 - God comes down after Adam and Eve sinned
2. Genesis 11:5–7 – “But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.”
3. Genesis 18:20-21 - “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great... I will go down and see whether what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me.”
4. Exodus 19:11, 18- 20 - God comes down on Mount Sinai to give the Hebrew people His laws
5. John 1:14 - God the Son (Jesus Christ) became flesh and dwelt among us
6. Revelation 21:2-3: Ultimately, God will come down to dwell with His people forever.
God Himself coming down to deliver the Hebrew people is profoundly heart-touching. “I have seen... I have heard... I am concerned... so I have come down to rescue...” (Exodus 3:7-8). Coming down is not about getting new information, but it is about personal engagement. God is not an absentee landlord. Our God is not distant. He sees, He feels, and He is moved to do something for His people. “Coming down” is a special moment of divine intervention. Whether used figuratively or literally, all humanity needs a special moment when God steps in to turn things around. Two thousand years ago, God came down to save not only the Hebrew people but the entire human race.
“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” )John 1:14, NIV).