Have you ever read the same Scriptures a hundred-billion (give or take a few) times and then, all of a sudden, noticed something that you have never seen before? That’s what happened to me recently. I was reading through Exodus in preparation for Pastor Ronnie’s sermon on Moses and something stood out like a burning bush to me. (Too cheesy? Church humor…gotta love it.)
I had just finished trying to imagine what it would have been like to be Moses in that well-known moment. To hear the audible voice of God. What it would have been like to know that the God that I had only heard about, decided He had something that He needed to say to me? To see a bush in flames and to know that it was not the same kind of fire that I always knew, but the presence of the Lord.
It was in that moment as I was thinking to myself, “Wow. What a powerful, life-changing experience that must have been”, when, in my gut, I knew that the Lord, the God of Moses, had something He needed (little, ole) me to hear.
This is what I read:
“Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
And some of the words leapt off the page. They were:
“Then the Lord said,
I have seen.
I have heard.
I know.
I have come down.
to deliver.
to bring you out.
into to a good land.
. . .
I will send you.”
And POW! right before me– in the black and white text of the Old Testament– was the Gospel.
We were in our bondage. Slaves to sin. And the Lord saw. He heard. He knew. So he came down, from heaven and took the form of a man and died as a sacrifice. To deliver us– from death and sin. To bring us out of the miry clay and into life abundant and everlasting.
And then he sends us to the world to make this truth known.
I sat silent. Staring at the words that seemed to be staring at me. Sitting in my kitchen, but knowing that I, like Moses, had stumbled onto holy ground.
-Stephanie Cannon
