'And, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush
was not consumed.' EXODUS iii. 1
It was a very sharp descent from Pharaoh's palace to the wilderness,
and forty years of a shepherd's life were a strange contrast to the
brilliant future that once seemed likely for Moses. But God tests His
weapons before He uses them, and great men are generally prepared for
great deeds by great sorrows. Solitude is 'the mother-country of the
strong,' and the wilderness, with its savage crags, its awful silence,
and the unbroken round of its blue heaven, was a better place to meet
God than in the heavy air of a palace, or the profitless splendours of
a court.
So as this lonely shepherd is passing slowly in front of his flock, he
sees a strange light that asserted itself, even in the brightness of
the desert sunshine. 'The bush' does not mean one single shrub. Rather,
it implies some little group, or cluster, or copse, of the dry thorny
acacias, which are characteristic of the country, and over which any
ordinary fire would have passed like a flash, leaving them all in grey
ashes. But this steady light persists long enough to draw the attention
of the shepherd, and to admit of his travelling some distance to reach
it. And then--and then--the Lord speaks.
The significance of this bush, burning but not consumed, is my main
subject now, for I think it carries great and blessed lessons for us.
Now, first, I do not think that the bush burning but not consumed,
stands as it is ordinarily understood to stand, for the symbolical
representation of the preservation of Israel, even in the midst of the
fiery furnace of persecution and sorrow.
Beautiful as that idea is, I do not think it is the true explanation;
because if so, this symbol is altogether out of keeping with the law
that applies to all the rest of the symbolical accompaniments of divine
appearances, all of which, without exception, set forth in symbol some
truth about God, and not about His Church; and all of which, without
exception, are a representation in visible and symbolical form of the
same truth which was proclaimed in articulate words along with them.
The symbol and the accompanying voice of God in all other cases have
one and the same meaning.
That, I think, is the case here also; and we learn from the Bush, not
something about God's Church, however precious that may be, but what is
a great deal more important, something about God Himself; namely, the
same thing that immediately afterwards was spoken in articulate words.
In the next place, let me observe that the fire is distinctly a divine
symbol, a symbol of God not of affliction, as the ordinary explanation
implies. I need not do more than remind you of the stream of emblem
which runs all through Scripture, as confirming this point. There are
the smoking lamp and the blazing furnace in the early vision granted to
Abraham. There is the pillar of fire by night, that lay over the desert
camp of the wandering Israelites. There is Isaiah's word, 'The light of
Israel shall be a flaming fire.' There is the whole of the New
Testament teaching, turning on the manifestation of God through His
Spirit. There are John the Baptist's words, 'He shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire.' There is the day of Pentecost, when the
'tongues of fire sat upon each of them.' And what is meant by the great
word of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'Our God is a consuming fire'?
Not Israel only, but many other lands--it would scarcely be an
exaggeration to say, all other lands--have used the same emblem with
the same meaning. In almost every religion on the face of the earth,
you will find a sacred significance attached to fire. That significance
is not primarily destruction, as we sometimes suppose, an error which
has led to ghastly misunderstandings of some Scriptures, and of the God
whom they reveal. When, for instance, Isaiah (xxxiii. 14) asks, 'Who
among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell
with everlasting burnings?' he has been supposed to be asking what
human soul is there that can endure the terrors of God's consuming and
unending wrath. But a little attention to the words would have shown
that 'the devouring fire' and the 'everlasting burnings' mean God and
not hell, and that the divine nature is by them not represented as too
fierce to be approached, but as the true dwelling-place of men, which
indeed only the holy can inhabit, but which for them is life. Precisely
parallel is the Psalmist's question, 'Who shall ascend into the hill of
the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place?'
Fire is the source of warmth, and so, in a sense, of life. It is full
of quick energy, it transmutes all kinds of dead matter into its own
ruddy likeness, sending up the fat of the sacrifices in wreathes of
smoke that aspire heavenward; and changing all the gross, heavy,
earthly dullness into flame, more akin to the heaven into which it
rises.
Therefore, as cleansing, as the source of life, light, warmth, change,
as glorifying, transmuting, purifying, refining, fire is the fitting
symbol of the mightiest of all creative energy. And the Bible has
consecrated the symbolism, and bade us think of the Lord Himself as the
central fiery Spirit of the whole universe, a spark from whom
irradiates and vitalises everything that lives.
Nor should we forget, on the other side, that the very felicity of this
emblem is, that along with all these blessed thoughts of life-giving
and purifying, there does come likewise the more solemn teaching of
God's destructive power. 'What maketh heaven, that maketh hell'; and
the same God is the fire to quicken, to sanctify, to bless; and
resisted, rejected, neglected, is the fire that consumes; the savour of
life unto life, or the savour of death unto death.
And then, still further, notice that this flame is undying--steady,
unflickering. What does that mean? Adopting the principle which I have
already taken as our guide, that the symbol and the following oral
revelation teach the same truth, there can be no question as to that
answer. 'I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and
of Jacob. 'I AM THAT I AM.'
That is to say, the fire that burns and does not burn out, which has no
tendency to destruction in its very energy, and is not consumed by its
own activity, is surely a symbol of the one Being whose being derives
its law and its source from Himself, who only can say--'I AM THAT I
AM'--the law of His nature, the foundation of His being, the only
conditions of His existence being, as it were, enclosed within the
limits of His own nature. You and I have to say, 'I am that which I
have become,' or 'I am that which I was born,' or 'I am that which
circumstances have made me.' He says, 'I AM THAT I AM.' All other
creatures are links; this is the staple from which they all hang. All
other being is derived, and therefore limited and changeful; this Being
is underived, absolute, self-dependent, and therefore unalterable for
evermore. Because we live we die. In living the process is going on of
which death is the end. But God lives for evermore, a flame that does
not burn out; therefore His resources are inexhaustible, His power
unwearied. He needs no rest for recuperation of wasted energy. His
gifts diminish not the store which He has to bestow. He gives, and is
none the poorer; He works, and is never weary; He operates unspent; He
loves, and He loves for ever; and through the ages the fire burns on,
unconsumed and undecayed.
O brethren! is not that a revelation--familiar as it sounds to our ears
now, blessed be God!--is not that a revelation of which, when we
apprehend the depth and the preciousness, we may well fix an
unalterable faith upon it, and feel that for us, in our fleeting days
and shadowy moments, the one means to secure blessedness, rest,
strength, life, is to grasp and knit ourselves to Him who lives for
ever, and whose love is lasting as His life? 'The eternal God, the Lord
... fainteth not, neither is weary. They that wait upon Him shall renew
their strength.'
The last thought suggested to me by this symbol is this. Regarding the
lowly thorn-bush as an emblem of Israel--which unquestionably it is,
though the fire be the symbol of God--in the fact that the symbolical
manifestation of the divine energy lived in so lowly a shrine, and
flamed in it, and preserved it by its burning, there is a great and
blessed truth.
It is the same truth which Jesus Christ, with a depth of interpretation
that put to shame the cavilling listeners, found in the words that
accompanied this vision: 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob.' He said to the sneering Sadducees, who, like all
other sneerers, saw only the surface of what they were sarcastic about,
'Did not Moses teach you,' in the section about the bush, 'that the
dead rise, when he said: I AM the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of
Jacob.' A man, about whom it can once be said that God is his God,
cannot die. Such a bond can never be broken. The communion of earth,
imperfect as it is, is the prophecy of Heaven and the pledge of
immortality. And so from that relationship which subsisted between the
fathers and God, Christ infers the certainty of their resurrection. It
seems a great leap, but there are intervening steps not stated by our
Lord, which securely bridge the gulf between the premises and the
conclusion. Such communion is, in its very nature, unaffected by the
accident of death, for it cannot be supposed that a man who can say
that God is _His_ God can be reduced to nothingness, and such a bond be
snapped by such a cause. Therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still
living, 'for all' those whom we call dead, as well as those whom we
call living, 'live unto Him,' and though so many centuries have passed,
God still _is_, not _was_, their God. The relation between them is
eternal and guarantees their immortal life. But immortality without
corporeity is not conceivable as the perfect state, and if the dead
live still, there must come a time when the whole man shall partake of
redemption; and in body, soul, and spirit the glorified and risen
saints shall be 'for ever with the Lord.'
That is but the fuller working out of the same truth that is taught us
in the symbol 'the bush burned and was not consumed.' God dwelt in it,
therefore it flamed; God dwelt in it, therefore though it flamed it
never flamed out. Or in other words, the Church, the individual in whom
He dwells, partakes of the immortality of the indwelling God. 'Every
one shall be salted with fire,' which shall be preservative and not
destructive; or, as Christ has said, 'Because I live ye shall live
also.'
Humble as was the little, ragged, sapless thorn-bush, springing up and
living its solitary life amidst the sands of the desert, it was not too
humble to hold God; it was not too gross to burst into flame when He
came; it was not too fragile to be gifted with undying being; like His
that abode in it. And for us each the emblem may be true. If He dwell
in us we shall live as long as He lives, and the fire that He puts in
our heart shall be a fountain of fire springing up into life
everlasting.