Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Ministry from David Gilliland Saturday morning.

[0:01] For the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction.

[0:18] Of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters.
For I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land onto a good land and a large, onto a land flowing with milk and honey, onto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hevites and the Jebusites.
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me, and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.
Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?
And he said, certainly I will be with thee and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee.
When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.
Moses said unto God, behold, when I come to unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers has sent me unto you and they shall say to me, what is his name?
What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am.

[1:32] And he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.
And God said moreover unto Moses and so on. I think perhaps we’ll terminate the reading there, and trust the Lord’s blessing upon his word.

[1:59] I, as far as I can remember, today’s date marks the death of Anne Bradstreet.

[2:09] A famous lady in this part of the world. She came from England way back in the early 1600s and arrived in the New England states. She was born into a wealthy Puritan family, was a very famous lady in her day and generation, a woman marked by great piety, feared God, brought up a family of eight children, became a very accomplished poetess in her day, and in fact she’s the first American lady, as far as I know, to have her poetry published in English. And some of her poetry is very well worth reading and is being published even to this present day. So, on the 16th of September 2023, we remember the death of Anne Bradstreet on the 16th of September 1672. She was, I think, around 60 years of age. She lived in difficult circumstances, and although she had a very affluent beginning in life, she came into considerable difficulties in poverty and hardship. On the 10th of July, 1666, her house was completely burned to the ground.

[3:20] She awoke in the early hours of the morning to hear the crackle of violent flames, and she managed to escape out of her home, and she stood and watched everything just being turned to smoke and dust and ashes. As she saw the rubble begin to accumulate, she thought, that’s where the table we used to be and never sit there again.

[3:47] That’s the room where we used to have the children. We’ll never sit again.
And everything just seemed to be turned to ashes before her very vision.
She wrote a poem, I read a little bit of it here. It’s not the subject that I want to speak about in particular, but she said, when I could no longer look, Luke. I blessed his name, who gave and took, that laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so it was just. It was his own, it was not mine, far be it that I should repine.
And when she begins to think about the loss of all our earthly goods, she goes on in this poem.

[4:37] To say, thou hast a house on high erect, formed by the mighty architect.
It’s purchased and paid for too by him who had enough to do, a price so vast as is unknown, yet by his gift is made thine own.
She concludes the poem to say, then would no longer, The world no longer let me love.
My hope and treasure lies above. The title of the poem, Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July the 10th, 1666.

[5:20] Well, fire is destructive, isn’t it? We hear a lot these days about these uncontrollable fires, that create such havoc and move at such speed and leave behind in their trail so much damage.
Fire, I say, is destructive.
Fire can also be instructive.
It was destructive, as far as this lady was concerned, destroyed her home.
It was very instructive in the sense that it made her think about a better home above the sky.
The Bible is a book that is ablaze with fire, right from the early chapters of the book of Genesis, Right to the lake of fire in the book of Revelation chapter 21.
The blaze, the flame of fire covers the pages of the Bible. Fire can be the fire of retribution.

[6:18] It can be the fire of refinement. God can sometimes use the refiner’s fire to improve, to purify, to cleanse away the dross.
It can be the fire of revelation.
The Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in fire.
I think there’s another verse somewhere that tells us that the fire shall declare it.
It shall be revealed in fire, and the day shall declare.
Well, I tell you, this was quite a day of revelation for Moses.
He stood and saw the blazing bush.

[6:59] He’d never seen the likes before. This was not a phenomenon that was explainable, naturally speaking.
There’s something significant. There’s something supernatural about it all, and he stands and he gazes and he listens and he looks and he learns.
What a day of revelation it was as Moses stood at the burning bush.
A man of 80 years, his first encounter with God.

[7:27] He believed in God, I think, from early day. His faith in God had been established for many years.
But now he’s coming into a conscious sense of a relationship with God, and of the nearness, of God, and of the intervention of God, and the impact of God in his life.
And it’s a day of significant revelation at the bush.
In fact, there was another English poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she said, Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every bush aglow with God.
But only those with eyes to see take off their shoe. The rest sit round and eat blackberry.”.

[8:16] Quite an emotive piece of poetry. I hope we not eat blackberries this weekend at the conference.
I hope we’ll take off our shoe, and that this very place will become ablaze, aglow with the warmth and the glory of the presence of God.
They’ve given us quite a few bushes here.
It’s very kind of them to do that, seven of them. And they’re all aglow, they’re all aglow.
I don’t know whether in the words of Barrett Browning, aglow with God, but there’s something about every bush that reflects the ingenuity of the great creator.
But here’s a bush, and Moses, I say, he finds on this particular day things to learn about God.
One of the things that he learned was that God is the God who comes close.

[9:05] Moses has taken, in the discharge of his duties, he has taken his father-in-law’s flock into the backside of the desert. He’s off the margin.
He’s been buried in the wasteland of Midian for 40 years. The man that used to strut the palaces and the corridors of power.
He rubbed shoulders with the royalty of Egypt.
Suddenly he finds himself exiled and dislocated to a nomadic life into no man’s land. No one knows where he is.
He has disappeared off the map, but suddenly just there, in the solitude of his isolation, in the detachment of his position, God is just as close as the bow.

[9:55] God comes very near. He’s the God who comes close, and he arrives in strange places, and he breaks unusual sight. God hasn’t been heard for 400 years. The centuries have passed since great promises were made to Jacob and to Isaac and to Abraham. Some of those men had personal experiences with God, but God hasn’t been seen or heard for 400 years.
God is distant and Moses is detached. Now the two of them connect in a special…
Isn’t it good to know, dear Christians, we have a God that comes close, Right down into the loneliness, into the isolation of our experience.
Whoever you may be here, just in this opening meeting, I want to encourage you.
We have a God who knows exactly what our situation is.
You know, time passes. There’s between the last communication of God and this one at the bush is just the tissue page.
And in that tissue page of my Bible, 400 years lie.

[11:09] There’s another tissue page, just after the book of Malachi.
There are 400 years there, 400 years of silence.

[11:23] The prophetic voice is no longer heard. And just as God appeared in a common bush, just a thorn bush, in a common bush in Exodus chapter 3, and He broke the silence of four, centuries and appeared in an unusual it all again. There’ll be four centuries of silence and suddenly God will shatter the silence of those years and he will reappear, not now, in a bush, flesh and blood in the poverty of Bethlehem’s manger. This is the God who comes close and he becomes involved in the human situation and he reaches right down to where we are, and he meets us at the point of our need.
I say, dear Christians, we should never think, we should never think that God is so detached and so distant that he’s far removed and is forgotten.
No, God was right here, and Moses learns.
The first great lesson he learns, this is a God who comes close.
God is mentioned three times in Exodus chapter one. Exodus Chapter 1 He Never Says a Word.

[12:47] He’s just mentioned three times at the end of the chapter.
The body of the chapter tells us about the children of Israel increasing in number and being persecuted and made to serve with rigor and with hard bondage and their little children being thrown into the waters of the river Nile and God says nothing.
You just get three meager mentions at the end of the chapter.
Then you go into chapter number two. There’s a boy born, has to be put into a bulrush, put out into the the Nile, all the different things that happen in chapter number two. And again, God is just mentioned five times at the end of chapter two, never says a word.

[13:34] In Exodus chapter one and in Exodus chapter two, God is invisible and he is inaudible. When you When you get to Exodus chapter 3, God is mentioned 21 times.
The God who has almost disappeared in chapters 1 and 2, he now appears in a very visible and he now speaks in a very vocal manner. Most of the speech in Exodus chapter 3 is God that speaks.
Out of 22 verses, God speaks about 15 verses.
Not a word was heard. in life, you know, dear Christians, God seems to be distant and he seems to be silent.
Difficult things happen.
We wonder, has God forgotten? Has he disappeared? Is he letting things go?
But in the silence behind the scenes in chapter 1 and chapter 2, God is still moving.
And now in chapter 3, I say he comes close.
Jehovah, the Lord, is not mentioned once in Exodus 1.

[14:44] He’s not mentioned once in Exodus chapter 2.

[14:50] How many times is Jehovah mentioned in Exodus chapter 3? Seven times.
So that this faithful Lord, this covenant-keeping God, even though He has been silent and invisible and inaudible, He’s always there keeping watch above His own. And now the perfect revelation, of God is being seen in Exodus chapter three, right here in the flame of fire, in the burning of the thorn bush.
I’m sure Moses wondered at times, what has happened to the people that I left behind?
When I left Egypt 40 years ago, they were being severely persecuted by a ruthless pharaoh.
I wonder, are they still alive?
Do they still exist?

[15:38] Have they been persecuted into the dust of the ground and disappeared from being a people at all.
And as those 40 years slowly dragged by, there must have been many thoughts in Moses’ mind.
Suddenly he sees a bush that burns and is not consumed.
And he, I think, discerned the lesson that God’s people are invincible.
God will preserve his people. God will protect his people.
God will sustain and will maintain his people, even amidst the fires of adversity and the protecting, preserving presence of God, it became the God who comes close.
He’s the God who makes claim.

[16:25] Moses is obviously fascinated by the presence of God, by the flame of fire in the bush, and he goes to go closer to see this, take just a little bit of, God says, no, stay, just enough.
Don’t come any closer, just take your shoes off.

[16:48] The great man Moses now stands unshod in the presence of God, and he keeps a safe distance.
He doesn’t dare to cross the boundaries, and he doesn’t push the limits.

[17:03] This God who comes close is now the God who makes claims, and he tells us where to go, and he tells us what to do, and he tells us how to act. And I say, Moses appreciates its, holy ground. You’re well aware of the fact this is the first time that the, word holy appears in its adjective form in the Bible. God is now coming close, but he doesn’t want Moses to take undue liberties, and he has a claim upon Moses’, attention. It says, when God saw that he turned aside to see. He has a claim upon on Moses’ attitude, the sense of awe in his heart.
He has a claim upon Moses’ availability. He says, Moses, Moses, and the good man responds, here am I.
I say, dear Christians, maybe that’s a good thing for us to learn, even in the first session of the conference.
God is not only a God who has come close and become involved in our human situation, And from the transcendence of his eternal abode, he has touched planet Earth as a babe.

[18:18] He died on one of our crosses, and the body of his son lay in one of our tombs.
We can never doubt that God is a God of human involvement, but he’s also a God who makes claim.
I don’t want to be critical in any shape or form, But I think, I think that maybe, maybe.
In the casual atmosphere of 2023, in the dumbing down atmosphere of the secular age in which we live, we’ve always a danger, always a danger that we might begin to take liberties with God.

[19:03] Just to lose a sense of awe and a sense of reverence, just to lose a sense of what is appropriate for the presence of God. And I think Moses is going to learn. There will be further claims and further demands that will be made in the book of Exodus, but Moses is already learning that in the presence of God you stand with unshod feet.
Even when priests move in God’s sanctuary, as the book comes to an end, they will carry out their priestly service without any shoes upon their feet.
I trust that God will help us to appreciate his claims upon our lives, our appearance, our attitude, our activity, all of those things.
Are part of the demands that God sets upon us, the boundaries that he establishes, the limits which he identifies.
Thirdly, Moses also learns in the flame of fire in the bush, not only the God who comes close and the God who makes claim, But he learns that he is the God who keeps covenant.

[20:20] He said, I know, Moses, I know that it’s a long time since I spoke to your great-great-great-grandfather, Abraham. I know it’s a long time, and I know that the centuries have passed by.

[20:33] And I know that the delay seems to be endless and interminable. But he said, I haven’t forgotten, you know. He said, I made promises all those centuries ago to Abraham. I reaffirmed those promises to Isaac, and I confirmed them with Jacob. And he said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And he said, when I make covenants, I don’t revoke them.

[21:00] And I don’t forget about my promises, and I don’t go back upon my word. He said, you can trust me, you can trust me, that the promises which I made then, I’m coming down now, after centuries of delay to fulfill those promises. You say, well, I don’t know. Does God keep his promises? Does God really fulfill his promises? I think there’s something significant in those three titles. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Those are the promises. Those are the very features of God that guarantee that he will keep his promises. The God of Abraham is the God of Revelation. The God who revealed the promises is the God who will keep them. Behind those promises, there comes all the authority of the everlasting God. The God of Abraham is the God of Revelation.
That’s why we believe the Bible and the promises of the Bible, because they have come from God with all their divine authority, and the stamp, the insignia of eternity is upon this book, the promises.
The God of Isaac, well, the God of Isaac is not so much the God of revelation, the God of Isaac is the God of resurrection.

[22:26] Out of the deadness of Sarah’s womb, Isaac was born. When everything seemed to be humanly hopeless and beyond human, the possibility of life.
Out of death, God brought life. And even when Isaac was stretched out upon the altar, again, there was the principle of life out of death.
That’s why, dear Christians, we can trust God.
Not only because he has revealed the promises, but he’s the God of resurrection.
And when we come to the New Testament and the Apostle Paul was speaking about the believers that it passed on.
He said we speak by the word of the Lord.

[23:09] We believe that Jesus died and rose again. Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
What about all the believers down the last 20 centuries that have gone to glory?
Their dust lies smouldering in the earth.
And there were all those wonderful promises of heaven and home and everlasting glory.
Will those promises ever be realized?
Or is it just pie in the sky that comes to nothing?
Upon what is our Christian hope for the future founded?
It’s founded upon the history of the past.
We believe that Jesus died and rose. We trust the Savior who has broken the barrier of death.

[23:50] Has moved the horizons of possibility to the resurrection side of the grave.
And because of what has already happened, we look forward with joyful, confident anticipation of what will happen.
The God of resurrection. Dear Christians, we’ve a great God. He will keep his promises. But you say, what? I don’t know.
I don’t know what happens if I, I might fail. And I might, I might let the Lord down.
And I might get far away. What about the God of Jacob? Old Jacob gets away out of the land for all of those years. And after he cheats his brother and does things that never should have been done, spends those 20 years of exile in the land of Paddanuram. And you say Jacob is far removed off target. Will he ever get back again to the land of God’s promise? Oh Jacob will get back.
It took a while and it took a few twists and turns, but God saw to it that Jacob came back because he is not only the God of Abraham, the God of Revelation. And he’s the God of Isaac, the God of of resurrection, I’m glad today that he’s the God of Jacob, the God of restoration.

[25:08] And he can bring us back, bring us back. That’s why we believe the promises for Israel will be fulfilled, because God will see to it that the nation that rejected his son and have become exiles across the globe and have been evicted for centuries, they will, Jacob-like, do the cycle and be brought back to their own land.
And the promises to Israel, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, they will be literally fulfilled in that very same locality, because God revealed himself at the bush There’s not only the God who comes close.

[25:48] As the God who makes claim, as the God who keeps covenant. He also revealed himself to Moses at the bush as the God who really cares.
Oh, he says, Moses, I have seen, I have seen the affliction.
He said, I have heard the cry. the cry. And he said, I know their sorrow. So he’s a God who sees. He’s a God who hears.
He’s a God who knows. One of the other verbs that is used, he’s the God who remembers. He remembered his covenant with Abraham and he had respect unto his people. I say, isn’t it a great comfort this after this morning to know, dear Christians, we have a God who is intimately acquainted with.

[26:49] The detailed circumstances of our life. It’s not even that God heard their prayer. I don’t think they were praying so much. He heard their cry as those dear people groaned.
Beneath the crack of the taskmaster’s rod, and they just groaned, those cries of suffering and depression, they penetrated to the very throne of God, and he heard them all.
Maybe there’s some Christian here today, and you have sorrows, you’re carrying burdens, you find yourself surrounded by circumstances that are breaking your heart, family problems, financial problems, health problems, assembly problems, and on and on it goes, physical problems, mental problems, spiritual problems, and your heart has, come to the conference today and you’ve just been crying. There’s that internal groan of unrelieved suffering. My dear Christian friend, can I tell you, the God, that was revealed at the bush and the God of the Bible is a God who really He really cares, and He knows, and He feels, and He sympathizes for His people in the midst of all their sorrows and all their woes, and He says, I’ll come down.
The seventh verb, I think, actually, that is used concerning God in this passage, He not only hears and knows and looks and remembers.

[28:19] And has respect and see, He’s a God who visits. He’s a God who visits.
That’s a beautiful term in the Bible. He’s a God who visits with delivering mercy and power, and he comes right into the center of the circumstances of his people.
Moses learned God hasn’t forgotten about his people. God is not detached from their suffering.
God is not far removed from the awful dilemma of these people, and when the time is right, when the time is right, God will intervene for the fulfillment of his own program.
Fifthly, I think the only one that I’ll mention just in this particular session of ministry, what kind of God is the God of the bush?
The God of the Thornbush.

[29:06] He’s the God who comes close, and in the dusty sand of life’s desert experience.

[29:14] He can come right down to where we are. He’s the God who really cares, and He knows all our sufferings, and all our sorrows, and all our burdens, and all our pains. He’s the God who makes claims upon us in our lives. He’s a God who keeps covenant and will fulfill his promise.
He never goes back upon his word. He’s the God who is eternally consistent. That’s the great question that comes up at the end of this interview and Moses speaking to God at the bush. And again, I emphasize it’s God speaking. God does most of the talking. Moses says a few things, throws in a few interjections here and there. God speaks seven times in chapter 3. Same thing happens in the first 17 verses of chapter 4. Moses makes a few comments. God speaks seven times. It’s a great thing. It’s a great thing when God does most of the talking. I hope God will do a lot of speaking this weekend. Does our brethren rise to minister one after another. That the voice of God will be clearly articulated and the light of divine revelation and Holy Scripture.

[30:35] Will shine into different corners of our lives. And one here and another there and up yonder and from front to back and left to right. That every believer will.

[30:46] Hear the voice of God speaking through his word. We’ll not do the talking, just, sit down quietly, take off your shoes, stand in his presence with reverential law, and may God speak.

[31:01] And we quietly listen to hear what God the Lord would say. He said, Lord, he says, who am I?
He says, you tell me that I have to go down to Egypt and deliver your people. Quite a tall order it was. Moses knew the protocol of Pharaoh’s court. Moses knew the power of that court. He says, Lord, But who am I?

[31:25] The Lord says, Moses forget about it. He says, it doesn’t matter who you are.
He said, the question is not who am I? The question is, who am I?
He says, it doesn’t matter who you are. He says, the big thing is, who am I?
He said, you’re just an 80 year old gentleman here.
And he said, you could do nothing, but who am I? I will be with thee.
And he says, Lord, I’ll need to tell them your name. What’s your name?
He says, just tell them I am.
I am. Strange grammar, strange title. He said, that’s my name, I am.
And he said, I am that I am.
And if I had a dollar for all the pages that have been written in explanation of that great title, well, I would be a multimillionaire.
That expression, I am, it’s what would be called in common English grammar, the future tense of the verb to be.
When God said, I will be with thee, That’s exactly the same word as is later in the chapter translated, I am that I am.
The scholars debate, well, how should it be translated? Should it be translated the second time, I will be what I will be?

[32:37] Or should it be translated, I will be what I am? Or should it be translated, I am what I will be?
Or I am that I am? How do you work all this? I am what I will be.
Well, that’s the majesty and the mystery of God’s great be. He says, listen, Moses.
He said, there’ll be no situation that will arise for which I won’t be sufficient.
He says, I am what I will be.
And he says, whatever emergency arises, he said, I’ll have what it will take.

[33:14] And he says, what I will be is what I am. You know, you could have people in life, and maybe 40 years ago, I’m speaking to some of the older believers, they were a tremendous help to you, and they were encouragement, and they were a great support, and a great strength, and they brought you on, and saw you through many difficulties, and you’re indebted to them, but they don’t help you very much today.
They’re not the people that they used to be.
They don’t have the energy.
They don’t have the wherewithal. They don’t have the ability today that they had 40 years ago.
They’re not what they were, and you find yourself in difficulty, and they’re not able to provide what is required by your prayer. No, no, says God.
God says, I am what I will be, and I will be what I am.

[34:00] He said, Moses, a thousand years down the way, I will still be what I am.
I will never weaken. I will never waste. I will never weary.
And he said, all that will be required in any given situation, anywhere by any of my people at any time, he said, I will be what I am.
And he said, I never decay. I never age. I never need to sleep.
I never need to take rest. I don’t take any food.
He said, in the timelessness of my eternal being.
He said, I am what I will be. Dear Christians, can I tell you, you can face the future with God.
And whatever situation might arise in your life, you need not be afraid that God will be shortchanged or he won’t have the sufficiency to meet the situation.

[34:55] That may just arise. What a great God we have.
And all that is in the great I am has been incorporated in the one who has become Jesus the Saviour.
And God has committed his unchangeable character in the person of his Son and vouchsafed to us every promise made secure in Jesus Christ. And so, the revelation of God at the bush.
That’s all I’ll say. Leave time for my brethren.
I say this, dear Christians.
I think one of the best tonics that the 2023 Midland Park Avenue Conference could provide for us, is to give us a fresh vision of the greatness of God.

[35:41] Just a sense of God. In most of our minds, God is far too small, maybe even in Moses’ mind.
After 40 years of keeping shape, God said, I’ll stop him at the bush and I’ll tell him exactly who I am and what I am and what I want him to do in light of what I am. And when he came to die, good old Moses, and he was writing a piece of poetry in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 33.
He looked back across the landscape of life, and the one thing that he mentions is this. He says, the good will of him that dwelt in the thorn bush.

[36:31] You say I thought God would dwell in the lofty cedar? Yes. You say I thought that God would dwell in the mighty oak? Yes.
You say I thought that God might dwell in the beautiful olive? Yes.
But as Moses looked back over life, he didn’t speak about the God that dwelt between the cherubim.
He didn’t even speak about the God that dwelt within the tabernacle, or the God that dwelt within the holy of holies.
He said, as I look back on life, and I want to pick out something that has stood me in good stead, it’s the good will of Him that dwelt.
In the thornbush. Dear Christians, that’s the kind of God that we have.
May God help us to appreciate Him more and to serve Him better until we see the Savior face to face.
May the Lord bless his work.

Filed under: Conf Ministry, Conferences, gilliland-david