Okay, friends, please grab a Bible and open with me to Exodus chapter 3, Exodus chapter 3.

The beauty of the church is something that has been recognized since time immemorial. It is the consensus of covenant and reformed theologians that the church did not start in the New Testament, but started with God's people.

After Adam fell in the garden, God made a covenant. He covered him with clothing, and He said, there will be one that will come that will crush the serpent's head, though the serpent will strike his heel. And from that moment on, God has called a people to Himself by grace from the very beginning. And as we go through the series on the beauty of the church, it's very important that you recognize that God's church began.

At the very beginning, and let me give you this definition of the church. It's very simple. Even children can understand it, and it's this. The church is God's people on God's mission for God's glory. The church is God's people on God's mission for God's glory. For God's glory. What does that definition teach us?

It teaches us, number one, that it's not about you. And while there is a visible church, as we've just confessed, it is all the people who gather together to worship on Sundays, there's also an invisible church. That is, that those among the visible church are those who truly are believers. And so every week we are going to call every person within the sound of my voice to believe the good news of the gospel.

Because the beauty of the church is where the work of God is manifested by His Spirit in and through the lives of His people out into the world. And the engine, the place of our corporate and covenant renewal happens on Sunday in worship together as the visible church gathers together. And so knowing that the church is God's people on God's mission for God's glory, which started at the very, very beginning of Genesis.

We have learned that Adam and Eve fell in the garden, and many, many years and generations later, God called the son of a moon worshiper, the son of Terah. His name was Abram. His name meant exalted father, and he said to Abram, Abram, I'm going to call you out of your fatherland, out of Ur of the Chaldees, and I'm going to pull you into a land flowing with milk and honey, a beautiful land.

And I'm going to give you this land, and not only will I give you this land, but I'm going to give you. More children than you could ever imagine. And God changed Abram's name to Abraham, which means the father of multitudes. And he gave him a sign of circumcision to say, this is to be placed on every one of the boys that are born to you forever to be a sign that this is my covenant seal over you.

And of course, now we know that that sign has been replaced with the beauty of baptism. And many years after Abraham, as we saw last week, God called him, tested his obedience to sacrifice his son Isaac, which points us to the greater offer of a father giving his son, except Jesus wasn't rescued by the ram and the thicket.

Jesus was the true Lamb of God who was sacrificed for us. And many years later, after the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob's children became many, many multitudes. The pharaoh of Egypt enslaved God's people for 400 years. And as the pharaoh was killing the babies, every Hebrew baby that was to be born was to be killed.

They were to be killed by being thrown into the Nile. And so, Um, So, this young baby's mother, also one Hebrew baby, his mother took him and put him in the Nile, but he put him in a basket made of papyrus reeds and set him in the river, and he floated down the river and toward Pharaoh's daughter as she was bathing with friends, she found this baby boy in this basket, and she drew him out of the river, and she named him the one who was drawn out.

Moses. Moses, that's what his name means. And she raised this Hebrew baby boy in the midst of the arrayed might of Pharaoh, educated with the best of the Egyptians. And one day Moses recognized how the Egyptians were treating the Israelites, and he struck down an Egyptian. And when he struck down the Egyptian, Pharaoh wanted, even though he was considered his son, Pharaoh wanted him dead.

And so for 40 years he disappeared into the wilderness. Are you with me? Pharaoh married. He married a woman named Zipporah. They had a son named Gershon. And one day while Moses was tending to his father Jethro's flocks, he took them to the west side of the boundary of the land near a mountain called Horeb.

And the Lord appeared to him in the most amazing way. And just like we saw in the garden, heaven and earth met once again. This time, not in a garden, but in a bush that was always burning, yet not consumed. And so this morning, we read of the story of Moses before the burning bush. And so if you're willing and able, would you stand together as we read Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 to 10.

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight. Why? The bush is not burned. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here I am. Then he said, Do not come near. Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

And he said, I am the God of your 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 at God. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry, because 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 Hibbites, 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.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated, please. Father, would you take us to the Foot of the burning bush, would you remind us that we stand in your presence and we also stand on holy ground because wherever two or three are gathered in your name, there you are in our midst.

And in a billion years from now in glory, we will recognize how the English language failed to communicate the depth and breadth and height and length of your great love for us. And the holiness. With which you are crowned King of kings and Lord of lords. And so would you open our hearts this morning in the moments we have together to recognize in this great movement of the redemptive story that you demand reverence in the presence of your holiness.

And we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. In the year 1666, Scotland was ruled by the Stuarts, and the Stuart kings, sometime before that, began to rule both England and Scotland because of a marriage that happened many, many years prior, even before Henry VIII. And when the King of England died, the next one on the throne was the King of Scotland, and so Scotland and England began to be ruled by the same.

monarch. Scotland had its own rules, its own parliament, its own procedures, and so did England. Totally separate. One person had to know both worlds very, very well. Many generations later, they decided to make things a little easier, and so there'd be one king over Scotland and England, and that king was the head of the church.

And in 1666, there are a group of Presbyterians in Scotland who were ruled not by bishops. They weren't ruled by the king appointing particular men to oversee their churches. They were ruled by a representative form of government called Presbyterianism. But the king imposed upon these people that you won't be ruled by the ones that I appoint to rule over you.

And they were called the Covenanters. They covenanted together. That they would be ruled by a Presbyterian form of government, a representative form of government over all of Scotland. And when the king or queen did not like that, they didn't just make suggestions. They sent soldiers to decapitate those who disobeyed the king.

And so the Covenanters were led by a man named, at one point in time, Donald Cargill. And in the Penland Hills, which is about 20 miles southwest of Edinburgh, Scotland, they would disappear. They would go hide out to hide from the soldiers of England. And of the king. And they would worship. And one day in 1666, Donald Cargill gathered these brothers and sisters in the hills fighting against the state imposed church that were asking them to go against their conscience of what they believed Scripture taught.

And many of them, including Cargill himself, would later be executed. And on this day, Cargill rose and he read to them to comfort them and to strengthen them. That they stood on holy ground. And he read to them Exodus chapter 3, and he said to them, We are like that bush, O people of God.

We are always persecuted, yet never destroyed. We are always burning, and yet never consumed. And so the symbol of the burning bush, became the symbol for the Scottish Presbyterian Church. And if you've ever been to Scotland, you will see the words, Always burning, yet never consumed, is a sign of God's covenant people in Scotland who fought for religious integrity.

Fierce religious independence from the state imposed church. And the symbol of the Scottish Reformation is the symbol of the burning bush. This is why, for example, if you've ever seen ministries like Ligonier Ministries. Anybody ever heard of Ligonier and R. C. Sproul? What's the symbol of his organization?

A burning bush. Because it harkens back to the Scottish Reformation. In our new building, one day, someday, you'll see many different burning bushes, including on one of the trusses, and you'll see pictures in your bulletin of what that looks like. It's a symbol of the burning bush to remind us as God's people that we are always burning, yet never consumed.

We should always expect persecution, yet we stand upon our conscience, believing in God's inerrant, yet Infallible and trustworthy word, despite whatever government persecution may come our way. Amen? It's easy to say now. Won't be so easy one day. And what Moses, in his experience of the burning bush, teaches us, and what the sermon in a sentence is, At the burning bush, God calls us, His church, to recognize His holiness.

God calls us to recognize His holiness. I wonder if you recognize it.

When Moses encountered God at the burning bush, it changed everything for Moses. And the first thing that an encounter with a holy God Demands, is it? Number one, it demands reverence. The holiness of God demands reverence. Notice what the text says. While he was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro, the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst.

And when God spoke to him, what did God say to him? He said, Do not come near. Take off the sandals from your feet for the place in which you are standing It is holy ground. Adamah,

the ground. Kadosh, holy. It is holy ground. Take off your shoes.

John Calvin says, It is not lawful for men to thrust themselves rashly into God's presence, but they are to be subdued by His majesty.

The burning bush is a symbol of where heaven and earth meet together. It's a theophany. It is an appearance of God in the Old Testament where His presence is there and dwells among His people. Heaven and earth come together. And like Eden, you see this beautiful bringing together of heaven and earth at moments of Scripture.

And the perfect example of heaven and earth coming together is in the person of whom? The Lord Jesus Christ, of course, who is the true Word of God, who is fully God and fully man. And you see it culminate in Revelation 21 and 22, when heaven and earth come together again. Heaven comes down to earth when the earth is remade in the New Jerusalem.

And so here Moses is standing with shoes off before his, the infinite holy presence of God. And just as Moses needed to take his shoes off because he stood in God's presence, so also we, when we come into his presence, we come into his presence on his terms, in his timing, with his methods, and with new motives.

We come to his presence on God's terms. Removing his sandals was a sign of his deference, his humility, his submission. That we come and we approach God humbly. I wonder if you approach God humbly. The way you approach God humbly is not by the way you dress, although that can help your heart. The way that you approach God humbly is not by genuflecting, by bowing, getting on your knees before you come into the service.

It's not by crossing yourself. The way that you come before God with a Who is infinitely holy is recognizing that you are in desperate need of grace. And that all of your self saving strategies have led you into cul de sacs, into dead ends. And they have frustrated you in so many ways. And He invites you to recognize His holiness, because when you recognize His holiness, you see that it demands your reverence.

RC sprawl writes, the holiness of God means that God is holy, other, and we must approach him with deep respect and a recognition of our unworthiness, we come into God's presence on God's terms. We also come into God's presence on God's timing. God chose the place and the time, 40 years after Moses had run into the wilderness 40 years, God called to Moses out of the burning bush.

Moses was not seeking God, but God was seeking Moses. And God sovereignly initiated communication with Moses to say, Moses, listen up. And not only does God call us on his terms and in his timing, but God also calls us in his way. God said to Moses, Moses, Moses, and God, and Moses used the same phrase that we saw last week.

Hineni, here I am. Hineni, in Hebrew. Here I am, God.

God's ability to work and through ordinary means in extraordinary ways is

amazing. You think this is just wine and grape juice and bread? God uses ordinary means to strengthen you and to transform you. God is thinking, how do I get Moses attention? Oh, I know. His creativity is amazing. I'm going to set a bush on fire, but it won't burn up. And God uses ordinary means, a bush in the middle of the wilderness.

Fire, something that humans are always familiar with. And he brought them together to say, I'm going to use ordinary means. In order to help you recognize my presence. Those of you, for example, who are really torn, teenagers especially, listen to me. If you're thinking, college students, you're trying to figure out, what am I going to do after graduation?

What is God calling me to do? You may have real clarity in that calling. I thought when I was in college, I knew what I wanted to do, but actually God led me in a very different direction. Moses, Wandered for 40 years before God gave him that clarity of call. And if you're wondering, what is my purpose?

What am I called to do? I want you to invite you to the ordinary means of grace, week after week after week. Keep coming to worship. God uses the ordinary, a bush and fire brought together. He uses the ordinary means. The preaching of God's word, prayer and fellowship, and the sacraments of the church to shepherd you and to hone your purpose and your calling.

Because God calls you into his presence on his terms, in his timing, And he gives you a renewed motivation. Notice in the text how God identifies himself. He says, In other words, Moses, I am the God, the covenant making God, who made a covenant with God. To your fathers before you. And I'm calling you into that covenant.

And we know later in reading in Exodus, God honed the nation of Israel by giving them the law to be a further example of his covenantal precision over his people.

We are motivated because of God's faithfulness to his covenant. He reminds Moses and all of the readers That God is faithful to His covenant. This is the reason why Don and Cargill stood in 1666 in the Pinland Hills of Scotland. They called themselves the Covenanters because they stood upon God's covenant promises.

And they signed a document called the National Covenant that we will stick together. Later it was the Solemn League and Covenant. That we will stick together because we have a covenant keeping God who is faithful to His promises.

And that just as Moses was called to recognize God's holiness with a sense of reverence, so also our forefathers in the Scottish church were called to recognize God's holiness by believing the Bible, even when they were persuaded by the sword to believe something outside their conscience.

I wonder if you would make that same decision.

One of the things that when we think about the way that God uses his methods. Right? His terms, his timing, his methods, his motivation. What does that mean for us? Pete Wehner is a journalist. He writes for a number of publications, New York Times, Atlantic others. He goes to a PCA church in Washington, DC that's pastored by a good friend of mine.

And Pete sent us a speech that he gave to a group of pastors or a group of high school kids at a private school in Virginia this week. And Pete, Was thinking about the way that God's methods work itself out in the time of the election season. And this is what he wrote. The way many Christians are engaging in politics is troubling.

And if I had to boil down my concerns to a single sentence, it would be this. In too many cases, those who claim to be followers of Jesus are subordinating the Christian faith to political tribalism, partisan loyalties, and political power. And in so doing, they are using methods and means that are fundamentally at odds with what.

The theologian Eugene Peterson called the Jesus Way. Eugene Peterson says that you can't proclaim Jesus's truth without also adopting Jesus's way, his methods. Christianity is about professing a particular creed, but it's also about professing a particular ethic. The way that we interact with each other, one's conduct, one's sensibilities, one's cultural engagement.

And Eugene Peterson writes, We cannot suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth. The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent. I wonder if that's true in the way that you treat those who disagree with you politically in this season. Wouldn't it be amazing if we had a church where we were so centered on the gospel?

That our loyalties were first, Christian, second, nationality, third, political party. And everybody knew us as that. That we were able to listen for our opponents, not just be thinking about what to say next. Because we need to learn how to do moral discourse again. And where do we learn to do that? We learn to do that by recognizing that we stand on holy grounds in the presence of God.

And we learn to do that together. There's a lot of heads nodding. You know this. You feel this together. The question is, can we do it together? I think we can, and I think we have. And I think that's why, quite frankly, some of you are here. Because we want to hold the gospel at the center point of our church, in every way.

And so, may I encourage you, this political season, to not only walk in the truth of Jesus, but also walk in the methods and the ethics of Jesus together. Not only does God's holiness demand reverence, but secondly, God's holiness reveals our need for redemption. God's holiness reveals our need for redemption.

Moses hid his face before God because he was afraid to look at God.

Like Isaiah in the temple in Isaiah chapter 6, Moses hides his face in recognizing that he is unworthy to come into God's presence. One theologian named Herman Bovink says that it is God's holiness, which means his absolute purity, his complete separation from all that is sinful, causes us to only recognize all that more greatly, our need.

And this is where God literally uses the word redemption. I'm going to send you, Moses, to redeem. There's the word. To redeem the people of Israel out from under the thumb of Pharaoh. And ever since this time, the churches use this metaphor of redemption. Paul uses it all throughout his epistles. To say that in the same way the Lord Jesus Christ comes and he redeems you out from the Pharaohs of sin and death.

So that you might be able to rest out of slavery and bondage to sin. And the delight. of your father's tender love and affection. Children, do you know how much God loves you? He loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to die for you on the cross, so that when you place your faith in Him, you are given a new name, like Abraham was given.

You are called Christian. And he places his seal upon you. His baptism is upon you to remind you that, oh, his promises are always true. Kiddos, do you believe that? It's not for your parents only. It's also for you because you are a part of this church.

God's holiness reveals his demand demands our reverence. It reveals our need for redemption. And also God's holiness calls us to his mission. God's holiness calls us. We tend to think of God's holiness and God's mission as something that are separate, but notice it's where you see God's holiness. that you get God's mission.

In fact, you don't really understand your place in the world until you understand how infinitely beautiful, glorious, and holy God is. And then when you recognize that and see that there's such a great distance from you and God, mediated only through Jesus, that you begin to understand your true purpose.

Whether it's a minister of the gospel, it's a financial planner, it's a nurse, a doctor, caretaker, candlestick maker, or whatever it is. You do so by recognizing God's holiness. Come, I will send you, verse 10, to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

St. Augustine, many years ago, said just as Moses saw in the burning bush the holiness of God, God commissioned him to deliver his people from Egypt, so too Christ calls his church out of the world, a people in bondage to sin, that we might lead others to the promised inheritance of eternal life. The church is a pilgrim people, Augustine says, in the city of God, called by grace, sent to bring light and freedom to the nations.

Are we doing that? What a privilege it is to be able to do it in our cul de sacs and in our neighborhoods. And John Knox, like Augustine, was deeply committed to the idea that the church is called to be his hands and feet. And as a, one of the early Scottish reformers, generations before Donald Cargill, Knox writes a letter to the church in Edinburgh and he says, the church of God is not buildings of stone, of wood.

It is the company of the faithful, sealed by God's mercy, called by his voice in light of his truth. And then he adds, As Moses was called to deliver Israel, so the church is called to bring forth the light of the gospel, to lead souls from the bondage of sin and idolatry into the liberty of God. The church is God's people, on God's mission, for God's glory.

And this is God's ordinary vehicle, His ordinary agency to bring the gospel to the world. Do you know that? The church is not ancillary to your Christian faith. It is His ordinary means of encouraging you to walk in light of His holiness, with reverence, aware of your need for redemption, and on mission together.

And just as the Lord called Moses away from all of the gods of the world, Nations around him, and there were many gods. The Canaanite gods, the Egyptian gods, Ra, or Amun, or Osiris. All of these gods that Moses had grown up seeing his family worship. God called Moses, and he said, Moses, and Moses said, God, when people ask me what this god is, because there's lots of gods out there, who should I say is sending me?

And what does he say? He says, you tell them that I am who I am is sending you, or I will be who I will be.

And what's amazing is that many, many years later, Jesus, when He's teaching the scribes and the Pharisees in John chapter 8, what does Jesus say to them? They say, who are you? And Jesus says, Before Abraham was, I am. And in John 8, 58, make no mistake about it, they knew exactly what Jesus was saying. Jesus is saying, just as the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, your forefather Moses, I am.

I am who I am. And the next verse in John 8 says they picked up stones to kill him. And so isn't it amazing that when Jesus is trying to think about how do I describe myself to these people, he begins in John 6 by talking about how he is the bread of life. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world in John 8.

I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am in John 11 the resurrection, the truth, and the life. In John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. In John 15, I am the true vine. How remarkable it is when Jesus is describing himself almost as though he knew we'd be in worship together today. He begins by saying, I am the bread of life in John 6, and he ends by saying, I am the true vine.

And when we come together in just a moment for the Lord's Supper, you come before the Holy God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is spiritually present in the bread and in the wine. spiritually present to nourish and strengthen you, to remind you that you, oh people of God, on God's mission for His glory, come before His presence with reverence.

You come because you recognize your need for redemption and you come as a people who are on mission. And we come before the great I Am who holds Himself out to you, not in power and glory as He appeared in the Old Testament, but He comes to you weak and crucified. Amen. And bleeding on a cross. The Lord Jesus Christ, the true burning bush cannot say it any clearer.

Come to me, all who are heavy laden and I will give you rest. So friends, let's come to the supper and hope that we are people called by God on his mission for his glory, strengthened by his might. So that one day, someday when we face persecution too, we might take off not into the Penland Hills outside of Scotland, but perhaps to the Osage Hills outside of Tulsa.

And we might worship Him in spirit and truth because He is worthy. Hallelujah. Let's pray together. Father, You are worthy of all glory and might and power. And Jesus, thank You that just as You called Moses out of the burning bush, so You call us today out by the preaching of the gospel to see Your Son, the great I am.

Jesus, thank You that You are the bread of life, that You are the light of the world, that You are the door, that You are the great shepherd, that You are the resurrection. That you are the way, the truth, and the life, that you are the true vine, and help us to give now generously of our tithes and offerings for your glory's sake, and to come and run to this table of celebration in the joy of your presence.

And we ask all these things in Jesus name, amen.