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 your sandals off 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.
Exodus 3:1-6
This is one of the most outstanding passages in the Old Testament, and we must study it carefully and patiently in order to draw out its meaning. Older divines have tended to interpret the Bush as a type of Christ in both His person and work. We should perhaps check the temptation to be impatient at such apparently extravagant interpretations, by reminding ourselves that they were held by men who lived very near to the Lord and who were probably in a better position to discern the inner meaning of the Scriptures than we often are. At the same time, however, there is a more general symbolism here that has much to teach us. In the first place the Bush was a revelation of God to Moses, in which He made known to him His Name, the awful Name of the covenant, Jehovah. In simplest terms, this is what God is like, a flame of fire, unchanging. It is as if He were saying to Moses, and through him to Israel, 'I am still the same covenant-God, as of old. I change not, the same yesterday, today and forever' (cf Genesis 15:17 - the same fire that gave assurance to Abraham came to assure Moses). In the second place, God was in the midst of the fire, and His voice came out of the fire, that is to say, He was with His people in their torment, and was saying something to them in it. This is the same message as John received on lonely Patmos; to him came the vision of the mighty, ever-living Christ with eyes as a flame of fire, holding the keys of death and hell. The Bush did not mean only this, but it could not have meant less, to Moses, and as such was really the answer to his strange and unaccountable unwillingness to being the divinely appointed deliverer of the people, mentioned in the next chapter (of which more later). In face of such divine assurance (cf Isaiah 43:1, 2), how could any man fear or shrink from the fight?