The Window
Exodus 3-4, focused on 3:1-15
The Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible
October 18, 2026
Rev. David Collins
We saw Godspell this weekend at UCF and it was incredible. I had never seen it before. If you don’t know it, it’s Jesus and a group of followers acting out the parables from Matthew. The ensemble plays all the parts, the way kids do when you hand them a pile of costumes on a rainy afternoon, and the songs come in about every style there is. The actor playing Jesus was incredible, everyone was so talented, and it was perfect.
Except for one part.
In the second act, which is not the fun act, the ensemble holds up newspapers during a song. I assume when the show came out in the 1970s those were real newspapers, with real headlines about Vietnam. This weekend the newspapers said things like “Loneliness sweeps the globe.”
And I don’t mean that as a knock on the kids. It was an amazing show. I imagine a teacher made that call so nobody would get hassled by parents, or by a board member placed there by everybody’s least favorite governor. I get it. And if we could bring the whole cast and band here to perform the entire thing, that would be the coolest thing ever. We’d even let them use real newspapers.
I have to confess that there was a time here when Megan and I made those calculations too.
Pastors decide which issues to speak out about based on how it might reflect on them or hurt their ministry. They say "politics is the art of the possible", and that doesn’t only apply to politicians. Everybody does fast math when it’s time to speak up for people being hurt, because we don’t want to get hassled. And man oh man, can people hassle you. Or fire you. As a pastor, it’s a lot easier to preach about loneliness than about the genocide in Gaza.
Moses did that math too. He grew up in Pharaoh’s house, so he always knew what was happening in the brick pits. He went out and looked once, and it ended with a dead Egyptian and Moses running for his life. In Midian he names his son Gershom, which means “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” So he hadn’t forgotten his people. He’d just found a way to live with it. Sheep are a lot easier to look at than brick pits.
It starts like this.
Exodus 3:1-10
Exodus 3:1 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God.
Now, Moses doesn’t know this is the mountain of God yet. That’s just the narrator telling us where he was. It sounds like he ended up there because that’s where the grass was for the sheep.
2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
A quick note about this burning bush…as much as it has gotten featured in sermons and church conferences, it doesn’t really come up again in Exodus. Later in our scripture, God gives Moses all of these signs to wow Pharaoh with, and never once does God say, “Tell him about the bush!”
One of the signs is even a little silly. He tells Moses to put his hand inside his cloak and when he brings it back out it looks like he has leprosy because it’s really white, and everyone is shocked, which lets you know, once again, that the people in the Bible were not white.
Seriously, if I did that trick, people would be like, “I can’t tell the difference.” But then I would do the old detachable thumb routine and win them back.
But we’re still on the burning bush, and it says something really nice about how thoughtful God can be.
Have you ever accidentally startled someone who was focused on a job they were doing? It’s really scary! Now imagine that you’re God! The burning bush is God’s little way of preparing Moses for an encounter with God.
3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.”
And it works! Moses is now no longer lost in his thoughts about the past or his worries about the future or just way too focused on what that one annoying sheep is doing again. And that’s when God speaks to him.
4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
Which as we have seen is the classic answer to give when God calls. Here I am! It’s what you say before you even know what God is going to ask of you.
5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Moses had been walking on that ground all morning, and so had the sheep. And you know what sheep do. Nothing in the text says the dirt changed. What changed is that Moses gradually came to notice who he was really standing with.
6 He said further, “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.
Only now does it say that Moses began to feel afraid. I think that’s because God went so slowly and gently for his sake. God got his attention with the bush. Then said his name twice, Moses, Moses. Then gave him a warning about the holiness of the moment…all before letting him know that he was actually God.
God goes slowly because we can only take so much at once, and God seems to know that about us.
So now, Moses is there, covering his face out of fear, and of reverence. You do not make eye contact with the Divine. But God tells him that God has been paying attention to what is happening on Earth.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,
If anyone gets to be happy and untroubled, it should be God. Nothing is out of God’s reach, and God has no deadlines and no news feed. God could look at Egypt once, shrug, and go back to being thrilled to be God.
Instead God says, “I know their sufferings.” Which means knowing something because you’ve been close to it. That’s a strange thing for God to say. It means a people in the brick pits have gotten to God, and God has stayed with it. And look where that knowing goes in verse 8. God saw, and God came down.
8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.
10 Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
Listen to what God just said. I have seen. I have heard. I know. I have come down. Every line points at Egypt. Also notice how God doesn’t bury the lead here. He doesn’t say “Misery sweeps the land”. He says, “I see how Egypt oppresses them”. Things don’t just happen. They are done by people. When that’s obscured, there’s a reason.
The Window
It’s like God has been standing at the window this whole time, and now God points through it and says to Moses, “Look. Go.”
But there’s this thing with windows.
Every one of them shows you your own face too. Stand at one at night with the lights on behind you and that's all you can see.
So even though Moses is being shown what God is looking at, what God wants him to see, Moses can’t stop seeing his own reflection, what this will mean for him.
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
It’s the question any of us might ask. We might even be fishing for a little confidence. If Moses were your friend, you would say:
You grew up in Pharaoh’s house, so you know how the palace works. You’re educated. You cared enough about your people to step into the brick pit once, even though it ended badly. You can pass for an Egyptian but you’re a Hebrew. The list goes on and on. And all of those answers are all things about Moses’ reflection in that window.
But God doesn’t say any of that. Instead:
12 He said, “I will be with you,
That is all the qualification that Moses needs. It’s all that we need too.
and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you:
Now, we can think of signs we’d like to have that God is with us. Like a still small voice that speaks peace into our hearts. Or a signed contract.
But again, not what God is offering Moses. Instead he says.
and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you:
when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
Sooo. You’ll know you’ve done it when you’ve done it. Thanks coach.
But that is true isn’t it? Kierkegaard wrote, in the condensed version, because being pithy was never his gift, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
We can appreciate how deep that is now, but it didn’t do much to assure Moses, so he keeps asking questions.
God keeps turning Moses toward the people, and Moses keeps turning back to himself. The rest of these two chapters is Moses looking for the exit.
God gives him the plan. Gather the elders and tell them God has seen. Go to Pharaoh and ask for three days in the wilderness. Pharaoh will say no. Then come the wonders, and the people will walk out carrying Egypt’s silver and gold.
Moses says, what if they don’t believe me? So God turns his staff into a snake and the whole white hand bit, and keeps the Nile turning into blood in reserve. Moses says he’s never been eloquent. God asks who gave people mouths in the first place. Moses says, please, send someone else. And for the first time in the story, the Lord’s anger is kindled, which is the Bible’s way of saying God has run out of patience with the conversation.
God’s answer is Aaron. Anyone with a brother knows how that goes. Moses goes home to Jethro and asks to go see whether his people are still alive. On the road, God tries to kill him, and Zipporah saves his life with a flint knife. Megan already explained that one as much as it can be explained.
But I skipped something… Moses second question, and it’s the one question in these two chapters that is about God. Let’s go back and take our time with it.
3:13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
In Egypt a name tells you which god you’re dealing with. There are gods for the Nile, the sun, the harvest, and Pharaoh himself. Asking a stranger who claims to outrank all of them “which one are you?” is a fair question.
God answers, but not in the way Moses expected.
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
THE NAME
It’s hard to overstate just how important God’s name is. It shows up in the Hebrew Bible nearly seven thousand times, more than any other word for God. If your Bible prints LORD in small capital letters, that’s the name. Every time you see those little capitals, you’re looking at what Moses was just given.
Every Hebrew word was written without vowels, and readers knew what to say. For this one word, people stopped saying it, out of reverence, and said “my Lord” instead and eventually nobody knew how to say God’s name anymore. Scholars guess “Yahweh,” but it is a guess. The most important name in the Bible, and we aren’t certain how to say it.
Now think about why Moses just asked for it. A name is a handle. If you know someone’s name, you can call them. In Egypt, knowing a god’s name told you who you were dealing with and what that god was good for. You have a problem with a well, you need to call Stan, he’s the god of wells. Someone fell in one? Could he not see that well?
Moses wants a handle, and it’s a fair thing to want. But the name God gives isn’t a handle at all.
God gives Moses a name that you can’t grab on to. “I am who I am” can just as easily be translated “I will be what I will be.” You can’t get a grip on that. t’s a verb. In Hebrew, the verb “to be” also means to become, and to show up.
And it’s the same verb God used back in verse 12. Moses said, “Who am I?” and God said, “I will be with you.” Then God takes that word and makes it a name. Before it’s anything else, God’s name is a promise to show up.
Look, too, at who the name is for. “Thus you shall say to the Israelites.” God gives it to people in brick pits, and says it will be theirs for all generations.
A God whose name is a promise to show up keeps looking where people are hurting. That’s why God keeps pointing out the window.
And that name hasn’t stopped being said. If God is “I will be,” then God isn’t finished showing up. A bush. A pillar of cloud. A tent, and later a temple.
Then God came down again. John says the Word became flesh and pitched a tent among us. It’s the same coming down God announced at the bush, only now he has a mother and dirt under his fingernails. The God who said “I know their sufferings” suffered for the sins of the world.
The one who said “I have heard their cry” let that cry come out of his own mouth.
The one who told Moses “I will be with you” told us “I am with you always to the end of the age”
So go to the window.
It won’t be easy at first, because the glass is going to show you your own face. What will this cost me. Who’s going to hassle me. That’s the fast math, and every bit of it is a reflection.
They’re fair questions, and God never asks Moses to stop asking his.
But you can cup your hands around your eyes. Press up to the glass until it quits being a mirror. Then stay there long enough for the view to come through.
Here’s what’s out there. A genocide in Gaza. Families torn apart by ICE. Women who are assaulted and then blamed for it. People who work full time and sleep in their cars.
Say so. Say it here and at home and work, and don’t apologize for it. Let the need you see, not the fear of repercussions, dictate what you do and what you say.
And if what you see is loneliness, because it’s everywhere, don’t worry about what someone like me or anyone else has to say about that either. Just go.
You don’t have to be good at it. Moses wasn’t. He needed Aaron. You’ll need somebody standing next to you, and that’s part of what we’re all here for.
Jesus did the math and did it anyway. He stood in the temple and called the powerful hypocrites to their faces, and it cost him exactly what you’d expect. He looked at what God was looking at, and he didn’t turn away, all the way to the cross.
Then on Sunday morning he came out of the tomb with the wounds still on him, and one of the first things he said to people was "look".
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