of fire in a bush. the sight and as he : came unto him, 32 Saying, I am the the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God of thy fathers, Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold. 583 XIV. Acts Forty years after, God appears to him in a burning bush. of the Lord in a flame a bush, while he was feeding the flock of Jethro SECT. his father in law in the wilderness of mount Sinai, even of that mount Sinai which (as you know) lay in the confines of the Midianite country, VII. 30. not far from the Red Sea. (Exod. iii. 1, 2.) 31 When Moses And Moses, seeing [it,] admired the vision, for 31 saw it, he wondered at the bush burned with fire, and yet was not drew near to behold it, consumed; and as he drew near to behold and the voice of the Lord survey [it] more particularly, the voice of the Lord came unto him out of the bush, [Saying,] 32 "I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who led them safely through all the difficulties of life, and still manifests a friendship to them; in consequence of which, I am not even now ashamed to own that title." And Moses upon this, perceiving that it was God himself who was there present and spake to him, trembled at this appearance of his Majesty, and did not dare to behold it, as he intended, with a 33 Then said the curious regard, And the Lord said unto him, 33 Lord to him, Put off Loose thy shoes from thy feet; for the place feet; for the place in which thou standest is now holy ground, where thou standest is while I thus visibly appear upon it; and it holy ground. becomes thee (by that usual token of respect before princes) to express thy reverence for 34 I have seen, I my royal presence. I have surely seen the 34 have seen the affliction evil and oppressive treatment of my people which in Egypt, and I have are in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning; heard their groaning, and moved with pity and compassion at their sufferings, I am come down to deliver them by thine hand: And now therefore come, and lay aside immediately thy cares of a shepherd for others of much greater importance, and I will send thee into Egypt, to demand their dismission from that proud tyrant who so injuriously detains and oppresses them." (Exod. iii. 5-10.) thy shoes from thy of my people which is and am come down to deliver them : and now come, I will send thee into Egypt. 35 This Moses whom And thus you see, what in present circum-35 they refused, saying, stances it will be proper for you to reflect upon, that this Moses, whom they renounced, saying Who i Loose thy shoes from thy feet.] It was formerly in the eastern nations, and is now in the southern, esteemed a ceremony of respect, to put off the shoes when approaching a superior, lest any of the dirt or dust cleaving to the shoes should be brought near him, and that the person approaching bare foot might tread more cautiously. This, which perhaps was introduced at first in court apartments where rich carpets might be used, the King of kings requires to be with done in a desart, as a token of the infinite'y k This Moses, whom they renounced.] As through 584 xiv. Acts Reflections on the account that Stephen gives of Moses. did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer SECT. with disdain, Who has constituted thee a ruler and Who made thee a ruler a judge? even this very person did God, by the and a judge? the same hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush, VII. 36.send [to be] a ruler and a redeemer. And though he hesitated for a while, he afterwards complied; and at length led them forth in triumph, a willing people listed under his banner, doing out, after that he had wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and at- shewed wonders and terwards in the Red Sea, where Pharaoh and his Egypt, and in the Red host were overwhelmed; and working many Sea, and in the wilderother miracles in the wilderness for the space of ness forty years. forty years, where indeed they were every day miraculously fed by manna from heaven, and conducted by the pillar of fire and cloud. sigus in the land of IMPROVEMENT. Ver. He is indeed faithful that hath promised; he remembereth his 17 covenant for ever, the word which he commanded even to a thousand generations. (Psal. cv. 8.) He multiplied his people in Egypt, that Canaan might not want inhabitants, when the sinners against their own souls that then held it should be cut off: And when he had determined so to multiply the holy seed, vain were all the at18, 19 tempts of the ungrateful Egyptians to destroy the kindred of him by whom, as they had formerly confessed, their lives had been saved: (Gen. xlvii. 25.) Yet was the rod of the wicked permitted for a while to rest upon their back, that the remembrance of the bondage and the cruelties they had there endured might, throughout all generations, be a source of joyful and grateful obedience to that God who delivered them from the land of Egypt, and from the house of bondage, and an engagement to serve him who had so illustriously triumphed over idolatry, as it were in its head-quarters. The church has often had its winter season, yet Providence has over-ruled the severity of that, to conduce to the verdure and beauty of its spring, and to the fruitfulness of its summer and its 20, 21 autumn. Moses was born in the midst of this persecuting time, and when exposed, was the care of divine Providence; the compassion which God put into the heart of this Egyptian princess, was to draw after it a train of most important consequences. Moses was fitted for the great part he was to act in the close of life by very different through the whole of this discourse speaks be a ruler and redeemer, intimated how possible it was, that Jesus, whom they had lately rejected, might nevertheless be constituted a Saviour by the divine determination. Reflections on the account that Stephen gives of Moses. 585 xiv. different means; the learning, the magnificence, and politeness SECT. of the court of Egypt were to do their part, that he might be able to appear with honour in that court as an ambassador, and Ver. to conduct himself with becoming dignity as a prince; but they 22 could not do the whole: They were to illustrate his generosity in seeking, in the midst of such various pleasures, and at the expence of such high prospects to vindicate his oppressed brethren, 23, 24 whose sorrow touched his heart, and whose groans pierced (if I may so express it) through all the music of the court, through all the martial noise of the camp, in which he might sometimes reside and command: Glorious triumph of faith, that when he was come to such full age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and chose rather to meet with affliction in the cause of Christ, than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin! (Heb. xi. 24, 25.) But forty years of retirement in the desart of Midian, spent in 29 the meditations and devotions, for which the life of a shepherd gave so great advantage, must ripen him to feed God's people Israel; while they, in the mean time, justly groaned under the continuance of that bondage from which they were so backward to accept of a 25 proffered deliverer. At length light breaks in upon them in the midst of their dark- 30, 31 ness: Let us turn aside and behold with proper affection this great sight, the bush burning but not consumed; and therein an emblem of the preservation of the church, even amidst the fiercest flames. Let us hear with pleasure that voice which proclaims to all that 32 hear it, so compassionate and faithful a God, which opens so glorious and lasting a hope; I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. "Thou art not, O Lord, the God of the dead but of the living, (Mat. xxii. 32.) these pious patriarchs therefore live with thee, and their believing seed shall partake of that life and joy in the city, which because thou hast prepared for them, thou art not ashamed to be called their God." (Heb. xi. 16.) How does God manifest the heart of a parent towards these his 34 oppressed children! I have seen, I have seen the affliction of Israel: Thus, () Lord, dost thou see all our afflictions! Let thy church, and each of thy people, trust thee to come down for their deliverance in thine own time and way; let us with pleasure behold this Moses whom they rejected, and from whom a worthless offender could not bear a reproof, made a leader and a redeemer: So is 35, 36 our blessed Jesus, though once rejected and despised, exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. It is not in vain that we have trusted, it is he that should redeem Israel. (Luke xxiv. 21.) He has conquered the tyrant of hell, he has broken our chains, he has brought us forth into a wilderness, but a wilderness in which God nourishes and 536. xiv. Moses had pointed out another prophet, even Christ. SECT. and guides us; and he shall ere long have what Moses had not, the honour and delight of leading all his people into the land of promise, and dividing to them a joyful and everlasting inheritance there. SECT. XV. SECT. Stephen proceeds in his discourse, till his audience are so enraged that they rush upon him and stone him. Acts VII. 37, to the end. VIII. 1. ACTS VII. 37. STEPHEN went on, in his discourse before XV. the Sanhedrim, to mention several other cirActs cumstances concerning Moses, which he judged VII. 37. important to his present purpose; and having taken notice of the commission he received from God to be a ruler and deliverer, and of the won ders that he wrought in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness, he added, This is that Moses who expressly said to the children of Israel, (Deut. xviii. 15.) "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you from amongst your brethren like unto me, him shall ye hear" Thereby pointing out, that Jesus of Nazareth, who is to be regarded as the great prophet and lawgiver of Israel, by whom God has sent you, as he did by Moses, a new system of precepts, and new ample discoveries of his will. 38 ACTS VII. 37. THIS is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me: him shall ye hear. 38 This is he that the wilderness, with This Moses is he who was the chief in the assembly convened in the wilderness, who had the was in the church in honour of conversing with the angel that spake the angel which spake to him there on mount Sinai, and of transacting to him in the mount 2 A prophet shall the Lord your God, &c.] As to the justice with which this prophecy is applied to Christ, in its original and literal sense, see Dr. Bullock's Serm. on Deut. xviii. 18. and Mr. Jeffery's True Grounds, p. 128-155. whom I mentioned before in note i on Acts iii. 22, p. 534, to which add Bishop Sherlock on Prophecy, p. 187, & seq. b This is he, who was in the assembly in the wilderness. When this clause is quoted as it has been by some very great men, to prove that Christ was the person, who brought Israel out of Egypt, gave them the law, conducted them through the wilderness, &c. the argument from thence is certainly inconclusive; for 1 here evidently answers to 13, ver. 36, and to wi. Mwvang, ver. 37: and the following clause, which expresses his being with the angel, all Sinai, plainly proves the angel to be a different person. But I think the doctrine itself, "that Christ was the God of Israel, or the ange! who appeared to Moses," a great and certain truth, capable of being evinced from many passages of the Old and New Testament, and from this paragraph in particular, though not from this clause; and I hope in due time to shew, that the arguments which Mr. Pierce has urged against it from Heb. xii. 2. and ii. 2-4, are quite inconclusive.I follow Beza, Heinsius, and the Prussian translators, in rendering xxknoia, assembly, as our translators co, Acts xix. ult. because I am persuaded it refers, not in the general to their being incorporated into one church in the appropriate sense of that word, but to their being assembled round the mountain on the solemn day when the law was given, Exod. xix. 17, & seq. After the law was given, Moses was soon rejected. XV. 587 Sinai, and with our all things with our fathers, whom he then enter- SECT. fathers; who received ed into covenant with God: (Exod. xix. 3, 17; the lively oracles to give unto us, xxiv. 7, 8) And it was he who received the Acts lively oracles of God, to give them unto us, even VII. 38 those oracles of the living Jehovah, which are so full of divine life and energy, which were delivered in so awakening and impressing a manner, and which instruct us in the way to life and happiness. Yet notwithstanding this, 33 fathers would not obey, but thrust him you cannot but remember that this is the illusfrom them, and in trious prophet to whom our fathers, even after their hearts turned all the proofs of his miraculous power in Egypt back again into Egypt, and the Red Sea, would not be obedient; but 39 To whom our 40 Saying unto Aa ron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses which acted a part yet more stupid and ungrateful than that which I mentioned before, (ver. 27, 35,) when they (as it were) thrust him from them a second time, as in contempt of all these wonderful appearances of God by him, and returned back again to Egypt in their hearts; Saying to 40 Aaron, at the very foot of that mountain upon which God had visibly manifested himself to brought us out of the them, while the sound of his voice was (as it laud of Egypt, we wot were) yet in their ears, and though they but a not what is become of him. few days before had seen their great leader ascending up to him by an intimacy of approach allowed to no other mortal, "Make us Gods, who may march before us, and conduct us in the way; for [as for] this Moses, who indeed brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him, and cannot have раtience to wait for him any longer. And they 41 stupidly made a calf, in imitation of the Egypunto the idol, and re- tian' Apis, in those very days while they contijoiced in the works of nued encamped in that remarkable situation, and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands, as if, instead of a reproach and abomination, it had been an ornament and defence to them. (Exod xxxii. 1, 6.) But upon this God was most righte- 42 ously provoked, so that he turned, as it were, away from them, and, as in many other instances, punished one sin by letting them fall into another; yea, at length he gave them up in succeeding ages to the most abandoned, public, and general idolatry, even to worship all the host 41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice their own hands. 42 Then God turnto worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house ed, and gave them up of of that they might see it was no new thing, d You |