To make the fourth chapter of Exodus more understandable, we need to backtrack and understand the backstory. In most great stories, there's a backstory, and once you're clear on that, everything else makes more sense. So, if you would turn with me to Exodus chapter 3, we're going to look at a couple of scriptures there, and then we're going to go to the New Testament for a minute, fill in the gaps, and then we're going to dive deeper into the message today. Let's pray. Father, we come before you today and just say thank you for the opportunity to be in your house and in your word, and Father, to spend time listening to your voice. Father, I pray that you just speak through me today, that the words that need to be communicated would come forth, and that you would be glorified in everything that takes place here today. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.
If you don't have a Bible today, certainly turn in your app or your tablet. There are Bibles in the seatbacks in front of you; that's a gift from us to you if you don't have one. So, Exodus chapter 3, starting at verse 16, and what we're going to get are the marching orders for Moses. If you'll remember last week, we talked about Moses' burning bush experience, and we're going to dive into that here. So, starting at verse 16: "Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them: 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, 'I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
So, from there, we're going to go to Acts chapter 7. So, if you'll turn in the New Testament to Acts chapter 7, we're going to fill in the rest of the information we need before we continue on here into chapter 4. So, Acts chapter 7, and we're going to start at verse 22: "And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds." Yeah, I want to stop there before we proceed any further because this is part of what's going to set the pace for where we go today. Moses had been educated in Pharaoh's Palace; he had grown up in Pharaoh's Palace. Common sense would tell us if anyone was going to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, it was probably going to be Moses because he understood not only Hebrew culture but he understood Egyptian culture. And so, at age forty, it enters his heart or enters his mind that, you know what, I should go do something for my people. I should go check on them. I should go see how things are going.
And so, at age 40, he proceeds to check on his brothers. Verse 24: "And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand." And you really need to anchor that down because that's going to make today's passage make sense. Moses gets it in his mind, "Hey, I'm the guy to deliver these people. I'm well-educated, I'm well-equipped, I've got Pharaoh's ear, I grew up in his house, and I'm going to go deliver my people." He shows up and says, "Hey, I'm here to rescue you," and they didn't get it. Failure. And so that's the word I want you to hold on to as we look at Moses' story here: failure. So, they did not understand.
Verse 26: "The following day, he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you wrong each other?' But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'" At this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
So, with that backdrop of failure, let's now go into Exodus chapter 4, and it's a continuation of the conversation from Exodus 3. God has said, "Moses, you're my guy, and I'm going to send you to your people and then to Pharaoh to lead them out of captivity." So let's look at what Moses has to say in this conversation with God starting in verse 1 of chapter 4: "Then Moses answered, 'But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, 'The Lord did not appear to you.' The Lord said to him, 'What is that in your hand?' He said, 'A staff.' And he said, 'Throw it on the ground.' So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, 'Put your hand and catch it by the tail.' So he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand, that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.' Again, the Lord said to him, 'Put your hand inside your cloak.' And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, 'Put your hand back inside your cloak.' So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 'If they will not believe you,' God said, 'or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.' But Moses said to the Lord, 'Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you've spoken to me, your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.' Then the Lord said to him, 'Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.' But he said, 'Oh my Lord, please send someone else.' Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, 'Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And taking your hand this staff with which you shall do the signs.'"
So, let's back up here to verse 1 and start walking our way through. So as a kid, when I would read this story, I would think about the staff and turning into the Serpent and the leprous hand and the water turning to blood, and I would immediately think, okay, that's for Pharaoh. But then as I got older and I began to really read this passage in context, I realized that what Moses was afraid of was his own people. So that's the first thing I don't want us to miss: what God was asking him to do in chapter 3 was go to the elders of Israel and tell them that I am sending you to lead them out of Egypt, to which Moses is responding, "But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you.'" Most of us don't mind failing when we're little. So when I learned to ride a bike, and probably the same was true for you, I fell over quite a bit. I crashed quite a few times, and all I did was get back up and start pedaling again. But then as I got older, failure began to take on a new meaning, and I would fail at things, and then I would be afraid to reengage those things ever again because I failed, and I failed big. And it wasn't just that I failed; what began to happen is I began to experience those failures in front of family and friends, and so failure took on a deeper impact. So I want you to think about what happened with Moses at age 40: it entered his mind to go and do something for his people. He goes out in his own strength, he goes out in his own creativity, he goes out in his own education, and fails, and fails miserably, and for the next 40 years, he's on the run. And so now here he is, an 80-year-old man, and God is appearing to him saying, "You are the guy, and I'm going to send you to your people first, and you're going to tell them this is what I'm going to do." And of course, Moses goes, "Whoa, wait a minute, 40 years ago we tried that, remember? It didn't go so well; they didn't understand."
And so the point that he's bringing up here is, "I'm afraid they're not going to believe me when I say the Lord has appeared to me; they're going to say, 'The Lord didn't appear to you.'" I want you to think about this for a moment: what we really want to avoid most deeply is the criticisms of those we are closest to, the doubts of those we are closest to. I want my family to believe in me in all things, I want my friends to believe in me in all things, I want the people that I serve and I work with to believe me in all things, and when somebody questions whether or not I'm true, that rocks me to the core. You're not just questioning the statement; you're questioning me as a person, and this is where Moses is at. Listen, I went out in my own strength, I went out with all of these qualifications, I went out and tried to make a difference, and what ended up happening is I ended up in the desert, tending sheep for the last 40 years. It didn't go so well for me, now I'm not sure they're going to believe me. I am afraid they're going to question whether or not I was true.
So it's a valid argument. Here's the piece that I want you to really grab hold of, though, from this verse: what God-given dreams are you holding back from because of the pain of a previous failure? See, I believe every one of us has a call on our life that's uniquely god-given, but I believe the thing that holds us back so many times is the pain of a past failure, and we can't seem to get ourselves beyond that failure, and that's what God is having to do here with Moses. I've got to get you beyond the failure to live out the call upon your life.
So notice where he takes him. Verse 2: The Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" He said, "A staff." And he said, "Throw it to the ground." So he threw it to the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. Now, I don't know about you guys, who here is also not a fan of snakes? Yeah, I'm not a big fan of snakes, right? So I'm on a hunting and fishing group on Facebook, and regularly, about once or twice a week, somebody will post a picture of some snake that's out on their ground, and they'll go, "Is this thing poisonous?" And I'm of the mind that I'm not going to get close enough to find out if it's poisonous; by that time, we'll figure out if it's poisonous after I've already killed it, right? Hmm. So, Moses is afraid, and he runs, and so the truth is, most people—not all, some people love snakes and they handle them just fine—most people in general, those spiders and snakes are—those creepy crawlies—they don't want to be around, and the bigger they are, the worse that gets.
So Moses throws down the stick, it becomes a snake, and he runs. All right, and I get that, because I'm, if I've got the lawnmower and the snake is in the yard, the lawnmower and the snake are gonna meet. Mm-hmm. It's just gonna happen that way, right? So here's the thing that we want to see, though. God told him to take something ordinary that was already in his hand and throw it to the ground. In Moses' hands, it was nothing more than a wooden stick. As soon as he released it into God's hands, it became something that brought out a very strong response. Don't miss this: God has put things in your hands that, in your hands, are very ordinary, but as soon as you release them into God's hands, they become something extraordinary; they bring out a response in people. Now, a stick shouldn't have been any big deal, but in the hands of God, it's a huge deal. So I want you to think about this: the tools of your job, that the wrench, the computer, the cell phone, the things that you think are ordinary, in the hands of God, can become extraordinary. They can become life-altering and life-changing. Don't miss what he's doing with Moses here: throw down the stick, he throws it down, it becomes a serpent, he runs, and then here's the next thing God tells it, you're like, "Huh?" He says, "Moses, go back and pick it up by the tail."
Now, let's just talk honestly and openly here. My childhood years were spent in Ponca City, Oklahoma, lots of rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and copperheads. There's one thing that I was always told: you never pick up a snake by the tail. Why? It'll snap around and bite you, right? So here's the thing that we want to understand. God is showing Moses not only do I have the power to take what is ordinary and turn it into something more, but I'm also giving you the power to take up something that is dangerous and turn it into something painless. And this is important because in the Egyptian culture, the snake was revered, particularly the cobra. So this is a sign; remember, the Israelites have been in captivity in Egypt, so they've been bombarded with this thought process. So when God shows his power over the serpent, he's rendering the deity of the Egyptians powerless. And so he tells Moses, "Come up and grab it by the tail."
Now here's a couple of things I want us to understand: number one, not only does God take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, but often what he tells you to do next doesn't make sense. Think about it from Moses' perspective: "You want me to go deliver the people? Okay, I'm 80 years old, first of all. 40 years ago, they ran me out of town, second of all." And then he's getting ready to give a whole laundry list of other reasons why he's probably not the guy, and so God is going to begin to pick through every one of those objections, one by one. So, the Lord said to Moses, "Put your hand and catch it by the tail." So he put out his hand, he caught it, and it became a staff in his hand again. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, and then it becomes ordinary once again. In God's hands, it's huge; in your hands, it's normal. Don't lose sight of that.
Verse 5: "That they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you." So remember, he's gonna be talking to his own people; they're gonna need to be convinced. "Okay, Moses, you're an 80-year-old man; we haven't seen you for years. Why you?"
So, that brings us to the next one. We get here to verse 6. Again, the Lord said to him, "Put your hand inside your cloak." And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Now, there's a thing about leprosy that you need to understand: the way leprosy works is, leprosy kills off the nerve endings in the skin. What happens is a leper begins to injure themselves or they begin to get cuts and nicks, and because they can't sense that, those get infected, and the skin begins to die. So in my travels, I've had the opportunity to be in a leper colony in India on two occasions. Tips of the fingers are gone, generally down to the knuckles, toes are the same, noses, ears—those things begin to erode. I thought about putting some nice leprosy pictures up today, but I didn't think you guys would appreciate that, so I have a picture of clean hands because that's what happens next: Moses, stick your hand back in your cloak and pull it out, and it's whole again.
So, God is showing Moses, first of all, "I control your feet; I'm bigger than your fears. I'm bigger than the serpent, I'm bigger than the Egyptian deities. Now he's showing them, "I handle health, and I handle disease." Neither one is too big for me. "Moses, put your hand in, it's leprous; put it back in, it's clean." Remember, in a leprous society, they're not allowed to live amongst the normal population because it spreads. So even today, and in countries where you have leprosy, there will be a leper colony outside of the villages because they don't want to spread the disease. So, put your hand inside your cloak: leprous, pull it back out: clean. God is bigger than the disease; God is bigger than health; he gives both health and disease.
And this is a foretelling of what's coming with the Egyptians. We are seeing some of the plagues that are to come as he takes Moses through this. So Moses does that; he put his hand back inside his cloak, verse seven, he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.
Verse eight: "If they will not believe you," God said, "or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign." I want you not to miss this one, either. God is telling Moses, "They're not going to believe you." I hope you caught that; they're not going to believe you. They actually are going to not believe you; you're gonna have to show them several things. Here's the other part of why we struggle with the call: I don't want to just fail, but I don't want to be rejected by my people, and I certainly don't want to be rejected repeatedly. And so it's easier just to not answer the call than to be rejected. None of us likes rejection, except now this is kind of an interesting thing: if you're a Kansas City Chiefs fan, raise your hand, get it high, get it high. Okay, you Chiefs fans are done; you need to Denver Broncos fans in the house, raise your hand. Yeah, we've got one, too. So, so they're representing. Right, here's the thing: we're in an auditorium full of people, and nobody minds going, "That's my team," even if nobody else agrees with you, but it's not real personal at that point. We start to get into family, we start to get into the deeper things, like your walk of faith, your relationship with God. If people don't believe you or people reject you, there's pain in that. And this is where Moses finds himself. God's telling him, "You know what, Moses? They're not all gonna buy into it on the first go-round." So he gives him some more tools in his tool chest.
Verse 8: "If they will not believe you," God said, "or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground." Again, I had a choice with the slide; I chose just a slide of clean water because, like my wife, doesn't like the sight of blood, and so splattered blood all over the screen behind me was probably not going to be in everybody's best interest today, so clean water. But the reason that we need to understand this is, the Nile River was the source, the center of the Egyptian economy. The reason the Egyptians prospered is because they had access to the river, to water; they could water crops, they could have drinking water, they could propel their economy because of the river. So if the river were to turn to blood, it will immediately bring that economy to a standstill; it will also bring disease, it will bring all sorts of things. So imagine for a minute if the River downtown turned to blood. Well, it'd be not so fun to look at, right? But notice what else would happen: is that you would have not only the river turning to blood, but everything within that river would die, everything within that river would die. And so what you would need to have happen is you would need to deal with all the dead animals. So in the river, you'd have dead catfish, you'd have dead carp, you'd have dead gar, you'd have dead turtles, you'd have dead snakes, you'd have all sorts of dead, right? And so you've got to deal with those things, all sorts of dead. And so that's the image that's being put forth: you've got all of that dead showing up in the river. Remember, this is going to be one of the plagues that happens with the people of Egypt. The river is going to turn to blood. Part of what God is showing the people of Israel is because remember, one of their temptations is going to be, "We want to stay because at least there's water here, at least there's crops here, at least there's all these other things here taking place." And so what happens is, he's foretelling these are the things that God is going to do in this place. He's also showing the people of Israel, "I'm the one that controls health, I'm the one that controls disease, I control purity, I control all of those things." It's a demonstration of God's power to remind God's people of who heals.
Now, here's the thing that I want us to latch on to: sometimes, we need the same demonstration of God's power to remind us of who he is, and what's dangerous for us, today's Father's Day, is when we don't impart those things into our families, when we don't impart those things through the generations. My children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren need to know the legacy of faith. They need to know that the God we serve is so much bigger than any challenge they would ever face; he's bigger than any disease, he's bigger than any job obstacle, he's bigger than any crisis in the moment; he's bigger, and that's what Moses is there to reveal. Now, Moses sees all of these things, and he realizes that every time he makes an argument, God continues to respond to that argument, right? So every objection gets met. So now, look at where we go with this.
Verse 10: Moses said to the Lord, "Oh my Lord, I'm not eloquent, either in the past or since you've spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue." So Moses starts to look at himself, "Okay, God, you've answered the question; you're big enough, but let's talk about me. I don't talk well, my speech is slow, and I get tongue-tied." Here's what Moses was missing: God had already made his decision. "Moses, you're my guy. I already know all of that about you," and he's going to remind him of that here in verse 11. And then the Lord said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Moses, who gave you a mouth? I did. Moses, who allows that mouth to speak? I do. Who gave you ears to hear? I do. Who controls deafness? Who controls hearing? Who controls speech? Who controls muteness? I do. Moses, I put you together, I formed you, I made you, I know all of the things that are troublesome because they're not troublesome to me." Well, things it's fun is, every speaker who speaks regularly has some kind of weird tic. So laughingly, I didn't know what mine was until the first couple of years in ministry, and my wife asked me, "Are you having an asthma attack?" I'm like, "No, why?" Because I have a nervous tic where I breathe deep, and then Scott followed them, said, "Yeah, actually, you have two; you go high with one and you go low with the other one. You're laughing to yourself, and the other one, you're waiting for people to acknowledge a point you've made." Oh, that's interesting; I never knew that. So those of you who've laughed at me for years, I'm on to you, right? I get it. Scott has one where he'll talk off to the side. So as we were driving to Dallas the other day, we were laughing about our speaking tics. What do we do that that you—you need—so as a person, I could look at that and say, "God, I shouldn't be talking. I have this distracting tic," and that's really what Moses was doing. "I talk slow, my words get twisted, it's not a good thing, I shouldn't be the person," right? So let's take a look here at how God deals with this.
God says in verse 12: "Now therefore go, and I will be your mouth and teach you what you shall speak." So God says, "I'll give you the words; you don't have to worry about it. I will provide everything you need to say, and you'll simply say what I tell you to say. It's not that hard." But I want you to notice something that changes here, and this is the part that applies to us really strongly.
Verse 13: But he said, "Oh my Lord, please send someone else." Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. God is not afraid of your questions; he's not afraid of your uncertainties; he doesn't mind answering all of your objections, but when you tell him "no," things change, and this was the place where Moses said, "Yeah, I hear all that, no, send someone else," and God's anger burned against Moses. So let me ask you a question: if you've just thrown a stick on the ground and it became a snake, and you've just stuck your hand in your cloak and it became leprous, and then you stuck it back in and it wasn't leprous, and you've just poured water on the ground and it turned to blood, is that the person you really want angry at you in the moment? No, right? I think we would all agree, God demonstrates that power; I really don't want to be on the wrong side of that equation. However, Moses was afraid. "I don't want to face rejection again, I don't want to fail again, I don't want to be in that place again. I've spent 40 years regretting these decisions, I don't want to go there again." His failure, his pain, his disappointment of the past was holding him back from what God had for his future. God was showing, "Hey, I'm bigger than your failure, I'm bigger than your obstacles, I'm bigger than your worst fears, but you need to say 'yes.'"
God's anger was kindled, and he said, "Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he's coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him."
God will meet you where you're at, and he will give you everything you need to fulfill your call. Aaron's heart was already prepared to be Moses' spokesman. I would imagine, over the 40 years, they had talked many times about, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if the people of Israel could leave Egypt?" Aaron was going to be ready for this task, but God was not gonna let Moses off the hook. The call was for Moses. "Moses, you're going to lead my people out, and if you need extra tools to reinforce you, then I'm gonna put those tools there, but the call isn't going away. It's your call to fulfill."
And that brings us here to verse 17: "Taking your hand, the staff with which you shall do the signs." God has a call on each of your lives; it's unique, it's bigger than you are, but he's already given you the tools that you need to fulfill that call. You don't recognize them oftentimes because they're ordinary. The first one was a staff: throw it on the ground and watch how people move, pick it back up, it's ordinary again. In my world, it's been a computer; in my hands, it's not that impressive, but it's changed a lot of lives over the years. For you, it may be something else. I've known mechanics that a socket wrench is their tool for blessing widows, single moms, people who wouldn't have transportation otherwise, and in their hands, it's just a wrench; in the hands of God, it becomes something else. That's what I don't want you to miss. Whatever's in your hands may seem ordinary to you; in God's economy, it's far beyond that.
The second piece of that is your hands, the second tool that God used with Moses is, "Take your hands, your very hands, stick them in your cloak, pull them out, stick them back." What are you allowing God to do with these hands that he's given you? How are you changing your world? How are you changing your family? How are you changing your environment because you're letting him take these ordinary hands and use them for greater purposes? And then finally, there's the water that turns into blood. How are you allowing God to move in your life in such a way that it really becomes either a healthy thing for, if you misuse it, it becomes an unhealthy thing? And the reason I say that is, sometimes, we are not good stewards of what God has given us. Just in our conversations, we can always give life or we can bring death. It's who's in control.
And so, here's the point: God has already equipped Moses to go forward; he's already equipped you to go forward, and it's not that necessarily everything you have is going to turn to a snake or things are going to turn to blood, but he is going to change lives with you if you let him. The thing that he's looking for is, are you willing to go? Are you gonna give him all of your excuses and then say "no"? "No" is not the right answer when we're dealing with God's call on our life. Here's the beautiful thing, though: God, in His mercy and His grace, the call never goes away. You can run from it, but ultimately, he'll catch you. You'll surrender. That's the beauty of the way God works in our lives.
