Summary 

Moses stood at the burning bush full of doubt, fear, and excuses, and God met every single one of them with provision. When Moses said the people would not believe him, God gave him signs. When Moses said he could not speak, God reminded him who made his mouth. When Moses finally begged God to send someone else, God provided Aaron and still called Moses to go. This pattern is not unique to Moses. Throughout Scripture, God consistently calls people who feel unqualified and then works through them in ways that cannot be explained by their own strength. His presence is always the provision. Whatever God has placed in front of you, He does not expect you to accomplish it alone or in your own strength. The question is whether you will trust Him enough to take the first step.

Transcript

Pray again together. Lord, we're thankful that as we read in your word, that the grass withers and the flower of faith but the word of the Lord stands forever. And so, Lord, we ask again today that you'd speak to us that these texts that are old for us seem forever old to us, might be made fresh and new and alive. That you use the words of my mouth, that the meditations of all of our hearts might be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
You may have noticed on the front cover of our bulletin, in this little series, we're in an Exodus. There have been paintings from Marc Chagall's work on Exodus. He actually did a whole collection from the Exodus narratives. And I have a Mark Chagall lithograph sort of framed in my house that is not from that, but instead it's from the call of Isaiah. Isaiah, chapter six.
Some of you might be familiar with that famous passage. It's a great passage. And there in chapter chapter six, verse eight of Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, you know, he's writing and he says, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And in this lithograph, there's this six winged seraphim pointing.
And Isaiah's kind of looking like this, like me. And you might know how it goes, because Isaiah responds like this. Then I said, here I am. Send me. Or maybe he said, here I am.
Send me.
I love that passage, and you might, too. And part of what I love is the eagerness and the willingness, the readiness that Isaiah has to hear the Lord's voice to go where he is called, right? And in our best moments, in our places of deepest and widest faith, in our great days, we can kind of associate with it. But I think also the fact is that we're also often, maybe more often, comforted by the words of the Father with a convulsing Son in the Gospels that says to Jesus, lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Or maybe we are comforted by Gideon in Judges, chapter six, when the Lord comes to him, and this is what the Lord says, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian.
Do I not send? Do not I send you? And Gideon's response is, please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, look, Lord. That's kind of what he's saying.
Behold, look, God had just said, in this mind of yours, he says, behold, my clan's the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my father's house, which is like, I'm the wrong guy here. Or maybe you're comforted by Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 1. The Lord comes to him. This is what the Lord says to him.
Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah's response. Ah, Lord God, behold.
Look, I don't know how to speak. I'm only a youth. I have inability. I have inexperience. You probably got the wrong guy here.
And the fact is, I can give you more examples from Scripture. I could give you even more from church history of people hearing the words of the Lord, hearing what they're called to do, where they're called to go and say, I don't know about this. Questions arise, doubts surface, Objections abound, rebuttals resound. Right? And that's part of what we have going on in Exodus 4 for us this morning.
Remember, we're looking at the life of Moses. And part of what we're doing is we're looking at the narratives primarily in Exodus, but through the life of Moses. So we're seeing Israel's story, but more than that, we're seeing God. And actually we're seeing ourselves. It's God's story in our own story.
And we're here at chapter four. And here in chapter four, it's beginning. Sorry, it's not beginning. It's continuing the story that began in chapter three. Really, they're together because here we're still at that burning bush event, right, that we talked about last week.
You remember, back to last week, God said that he had seen the affliction of his people. He'd heard their cry. He knew their suffering. He's come down to bring them out. And he said to Moses, moses, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people out of Egypt.
And what was Moses? First question? Who am I? Who am I? God's response is, I'll be with you.
And Moses basically says, who are you? Who am I? Who are you? I don't know.
So today we're going to continue this dialogue. And mostly what we're going to see is Moses has quite a few objections. And yet with his objections, God gives his provisions. Okay, so let's look it up. And actually, you'll notice that the sections that bring up the objections always begin with but.
Which is exactly how we so often bring up our objections. But have you thought about this? So we begin now, I think the first one is Moses really He's like, what if they don't believe? What if they don't believe? That's his first objection.
What if they don't believe? Meaning the Israelites, right? Now, I know this, that Moses does not really ask it in the question necessarily. Here, actually, here, get this. Okay?
Verse one. But behold, it's that same word that Gideon used in Jeremiah. Lord, look, have you considered this side of it? Can you turn this around and see that it's not really going to work. But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice.
This is actually an exact contradiction of what the lord said in 3:18. If you have your Bible open, you can look back up there, verse 18 of chapter three, and they will listen. This is the Lord speaking, and they will listen to your voice. Moses says, but behold, Lord, they will not listen to my voice.
I want you to first understand that I think Moses objection is not. With some reason, it's not like it's not warranted.
Think with me back not long ago, not five verses earlier, but, you know, two chapters earlier, what happened the last time that we had read about Moses talking to some of the Israelites? Did they listen to him when he said, why do you strike your companion? No, no, they did not listen. Right. What did they say?
Well, who made you prince over us?
So he's got some reason, right? That was their response. His objection, this objection is not unreasonable. They're not the excuses that we might make up. The dog ate my homework.
My baby sister ate my homework. My mom washed my pants that had my homework in them. You know, they're not kind of like dismissive. He's like, they don't listen to me, Lord. I've got an example.
They don't listen to me. And he knew that he had left as a fugitive under sentence of death. He knew that he had spent half of his life not in Egypt, 40 years. Now, would the Israelites risk confrontation with Pharaoh over this guy who had fled and been gone for 40 years, coming back, say, hey, y', all, listen to me. Let's go to Pharaoh and say, let's let.
Let this whole slave people go, please. Why would they risk being worse off for that kind of effort, really? Why would they believe some reports of having met with the Lord?
So I think first, let's just say, like, it's kind of reasonable. We're like, they're not going to believe. They're not going to listen to me. And I think this is kind of reasonable, actually, even because of God's own response to Moses, almost Sort of reminding us of, you know, Genesis chapter three, where God, Adam and Eve sin. And God doesn't first come in and say, like, oh, what you do you know what this is going to cost me?
God doesn't say, hey, five verses ago, I told you they were going to listen to you. What are you saying?
How dare you contradict what I just told you? He doesn't say that. Instead, what he does is he provides some signs for Moses. Okay, so let's consider these three signs. First, it's the staff, right?
God first says, hey, what's that in your hand, Moses? Like a stick. It's a staff. God says, throw it on the ground. And he throws it on the ground and becomes a snake.
And you kind of wonder, like, is God just showing? We were going to find out this isn't just the case later on, but is God just showing, ah, look, I can transform things. Is it a magic trick?
Is it more than that? Is it a sign, maybe that God can take ordinary things and make them extraordinary? I think maybe it's partly that. I think it's more than that, though.
God tells him to pick it up. And if you notice, there's a funny detail there. He says, pick it up by the tail. You don't pick up snakes by the tail. You pick them up right behind the head because you don't want them to bite you.
And Moses, probably very fearfully, is like, okay, but even in that small act, what's happening is you've got to trust me. I can take care of it. I can take a stick, turn it into a snake, and you are not going to get bit. You are going to be okay. Reach out, take hold.
You can trust me. And the second sign is this leprous hand. And I imagine I do not like snakes. Actually, one of the most fearful scenes in any movie that I watched growing up was the scene with the snakes in Indiana Jones. You know what I'm talking about, right?
Right. So I hate that idea. I'd be so scared to do that. Pick it up by the tail. And I'd be like, okay, maybe I can trust God.
But then he. Then he takes his hand and he sticks it in his cloak and it comes out and it's leprous, it's deadly. And it's not just something that's deadly, that's outside of him, like the snake, but it's actually a part of him. He's frail, he's fragile. This hand that he has is now useless.
And God heals it. Christopher Wright, one of the Great contemporary Old Testament scholars, who I hope some of you have read, he's one of the really great writers on missions in our day, too, says Moses Hand symbolized Moses himself. Then he too was being transformed from uselessness to useful again. And you got to keep in mind leprosy was. It was a pretty common disease.
And actually it was a common disease in Egypt. And it was a common disease in Egypt that was widely considered as totally incurable, which is to say that God can actually cure things that we think are incurable. And I'm guessing, at least in this moment, when Moses contradicts what God had just said, is that he's saying, you don't know how fearful I am. You are sending the wrong guy. I'm not the one for this.
And of course, our fear can feel totally incurable. You all have probably heard that in 1977 in the book of Lists, death actually got second place to people's greatest fears behind public speaking. It's like, lord, they are not going to listen to me.
How are you going to take what is so fearful? Who's willing to contradict the I am himself. That's as you can take your hand in and you are, in a way, in and of yourself, incurable. And I can cure you.
You can be changed from useless to useful. I can cure your fears, too. You can trust me. I can cure your fears too. Then we have the Nile.
And this is kind of interesting. Verse 9 says, 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. You know what's so interesting about this? Unlike the first two, where it happens with Moses right there on Mount Sinai, on Mount Horeb, they're interchangeable.
Is that this can't. He's not going to see this miracle unless he goes. Unless he goes. Sign can't be done. Unless.
Well, unless Moses is in the land of the Nile, unless he's down in Egypt. And it's not so much a sign there of convincing Egypt or Moses or even the Israelites. This is a sign that we'll learn later is for the Egyptians. But how's that a provision for Moses? Objection.
Well, in a way, God is saying right there, I'm not just going to have the Israelites listen to you. You're going to do some wonders. You're going to see some things that even the Egyptians cannot den. They will not be able to deny them. So God is speaking to him, but he's also Speaking to the Israelites.
And he's assuring him that the Israelites are going to hear. And he's assuring them not just the Israelites are going to hear, but also the Egyptians. And you've got to think of the importance of the Nile. The Nile was one of the Egyptian gods, but it's also the source of their life. It's not just the source of their life.
The Nile is the reason Egypt was there. It was the source of their abundance, of their prosperity.
If God can control the source of life for that great nation on earth, he can also control whether or not they hear Moses. He can meet Moses and his doubts and fears, insecurities and all of his objections. And he can do that for us, too. So this is first Moses first Objection. Right.
They're not going to listen to me. You got the wrong guy. Behold, just like these others later on say, behold. But there's more. Right the second but here that Moses brings up.
But Lord, Verse 10. But Moses said to the Lord. I'm going to paraphrase it first. I can't speak.
Okay, we're going to get to that. But I actually want to take a pause in a moment here, for a moment here, okay? Because I think Moses knew in a way that signs aren't always enough.
And I think maybe it's a temptation to think, oh, man, if I was just there at the time of Jesus and I saw him heal the blind man, you know, allow the lame to walk again.
Miracles, you may know this. They're not like, spread evenly throughout the Bible, not even close, actually. You have largely Moses, you have Elijah and Elisha, the beginning of the prophetic movement. You of course, have Jesus and sort of like those events, you know, Pharaoh doesn't necessarily believe. The Egyptians don't necessarily believe because of the signs.
At the time of Elijah and Elijah, Elisha, Elijah and Elisha, people didn't necessarily come flocking to the Lord because of what they did. And certainly at the time of Jesus, it wasn't necessarily that people were like, oh, look at this, let's listen to him. He actually says as much. But miracles are a kind of accreditation to these major turning points in salvation history. And that's what they.
That's what's happening here for Moses saying, I'm with you, you can trust me in this. Another interesting thing, kind of just to pause to think about this is that the Egyptians didn't deny that the miracles were happening, just like the people in the time of Jesus didn't deny it. They just rejected God still, the Pharisees weren't like, oh, that didn't happen. They're like, we don't buy you. And I think why I paused there is because Moses knew there was a possibility of that kind of thing.
We can see wonders. Jesus says, you know, blessed are those who believe without seeing. In fact, he says, it's better that I leave than thee of the Spirit, right? Moses knew this was a possibility, and so he has more objections. He's like, okay, you give me signs, but I've got more for you, God, I can't speak.
Actually, what he said is, oh, my Lord, I'm not eloquent either in the past or since you've spoken to your servant, which is just these last few minutes, probably for him. I've never been eloquent, but I'm slow of speech and of tongue, which literally means I'm heavy of speech and I'm heavy of tongue.
Some take that to mean that Moses is saying, I have a speech impediment. It's not just that he wasn't adept at speaking in front of others, but his tongue didn't work well, is what he's saying. It's heavy.
Others, of course, say that what Moses saying is, I'm not a good public speaker. You put the wrong guy for this job. He's saying, the training that I had in Egypt, Lord, you know that even back then, when I went through this great Egyptian university education, it didn't really stick.
Slow speech, either in the past or since.
Maybe others think that he's just saying, hey, I've been in midian now for 40 years. I've lost many of my. Much of my knowledge of Egyptian culture and Egyptian customs. I'm the wrong guy for the job, Lord. And think about this.
It would be, I think this is reasonable again, in a way, it would be bad enough to be the one that has to go before Pharaoh, kind of the greatest ruler of the day, and say, hey, you should really let this whole population that does all this brick work and all this work for you. Just. You should let them go. But imagine doing that with a stammering tongue, looking like a goof. He's like, no, Lord, this is not really what I want to do.
He knows. He's not like Winston Churchill and Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. He doesn't make the list of great orators.
And I love this part.
I love this for a number of reasons. I love this. This part where Moses and dialoguing with God, because it feels so human. This feels so real. Like Lord, this.
I have these inabilities. His fear of rejection. Right. He has doubts of his own competencies, his own abilities. You know, we can think of.
Lord, I don't know how to tell. Tell people about you. I haven't studied apologetics. I don't know how to make a convincing argument. Lord, I don't know how to raise a child.
To nurture them in your ways, to discipline them with love and grace and care and attentiveness. I didn't receive that. What are you calling me to?
I love this because it feels so human. And I also love it in part because it feels a lot like my own story.
I had four years of mandatory speech class in high school. And I emphasized the mandatory because if it was not mandatory, I wouldn't have been there. I remember very clearly sweaty, sweaty palms, you know, double layering, the deodorant in the morning. I actually remember pretty clearly, at least twice fidgeting so much with my flashcards that they got out of order and kind of freaking out inside.
I remember preparing, rehearsing my first sermon that I was supposed to give in one of my first sermon practicum. Like a practical thing where you were giving it in front of others in seminary. I remember exactly where I was practicing it in Edwards hall at Covenant Seminary. Because frankly, I didn't really want to give it. And shockingly, I did not win the speech awards in high school and I did not win a preaching award in seminary when I was in high school.
I signed up my senior year for the play Much Ado About Nothing. It was fantastic. I mean, it's one of Shakespeare's funniest for sure, and greatest. And you probably are familiar with it.
I got the smallest role possible. Fergus, who's just clodding behind, agreeing with everything that Dogberry says.
That's what I got.
While I felt called to go into vocational gospel ministry at first and at second and maybe at third, I didn't really think, sign me up to be a preacher. Lord, this just feels so relatable. My guess is it feels relatable to you too, on many levels. You've got the wrong person. I'm not able.
It's so human. But I also love God's response. Who's made your mouth? Who makes you mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
And that the Lord is his name? That he had just revealed the chapter before Yahweh, One who is now, therefore go and I will be. That's that same word when he says, I will Be who I will be, or I am who I am. It's the exact same word, I am, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what to speak.
If Moses did have a speech impediment, God says, I know I'm with you in that. If he had forgotten the speech and the customs of the Egyptians, after all, he'd been away for 40 years, God says, I know your story. I've woven it together. I'll be with you in that.
See, God is not just saying, I understand your objections, but I provide you with my very self. What God is not doing in this is giving him a motivational pep talk. Right, Motivational speak speech. Moses, stop saying all of that. Think positively.
You can accomplish all that you put your mind to. It's not in this text at all.
There's nothing like that here. He doesn't even say, ah, you're giving yourself too little credit. You were the Prince of Egypt. You had the finest education. You're just the man for it.
Though we may be able to see that. No, his answer is, is it not I, the Lord, who will be with your mouth? I am. I will be. I read this week, actually, from a sermon from my pastor growing up about this great revival that broke out in Scotland during the first Great Awakening.
Because the first Great Awakening didn't just happen here in the US just 1730s, 1740s. Think of George Whitefield and that whole crew. But actually, some of it happened. There was a great revival in parts of Great Britain. What we think of today as Great Britain.
Well, one of those towns in Scotland was the town Campbell Sling. And the pastor there was William McCullough. He was such a PO preacher that it took him nine years, having graduated seminary, to convince a pastoral search committee, I don't know what it was called then, to hire him. Nine years. His own son said he was not eloquent.
And he actually got a nickname. His nickname was the ale preacher. We might say the beer preacher. Not because he drank beer while he was preaching, but because as soon as he got up to preach, most of the men in the congregation went to the pub, like, okay, I'm out. But it was through his poorly composed and even poorly.
More poorly delivered sermons that in 1742, some 3,000 people came to faith in Jesus in that small town on the outskirts of Glasgow. 3,000 people. I mean, that's like ten thousands in Harrisburg from somebody that no one thought was a great preacher, like nobody.
You probably know that John and Charles Wesley were the brothers who were raised in the Anglican Church and then were in the States for a while down and now it is sort of the coastal Georgia and the Carolinas a little bit with George Whitfield and all. And they led part of what became the first great awakening in the United States same time, 1740s.ish. I mean on a little bit. Well, you know, there are some of the greatest hymn writers. They, we sing some of their hymns.
We didn't sing any today, but we sing their hymns still today. They're some of the greats. They started the Methodist Church. These great work wordsmiths.
I haven't read much of their sermons, but I've heard they are better than Melatonin. You know, next time you're struggling to sleep at night, grab your volume of John Wesley. Give that a try. How does God work? He so often uses the people that we go, that's the least person we would expect.
But Moses goes on, God says, I'll be with you and with your mouth. And Moses has another but Lord, verse 13.
But he said, oh my Lord, please send somebody else.
The Hebrew is actually a little bit different. That's really a paraphrase. Literally translated it's more like pardon my Lord, please send by the hand who you will send. Which is a little clunky. And so some other translators trying to get closer say something like this.
Please my Lord, send anyone. You decide which. Some commentators come here say this is like Moses kind of grudgingly submitting to the possibility that maybe possibly in some way God might use him, but he'd rather use somebody else. You know, he's like the child with his parent. All right, you win.
Send whoever you want. I guess, whatever. And I sort of love the picture of Moses, 80 year old Moses as a 14 year old. Okay. You know, shrugging his shoulders, muttering under his breath.
But most people do think it's best to translate it. Please send someone else, Lord.
And again we find God's provision. And his provision is not him giving in. This isn't plan B for God. Right? But Aaron is not like, ah, hey, what?
How about Aaron, it's his provision. And you can see he's not a fan of our reluctance, obedience, but disobedience. But he works with it. Our objections. He goes, okay, I can work with this.
Right? He works with them. God already has Aaron on his way. Sort of a providential family reunion at play here. And there are two things again here that are worth noting.
One is that the work that God calls us to do is almost always him calling us into his community.
It's not a shock on God that we are not able to and of ourselves he calls us into the life of his body. You aren't called to parents alone. You aren't called to evangelize alone. You aren't called to seek the welfare of those who are suffering in the world by yourself, right? I mean, we just heard from Logos.
We are not called by ourselves. You are not called as individual. Take on the question of telling little kids about Jesus and helping them learn to read. Well, enter into the wide body of Christ. The I cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.
But the other thing that we learn is that while we don't do God's work alone, we are not off the hook from doing it.
Aaron's gifts will compensate for Moses deficit. Like the whole operation is not like, if I can just find the right guy, then it'll come about.
But God still will use Moses for what God called him to do. So verses 15 to 17 say this, you speaking to Moses, you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth. He's not just saying like, okay, I'll just use him and I will teach you both what to do. He shall speak to the, he shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth and you shall be as God to him, meaning God.
Actually, I'm actually speaking through you, through him to the people and taking your hands his staff which with which you shall do the signs. So I'm saying God provides, but God also equips his objection. The objection of Moses here is God providing, but also God equipping him both to through Aaron and also saying, I'm going to use you, as I said I will. So let me get back to the beginning. The Bible seems to to to share some lessons just again and again with us.
Have you noticed that like when you start reading the Bible, you're like, I think I heard that before. Or there's an example of that elsewhere. And a lot of times those are the lessons that are said again and again because we need to hear them again and again and again. And this is one of those God showing us that we have all these objections. God, I'm not the right person to do this.
I know you told your people, live this way. I don't think I can do that. Like, we bring these objections to God and again and again God still calls us and he still provides for us. He still equips others. He still brings us into the life of his body.
And part of what I think is telling us is that in some ways you can't. You can't do what God calls you to do.
None of this was a surprise for God that Moses was saying, well, I got this speech impediments. They're not going to listen to all this stuff. You can't do it on your own strength.
In some ways, Moses is totally unlike us. I mean, he literally brings the people out from Egypt, right? The great superpower of the day to worship the Lord. But in some ways, he's exactly like us. I mean, we cannot do what God calls us to do in our own strength.
Any of the great. I mean, you can't keep the law of God in your own strength. You can't put sin to death in your own strength. You can't share the good news of Jesus with your neighbor and expect that that neighbor will turn to faith in your own ability. That never happens.
We cannot worship him as we should. We cannot live into the life of the body of Christ as we should.
None of these things. There is nothing that God calls you to do that he thinks you can do it on your own strength. None of is always God meeting us in our inability, in our weakness, and saying, I am, I will be. Think about this. One example I didn't give at the beginning, but that kept kind of coming up in my mind was Mary, the mother of Jesus.
She's met by Gabriel. Gabriel says, greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. And the first thing we read is Mary is very troubled, greatly troubled, right? And of course, I've always thought of that as like, that makes sense.
I don't really see angels. Some angel shows up to me. I'm like, this is a little bit scary. But actually, maybe she knows the story of God's people. All these stories like Moses and Gideon and Jeremiah and others.
And she's like, oh, dear.
So she's told what's going to happen, and she says she asked the question too. How's this going? How will this be? She says, for I'm a virgin, how will this be? Because I'm not able.
How will this be? Because from my own experience, right, she's sort of questioning God, but she's also questioning herself. And yet her song becomes the song that we say so often. If you read sort of the daily prayer book, her song is every day said by many in the church. But what she does in her song is she constantly says, what has God done?
Who is he? It's not, look at me so she says stuff like this. His mercy, she sings rather. His mercy is for those who fear Him. He's shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those with humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he sent away empty. He's helped his servant Israel in the remembrance of his mercy. You see, it's again, again his Him.
I mean, the truth is that none of this she can do on her own. And that's the same story that you live into. It's the same story of Moses, same story of Gideon, same story of Jeremiah. His power of inability that is met with God's power. And so when God speaks to Paul in his weakness with his thorn in the flesh, he says, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
Our objections to what God calls us to may arise. They do arise. But God's provision is found just in those places where we're frail, when we're unable, when our inabilities are so present.
It's there that God shows us that he provides and that his strength is at work even through us. Can use even us, can do great things even through us.
His grace is sufficient for you. Whatever he calls you to do, wherever he calls you to go, he will provide. His power is made perfect in weakness. Lord, this is a lesson that we are told again and again because we need it again and again. We're so eager to think well, to fall into one ditch.
We can do it all or we have nothing, neither of which is true. We can't do it. But we have you. The God who is the great. I am.
And the God who will be. I am with you. I pray that in this we would press on to what you call us to. That we would live lives of great hope, of great faith, of great belief, not in what we can do, but in your great work in and through us. In Jesus name, amen.

Previous Page