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Now Go; I Will Teach You What to Say
Now Go; I Will Teach You What to Say Exodus 4:1-17 Key Verse 4:12 “Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” In the previous passage we learned that Moses 40 years of wilderness training was complete and God was ready to call Moses for the great mission God had in store for him. God appeared to Moses as a consuming fire in a bush that did not consume the Bush. When Moses heard God speaking to him, he immediately recognized God as God and tried to hide his face from God. However, when he heard what God had to say to him, Moses didn’t really like it and in chapter three he makes two meager attempts to get out of this great commission. In verse 11 he says, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And again, in verse 13 he complains saying, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God graciously answered both of Moses complaints and he even told Moses the entire plan that He had prepared in advanced. However, as we begin the study of chapter 4 we realize that Moses hadn’t accepted God’s mission in his heart. In fact Moses makes three more appeals, much more direct and to the point this time, to get out of carrying out this great mission God had for him. Even though God’s anger begins to burn against Moses, he nevertheless graciously answers Moses each time giving him wonders to preform and reasons why his arguments to get out of the mission are not valid. In the end, God tells Moses to go and God himself would teach him what he must do and say. Through the study of this passage, I pray that God may open our hearts to listen to and accept his call. Sometimes his mission might seem to be overwhelming to us, but in this passage we can learn that if the mission comes from God, God himself will provide everything we need to carry it out. God will teach his servants what they must do and say and in the end God’s will will be accomplished. First, God graciously answers all of Moses objections (1-17) After God had finished giving Moses all of the details of the plan that He had in store for Moses and the Israelites, Moses goes on with his complaining. Look at verse 1. “Moses answered, ‘What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you’?’” It was as if Moses simply wasn’t listening to God. God told Moses exactly what was going to happen, but for some reason Moses didn’t think God could do; or rather he didn’t think God could use him to do it. Perhaps Moses was still thinking about his earlier defeat in Egypt when he had tried to help the Israelites and had only ended up being banished. Maybe he thought the other Israelites would all remember this as well. What is clear is that Moses either wasn’t listening to what God was telling him or he didn’t think God was capable of making it happen because of who God wanted to use to get it done. I think this is a very common problem among the servants God wants to use. I can think of two very good Biblical examples. The first example is God’s mighty warrior Gideon. Gideon obeyed God when God told him to tear down his father’s Asherah pole, but he did it at night because he was afraid of the townspeople, but when God told him to go up and fight against the Midianites, Gideon didn’t think he was up to the task. Unlike Moses, Gideon didn’t plead to get out of the task, he simply asked God to give him a sign to prove that God was going to do what he promised he would do. When God agreed to do this and did exactly as Gideon asked, Gideon still wasn’t sure God had selected the right person, so he asked God to reverse the sign just so that he could be sure. When God did so, Gideon finally accepted his task. A second example of someone who didn’t think they could do what God wanted them to do is Jonah. God told Jonah to go tell the Assyrians to repent and to do this in their own capital city. To Jonah this seemed like a suicide mission so instead of obeying God, he simply tried to run away. God caught him and used a very big fish to deliver Jonah to Nineveh. Reluctantly Jonah, realizing that he couldn’t get away from God, went through the city telling the people to repent. Amazingly his preaching accomplished exactly what God wanted it to accomplish. This, however, did not make Jonah all that happy, but the point is that if God gives us a task to do, he can make it so that we can do it. It might seem too great a task from our point of view, but nothing is too hard for the LORD to do. If God wants us to do something He will provide what we need to get it done. So how did God answer Moses. God gave Moses three signs to perform in front of the Israelite elders. Look at verse 2 - 4. “Then the LORD said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff,’ he replied. 3 The LORD said, ‘Throw it on the ground.’ Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the LORD said to him, ‘Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.’ So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand.” The first sign God gave Moses was turning his rod into a serpent. This is interesting because growing up in Pharaoh’s household, Moses would have known that the serpent was a symbol of Egyptian power and a symbol of the Egyptian king himself. On the headdress of the king was the head of a cobra. This sign should have had a very powerful effect upon Moses. When Moses saw the rod turn into a snake, he was terrified and ran away from it. He knew that that snake could kill him so he didn’t want to be around it. However, this wasn’t the end of the sign for Moses. God stopped Moses from running away and commanded him to grab the snake by the tail. This probably didn’t seem like a very good idea, because as we all know if you grab a snake by the tail the first thing it will try to do is turn around and bite you. But when Moses obeyed God, the serpent simply turned back into his staff. This part of the sign should also have had a great impact on Moses. Not only did God show Moses that he was in control of this very dangerous situation, he was showing Moses that with God on his side, he could grab all the power of Egypt and subdue it. God was more powerful than symbol of Egyptian power. The next sign was turning Moses hand leprous. The word leprous as used in the Bible suggested not only the disease we know today as leprosy, but any number of skin diseases that cause the skin to rot and look disfigured. If you look at a person with ordinary leprosy, sometimes it is hard to tell that anything at all is wrong with them, especially in the early stages of the disease. However, when Moses stuck his hand in his cloak and removed it, it was very clear that something was really wrong with his skin. This indicated that God had the power and authority to bring disease on man and animals. This was a foreshadowing of of some of the plagues that God intended to bring on the Egyptians. Of course Moses had no way of knowing that at the time, all he could see was that his hand was horribly disfigured and he was apparently in big trouble. But again, God was in total control of this situation. God simply told Moses to place his hand back into his cloak and take it out again. When Moses did so his hand was completely healed. This again should have been a very powerful sign for Moses. It showed that God could inflict any disease he wanted to on anyone and what’s more God could also save those he chose to save from even incurable diseases. These two signs should have been enough to convince Moses that God could take care of him on this mission and make the mission a successful one, but God didn’t stop there. Look at verse 9. ” But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.” This should have been the sign that convinced Moses once and for all that God was indeed in charge of the situation and was going to make everything come out just the way he said it was going to come out. We must remember to take this sign in context. The Nile River was not only the most important God in the Egyptian society it was also the very source of their existence. Without the water from the Nile they were a doomed civilization. Not only that, but it was into the Nile that Pharaoh had ordered the Israelite women to throw their newborn sons. The blood of the Israelites had been spilled in the Nile and just as God had heard Able’s blood calling out from the ground where Cain had spilled it, God also heard the blood of the Israelites calling out from the Nile River. This signed showed that God was indeed watching over his people, and he intended to bring justice to his people by striking the life blood of the Egyptians by striking the river where they had shed the blood of the Israelites. As we know, this was to be the first plague that God was going to strike the Egyptians with so God was once again giving a foreshadowing to Moses as to what he intended to do to the Egyptians. We might think that with these three signs, Moses would be convinced that God could use him to do what God was sending him to do, but Moses doesn’t seemed to have been convinced. Look at verse 10. “Moses said to the LORD, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” We might think that this is a very weak excuse that Moses is offering here, but given the time and the things that Moses had been through it was probably pretty reasonable from a human point of view. However, this was Moses problem, he was looking at this whole situation from a human point of view rather than God’s point of view. Moses had spent 40 years in Egypt and had been educated there. Surely Moses knew his strengths and his weaknesses. Apparently one of his weaknesses was that he wasn’t a very good orator which was a priced thing in those days. According to the McArthur study Bible and ancient text dating from around that time period entitled, The tale of the Eloquent Peasant, suggested that eloquence of speech was very important in the Egyptian culture. What’s more Moses had spent 40 years in Midian learning a new language and forgetting all that he had learned in Egypt. So, again from a human point of view, Moses may have had a point, but this mission could not be looked at from that point of view. God answers Mosses with a rhetorical question. Look at verse 11. “The LORD said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’” God had already shown Moses what he was capable of. Moses should have simply accepted that God was in control of the situation and accepted his mission, but Moses was still very reluctant. If I were God I probably would have given him that leprosy all over his body and found someone else, but lucky for Moses I’m not God. God is a gracious God so he assured Moses that God himself would help him to speak to the Israelite elders and to Pharaoh. Moses should have thought like Paul did “If God is for us who can stand against us,” but Moses wasn’t thinking this way. He was only thinking about himself and what he could and couldn’t do. We must avoid this kind of thinking. Look at verse 13. “But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.’” Wow! How could Moses be so brave as to say that to God after all God had just showed him? This was the last straw. Now even God who is patient and slow to anger started to burn with ager against Moses. But God didn’t let his anger overwhelm him. Instead, he provided one more small sign for Moses to show him that he had even prepared for the smallest defects, like Moses trouble speaking. God had arranged for Aaron, Moses older brother, to come out into the desert to meet Moses. Aaron could do the talking for Moses. I think Moses was finally beginning to see that he simply couldn’t back out of this calling from God. So after God told him how he was to work with Aaron and reminding Moses to take the staff through which he was going to perform the miraculous signs, Moses seems to accept his mission. He returns to his father-in-law and asks for permission to head back to Egypt. We may seemed surprised at Moses reluctance to take up his mission, but how often are we just like this. I know that I am. I believe that God has given me the mission to go out onto the Korea University campus and invite students to come and learn about God. God has time and again shown me that he has already equipped me with everything I need to carry out this mission, but for one reason or another, I just keep finding excuses why I can’t do this. This week, it was because I’m just too busy. However, as I wrote this message I really heard God’s word, “Now Go! I will teach you what to say.” This is so true. Each week when I sit down to write, I have no idea what to write, but somehow God teaches me what needs to be said. I don’t even have to think about it. In the same way, I know that if I just go out to that campus God will be right there teaching me what to say to those students – even if we speak two different languages. Are you like this too? Do you find excuses not to carry out the mission God has for you. I think there is a little (if not a lot) of Moses in each of us. I pray that each of us can reflect on what God has already shown us he can do rather than reflecting on what we think we can’t do. This is the secret to being a servant of God. Remember it is never about what we can or cannot do, it is only about what God can do. He has promised to be with each of that he will be with us and teach us what to do, and, what’s more, I believe that God has shown each of us that He can accomplish everything that He intends to accomplish. God is completely sovereign over the events of this world and if He wants to use us to conquer the world with the Gospel of Jesus, it is not our place to think that He can’t do it through us. We must simply accept his mission believing that He will teach us what we need to do and say. I pray that through the study of this passage we might learn from Moses how not to answer God’s calling, rather we may deeply reflect on the signs that God has already given us to show us that He can use anyone he chooses for any mission, no matter how great that mission might be or how simple that person might be. May God help each of us to simply answer his call, believing that He will be there to teach us how to accomplish everything He wants to accomplish. |
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