Send Someone Else (Exodus 4:1-31)

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Go ahead and grab your Bibles, open up to Exodus. Chapter Four. Exodus chapter four. We’ll cover the whole chapter here this morning as you turn into Exodus four. In the 1850s, a man named John Patton felt called to a string of islands in the South Seas known today as Vanuatu. Now, he was not the first person to try to bring the Gospel to these Islanders. In fact, less than 20 years earlier, the first missionaries that we’re aware of were sent out in 1839, and they were killed and then eaten by cannibals in their first few minutes ashore. So Patton was getting a lot of people telling him, maybe you shouldn’t do this. In fact, one person in particular, an elderly pastor that he knew named Mr. Dixon, had said, You’ll be eaten by cannibals, ” which was kind of his whole argument, and he responded, Patton had a wit for sure. He said, Mr. Dixon, you’re advanced in years, and you’ll soon be eaten by worms. I confess to you if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus. It makes no difference to me if I’m eaten by cannibals or by worms elsewhere. He writes, I continually heard the wail of the perishing heathen in the South Seas. And the Lord kept saying to me, since none better qualified can be, got Rise and go yourself, which I love also, like just, he’s just saying, like, I know I’m not top shelf, but you know, it’s okay if I’m the one who’s willing, then I will go. Now, that’s not how most of us would feel. I can tell you from personal experience, that’s not even how most missionaries feel when they’re heading out on the missions field. Many people would have more that kind of drag, kicking and screaming. I’m not going. You can’t make me kind of feel as the Lord is taking them to the field. It’s probably why we tell Patton’s story honestly, because he’s just got that courage where we go, wow. You know, we would aspire to be like that, but most of us need a bit more encouraging. Most of us need a bit more encouraging, even if we’re not being called to go across the world, but just going across the street to have a conversation with a neighbor, just to do what we know God has called us to do, to evangelize, to make disciples. Most of us need more encouragement. So did Moses, by the way, so did Moses, as we started this conversation he had with God last week. We’ll finish up the conversation this week, where he’s giving his list of objections to his being called to lead God’s people, and then we’ll see some of the first steps that he takes toward Egypt, as well how God overcomes his reluctance is really what we’re looking at it. We’ll see it in three scenes, and what God provides to overcome that reluctance. So our first scene, chapter four, verses one to nine. God gives us what we need to trust. God gives us everything we need so that we trust him. Let me read chapter four, verses one to nine for us. Moses answered, what if they do not believe me or listen to me and say the Lord did not appear to you. Then the Lord said to him, What is that in your hand a staff? He replied. The Lord said, throw it on the ground. Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 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 turned it back, and it turned back into a staff in his hand. This said, The Lord is so 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. Then the Lord said, put your hand inside your cloak. So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, skin was leprous, and it becomes white as snow. Now, put it back into your cloak, he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. Then the Lord said, if they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second, 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. All right, so this is Moses’s third objection. At this point, we kind of looked last week again. His first one was, who am I? And then the second one was, but who are you? And here we are on the third one, what if they don’t listen to me? This, by the way, contradicts what God had promised him back in chapter three, verse 18, God says the elders of Israel will listen to you, and Moses does not take God at His Word. What if they don’t listen to me? To be fair to Moses, a little bit understandable, because the last time he tried to lead Israel, it didn’t go well for him. We saw that back in chapter two, but still he is doubting God’s ex. Explicit promise, and so can we just pause for a moment and appreciate God’s patient kindness toward us that God doesn’t just zap Moses dead right here, the Lord is willing to have robust conversations with us. He invites our questions, and questions are very different from doubts, especially willful doubts. So God not only invites the questions, but then gives him what he needs to trust. He overcomes the objection, and that’s true for us also. He calls us and then he helps us to trust Him for the call. And so how does he do that? These three signs. The first sign involves Moses’s staff, his shepherding staff. This is gonna be an important prop in the story of Exodus. It’ll show up a bunch, but it tells us something immediately, even I mean, it’s interesting that the man called to lead Israel is given a staff and not a scepter, because he is to be a shepherd leader, and not a dictator or a king, yet at this point, and so here he is. We know about shepherds. What good shepherds are like, as Jesus tells us, they’re willing to lay down their lives to their sheep to make sacrifices for the sake of the people, that’s what Moses is called to be. Second I love in this that the sign that the Lord gives Moses involves what Moses already has. Like He literally says to Moses, What’s that in your hand to show him? Yeah, you can trust me. It’s like the Lord saying to you, what do you got in your pockets right now? Okay, I can work with that. You need a sign. I’ll do what you know, you got bubble gum. We’ll do you use bubble gum for your sign. Francis Schaeffer says this in his essay with no little people. He says, you know, it’s like God’s saying, Look what I can do with a dead stick of wood. And if I can do this with a dead stick of wood, what do you think I can do with you? What do you think I can do with you, Moses, and it’s so interesting. We’ll see this by the end of the chapter. In fact, it’s no longer just called Moses’s staff. It is now the staff of God, and that changes everything. You look at people as they’re being called to serve the Lord, you go, well, what could they do? They’re just a child. No, no, they’re a child of God. I’m just a man, yeah, a man of God, a woman of God, the Lord can work with that. Now, part of this sign, though, also, and I don’t like to be boastful, you know that about me, but I was an Eagle Scout, so like, wilderness survival is my thing, I should have a Netflix documentary about me. This is not true, by the way. I’ve gone soft in the years since, so I have my how not to get bitten by snakes, merit badge, and it was really difficult. It’s just one question, right? Should you grab snakes by the tail? No, okay, that’s it. One question. Moses fails here, but that is the sign. The whole idea here is that God is saying, I will give you power over your enemies. And it’s going to have something to do with Egypt, as we’ll see here in a moment. But it also should make us think of the original enemy, who was also a snake, by the way. Should make us think of that first promise, Genesis 315 that one of Eve’s children, one of her descendants, will stomp that snake’s head. And here we’re starting to see that come true. Second sign then involves Moses himself, and this is a humbling sign, because in it, God gives him an outward sign of an inward corruption. So he’s seeing on the outside what is true of His Spirit. We see here the contagion of sin, and this is an important sign, because before God can raise us up to serve Him, He must bring us low. We see this over and over in Scripture. We even see it in Jesus’s life, and Jesus did not have the contagion of sin. But even still, Philippians chapter two, God humbles Jesus, right? He humbles himself, becomes obedient as a servant, even to the point of death. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name above every name. So God gives Moses gives us a sense of our unworthiness before we are sent out, and then we get to the third sign. But before the third sign, did you notice that God admits that Moses may actually be right? He says, Well, right, the elders of Israel, they might not believe you this, I think, is actually part of how he felt. Fulfills the promise in chapter three, verse 18, like the the interplay between God’s sovereignty and just the reality of complicated people is itself more complicated than we would sometimes like to. Admit like, I think God is saying in 318 they’re going to listen to you, because God knows that Moses is going to struggle. So God’s gonna have to give Moses signs to perform for the Israelites so that they listen to him, so that they believe it’s just like infinite dimensional chess, and we’re all very linear. So of course, it’s more complicated. We’ll see that again in this passage, by the way, the third sign involves the Nile River, then. And this is an important one, because, of course, the Nile is what makes Egypt Egypt. It’s the whole reason it’s this powerful civilization. Even today, you think of Egypt, you think pyramids, Nile, that’s it, right? Like those are the first things that come to mind. So it involves Egypt, which is important, gets us ready for the plagues as well, since this will be the first plague. But here he also calls them signs, verses eight, nine. They don’t believe you pay attention to the first sign, the second sign. Here’s the third sign that’s important. These are signs. They are pointers to something. They’re not just magic tricks to show that God is powerful. It’s a sign pointing to something in particular. So yes, absolutely points to God’s power. We have every reason to trust that he can do what he says he’s going to do, but we’re also seeing power over specific obstacles. The snake is a symbol of evil, as we’ve seen, but it’s also a symbol of Egypt. The Cobra is there in the crown that Pharaoh would wear. Leprosy is a picture of sins, corrupting influence and the decay and death that sin brings, God is stronger than sin and death. And then we see God’s control over nature, even the most powerful elements in it, like the Nile. So we have seen his power to transform, to heal, to overcome. These are good signs, don’t you wish you had signs like these. Wouldn’t that make faith easier? I mean, never mind some call like Moses is experiencing here, but it’ll just make daily Christian living easier even. I mean, how many of us think, are you real God? Like, are you really there? Am I going to be okay if I follow you anywhere like we just sang, because it doesn’t always look or feel that way. Well, you know where I’m going because you heard me preach before I got good news for you. We have a far better sign, because we have the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the biggest sign. It’s the blinking neon sign with the moving arm that you see on the highway pointing turn here. Okay, yes, you can trust the God who raised your Savior from the dead. Now, some of you are immediately going, okay, but can I trust that the resurrection happened? And that’s another question. Yes, absolutely you can. I don’t have time to get into it, because you all get fussy when I go 55 minutes in a sermon. Okay, so we’re not going to do that this week, but if you got questions, come and ask me, there’s a few things I would rather talk about than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s just I don’t have the time right now. God gives us what we need to trust Him, so that we know that we can do what He asks us to do, except that Moses isn’t convinced. So Scene two, God gives us what we need to act, to actually do His will. God gives us what we need to act. Let me keep reading verses 10 to 17 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. 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. But Moses said, Pardon your servant, Lord, please send someone else. Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth. I will help both of you speak, and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it. So in this fourth objection, we get what is ironically a very eloquent defense of his lack of eloquence. It’s even more eloquent in the Hebrew. But what exactly is he complaining about here? When he says, I am slow of speech and tongue. Does he stutter or have some kind of speech impediment? Maybe? Is it stage? Right, like John Piper had as a high school student, like literally just cannot get up and talk in front of people. Maybe, is it a language issue? And keep in mind he is an ESL student Egyptian as his second language. Except he’s actually just really confused, because I don’t even know if Egyptian was a second language or if Hebrew was his second language. Plus now he speaks Midianite. So he just has he’s probably not fluent in anything. It’s also been 40 years since he was in Egypt. If you’ve ever lived overseas and spoken another language for a time, you know how quickly that goes away, right? So, yeah, maybe that’s what’s going on in any case, whatever it is, whether this is a real defect or an imagined defect. On his part, it is how we all so often feel. I mean, take a moment and just articulate for yourself right now, in the quiet of your own heart, why you think you can’t do it. Here’s why I can’t be a deacon. Lord. I can’t lead a ministry at this church. Here’s why I can’t be part of the church plant team when it gets sent out. Here’s why I can’t start a gospel conversation with my coworker. Here’s why I can’t answer the hard questions that my family member keeps bringing at me. Got that in your head. Hold on to it as we go then, because God deals with those objections. He deals with them from Moses here and in two stages, as Phil Reichen points out, first he deals with the irreverence of the objection, and then with the irrelevance of the objection, Moses’ objection and ours. So the irreverence he answers by asking the question, Who made you? Who made you the way you are, not only that, but who is sovereign over every life experience that has shaped you into who you are today is the answer to that question, the same God who calls you now that he probably knows what he’s doing, he knows your defects, real or imagined because he made you, because he is shaping you, and he uses you and calls you, not despite those defects, but precisely because of them we see over and over again in Scripture and in history as well. As long as we got kind of a missions theme going, let’s stick with the missionaries. You know, Amy Carmichael, missionary to India who worked to rescue children who were in girls who were in great danger of abuse and whatnot. All her life, she wanted blue eyes. He used to pray to God that he would change her eye color so they’d be blue, because that’s what pretty girls have, right? Everyone knows that, right? Like that’s but that’s her, her imagined defect there, until she got to India, and the work she had to do meant that she had to be as anonymous as possible, and blue eyes would have stood out. And she stopped, and she went, that’s why you gave me brown eyes. That’s why you gave me brown eyes. I think of Fannie Crosby, who was blind because of a doctor’s mistake when she was an infant, and who was blind because of the sovereign will of God when she was an infant. Now, would Fanny Crosby have been the hymn writer that she was, if she hadn’t been blinded at an early age? I don’t know if you answered the question, but I tell you what, that probably steered her in a certain direction. It would involve things like, you know, your sense of hearing, the play of language, but in the play of music as well, you get the idea God didn’t mess up when he made you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. And not only that, if you are in Christ, you are being fearfully and wonderfully remade in him, then he deals with the irrelevance objection. Oh, you’re not eloquent. So what? God doesn’t need Cicero. He’s not looking for rhetoricians, but reporters, right? We’re not called to be these great orators. We are called to be Newsies who are just the kid on the street corner going Extra, extra read all about it. Jesus died for your sins. God raised Jesus from the dead. You don’t need to be eloquent to say that. I mean, this was Billy Graham’s power, wasn’t it? He was just a simple man, simply presenting profound truths. And how many times did he say the Bible says the Bible says, That’s it. All I’m doing is telling you what somebody else said, because that is out. Or call this is what Paul says in Corinth as well. I didn’t come with wise and persuasive words. You wanted eloquence. I didn’t bring it. I came with a simple demonstration of the Spirit’s power, because I resolved to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. That’s the message I bring. The only credentials that we need. We are just God’s ambassadors, and ambassadors just speak someone else’s words. We have this treasure in jars of clay, and you overcome the irrelevance objection by forgetting about the jar and looking at the treasure of the gospel within. And it gets better, though, because then God promises again to be with Moses when it says, I will help you speak that reads, literally, I am with your mouth. I am with your mouth, same as the name he gave us a Ye, right? I am with your mouth. And that shift is the one that we all need to make, because Moses has been talking about I a lot, right? I can’t do this. I’m not eloquent. I, I, I, and God says I AM is with you. That’s what you need. And by the way, how much better again, for us than for Moses, because we do not have God, just with us, alongside us, going before us and behind us. Although that’s awesome, we also have God dwelling within us by His Spirit, but it’s still not enough for Moses. And so the fifth objection that he makes is no argument at all. He just says, like Isaiah, here I am. Send someone else, send someone else, not quite like Isaiah. I mean, how different from Mary in the passage that we had read for us earlier, right? I’m the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me according to your will. How different from our truest example, Christ, who said, Lord, if it’s possible, take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will instead. So God gets angry, and he gets angry here because our God loves to be trusted by his children. And so what we have here is the disappointment of a father whose son is rejecting the best. He is angry, but he’s still gracious too, because he gives Moses what he needs to act, the help he needs to do, what he’s called to do. Specifically, he gives him his older brother, Aaron. And notice he gives him Aaron, not because Aaron’s particularly competent, although he’s more so than Moses I get, but he’s actually given the same promises. So instead of I will be with your mouth. Now it says I will be with your mouth, both of you. All right, fine, so you’re still just going to need me to do this anyway, but he sends Aaron. And here, I think it’s worth asking the question at this point, are we settling for second best? Did Moses mess up God’s Plan A, and so God’s gotta switch to Plan B here, in a sense, yes, sure, because God, in His mercy, accommodates Moses’s request, but really, no, not a chance, because the Lord says through his prophet, Malachi, I the Lord, do not change. There’s no shifting of shadow with him. In fact, this has been his plan all along, because God is omniscient. He knows the end from the beginning, and if you know you’re going to change your mind, going to change your mind, are you really changing your mind? Probably not. He’s never surprised, even though he meaningfully interacts with people. So we know that this was his plan all along, by the way, because Aaron is already on his way. Did you catch that? And at the end of the chapter, we’re going to see why Aaron is on his way. Do you want to know why Aaron’s on his way? Because God told him to go. God already knew what was going to happen. See it in verse 27 we’ll get there in a little bit. I mean, how often, then our acts are precipitated both by human weakness and divine wisdom at one in the same time. And you kind of go, which one was it? Yes, it was both. That’s right. I mean, think of what Joseph, Joseph says to his brothers in Genesis, 50, right? You intended this for evil. God intended this for good. Simultaneously, you thought you were selling me to slavery in Egypt, God was sending me as a savior to Egypt to rescue you and surrounding nations from famine. And of course, we see it supremely in Jesus Christ as Acts tells us Pilate the religious leaders could. Spired together with evil in their hearts to murder the Son of God, they did what God had determined beforehand would happen. There should be a comfort to us, I think, plagued as we so often are by sorrow and regret over our past choices. Did I mess this up? And in a sense, sure, yeah, probably we’re all sinners. We’ve all made mistakes. But as we sang last week, nothing is wasted, right? No failure or mistake. Did you miss your call? No way God is using even those mistakes to shape you to be the person he needs you to be, to do what he called you to do. And let’s just take a moment before we go on to the next scene to revel in grace here. Because even after all, this God still calls and sends him like, how surprised Are you? How surprised should you be that that’s happening, that God’s like, no, no, Moses, you’re still my guy. And of course, we see that throughout Scripture. I mean, how many times should Peter have been cut off? How many times he put his foot in his mouth? Or what about, you know, when he denied his Savior three times? And almost the next day after the resurrection, there is Jesus at the shore calling Peter to himself, do you love me? Then feed my sheep. I got a job for you. Man, you look at Paul murdering Christians, or at least complicit in their murder, and that’s the one where God says, I’m going to use you to bring the gospel to all nations. And that’s how God is with you and me also, one more comment too, before we just get to the last verse there. But part of me wonders too, like, how upset should we be with Moses here? I mean, like, I get it, this is a lot of objections. Would you rather that when God called Moses? Moses went, yeah. No, that makes sense. I am the one you should be calling here. I literally don’t think you could do this without me. Like, of course not. I see this all the time because I’m the one who has the privilege, generally, of tapping guys on the shoulder to consider serving on our elder board. And I love seeing their response. It’s usually really helpful, actually, but to a one so far, none have said, Oh yeah, no, that makes sense, right? I’m actually surprised it took you this long to ask me to serve in leadership. I kid you not. I think every single one who has been asked through the years has said, Are you sure? And then we look at first, Timothy three and Titus one, and they go, no, like, Are you sure? Because I am not qualified. And you go, Great, that’s step one, right? That’s where it’s got to begin, the humility to realize God is going to have to qualify us. God then has Moses take the staff in his hand. Remember this is this tangible reminder of God’s power and promises. Every step he took, every time he felt the wood in his hand, he would remember what God had said and done. And that’s what baptism and communion are for us today, every time you peel back the plastic, even, which I realize is not, you know, good biblical imagery there, but still, every time we put the bread in our mouths, we sip on the fruit of the vine. It is a reminder of God’s power and promises. God has given us what we need to act, to do His will. Third scene, God gives us what we need to obey. God gives us what we need to obey. Let me read the rest of the chapter for us, Moses went back to Jethro, his father in law, and said to him, let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive. Jethro said, Go and I wish you well. Now. The Lord had said to Moses and Midian, go back to Egypt for all those who wanted to kill you are dead. So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand, the Lord said to Moses, when you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go and say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says. Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, let my son go so he may worship Me, but you refuse to let him go so I will kill your firstborn son at a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses, and was about to kill him, but Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’s feet with it. Surely you are a bridegroom of blood. To me, she said, so the Lord let him alone at that time, she said, Bridegroom of blood, referring to circumcision, the Lord said to Aaron, go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. Then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform. Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told him everything the Lord had said to MOS. Us, He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped. So we get this series of short scenes taking us from the burning bush to Pharaoh. He leaves Midian reaches the Israelites in Egypt with Aaron also in there, one of the most perplexing scenes in the whole Bible. We’ll get there in a moment. First four short steps out of Midian. Okay. First step, he takes his leave of Jethro, which would be a common courtesy, of course, at this time, and in a time when people tended to stay close to family, this is less common, a less common courtesy, even in a culture of expressive individualism where people just leave all the time, we’re a much more transient society. Now there is the reminder here. God may call us to leave family. He calls Abraham to leave. He calls Moses to leave. He calls Moses to take Zipporah away from her family. Called me to leave my family. I took my wife away from her family. I brought her back, okay, after seven long years. Yes, exactly. But when you are called to leave, the point is, leave. Well, leave. Well, say the goodbye. Well, I didn’t with one family member in particular, and I still regret it after all these years, even though, again, we came back, we made things right, of course. Can I say this too? This is not just biological family, because your church family is eternal, your biological family is not so if you are going to leave a church for some reason leave well, so that we feel the rupture of it. I think people who just stop coming. I find that almost unconscionable, in light of who we are as the Church of God. Second scene though, God heads Moses’ fears off at the pass because he says that guy who’s trying to kill you is dead now, so you don’t need to be afraid to go back. This means that Moses has changed. His identity is different. He is no longer a prince of Egypt. He is no longer a fugitive in Egypt. He is now a leader of the Hebrew people. God has made him new third. He takes the staff of God so he intentionally remembers. We already talked about that, but it’s just the reminder for us. This is what we need to do, right to cling to God’s promises like Moses to his staff. This is why we put the gospel armor on every day that Paul describes in Ephesians six. And what is the gospel armor? It is just remembering the gospel. Helmet of Salvation protects our minds, Breastplate of Righteousness protects our hearts, the belt of truth, it’s the gospel, right? So this is what we do when we put on the gospel armor. Each piece put on with prayer, as the old hymn has it. Fourth God lets him know that it’s not going to go well, Pharaoh won’t let them go until God acts in mighty ways and does these wonders. He says, I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. We’re gonna have to talk more about that as we go through Exodus. But there’s that tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility again, and what we’ve seen already throughout this passage is they’re the same side or different sides of the same coin. God uses ordinary means to shape human choices. That’s how He’s sovereign over them, and so they both will it simultaneously, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, as one commentator put it to the Hebrew there essentially the same explanation phrased differently, who hardens whose heart? Why does he do this? Why does he harden Pharaoh’s heart instead of making this easy to get Israel out of Egypt? And the answer is to showcase his power and glory that we might know God, which is the main theme in Exodus, that we might know God in the fullness of His glory. It’s also to show his love for his firstborn son. And here we just have to sit in the wonder of our adoption in Christ, because Israel is not God’s natural son. He adopted this people for Himself in the same way that he has predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, Ephesians, chapter one. And what’s even more impressive about our adoption is that he adopts us, adopts Israel here as his firstborn son, at the cost of his firstborn son. It is Jesus’ blood that is shed his natural son, so that we can be made sons and daughters in Christ. Of course, this gets us ready for the last plague as well, but we’ll talk more about that when we go that when we get there. Then it gets weird. So what happened here, starting in verse 24 apparently, Moses hadn’t circumcised his son, which is a big deal, because circumcision was the sign of the covenant, the way baptism is for us today. So. Moses was disobedient. He wasn’t keeping covenant demands. He needed the reminder, he needed the promises, and so God punishes his disobedience, but he punishes graciously, because he leaves time for repentance. He doesn’t always right. He zaps other dead on the spot. But Moses, something happens where he has time to repent. Likely, we’re guessing here a little bit, but most likely, Moses is experiencing some sort of physical symptom, and Zipporah sees it. And sees it spiritually. Is able to discern what is happening, and so she acts quickly and don’t miss this Zipporah, who’s a Gentile, by the way, Zipporah obeys in Moses’s place because it was dad’s job to circumcise the son. So Zipporah does what Moses should have done, and then sprinkles blood on him. What a picture of the gospel, by the way, because it is Jesus who obeys in our place, and then it is His shed blood that is sprinkled on us so that we can be saved. Of course, gets us ready for the sprinkling of the blood on the doorpost. Again. We’ll get there a little bit. But there is this reminder that we are only right with God through the covenant, promises and the shed blood of the perfect sacrifice, I would have to say at a point like this, if you are here today as a believer of Christ and have not been baptized, obey right now is the time to go. Okay, I should look into this, because that’s exactly what Moses was doing here, and we see that God takes it seriously. Finally, we get Aaron’s call. He sent as a helper for Moses, and the two of them do at last, what God asked them to do. They obey, and as God promised, the signs convince Israel, not Pharaoh, as we’ll see. And so here is this reminder that the signs don’t compel belief. The signs don’t compel belief. Rather, they authenticate the messenger. This one is really sent by God, and they vindicate the message. And it is the same with the resurrection today, the sign that we have. And so I’m in the middle of a kid you not 1000 page book detailing the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, there are a few evidences, good, good reasons to believe that this happened in history. If you doubt, and I give you this book, you will not necessarily believe at the end of it, it will not compel belief, but it might help you along, right? It is going to authenticate the messenger, Jesus Christ, and vindicate his message, so that if you go on doubting, it is now a willful rejection of what you know to be true. So my encouragement to you, if you are skeptical is, take a look. Take a look, right? It won’t make unbelief impossible, but you need to reckon with the claims of God, His messenger and his message, and then it ends with a note of worship. Of course, it does. How could it not? Because God heard his people and he visited them. Is the word that’s used there. It’s a wonderful word, actually, when it says that the Lord was concerned about them, that’s the visited idea. It’s this sense of he got involved in their lives. He didn’t stay at a distance. He got involved. He mixed himself up with them, and how that sets the stage for Jesus later, when, once again, God visits his people, dwelling among them in order to save them. This whole reminder of the gospel then should compel gospel obedience also. This is kind of the culmination to chapters one to four, in a lot of ways, but an exodus shaped salvation should lead to an exodus shaped mission so that we also see the misery of people around us, hear their cries, feel concern, and visit them. Go help whatever we can do, but we’re not going to. We’re not going to feel that we can unless we get the big idea for today, and here it is your big idea. God has given us what we need, so trust and obey, as the old song has it. God has given us what we need, so trust and obey. Get your eyes off of yourself and on to the great I AM. Amen. His Word and His promises, remember those covenant promises, and then keep the covenant demands. You know, it’s so interesting that Moses worries that the Israelites won’t believe or listen. That’s where we started. Chapter four, verse one, they won’t believe, and so they won’t listen, and the word listen has that sense of obey. And what’s ironic is that’s exactly what Moses is struggling to do also. So God graciously gives him, gives us all we need to believe, to listen, to trust and obey. And what does he give us? He gives us himself. He gives us himself in answer to every one of Moses’s objections and to all of yours. Now, God just offers himself. I am with you. I am with you. He doesn’t change our credentials, doesn’t change our circumstances, doesn’t try to convince Moses it’ll be easier than he thinks. Doesn’t promise him or us instant success. Instead, he says, I am with you, and he’s shown that in these last two chapters, the God, who reveals himself, makes promises, keeps covenants, rules. Nature defeats enemies, overcomes sin and death creates and recreates. I that God will be with you. You good. You got what you need then, yeah, of course, we do. God has given you everything you need because he’s given you himself. So trust and obey, go do what he told you to do, even if it means you’re at risk of being eaten by cannibals. Let’s pray.