Exodus 4:13-17

Now comes the final excuse, and one which many of us will have made. "Please send someone else".

So far God has been amazingly patient with Moses, but here things will change. The Lord's anger burned against Moses. Why is this? Why did this objection annoy God more than all the others? See what God was promising Moses. He was going to fulfil the desires of Moses' heart, namely see the Israelites set free, and Moses was going to be His chosen instrument in doing this. Yet all Moses could see were problems, and Moses was going to forego his destiny. When we are faced with situations that seem to overwhelm us, it is worth asking ourselves, and asking God, is God actually about to fulfil something amazing in our lives? God completely transforms the reality of life. In addition, God was about to free the Israelites, God may be about to use us to set someone else free, if only we will trust Him.

Then there is something equally amazing. God accommodates Moses, and suggests his brother speaks for him. Why did God do this? Our picture of God as someone who is totally unchanging and unresponsive is wrong. Even so, it is far better to go with God's first suggestion!

Exodus 4:10-12

Next Moses complains about his inability to speak well. This may refer to a speech impediment, or to not being quick witted and able to reply to Pharaoh. Acts 7:22 says Moses was "powerful in speech and action", though this may refer to what he did after he met with God.

Moses is looking ahead and imagining all the problems and reasons why things will go wrong. God looks ahead knowing He has everything planned out. The person of faith looks ahead knowing that whatever arises God can handle it.

The Lord's immediate reply is that it was He who gave man the ability to speak or not. Do you see the difference in perspective here? Moses views himself as at the centre of it all, it is all dependent upon his ability (or lack of). We often do the same, we see things as being completely dependent upon us. This is a product of the fall, when we took complete responsibility for ourselves. This is not what we were created for. We were created to live in fellowship with God, so what we can and cannot do is limited only by what God says we can and cannot do. When we come into relationship with Christ we need to get used to living in this new paradigm, and doing this is one of the biggest problems we have.

Exodus 4:1-9

Moses continues with his objections. This time he asks what will happen if they don't believe him and say "God did not appear to you". I am sure that this is something most of us have experienced. People will not listen to us, and don't believe that we actually know God.

The Lord answered this by giving Moses a demonstration of power. First he is to throw his rod on to the ground, and it turns into a snake. Then he was told to take it by the tail, a very dangerous thing to do with a snake! It then turns back to being a rod. Next he is to put his hand in his cloak and it becomes leprous. He puts it back, and it is healed.

Moses is to do these signs in the presence of the people, and God even gives him a third sign to do. See how God works here. First He demonstrates His power to Moses in private, then Moses is to demonstrate this in public. God works in our lives to demonstrate the reality and effectiveness of His love. Then we will see this work out in practice in the presence of other people. We should expect God to work through us in public.

Exodus 3:16-22

Moses was to assemble the leaders of Israel. Note that this would not be easy for him. As noted earlier, he was in exile. He had been brought up in Pharaoh's palace, so this would not help his reputation with the Israelites.

Moses is to tell them God has seen what has happened to them, and has declared that He will rescue them and take them to a land "flowing with milk and honey". Note that the promised land is occupied by various enemies. God was fully aware of this, and knew what He was going to do about it. When God makes a promise to us, it may seem that there are all sorts of obstacles in the way. Indeed, there may well be numerous obstacles, but God knows about the obstacles and knows what He is going to do about them.

God assures Moses that the elders will listen to him. Then they are to go to Pharaoh and make a request. God knew that Pharaoh would refuse, there would then be a power demonstration and eventually Pharaoh would relent. 

When they did leave, they would actually leave with loads of wealth given to them by the Egyptians.

Exodus 3:13-15

Moses then asks how he is supposed to explain to the Israelites who has sent him. Again we need to remember the situation. Only Moses had seen God in the burning bush. There was no established religion among the Israelites in the way that there was once the nation was set up, though there was an identity among the people.

God then introduces Himself as "I AM WHO I AM". Then He goes on to expand on this by saying that He is the God if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Israelites would probably have folk stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and about how they came to be in Egypt. So God makes a new revelation to them (I AM) and then shows how it fits in with what they already knew. In a sense this is what happened with Jesus and the gospel. Jesus was a new revelation, but then Jesus and the apostles showed how He was in fact the fulfilment of the Old Testament. 

In our own lives when we need delivering in some way God may well follow the same pattern, ie He may give us a new revelation of Himself, showing us something we didn't realise about before about Him.

"I AM". It can be interesting to compare this to what science says. It is increasingly common today for some atheists to claim that science negates religion. This is actually nonsense and quite the opposite case can be made equally well (in fact even evolution is not necessarily anti-God, only the way that Dawkins and the like portray it), but leaving that aside, cosmological views seem to come down at some point to saying "it just is". Big bang theories get down to fraction of a second after the big bang, but are then still at a loss as to why. When science tries to explain everything (rather than what is) it eventually comes down to having to say something just is. So even in its own terms, science is no better an explanation of the ultimate questions than the Bible. The Bible tells us that God is the reason, the difference is that this God has made Himself known to us in Christ.

Exodus 3:11,12

Moses now starts to raise all sorts of objections to God about why he cannot be the right person for God's mission. So when we do the same it is nothing new to God! 

The first objection that Moses raises is "who am I to do this?". We need to note that Moses had good reason for saying this. He had been in exile from Egypt (you know things are going badly when you are in exile from exile!) because the Israelites hated him and Pharaoh hated him. He had tried to help the Israelites and had failed. So all his experience taught him that he was not the man to do this. For all of us there are things in our life that have had a deep impact on us. We have ingrained views of ourselves, and areas where we feel complete failures.

God does not view us in the same way. Because of Christ anything is now possible. Now note that God is not ignorant of our past, our psyche, our failures and psychological flaws, it is just that He knows that in Christ they can be overcome.

God answer is "I will be with you". This is all we need. If God is with us who is against us? (Romans 8:31). The thing we should ask for in all situation is to be aware of God's presence with us (see Psalm 27).

God then gives Moses a sign. At first this might seem hopeful, but it is in fact useless (taking a human way of looking at things). God can sometimes be extremely unhelpful, and this is one of those occasions. He says that the sign will be "when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain". Now think about it, when this has happened Moses will already have inflicted the ten plagues on Pharaoh, seen the Red Sea part and several other miracles. At that point he won't need a sign!

So what is the lesson we can draw from this? It is that often you will only know that it really is God leading you when you start to take the steps. It is called living by faith. Our nature is to want to have everything all neatly set out beforehand, but God's nature is that we should take the steps, and He will assure us along the way. The way to know Jesus is to start to follow.

Exodus 3:7-10

"I have seen the misery .." The Lord has seen what has been happening to His people and has heard their cry. So often we think that God ignores our cry or is oblivious to our pleading, but this is not true. We can also forget that He is aware of other people's suffering as well. But God does see, and God is aware. We need to understand this, and for two very good reasons. First, He is never oblivious to our plight, Jesus said that every hair on our head is counter. God knows your circumstances right now, and He cares for you. Secondly, He will use us to help others, and some of His guidance and direction in our lives will be so that He can bring His salvation to others. In fact most of His direction and guidance will be motivated by this. 

So God says He has come down to rescue the people and to take them into a good and spacious land. This is God's purpose for our lives. 

Then in verse 10 we come to the most amazing thing, "So now go, I am sending you". When God comes down to rescue a people He usually works through people, including you and me. And just think again about Moses' situation. His life seems to have been a failure, he seems to be going nowhere, but God comes down and all his past failure means nothing to God, it is no problem to Him.  Understand the ways of the Lord.