Chapter 4 of Exodus presents us with the inner struggle of a man who believes himself quite unfit for the task he knows God has called him to do. It is a common enough problem for Christians, and an acute one for pastors. "Who am I, indeed, to speak for God?"
We have seen in broad terms how God dealt with this problem for Moses; now we zoom in on verses 1-9 of ch. 4.
The pressure points where Moses needs relief, as this paragraph reveals them, are his fear, his guilt, and his unbelief. These are all concealed in his opening statement to God, and then drawn out into the open in the ensuing conversation.
"It's no use sending me," Moses says to God. "The people You're sending me to won't be convinced by anything I say. They'll say, 'Who, you? God appeared to you?'" All the emphasis in the sentence falls on the word 'you'. Moses professes to be afraid of what people will say: they will scorn him and reject him. When it comes to speaking for God, it is a fear we all share with him.
But as the narrative goes on to show, it is not really people he is afraid of, but his own inadequacies. He says they will laugh at him; but what really troubles him is what there is in him to be laughed at.
In this he is like us too. We say, as he said, "But people will say ..." as though it is all their fault that we do not stand a chance. By throwing the blame on others like this - in advance - we give ourselves a reason not to try so the real reason for our failure will not show. It is all a smoke screen to hide our weaknesses, not only from others' eyes, but from our own. It is an old trick we all pull: seeing in others what we cannot bear to look at in ourselves. The psychologists call it 'projection,' throwing onto a screen 'out there' the picture that is really inside the projector - attributing to others what we cannot bear to look at in ourselves. It is what is within we are afraid of.
So what is the real truth about himself Moses has to face?
His fear first. And here we see ...
"Lord, how can I go to Pharaoh, even in your Name? What have I been doing these forty years but hiding from him? He means to kill me ... still. His power and his vengeance haunt me, even yet. I'm afraid, Lord, and in my fear I'm weak."
If we are honest to God, that fear is with us still. The people of God are weak, as Moses was weak. We are afraid, as he was, to oppose the principalities and powers that rule over us. We are afraid to challenge the injustices in our society. And we have been afraid so long, we are hardly sure any more what it is we ought to challenge.
There was a time when the churches were the nation's conscience. Not any more. We are uncertain and silent because we are afraid. We are disturbed by our society's increasing decadence, but we are afraid to challenge it. Like Moses, we protest "But people will say, 'Who are you to speak in the name of a God we do not know?'"
What is God's answer to Moses' fear?
He bids him take the shepherd's crook that is in his hand and fling it on the ground. At once it becomes a hissing serpent - a twisting, deadly, hostile thing. Moses panics, and flees from it. This little scene exactly represents Moses' fear, for the snake was a national symbol of Egypt, as the bear is of Russia and the lion of the U.K. That thing on the ground is Egypt! ... and Moses is terrified of it.
"Put out your hand and seize it," says God, "... by its tail."
By its tail? "But that's madness, Lord." Only an ignorant fool will grasp a snake by its tail. It will whip round because its head is free, and strike the hand that holds it. Only a man in a panic does that.
"I know," says God. "But do it!"
And the moment Moses does it, almost weeping with fright, it is at once a harmless rod again.
"You see?" says God. "So in my hands are all the principalities and powers of this world. Your hand, when it reaches out that rod over Egypt, will be enclosed in my hand. Weak you are; afraid I know you are: but my strength is made perfect in weakness, and when in your weakness you obey me Egypt will tremble to its knees."
We too stand in fear of the principalities and powers of this world. Are they not hostile to God and to His people? Did they not crucify the Lord of glory? And they will crucify us too. Who are we to oppose them ... with no armour but our faith, and no weapon but a word from God?
And yet we know that it was by His Cross that Jesus triumphed over the principalities and powers of this world ... disarmed them, and exposed them for what they are - empty pomposities which, when God's hour strikes, cannot thwart His purpose and His power to save. We have lived to see how true that is still - and dramatically - in the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union.
It looks a weak thing, does that Cross ... as Moses' rod did, his puny shepherd's crook. What sort of a weapon was that to wield? The fact that Moses was commanded to grasp the serpent by its tail emphasised the vulnerability we all feel before the principalities and powers of this world. But when Moses did reach out that rod, Egypt trembled to its knees, the waters of the sea went backward, the flinty rock released its gushing fountain, and the hosts of Amalek were routed ... until Moses in the end was to shout in triumph, that rod in his hand still, "A hand upon the banner of Yahweh!"
That is the symbol of the College in which I trained (Spurgeon's College): the Cross grasped in a man's hand, with the motto, "Et teneo, et teneor" ... "I both hold and am held."
When will we dare, in that sign of the Cross, to conquer? When indeed? Before we may, there is something else that is needed; we must be cleansed from the guilt of our sin. Here we must see ...
Behind Moses fear, and lending strength to
it, was his guilt.
"Lord, how can I, stained as I am with the guilt of my sin, speak for
You?
"How can I protest Pharaoh's high-handedness - I who have been
high-handed with my fellows?
"How can I protest his oppression of your people - I who was so ready
to oppress?
"How can I plead for the life of my people ... I who have killed?
"How - even in Thy Name - can I challenge in others the sin I share
with them?"
And this too, lies behind the fear and
timidity of the people of God. We are ourselves partners with the
world in its sin.
Shall we challenge its dishonesty, we who have lied and cheated?
Shall we challenge its greed and materialism, we who withhold from
God the full tally of our tithes and offerings, who give to the poor
only after we have provided handsomely for ourselves?
Shall we challenge its obsession with sex, we whose minds are
impure?
Shall we challenge the selfish fight for status men indulge by their
strikes for parity, we who quit a church if we feel we are not
accorded proper recognition in it?
The people of God are not rising up to serve Him because we are compromised by our own guilt. We fear exposure. It is our guilt that feeds our fear.
What is God's answer to Moses' guilt?
Again, the Lord said to him, "Put your hand - that guilty hand that killed - into your bosom." Moses did so, and when he took it out, it was leprous. Urggh! "You must see your guilt, Moses. You must see it as your own. And you must see it before My face. It must come out into the open between us. You must not conceal it - from your own eyes, or from mine."
So it must be for the people of God who are called to serve Him. There is no escape from that exposure if we are ever to be cleansed of the guilt of our sin. While we cover our sins, they remain unforgiven. They are forgiven only when God covers them.
There is never forgiveness without a reckoning. It is to save us from our sins that Jesus came, but not even He can cleanse them while we keep them hidden ... and in their hiddenness, indulged. Either we expose them to Him that He may cleanse us of them, or we shall be exposed in them without remedy before the eyes of the world.
It is a painful business, having to face the music before God. But this is the strait gate, the crushing pressure zone, through which we must pass if we are ever to arrive in the open country of life, and there enjoy the freedom of the forgiven. While ever we hide our sins away from the sight of our own eyes, and God's, we remain in them. Our sins are borne by Him, (the sins of the whole world are borne by Him), but they are not 'put away' from between ourselves and Him until first they are uncovered and He puts them away. Our sins will not be forgiven until we suffer God to convict us of them, and confess them. So long as we hide them, we remain in bondage to the strength of them and the guilt of them. But when we bring them out for Him to cover, then are we doubly cured - of their guilt and their power.
This, Moses now discovered. "Put your hand back into your bosom," God said. Moses did so. And when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. (Exodus 4:7)
Now Moses is clean ... as we are only ever made clean by the Word of forgiveness God speaks to us in Christ: "You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you." (John 15:3)
Let a man stand in the armour of forgiveness wherewith God clothes him, and he can stand against all the accusations of the world - and the devil. He will be surrounded as by a ring of fire within which he is safe. Though the world ferret out his secret sins and fling them in his face, yet the work God has given into his hands will prosper still. If God justifies a man or woman, who is there to condemn?
It rests with God to do that ... with God alone. That is why humanism as a way to remedy the world's ills is doomed from the beginning, for humanism can supply no remedy either for human guilt or for human defilement. Only God can furnish the world with cleansed and forgiven men and women. And the glory of the Christian Gospel is precisely that it is the marvellously good news that the remedy for all our defilement is provided ... fully provided, so that we may serve our generation with clean hands and pure hearts.
So to the third sign which Moses was given. Here we see ...
The water of the Nile was turned into blood.
The river Nile was Egypt's God. Depending on it absolutely for life and prosperity, they worshipped it. The Nile in this story is representative of all those powers in nature and the world to which men turn when they depart from the living God, and lose the assurance of His gifts, and His sustenance, and His protection.
This is what we humans always do. We think to escape from God into freedom. But in the delusion that we are free, we fall into bondage to the powers of the world and the lusts of our own hearts, for that is all that is left to us when we forsake the living God. "We worship and serve the creature, rather than the Creator, Who alone is blessed for ever." (Romans 1:25) And we corrupt 'the creature' (the creation) by demanding that its powers be as God to us, with the consequence that those powers, given to serve us in the hands of our beneficent Creator, turn to be our enemy. The water of life, which in our folly and ignorance we suppose them to possess, is turned into the blood of death.
In whom does Moses believe? In the false and threatening gods of Egypt which cannot sustain man's life? Or in the living God, the Creator of all things, 'in Whose hand it is to give life and breath and all things'? (Acts 17:25)
In which God do we believe? In the Spirit of the Age? Or in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? The god we believe in is the god we fear. Then let our fear of the god of this world, who blinds the minds only of unbelievers, be lifted from us.
"You shall not fear other gods, but you shall fear Yahweh, your God; He it is who will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. You ... shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you." (II Kings 17:38-39)
Fear and guilt and unbelief. These were the obstacles to Moses' service to God that needed to be cleared away. They are ours also; and their remedy is the same for us that it was for him:
The Power of God for our fear ...
The Pardon of God for our guilt ...
The Plenitude of God for our unbelief.
By these things the servant of God is readied for service.
And they are pledged to us - all of them. And the pledge of them is sealed with a seal better than any that Moses knew, the precious blood of Christ. Shall we, in the face of all this, shrink from the call of God to us? "By faith shall the man whom I make righteous live," saith the Lord, "but if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him." (Hebrews 10:38) Let us but yield ourselves to His obedience, and shall He not lead us, as He led His servant of old
... to the song of victory on the shores of
the great sea,
... to long and blessed converse with God on the mountain,
... to the vision of His glory so that our faces too will shine in
the splendour of it,
... to a passage through death by the hands of God Himself,
... and the blessed privilege of standing on the Mount beside our
transfigured Lord?
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