Taught by Philip de Grey Warter at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009
The film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ asks the question: what might happen if global warming continues? It pictures worldwide catastrophe, flooding and the beginning of the next ice age. The human relationship in the story is a father-son one, with the (not so) immortal line:
“Whatever happens stay put, because your father is coming to rescue you.”
Same here. Yet Moses, known throughout his Scripture for his faith, is anything but a man of faith here. At a recent conference, Mark Ashton looking back on his ministry felt he had been “inadequate in his task” – remarkable considering his ability! Yet in a sense, that is the normal Christian life.
Picture a graph – with time along the bottom axis, and along the side, some measure of godliness or the Christian life. On the graph are two lines. One is your head knowledge of the Christian life, what you know it ought to be like. This one is a steady trajectory.
The other = living it out. It ought to have an upward trajectory, though a bit wobbly!
But there’s a gap. The gap between your knowledge line and your living line, and it grows as they go up. The gap is an increasing sense of guilt, and inadequacy – what the Accuser uses to sling at us. That feeling of inadequacy is the normal Christian life. It is expressed in Romans 7:
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”
If this is the normal Christian life, Exodus 4 is a great encouragement – God is using a tentative, uncertain man with flaws, doubts and weakness – an ordinary guy used to do extraordinary things. The chapter is a picture of Moses’ faithlessness: his reluctance, then his disobedience.
1. His faithless reluctance
He is reluctant – willing to use any excuse to get out of going to Egypt. Moses is the kid at school who you go to, to think up an excuse when you haven’t done your homework. He is the master of excuses. But here he has met his match. God bats away every excuse Moses throws at him and gets a six every time.
First excuse: Inadequacy. 3v11 who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?
Second: Inability. What shall I say to him? God reveals what he’s like.
Third: Ineffectiveness. 4v1: they won’t believe me. God equips him with three signs. Each is a glimpse of God’s awesome power over the kings of Egypt. Pharaohs wore a crown with a snake’s head up, but the Lord rules it over them. Leprosy was prevalent in Egypt; but was also subject to the Lord. The Nile was the source of Egypt’s famed fertility, and therefore power and wealth; to destroy the Nile is to destroy Egypt, and even that God can do. Yet you can imagine Moses still trying to work out the next excuse.
Fourth: I’m not good up front or at public speaking. But who made his mouth?! You can imagine even Moses realising that’s a weak one.
Fifth: he admits his reluctance.
We’d be astonished at Moses, if only we weren’t tempted to make up the same excuses for ourselves. He had a unique role which we don’t have, but together as a church we’ve been given the corporate responsibility of telling people God’s rescue plan from sin for all people over all time. They need to hear about it, but if I’m honest I’m reluctant to tell people about it. That’s terrible, but it’s the reality, and like Moses I’ve made up excuses and even used some of his. They’re not going to listen. I don’t know what to say. Let someone else do it.
Why are we reluctant to tell people? Often because we’re faithless. We don’t really believe God’s in control. We don’t really believe he knows us better than we know ourselves – he’s in a better decision to judge how we should use our gifts. And that he knows our weaknesses and makes provision for them.
There is some real help here in the signs God gave to Moses – they speak to Egypt, but also to Moses.
- The snake: here is a man who has previously fled from difficulty. He’s told to take the serpent by the tail: the wrong end. Possibly the bravest thing he’s ever done. He’s got to forgo his fear and take a risk, but discovers that obedience is the path of victory. God can take the deadly and make it obedient to trust in deliverance.
- The hand: Moses has to deal with things in himself – it’s his hand that becomes leprous. Leprosy sums up Moses’ opinion of himself. He has a low opinion of himself, and God makes him go lower. As he does he discovers great uncleanness within himself; but God can restore it.
- The water: Moses here is being told he can overmaster Egypt his enemy, by obedience.
It works – in the end he goes obediently.
2. His faithless disobedience.
There is a bizarre section in this chapter about God meeting Moses on his way and about to kill him… In one sense it reminds us that God could use anyone, and if Moses is disobedient God could quite easily find someone else to do it. But it’s about keeping the deal; God has kept his part of the deal, and Moses hasn’t circumcised his firstborn son. Why might that be? It could be because Moses is in Midian; maybe he wants to blend in so doesn’t want to stand up and be counted as God’s man still. Zipporah does the job and touches his feet etc: almost as if she’s saying I was about to lose you but this blood makes us married all over again (?). But it does seem to be an issue of obedience.
It’s easy for us to want to blend in and not to live as we ought. Not to be the city on the hill, the salt and light.
